Summer is really upon us. It is another day in the 80’s. It is another day for hibernating inside the cool house. The dogs are napping. Last night was another strange night for Nala. This time she was barking. Henry barks all the time. Nala never barks. When I heard her, I grabbed my flashlight and ran outside. I called her as I wasn’t about to trudge through the undergrowth to the back of my yard. Luckily, she came running. I put the leash on her, brought her inside and kept her inside. I’m wondering if some animal is harassing my poor dog.

I love the wee hours. Last night, rather early this morning, I stood out on the deck around 2 AM. The night had cooled a bit. Only one other house had a light. The sounds were from insects and night birds. It felt peaceful, serene. I sat for a bit longer not wanting to go inside, not wanting to waste any of this lovely night, but it was time for bed.

My dance card has mostly uke. We had a concert yesterday, tonight is practice, tomorrow my lesson and another concert on Friday. Uke gets me out of the house.

When I was growing up, my life was simple. It had a regimen, sort of. School days were always the same. I wore the same uniform, walked the same way every day and lessons were in the same order. My lunch was usually a sandwich and dessert, bologna, on white bread, and cookies, Oreos or chocolate chip. After my mother grocery shopped, we’d sometimes have Hostess for dessert. I was partial to cupcakes. Depending on the season, we’d play outside after school. After dinner, we’d watch a bit of TV before bed. The next morning it started all over again, in the way, in the same order. The funny part of it is I was never bored.

Now, my life is a bit lazy. I do what I want. I choose cleaning only when the Henry hair balls take over the house. That was yesterday. I swept. I water the plants inside and outside. I only make my bed when I change the sheets. I don’t cook so much. I have a couple of go to dishes, one with sausage, potatoes and onions and the other is pasta, shells mostly, but I’d make lasagna if I weren’t so lazy.

I have a couple of errands today.

The air conditioner is already blasting. The house was hot when I woke up so even before I made coffee I turned on the AC. The high for today will be 86°. It is an August on Cape Cod sort of day.

I have small gripes, little things which somehow drive me crazy. One of them is the ad which is constantly repeated on YouTube and airs twice in a row. It is for a Toyota dealership. One line sends me right back to the 1950’s. The speaker says even a woman can shop there. Wow, good to know! I watched another video where two couples went out to eat together. The men sat in the front, the women in the back. I wondered if they also walked behind their husbands. I think I live in a time warp.

When I was a kid, we seldom went out to eat. It was just too expensive. We did, once in a while, go to Kitty’s. It was mostly Italian, and it was usually busy with filled tables and lots of noise. It always felt special to me. I can still see us in my mind’s eye at a table in the corner by the door. For some reason I remember old waitresses who were extraordinary, who could line up dishes on their arms and carry them from the kitchen and around tables to their final destinations. There was so much food on the plates that we always had leftovers. Kitty’s is still one of my favorite places though I haven’t eaten there in years.

I am a fan of cheeseburgers. When I go out to eat, I often order them. For sides I love onion rings, the ones with the thin batter, and sweet potato fries. At seafood restaurants I pig out on the seafood platter with cole slaw on the side. My mother always got shrimp. I am partial to scallops. I like to crack my own lobsters though I’d never turn down a lobster roll. I like tangy cole slaw. I’ll always try new foods as long as there are no beans. My favorite pizza is sausage with caramelized onion. I think my tastes in foods are cosmopolitan. When I traveled, I ate foods whose names I didn’t know or couldn’t pronounce. It was like mystery dining.

Because I live by myself, I don’t make elaborate meals. I eat what is easy. I have eggs often and usually add cheese, cheddar. If I cook a real meal, it is cause for celebration. The dogs wear party hats, and there are streamers. Henry turns in circles. Nala wiggles that stubby tail. I use real dishes. Music plays. I’m eating dinner, not supper.

The spiders are back. That may sound like the come-on for a cheesy science fiction movie, but it isn’t. Webs are everywhere, between fronds on plants, on furniture, especially between chair legs, and even in the corners of the stairs. I clear them every time I go upstairs, but that is a useless task, a task more for Sisyphus. This happens every August, but I forget and am both surprised and annoyed when the webs appear. I think of Charlotte and her webs, but my spiders are not clever. I think they are illiterate. They are Miss Havisham spiders.

