My mornings are quiet. I have my ritual. I read each paper and take my time. I have two cups of coffee. I share each cup with Henry. He gets about a teaspoon full in his own cup. Jack often disturbs my morning ritual by lying on my newspaper. That drives me crazy, but I don’t move Jack. I just put the paper on top of him. He sleeps.

When I was a little kid, my friends were all from the neighborhood. We were together every day walking to and from school. We played together, but we never rode bikes together. My friend didn’t have a bike because she didn’t want one. My pedaled explorations were by myself.

I remember the most glorious bike moments were when I was riding downhill propelled by the incline with the wind whistling around me. My bike sped all the way down the hill without my pedaling. I’d only hit the brakes before I reached the busy crossroads. I remember my back wheel sliding on the sand when I used my brakes. I used to do that on purpose, sand sliding. It made me feel like a trick rider.

My first grocery order arrived yesterday. It came in three bags. It was mostly dairy and produce with a few boxes of crackers, a small bag of potato chips, sea salt flavor, and tortilla chips. My second grocery order will be here tomorrow. It will have more produce, some beef and a few snacks, maybe more than a few. I’ve been missing snacks.

Every now and then I want salt. I don’t use salt on my food except on French fries and sometimes onion rings because salt tends to become the taste. The food disappears. My occasional need for salt gives me a chuckle and takes me back to the first TV episode of Star Trek and the character Nancy. I have never forgotten the shapeshifter’s name, the character who sucked all the salt out of the doomed crew member. Yesterday I was Nancy. I ate the bag of sea salt chips in one sitting. My lips tingled but I didn’t need salt anymore.

My dance card is mostly empty for the whole rest of the week except for an hour tomorrow morning, my weekly uke lesson. My singing voice is still so off-tune it makes me cringe, but I do know most of my uke chords, the only exceptions being ones we don’t play enough so they stay unfamiliar. I seldom need to look at my fingers anymore. I think I’m learning my uke!

When I was a kid, nobody I knew played a musical instrument. We all reached our musical heights in the first grade rhythm band. My grandparents had a piano in their living but nobody in the family, including them, played. To my grandparents a piano was a status symbol, always dusted, never played.

Today’s weather is the same as yesterday’s, sunny and cold. The sky is an icy blue. The wind is now a breeze. I can see the dead oak leaves at the ends of branches blowing, but only a little. I’m staying close to home today. My local grocery order will be delivered this afternoon. All’s well though the degree of wellness fluctuates from day to day.

My plants did get watered yesterday, and my bed did not get changed, just as I figured. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Today I have started a new list of items I need at the hardware store. I think this is my first hardware store list. Maybe I should decorate the top of the list with flowers or stars (tongue in cheek here).

When I was a kid, our living room didn’t have a whole lot of knick-knacks. I didn’t notice. I think there were twin sort of shadow boxes on the wall behind the couch. They held ceramic figures. In my kitchen on a shelf is an elf or a leprechaun. I’m not sure though I do lean toward leprechaun. I bought it because my mother had his cousins of sorts on those living room shelves on Washington Ave.

I can hear Henry playing with his toys. When Lee was vacuuming on Thursday, he put the toys in the toy box. Henry will not pull his toys from the box. If I put the toys on the hall floor, he will play with them. This is yet another Henry quirk. Did I mention he won’t go out the dog door at night unless I turn on the outside light first?

When I was a kid, there was no leash law. I don’t think I ever remember seeing someone walk a dog. I remember Duke, our boxer, being let out the front door to go wherever he wanted to go. Duke had a son named Sam who belonged to my aunt who had given us Duke. Sam was a big boxer compared to Duke. Sam was silly and even grinned. I’m not kidding. Sam grinned. Duke used to go to Sam’s house to meet up with his son. They used to roam together. People talked about the two ferocious boxers roaming the streets. We laughed. Duke and Sam were people lovers. I don’t even think those people mentioned Sam grinned.

Today is cold but winter lovely. The sun is brilliant in a light blue sky. The wind is strong and the high branches, both oak and pine, sway. It is only 29˚, and the wind makes it feels even colder. I’m cozy and warm.

