Today is a lovely day with bright sunlight, fall sunlight, slanted light, and a mostly blue sky. The breeze is strong and teeters on being a wind. It is raining leaves. It is 51°, the predicted high for the day. I have no errands, no reason to leave the house so I’ll do a bit of cleaning. I’m thinking vacuuming.

I’m watching The Black Scorpion, a 1957 black and white creature movie, a 1950’s B-movie. Geologists are checking out an erupting volcano in Mexico, but all the characters speak English, not Spanish. The backgrounds are painted stills. The jeep bounces on a fake road you don’t see. A film behind it provides the background and a sense of movement. The best scenes are in the village with crowds of extras. They are dressed in traditional clothes. The scenes would have been beautiful in color. The special effects of the giant scorpion are reminiscent of Harry Harryhausen, but the close ups of the scorpion’s face are silly. Only the mouth moves, and it drools. The scorpions have come out of the volcano and are ravaging the towns and eating the people and cattle. I am enjoying this movie maybe because of its flaws. My mother would have said it is right up my alley.

When I lived in Africa, my students would often visit in the early evenings. They would knock on the screen door and say caw caw or something similar. They’d leave their sandals outside. We’d sit and chat a while. One night, a student asked for my sandal. I passed it over to her. She whacked the floor. She killed a scorpion. It was my first scorpion. During training I saw my first army ants. They were mesmerizing. They traveled in a long, thick line and never stopped. I was late to class that day. I also saw centipedes near my house. I was disappointed they didn’t have 100 legs. As for common insects, during the day there were the flies while during the night, in the rainy season, there were the mosquitos, buzzing, annoying, blood sucking mosquitos.

My dance card is fairly empty this week. I have my usual uke practice and lesson but only one concert. I’m happy with a quiet week.

Today is yesterday, cloudy and chilly, but the weather report is a mix, a sort of a peek a boo game between the sun and the clouds. The high today will be 53°. That’s jacket weather.

When I was a kid, Sunday was a different sort of a day. I had to get dressed early to go to mass. I wore my Sunday church clothes, not to be confused with my school clothes or my play clothes. Most Sundays I walked to church, a short walk, as it was right beside my school. I preferred the downstairs for mass, no sermon there. I was never fond of sermons, most were dull. A bit of humor would have helped, but I guess sin and eternal flames are never funny. I always sat in the back, the best spot for a quick getaway.

My father always bought the Sunday paper. He read the Boston American. I remember he sat in the chair by the picture window to read it. He never read the funnies so I’d grab them. I’d lie on the floor to read. I remember the print would sometimes smear, and ink would get on my fingertips. The television was usually on showing the Sunday Cinema. The only movie I remember was Lassie Come Home, an old black and white film.

Sunday dinner was the special meal of the week. On the menu were always mashed potatoes and a couple of vegetables, canned vegetables. The roast varied. Sometimes it was a whole chicken, other times roast beef. We’d sit at the table. My mother, though, would often stand and eat at the counter.

Some Sundays we went to East Boston to visit my grandparents, my mother’s parents. My mother had seven siblings. She was the third born. My mother’s sisters were usually there on Sundays with their kids, the cousins. The women, including my grandmother, sat in the kitchen. The men sat upstairs watching football. On the stove was always spaghetti, enough to feed everybody. I loved that the cheese was in a chunk and had to be grated over the spaghetti.

It was dark when my father drove us home. I would sometimes fall asleep leaning against the backseat door. I do remember a white house with an oxen yoke, minus the oxen of course, over the garage. That was the sign we were almost home.

My leg is the best it has been. I believe my sloth days are the reasons. Now I need the energy to clean or blinders to ignore the dirt.

The house was cold this morning. It holds the night chill. Today will be in the low 50’s. It is a cloudy morning. Everything looks dark. The leaves are losing their colors, turning brown, and even a small breeze drops more of them to the ground.

Mornings this time of year have a different feel. The air is chilly but it hints of afternoon warmth. Hoodies are morning attire while a flannel shirt will do for the afternoon.

Saturday has always been my favorite day. When I was a kid, it was a day to roam. I remember riding my bike to the zoo. I’d put it in the bike rack then walk and visit the animals. Back then the animals lived in small cages except for the deer who roamed a fenced in hillside. The animals were more local than exotic. I remember raccoons and even squirrels. I’d spent most of the day there. I’d eat my lunch at one of the picnic tables in an area beyond the cages then finish roaming. The MDC barn was beside the entrance to the zoo. The horses were stabled there. That was my last stop before the ride home.