Last night was strange. The dogs were out a long time. That is never good. I called and Henry came, no Nala. I waited then decided to check on her so I grabbed a sweatshirt as it was cold and my flashlight. Once I was in the yard, she came running and was panting and jumping, excited. I figured she’d found a critter. I grabbed her and she shook me off. I got the leash and was able to catch her and leash her. About an hour later, I thought it was safe so I let them out just before bedtime. Nala didn’t come when I called. I went back into the yard then I heard her on the deck and leashed her again. This morning she went right to the same spot. Nothing was there.

When I was a kid, our boxer Duke wandered everywhere in the days before leash laws. He was fearless, and he was stubborn. One time a neighbor called and begged for help. Duke and his son Sam were around the doors of her house, and she couldn’t get out. They’d run to the door trying to get in when she tried to get out. Her dog was in heat and they knew it. My father went and got them. He was not happy and neither were the dogs.

If we had a barbecue when I was young, it was always hot dogs and hamburgers. My mother also cooked corn and made potato salad and peppers and eggs and served chips in the tulip bowl. For dessert it was always watermelon. My father cooked. Toward the end he’d ask who wanted a cheeseburger then he’d add yellow squares of American cheese to the burger. He also toasted the buns.

When we were older, barbecues were a bit more sophisticated. My mother still made potato salad and maybe peppers and eggs, but we never had hot dogs and hamburgers. We had steak tips and sausages, Chinese and Italian, sometimes chicken, ribs or kielbasa. We’d all sit around the kitchen table to eat. I loved sitting around that table and eating supper with my family.

Today the high will be 79°, somehow that sounds so much better than 80°. It will be partly cloudy. I still wonder why it is never partly sunny.

I need to be outside enjoying the cool, sunny morning. It is only 72°. For a Saturday, it is unusually quiet. I can hear birds singing and an occasional bark from across the street. Even Henry is quiet.

The other night I went outside with the dogs before bed. They roamed the yard. I stayed on the deck. Over my head swooped a bat. I ducked. I marveled at the first time I’ve seen a bat in the yard.

The older I get, the more words I seem to lose. I can see in my mind’s eye the picture of what the word is so I am patient hoping the picture catches up with the word. Most times it does.

My dance card this week has been filled with uke. The only ukeless day was Thursday. I had a concert Monday, yesterday, and I have another today. On Sunday I will rest.

If you had told me when I was a kid I would be a musician, I would have laughed. That I would travel the world was more believable; yet, here I am uke in hand playing music and accompanying myself. I mostly sing off key but with great enthusiasm.

I always think my greatest achievement when I was a kid was learning to read. Tying my shoes was second. Those loops weren’t easy. My mother bought a book a week at the supermarket. There were a couple of novels in each book. I read every book. They were abridged, but I didn’t know that until later. Most were classics. I remember Tom Sawyer. Those books were in the same bookcase as the supermarket encyclopedia. Our supermarket didn’t just feed us. We got a whole set of dishes, serving pieces included, and those books.

When I was in Ghana, I read all the time, in between and after classes, at night and when I traveled. I was blessed. I was given a Peace Corps book locker which the Peace Corps no longer gave volunteers. It was made of heavy cardboard, and when closed, took the shape of a small locker. When opened, there were two sides each with two shelves. My book locker was filled. The treasures inside included The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I flew through those books. I was oblivious to the world around me. I stayed in Middle Earth.

The second blessing was my town had a library and not just any library. It was designed by Davis Brody. It was only two years old when I arrived in Bolga. The form and shape of the building resembled the compounds of the FraFra, the local tribe. I loved spending time in that library. I’d go through the stacks and sit for a while at one of the tables. It was there I found British mysteries and Ngaio Marsh, a mystery writer from New Zealand.

Since my retirement, I have had unfettered time for reading. I am again blessed.

The morning is lovely. A slight breeze is keeping the air cool. It is in the mid 70’s now, but tonight will drop to the high 50’s. Over the weekend, though, the heat will be back with temperatures in the 80’s. I’d complain but that seems silly. It is, after all, August, our hottest month.