Every day I have a list. Some days I complete the items on the lists while other days I choose to be a sloth, to do nothing. Yesterday was a sloth day. Today my list says: water the plants and change the bed. I will prophesize. The plants will love the water.

I never see the neighbors who live across the street. Henry still barks when the man is in his yard. The other neighbors and I wave. The other day I saw a rental truck in the driveway of a house on the facing street. I’m still wondering why and have no one to ask.

When my father retired, they gave him a sumptuous send off complete with dinner and presents. A couple of the presents were a hand drill and saw. We, his family, gasped at visions of drilled or sawed off digits. My father and tools had one of those live or maim relationships. My mother asked one of the givers what had prompted the idea of tools. The man told my mother he knew my father liked to putter around the house. When my mother told us, we all laughed. By putter around the house, she meant he emptied ashtrays and did dishes. We had to figure out where to hide the tools.

When I was a kid, around this time on a Sunday, my mother would already be in the kitchen making dinner. The kitchen windows would be fogged from the heat of the oven. The aroma of the cooking roast would spread from the kitchen throughout the whole house. I can still remember my mother at the sink peeling potatoes. She always used the same pan to cook the potatoes. It had a dent. A couple of vegetables, including my favorite baby peas, would be in pots on cold burners ready to be turned on when the roast was finished and the potatoes were ready to be mashed. My mother used a masher with a wooden handle and a metal wavy masher on the bottom. Getting all the lumps out of the potatoes took strength of body and purpose. My mother excelled at serving smooth, lump-less mashed potatoes in which I always made a hole on the top for the gravy. This is and will forever be my favorite Sunday dinner.

The morning is cold. The wind is making it feel even colder. The high today will be 32˚. We’re just about there now. The sunlight appears through the clouds every now and then giving me a bit of hope for a nice day. I need to fill the bird feeders. I’d been waiting for a warmer day but warmth is not predicted. I’ll just wear mittens.

Staying inside is wearing thin. I am tired of my own company. Poor Henry is also tired of my company. I talk to him all the time. Mostly he pretends to listen but sometimes he ignores me and just gets off the couch.

When I was growing up, Saturday was my favorite day. I got to eat my cereal in front of the TV while I watched all those great kids’ shows. The whole day was mine to do what I wanted. I had so many choices. There was always my bike. I could get to five different towns from my little town. My favorite ride was around the lake in the next town over closest to me. I would sit for a bit of a rest at the bandstand. I remember how grand the houses facing the lake were. At the head of the lake was Bayrd’s Indian Trading Post which had a teepee in front and sold authentic artifacts and costumes. I loved wandering that store with its beautiful beaded headdresses and belts. That was usually my last stop of the day.

Another choice was the library. Saturday in the winter was my favorite library day. I’d wander the shelves, find a book, take a seat and start reading. The librarian never shooed me out. Usually I’d take four or five books, the limit, home with me.

There was always the Saturday matinee especially if it was a really cold, wintry Saturday. We sometimes got a ride uptown but we never got a ride home. I remember walking home from the theater around 4 in the afternoon. It wasn’t dark but it wasn’t light either. It was the part of the day without much identity. Late afternoon, maybe. Getting on to twilight, maybe even better. Street light time, the best description of all. I always hurried home.

Today is a pretty day and a warm day, in the mid 40’s. I have a few errands later, and I’m glad to be going out. I used to find errands annoying. Now, they are the only break in the monotony.

My den smells like the stores I used to visit back in time which sold woolen jackets with embroidered designs, handwoven socks and those square decorative cloth bags we all carried. Some bags had fringe. Mine didn’t. Everything in the store came from Nepal, which was big in the late 60’s. I used to buy prayer flags to decorate my apartment. The store in Hyannis always smelled of incense. I’m burning incense right now. It smells like the store to me, but I don’t know what the scent is. All the long thin incense sticks smell the same to me. I’m thinking sandalwood. I think they are all sandalwood.