Pieces of my childhood have stayed with me. They have become traditions. Some are as simple as making my mother’s stuffing at Thanksgiving and her pepper and eggs in the summer. She always made it when we went to the beach or had a barbecue. My sisters and I joke that we caught the Christmas bug from my mother. We even make the same cookies. My mother used to say, “It is too cold to snow.” We did too until it snowed on the coldest day. When I go outside in the winter without a hat, I think of my mother. She would have reminded me that heat escapes through the head. My sisters sometimes say that to me. It is part of family lore.

My sloth continues to party. I swear I can hear him blowing horns. He is celebrating my joining him and doing nothing. I have become quite adept at ignoring the giant balls of dog hair which fly into the air when I walk around the house. I could write dust me on the tables. At some point, though, I’m just going to have to clean. I can only take so much!!

Apologies, apologies for the lateness of the hour. I slept quite late then a former student from Ghana who lives here in the US called, and we spoke for well over an hour. It was catch up time. We spoke of her days as my student and of Bolga. Franciska is a FraFra, the tribe in and around Bolga. Her family home is in a village outside of Bolga. She was one of the youngest students in my class the first year. She was also one of the smartest. Franciska has had some heavy duty medical issues, but she sounded healthy and said she was feeling good. We caught each other up with what we’ve each been doing. She hasn’t been back to Ghana for a long time but hopes to go. I told her that was also my hope.

I am taking it easy again today. That worked yesterday as my leg is much better, and I can stand up without moaning. The Tylenol helped as I woke up only a couple of times during the night. I still need to do an errand.

The afternoon is mostly sunny. It is in the high 50’s. The air is still. My neighborhood is quiet though Henry did break the silence when he barked at the Amazon driver delivering a big bag of dog food to the house. Nala is still up to her felonious ways. I found a rolled pair of sneaker socks in the hall downstairs. They had been upstairs. I think I have to do a yard check.

Duke, the boxer I grew up with, was not a thief. He didn’t usually steal food from the counter except that one time we caught him, my brother and I. My mother had put the Sunday roast on the counter to defrost. It was roast beef, my favorite. My brother and I were watching TV when Duke came out of the kitchen with the roast in his mouth. We jumped up, grabbed him, opened his jaw and took the roast. He was not a happy dog. The roast has teeth marks. We washed it and smoothed out the teeth marks as well as we could. We must have done a great job as my mother didn’t notice. As we were sitting around the table eating, my brother and I were hard-pressed not to laugh.

Fall is firmly entrenched. The sunlight is sharp, no longer diffused as in summer. The breeze is chilly and constant. In the mornings the house holds on to the night air and is cold. I bundle a bit, a hoodie and warm slippers. It is time to put the storm door on the front. It is time to prepare for the coming of winter.

I’ve always loved this time of year. I remember how crisp the air felt in the mornings on my walk to school. I wore a jacket. The day would warm, but I still needed my jacket on the walk home. Darkness came in the late afternoon. We were inside early. We’d watch TV, or I’d do homework or read to pass the time until supper. We’d eat at the table in the kitchen. We could hear the TV in the background from the living room. We’d finish eating then to go back to watching TV until bedtime.

I used to love walking in the gutters and kicking the leaves. They flew into the air and onto the street. My front yard didn’t have trees which dropped their leaves. They were mostly fir trees. The backyard had a big hill and no trees. The sidewalks, though, were sheltered by big trees and long branches and were covered in fallen leaves.

My father raked on Saturdays. He’d clear the sidewalks and rake and sweep the dead leaves into big piles in the gutters. He’d burn the piles. I remember the smoke was gray, and the burning leaves had the best smell. I’d watch them burn. My clothes would hold on to the smell long after the fire was out.

Nala is sneaky. She quietly gets into things. This morning I found torn paper napkins and paper towels in the hall. I think she stole them from the bag I keep in this room for recycling my newspapers and magazines. I am either too engrossed in what I am doing or too absent minded to notice. When I accuse her, that stub tail wags, and she sort of smiles. That is her tell.

I was tired yesterday after nine straight days of mostly uke so yesterday I didn’t go to my uke lesson or the concert. I went back to bed and slept until noon. I am still tired today, and after all that activity my leg is hurting. The pain woke me up a few times during the night. I heard moaning. What a shock to find out I was the moaner. This morning I have started taking Tylenol again. I do need a few things, my usually bread and cream, but I won’t go out; instead, I need to stay home and do nothing, to rest my leg. I’m getting good at doing nothing.

Today is another lovely fall day. The sun is shining, but clouds are predicted for later. It is 61°. The breeze is every now and then and is strong enough to blow the leaves at the ends of the branches. The dogs romped this morning.