When I was a kid, August had a dual personality. It is my birthday month so I was excited, but August also meant school was close. My fun days were numbered. To add to the end of summer misery, we school shopped. Sometimes I needed a new blue skirt and white blouse, my uniform, but I always needed new shoes and school supplies. I had to pick out my lunchbox. I remember an Annie Oakley lunch box. She was riding her horse and shooting. My shoes were sturdy, tie shoes, and meant to last most of the year so I only wore them to school. My supplies included a pencil box, usually made of cardboard with different sections inside holding pencils, an eraser, a small ruler, a pencil sharpener, small colored pencils, sometimes glue, and a plastic triangle which I used only for tracing, My mother added a small pack of Crayola crayons and a few notebooks, the sort with the spiral middles. If I tore a page from the notebook, small pieces of papers were all over my desk and the floor. My school bag choice took a while. When I was younger, I had one that was square, opened with buckles and had a strap for over the shoulder. When I was older, I had one of those green bags with water proofing inside which had a strap you pulled then you carried the bag over your shoulder. That was the last piece of my school shopping.

School always started the Tuesdays after Labor Day. We took our baths on Monday night and went to bed early. My mother had to wake us up early. That was, to me, the official end of summer.

Today will be sunny according to the weather, but nobody told the clouds. It is going to be hot, 80°. The air is so still nothing is moving. It is quiet.

I am watching the strangest movie, Monster from the Moon from 1953. A boy wearing a space helmet and shooting one of those metal ray guns meets some scientists. His sister, a scientist, comes to get him to take him back to their picnic where his mother and sister are. They take a nap after eating. When the boy wakes up, he is wearing different clothes, there are scenes of dinosaurs and the plot has changed. He runs back to the cave and sees the Ro-Man monster, a gorilla in a space hat, who speaks perfect English in a voice-over and is on Earth to kill. There are only nine survivors. The film was colorized. Two characters have purple arms right up to their elbows, and the rest have tinges of purple. My favorite line so far is from a male scientist, the beau of the sister, who says to her, “You’re so bossy you ought to be milked before you come home.” He then adds, “You are too beautiful to be smart or too smart to be beautiful.” They are now getting married. The father wishes them a fruitful life. I figure the monster and all are part of the boy’s nap dream. I need the silliness of this movie.

My parents were always the youngest parents. My mother had turned twenty just four days before I was born. My father, also twenty, was close to his twenty-first. My mother was involved. She was a Girl Scout leader, a camp counselor and a den mother. She worked at the Christmas fair. My father had little time as he worked long days. He was a salesman, and his territory was south of Boston. In my mind’s eye, I see him coming home in the dark. He was seldom home for supper. I remember my parents driving to Hull for a drill competition. I was thrilled they drove all that way. I still remember them smiling as they walked toward me to say hello before we competed. My mother wore a white skirt. My memory drawer has held on to that white skirt for over sixty years. I don’t remember the rest.

The heat is back, 79°. The nights, though, are pleasant, cool, down into the 60’s, even the high 50’s. The dogs stay close. Nala lies against me keeping us both warm, shades of winter.

My life is quiet. The biggest excitement was my TV remote arrived and with it my Twizzlers, but the Twizzlers are finished. I now have a yellowing dance card, brittle with age. My cozies have become a uniform of sorts. Only my uke gets me dressed and out of the house.

The only part of Sunday left over from my childhood is the quiet in my neighborhood. I don’t hear anything. The chores were yesterday, Saturday chores. The neighborhood was abuzz with lawn mowers, with kids playing and with dogs barking. Sunday is a reset.

When I was young, I wondered about getting old. What was it like? How would I feel? I now know. I guess I’m not really surprised. My head doesn’t know I’m old. My body, though, is a different story. I wonder about the old lady in the mirror with the wrinkles. My body struggles. I have trouble carrying heavy bags or boxes. I keep having to accept limitations, begrudgingly accept.

It has been a long time since I last went to a theater to see a movie, but I watch them all the time on TV. Lately I’ve been watching spy movies and thrillers, but if I find an old science fiction movie, I’m usually hooked. I pop some corn, put my feet up and settle in. I think I just planned my evening.