My sister once gave me small blocks of peat to burn and a ceramic Irish cottage peat burner. Peat has a particular smell. It is one of those smells you love or not at all. I love the smell of peat. I particularly remember it from one trip to Ireland. We were staying at a summer hotel before the season. Most of the rooms were cold including the tiny dining room where we were having dinner so they started the fireplace. They used peat. The room warmed quickly and was filled with the aroma of the peat. It stayed on my clothes. I could still smell the peat when I went to sleep.

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to go tobogganing at the Winchester Country Club. It had the most amazing hills. I remember a hill we took only once. We were speeding down that hill when it just disappeared leaving us in mid-air. We flew for a bit. My friend Bobby was in front. I was in the middle and poor Jimmy was in the back. The landing was hard. We slammed against the snow but continued down the hill. Jimmy had almost fallen off when we landed. We sort of dragged him for a bit. We didn’t know. That hill was a monster.

Yesterday I did my laundry. I also dry mopped the downstairs floors, especially the corners where puffs of white fur seem to hide and grow bigger. I ordered dog food on-line, but today I’m going to Agway for the cat food and litter and whatever catches my eye as something always does. Last time it was a new bird feeder and three small plants since potted and moved to the dining room window sill. I haven’t put the bird feeder out yet. It has been too cold. It is now at the top of my to do the list but not today. It is colder than yesterday.

My life continues to be quiet. I talk to my sisters and that’s about it. I don’t go out often. Usually I save all my errands to do in one day except for the trash. Trash has its own day.

When I was a kid, I never saw our town dump. I didn’t even know we had one. The weekly trash truck picked up everything, even the things they weren’t supposed to, the dump things, but a six pack always eased the forbidden trash into the truck. I remember a chair stuffed into the back of the truck.

When I was a kid, the square in my town, we always called it uptown, had wonderfully, amazing smells and sounds. Just before the movie theater was a set of stairs going below the square. When the door opened, I could hear the sounds of bowling balls and pins dropping. It was a bowling alley and a pool hall. I never went there. None of us did. It was a mysterious place where we figured the leather jacket crowd hung out. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it was a rumor spread to keep kids out of there. It worked. We went to the big bowling alley or the one at Redstone Shopping Center.

I remember the smell of popcorn popping. Somewhere behind the square was a candy making building. The aroma of fresh bread wafted from Hank’s Bakery. The fish market had a gross smell, a combination of smells of fish, dead and on ice, and salt water, but standing on the sidewalk in front of the fish market was worth tolerating the smell because the fish market had a great window. Lobsters swam in a tank you could see. I always watched. The lobsters never did anything. They just stayed on the bottom, but I watched anyway. That’s how I learned lobsters are bottom-feeders.

On Sunday I felt accomplished. I went to the dump though I will never go to the dump again on a Sunday at 1:44 pm. At the recycling area, both sides of the road were filled with parked cars so, having nowhere to park, I skirted the area and went to the trash bins. I found a free bin so I tossed the trash. The rest, the cardboard and such, can stay in the car until the next trip. After the dump, I shopped for cat litter and cat food. I also bought myself a Milky Way. I cleaned the litter box before I put in the new litter. It was a gross job. I rewarded myself with the Milky Way.

Now that Christmas is gone, there are no colors left to brighten my world. Last night was dark. No houses near me were lit, inside or out. The only light was a bit of a street light through the trees from a couple of streets away. The trail of white lights across my fence had been turned off by the timer. Henry wouldn’t go into the dark so I turned on the outside light for him. He is still afraid of stuff but not so much stuff.

The other day I was cleaning up some old photos. I saw my pictures of snow storms from past winters. I don’t love snow, but I think freshly fallen snow on the trees and bushes is lovely. I have lots of pictures of the snow in my yard. Of the few trees around me, the furs seem most at home with snow. Their covered branches look like flocked Christmas tree branches. A yellow or red light through the melting snow around the bulbs wouldn’t be unexpected. Scrub pine are ugly trees, but the snow makes them look their best.

Last night I asked Hey, Google how to spell Hawaii’s state bird. I wanted to know how to spell nene (easy, I know). Goggle started, ” Capital H-a-w-a-i-i, and that’s where I stopped Google. I felt silly.