I remember so much, and if I close my eyes, I can see pieces of my childhood. My third grade classroom is intact in my memories. We were in the cellar of the rectory with the walls and the floor painted and tables and chairs about the room. A clock was the only wall ornament. I remember my seat was at the last table in a chair not against the wall. My nun’s desk was across from the door and facing all of us. We kept our books in the center of the table while lunches and book bags went under the chairs. We used to line up in the middle of the room to go outside. We had to walk beside the cars in the garage. It was a strange place for a classroom, but we never minded. It was as if we were in our own school.

I remember the eighth grade. My room was on the second floor. My seat was by a window overlooking the school yard. A bookcase lined the wall under the windows. I used to hide candy in the bookcase beside my seat. I’d covertly eat it during the day. Later, I got more brazen and kept my transistor radio in the bookcase. I’d listen through ear buds and hide the buds with my hands. One day as I was listening and eating, I got called on. I pulled the candy out of my mouth but wasn’t fast enough to take out the air buds. Sister Hildegard thought I was hard of hearing and raised her voice. I almost laughed out loud. Later, she changed all our seats, and I was in the front desk of the second row. She never remembered my hearing problem, and I couldn’t hide my candy or music anymore.

I can still see the classroom block and my classroom at Women’s Training College in Bolgatanga where I taught. The windows had no glass. They did have shutters. We sometimes had to close them when the rains were heavy. The door was an opening. Once in a while a goat would make its way inside the room. We’d just keep going. The goat always left. There were small wooden tables and chairs. Each table held two students. The chalk board was at the front of the room. Some of it had cracks. I wrote around them. My desk was in front of the board. In my memory drawer is the most vivid picture of that classroom. It will always be with me.

Today is ugly. The morning is dark. A strong wind is whipping everything back and forth, even the big limbs still covered in leaves are being tossed. I can hear that wind. Rain is predicted.

I remember Dick and Jane and their little sister Sally and who could forget Spot and Puff. I was in the first grade. They were in my first reader, Fun with Dick and Jane. Jane wore dresses all the time, frilly dresses. She had blonde hair sometimes tied with red ribbons. They never did anything once, “Run, run, Dick, run,” said Sally. “Look, Jane, look, look, see Dick.” Even the pets talked in doubles. Sometimes we’d read the books out loud as a class. We sounded sing-songy. Other times the nun would call one of us to read. I remember using my finger under the words so I could kept track. The books got boring quickly. We could read run runs and looks and sees only a few times. It was then we’d move on to another book with Dick and Jane. Each book had new words to learn, bigger words. I don’t remember when we were done with Dick and Jane, but I do remember different readers, bigger books with individual stories and questions at the end of each. The stories were actually interesting, and the questions were easy. They were in the same order as the story. They were usually homework.

The other lesson I remember is learning how to use the dictionary. That words were in the same order as the alphabet was the first thing we learned. I remember the guide words at the top of each page. That was the big lesson. We had work sheets with words, and we had to find the guide words for each of them. The test we had was the same. I loved my dictionaries. I used to open a page at random and look for new words. I kept a paperback dictionary near my bed so I could look up words I didn’t know when I was reading before going to sleep. I still have my red covered Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. The pages have begun to yellow.

In Ghana, I used to teach my students fun sounding words. Their favorite was bamboozle. I remember a history teacher asking me if I had taught them that word because it appeared in several essays. It seems the British bamboozled the Ashanti.

My dance card this week has my regular uke events, my practice and lesson, and also two concerts. I have a doctor’s appointment today, just a regular check-up. During the rest of the week I might vacuum and dust though I’m hesitant as I don’t want to risk my inner sloth.

Today is a lovely fall day. The sun is staying around. It was missing most of the week hidden by rain and clouds. Everything is glinting in the light, especially the leaves dangling from the lower branches. The sky is a light blue. The breeze is every now and then. It is 57°, the high for the day. The weekend will be a pretty one.

My dance card still has two events, today and tomorrow. I didn’t post yesterday because of the concert and may not post tomorrow for the same reason. I have to be in Hyannis at eleven thirty. This has been the busiest week I can remember in a long time. I’m tired.

When I was a kid, life was easy. During the week was school. Every day was the same. When my mother woke me up, she already had breakfast ready. The menu mostly depended on the weather, but I could count on my cup of cocoa and my brother’s tea, served in a pot. Sometimes we had eggs with toast while on cold days we often had oatmeal. My mother did her best to beat down the oatmeal lumps, but a few sneaked through. I didn’t care. I never ate naked oatmeal. Mine was always drowning in milk and covered in sugar. Once in a while I’d add cinnamon. After breakfast it was time to get dressed. I didn’t have to choose my clothes. I wore my uniform, but I did get to pick my socks. Sometimes I wore short socks, but in the cold I often wore knee socks. My friend and I walked to school together, the same way every day. I loved that walk. The straightaway was on a sidewalk with branches overhead. The sunlight was here and there. We’d sometimes jump from spot to spot. We’d cross the street, and school was right there. We’d wait in the schoolyard for the bell.

