The back rooms of my house are always dark and cool in the morning. I have to turn on the lamp in the den to read the papers. The cat sticks her head under the lamp shade, her way of  staying warm. When she comes to get patted, the fur on her head is always hot to the touch. Henry doesn’t care whether it’s hot or cold. He goes out, comes back inside and falls asleep on the couch.

When I was a kid, the living room was the coolest room in the house all summer. My mother kept the shades down. It was also the darkest room.

I have a stash of Necco candy: Necco wafers, tropical wafers, a box of Clark Bars and a box of Sky Bars. I know better than to open any package. I used to have two packages of Clark Bars.

My brother-in-law Rod shared his chili recipe with me. It said beans were an optional ingredient. I never have beans in mine. I hate beans. Rod always has beans in his. I told him no beans was more traditional. We still go back and forth on that. I told him I had proof.  “The ICS (The International Chili Society) defines traditional red and green chili as “any kind of meat or combination of meats, cooked with red chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of beans and pasta which are strictly forbidden. No garnish is allowed.” Rod said that was only one opinion.

I have to go out today. Henry needs dog food. He still insists on eating every day.

Today is another lovely day. Rain is expected tomorrow. After that it will get cooler, even as low as the high 50’s at night. The autumnal equinox is in five days, but that really doesn’t change anything. The calendar doesn’t determine the weather.

I am down to my last book.  I’ve put a trip to the library on my dance card.

My TV is stuck on a booting screen. It has been that way since ten this morning. I tried everything first then called Comcast. Since then, I have been having a lovely conversation with a technician from the Philippines. While my TV was booting a few times, we discussed the typhoon which hit Luzon, local languages and travel, but after all that time, nothing worked even though he tried everything. He said a technician would be here on Tuesday. Tuesday? I said angrily as I went ballistic. He apologized profusely but that did little to assuage my anger. Even worse was the confirmation e-mail which said, “KATHLEEN, your service appointment is right around the corner.” I am now in the dark ages, the pre-TV dark ages.

Today is a perfectly lovely day. It is sunny and hot, summer hot, but a breeze from the north is keeping the day bearable. It is a deck day. I’m in the middle of a couple of books, and reading is a perfect activity to complement the day.

When I was a kid, we never had homework on the weekends. The big night was Thursday when I had to learn to spell the twenty words on that week’s list. I was a good speller and even got a spelling ribbon when I was in the second grade. I also got a couple of other ribbons: religion was one but I forget the other. It was the only year of ribbons so I was glad for mine.

I have to go out a bit later and have decided to wear my old purple Converse high tops. I am at an age when eccentricity is accepted. I might even mix my plaids.

I used to wonder how it felt to be old. Now I know it feels no different than when I was twenty. The external changes, but the internal stays the same. I do have memory lapses when I can’t find just the right word. When I’m doing crossword puzzles, I doodle on the side of the page until the answer comes to me. Sometimes the doodles get intricate.

I did all my errands yesterday and even added a few stops. I got an ice coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and treated myself to a Boston cream donut. I deserved the treat.

The sun is actually shining. I can even see some blue sky through the trees. It’s a good day to be out and about doing my errands.

Henry woke me up this morning. I could hear him chewing on something. I thought it might be the wooden foot of my bed. It wasn’t. It was my spread. It’s folded so one chewed hole is four chewed holes when you open the spread. The holes, though, are sort of creative. They remind me of Polish paper cutting art.

When I was a kid, I loved fairy tales and myths and folk stories. I wanted them to be real. I figured a world where the little folk would live must be a good one. Then came a time when I didn’t read any of the stories. I grew up past them. But when I was in Africa, The Hobbit was one of the books in my Peace Corps book locker. I devoured the story and wanted to meet a hobbit. I didn’t figure I’d care to know a dragon but a Hobbit sounded fun. I’ve changed my mind about dragons. I’ve read all of Anne McCaffrey and want to fly in-between. The love of myths and fairy tales never disappeared, just got buried for a time. My imagination is alive and well, but it took some nuturing to bring it back to form. I feel lucky for finding it again!

I love the simple pleasures of every day: freshly brewed morning coffee, funny movies and buttered popcorn with just a touch of salt, warm slippers on a winter’s day, an afternoon nap on the couch, a hot shower after a tiring day and brownies, any kind of brownies, as long as they’re chocolate. It doesn’t take much to make me content.

My life moves slowly, and I’m just fine with that. Mostly I get to pick and choose how to spend my time. I tend to save up my errands so I can finish them all in one day. That leaves six more days, a wealth of time.