A friend wrote about the pit he was growing in his kitchen which would become a palm tree. All of a sudden I remembered avocado pit plants. They were the things for a while. Just about every friend’s house I visited had a tall plant growing from an avocado pit balanced between the sides of a glass by toothpicks on each side of the pit holding it mostly out of the water in the glass. I think the plants were always on windowsills in the kitchens. I know mine was. It is strange what I forget, what I remember. Today it was the avocado pit plants.

(From 2018)

Posts for special days are important to me. They are the thoughts and feelings brought to mind about the day and what it means to me. This post is from another year, but the title quote is especially apt for the events now happening. I don’t think I could do better than have Martin Luther King write the post for today. 

Today is Martin Luther King Day. These are excerpts from Martin Luther King’s speech delivered on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. 

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, 

From every mountainside, let freedom ring! 

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.”

Sun and a blue sky have finally crowded the clouds away. It will stay sunny with a high in the low 40’s, but the wind makes it feel colder. I have two errands: Agway and the dump, but I might add a stop for me. I’m thinking chocolate. It has already been an I need chocolate day.

My hometown is much bigger now than when I was a kid. The square has changed most of all. The best stores are gone, replaced mostly by restaurants. The movie theater, my Saturday matinee spot, was saved and renovated. It now has live theater. If I could conjure up a return of a few of the stores, I’d bring back the Stoneham Spa, O’Grady’s Diner, Middlesex Drugs, the cobbler and that little restaurant that was long and narrow. I especially miss the cobbler. His shop was also long and narrow. It had a table the length of the room, and it was always covered in shoes, pairs tied together. The cobbler used to sit at the end of the table. He always wore a white apron. I remember bringing a pair of shoes for new soles. He gave me a numbered ticket and threw the shoes on the pile.

O’Grady’s was a wonderful old diner. It had red stools and lots of silver around the counter. The tables had red cushioned seats. On each table was a connection to the juke box. The songs were a quarter, and I would turn the pages until I found what I wanted. Mostly I had breakfast there with my father.

Middlesex Drugs was the best with its marble soda fountain counter and its gift counters. I could always find Christmas gifts for my parents. The perfume counter was in the middle sort of aisle a bit beyond the soda fountain. The perfume I bought my mother was never expensive. I doubt it even smelled good, but my mother always loved it. I bought my father his Christmas handkerchiefs there. I bought vanilla cokes.

The restaurant was next to the men’s store, also long gone. I never ate inside, but my mother would get me a sandwich for lunch from there when I had to go to the dentist in Boston. I remember the sandwich was always toasted and was wrapped in white paper sort of like a present.

I’m back to being a news junkie. The closer we get to the inauguration the more I watch. I’m hoping I see nothing but pomp and tradition on Wednesday.

The sounds of the wind and the rain woke me this morning. The rain was heavily beating on the roof, but the wind was intermittent. Both started last night, but the wind was first. I ran out for my newspapers with my hood over my head. Henry balked about going out but he did twice. The second time he went out he came in the dog door to get out of the rain. Usually he waits for me to let him in. I am well trained.

Potatoes and onions are baking right now. There are small Yukon Gold potatoes, a sweet potato, two regular potatoes and two white onions. I can smell the onions, but it is a sweet smell. I have to keep an eye on the Yukon Gold.

I cleaned more yesterday. I wasn’t going to clean but guilt got me up. I finished washing and dusting all the boxes and trinkets and books. I can’t believe how shiny and bright everything looks. The wall shelves are next.

While I was watching YouTube, I got a tour of a rental. The door was shown but not opened to the basement. Here we don’t have basements. We have cellars. We even have an interesting way of using cellar in a sentence as in put it down cellar, not put it down the cellar, just cellar. I remember my mother telling us to go play down cellar. Maybe it is a New England thing.

When I was a kid, I had everything I needed. I had a bike to take me anywhere. I had roller-skates which were just fun, never a means of transport, but I loved roller skating on the parking lot near my house. I remember the tingling on my feet when I skated and how strange it felt to walk after roller skating. I got a transistor radio one Christmas, and I used to put it in my bike basket and roll with the tunes, on AM stations back then. I remember the radio bouncing in the air when I hit a bump. I always thought I was a lucky kid.