I was a dreamer. I didn’t plan day to day, but I did plan for when I was older. I knew I’d go to college, the first to go in my extended family. I knew I’d see the world. No one in my family traveled far, but I knew I would. I never doubted that my dreams would come true.

After Ghana, the first trip I made was to Europe. I went to Finland then on to Russia. I’ll never forget that trip. I ate reindeer in the Arctic Circle when it was midnight sun time. I took a train from Helsinki to Leningrad. Only three of us were on the through car. It got dis-attached from the Finnish train and added to the Russian train. One uniformed train person stayed in the car. She gave us tea, lots of tea served in clear glass cups.

I always think myself lucky. My life has been interesting. It has been all I dreamed it would be.

The sun was through the clouds earlier, and I saw a bit of blue, but both have disappeared. The weather report calls for light rain. It is chilly at 50°. Today might even be light coat weather.

This is a busy week for me, all uke. I’ve already had practice and my lesson. Today, tomorrow and Sunday are concert days. The concert book is songs of the sea. On Saturday I am playing with a few friends at an ordination. We will play the dismissal song. My dance card groans.

I am back to being pleasant. I have my coffee. The animals don’t avoid me anymore. It is a happy household.

When I was in Ghana, tea was the Ghanaian drink of choice. I had to buy instant coffee. Ghanaians didn’t drink milk either so I had to buy canned milk. Every morning I drank at least two cups of coffee, one with breakfast and another after teaching a class or two. I had a giant mug. I used to sit on my small porch and drink the later cups of coffee. I loved watching the world go by. Little kids walked passed my house in one direction to the primary school while older kids also walked passed my house but in the other direction to the middle school. Both schools were just outside my school fence so through my school was a shortcut. I was an attraction. Kids either said good morning or stared at me.

I had eggs and toast every morning for breakfast. They were cooked over a small charcoal burner. The eggs were cooked in groundnut oil, peanut oil to us, which gave the eggs the best flavor. The toast was buttered with margarine (I couldn’t resist the word play). Because butter came in a can and was expensive, I only bought it for holidays and for baking. Margarine was also sold in a can, but it was fairly inexpensive.

I never minded the margarine, canned milk and, aghast, the instant coffee. After a while, they tasted just fine. In Ghana I learned to make good with what was available.

The rain continues, but the darker clouds have given way to lighter clouds. A few leaves are moving in the breeze. The air is chilly with the dampness. The dogs are resting, having their morning naps on the couch. I woke up late. I went to bed late though I always think late is a misnomer. It was close to 4 when I turned off the light. That’s early morning.

My dance card is filled this week, all with uke. It starts tonight, and there is something every day through Sunday. I can’t remember any other week as busy as this.

My mother always made great lunches. We had bologna a lot which I loved. We never had peanut butter and jelly even on Fridays when we couldn’t eat meat; instead, we mostly had tuna salad or egg salad. I saw kids with gross peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The jelly seeped through the bread, and there was always a blue looking circle in the middle of the top bread. It was always Wonder Bread which was thin and sort of squishy anyway. Cookies were the usual desert. Oreos were my favorite. Chocolate chip was a close second. I bought my milk. It was delivered to each classroom just before lunch. Candy to be sold was delivered at the same time but in a lunch box. The bars were a nickel. Once in a while my mother would give me a nickel, and candy was my dessert. That brings me to Sister Hildegard. She was my eighth grade teacher. She was quite old. I remember that she would take the lunch box, check out the candy bars and take a few. She hid them in a desk drawer. Once in a while she’d eat some covertly. We always knew because she’d be chewing. I remember once she spit nuts on a paper of mine.

In the winter my mother sometimes gave us soup for lunch. It was always chicken noodle, Campbell’s chicken noodle. The top of the thermos was the bowl. I had to be careful pouring the soup as sometimes the noodles plopped hard and drops flew usually onto my blouse. My mother included saltines and dessert in my lunch box.

I am still partial to bologna and Oreos. I only have soup once in a while, but when I do, I sometimes crush my Saltines and put the pieces in my soup. I like chicken soup still, but I prefer tomato soup with grilled cheese. I love to dip the sandwich into the soup, a sublime taste, a heavenly lunch.