The clouds have finally done more than just hang in the sky. The rain started last night. I was reading in bed when I heard the first drops. I stopped reading to listen. When I woke up, the rain was heavier than it had been. I stayed in bed until Henry drove me to get up with his usual exuberant morning greeting. He runs up and down the bed wagging his tail and pushing at me until I pat him. He leaps into the air and spins as he’s leaping. Henry is a morning dog. I am not a morning person.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have a dishwasher or a dryer. My mother washed all the dishes. She hung out the clothes to dry. In winter, when the sheets froze straight out, my mother would lug them into the house and hang them in the cellar to dry. The rest of the year the sheets would dry on the lines. My mother would drape them across the line in the middle. Each side of the sheets almost touched the ground. I remember watching them being blown by the wind. I loved those sheets fresh from outside.

When I have guests, I pile my dishes in the dishwasher. When I am alone, I wash my dishes. Mostly I have just a cup, a glass, one plate and maybe a pan. All my clothes go in the dryer. I do have clotheslines up in the cellar but they date from pre-dryer days. My sheets smell like Bounce.

I have errands which I have decided not to do. Each can wait one more day. I’m tired. I was up early this morning, just before nine. I went upstairs to bed at 10:30 but didn’t turn off the light until after one thirty. I finished one book and got involved in another. I kept doing that one more chapter thing. I did it for an hour.

Today is yesterday only it’s Saturday. The translation: it is cloudy, damp and chilly just as it was yesterday. It’s supposed to be partly cloudy, but there’s no partly about it. Sun, where are you?

This morning I noticed a vine was taking over a part of my clematis. I changed into my Superwoman outfit, threw the papers on the grass and started pulling. The bees were not happy. They hummed and flew around me. The bees love the clematis, and there are always several on the flowers. I didn’t stop to think about that. I piled the vines on the grass then threw them way. I didn’t get stung but I did get a couple of cuts on my knuckles. My coming away unscathed would have been so contrary to the usual results.

I’m not doing a thing today. I’ll just read and eat bon bons. Okay, I have no bon bons, but I still have some of those Tropical Necco Wafers with the strawberry flavor. I’ll be trying to emulate a Victorian woman on a chaise lounge.

Did I mention the laundry? It is no longer in the hall. It is now at the foot of the cellar stairs the I threw it. That is a new step (sorry about the inadvertent pun) in the laundry process.

My dog and cat are driving me crazy. The dog is jumping on and off the couch. Usually that means he is hungry or needs to go out and wants my encouragement, but not this time. He has already eaten and he went out just a short while ago. The cat is meowing for attention. I kept patting her, but she wanted more so I scratched around her ears. She purred then meowed. I am being held hostage by my dog and cat.

Usually I have two cups of coffee. I’m on my third.

We had a thunderstorm yesterday and some heavy rain. Today is cooler than it has been, and it is damp and cloudy. The high today will be only 75˚. Right now it is 73˚ and showers are predicted. Today is a perfect stay at home and read while curled up on the couch day.

When I was a kid, I loved rainstorms. I loved when the drops pelted the windows in my room so heavily I couldn’t see any of the neighbor’s houses. I’d watch the drops slide down the window until they disappeared into the bottom pane. When it thundered, I always thought of Rip Van Winkle and the men in the mountains playing nine-pins which I guessed from the sound of thunder was a sort of bowling, but I used to imagine candlepins instead. Lightning was always awesome to me. I always hoped I’d see the jagged flash of lightning brighten the sky.

I used to like to color. Every year I’d get a new box of Crayola crayons at the beginning of school and in my Christmas stocking. My mother and I would sit at the kitchen table and color together. She was amazing. Her colors were nuanced. Mine, in comparison, were  straight from the crayon, and I wasn’t all that imaginative. The sky was always blue, the grass always green. Flowers were mostly red and yellow. Hair was brown. I did mix up house colors, but shutters were always black, the chimney brick red. The only thing my mother and I shared was we both colored inside the lines.

My mother and I used to read outloud in a contest to see who could read the furthest without making a mistake. We used to read from the books she got each week at the grocery store. They were hard cover books and each book had three abridged classics. I didn’t realize at the time they were shortened versions, but that didn’t matter much. I was thrilled by them, and those books introduced me to stories like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, books I probably would never have found on my own at the library. I remember my mother and I would lie on the living room rug and take turns reading. Hoping I’d catch a mistake, my eyes would follow along with the words as my mother read them. She seldom made a mistake, and she would read for the longest time, but eventually she’d make a mistake, and it would be my turn. Much later, I realized my mother made those mistakes on purpose or I’d never get a turn.