What a beautiful morning! The sun is shining. The air is still, and, best of all, the humidity has disappeared, but this dry air, this reprieve, will be short-lived. Sticky air will be back early next week.

When I went to get the papers, I saw a brown rabbit munching on the grass. He stopped when he heard me but stayed put. He started eating again when I went into the house. Two red squirrels were chasing each other from tree trunk to tree trunk. I could hear a chorus of cicadas. It seems all of us are celebrating today.

I’m on the deck figuring I’ll take in as much of this lovely air as I can. The only sounds are the birds and some cars going down the street. Henry came out but went back inside. I’m noticing some of the flowers in the clay pots need to be replaced. I noticed the garden center is having an end of season sale so I figure I’ll buy the four replacement plants I need. I don’t know why those plants died because the others are flourishing. I need to fill the feeders.

The foliage around the deck is so lush I can only catch glimpses of the houses around me. It is as if I am living on a tropical island. To further the illusion, I can pretend the sounds of the cars are the waves hitting shore. I am alone out here, no people sounds.

There is a bit of a breeze. If one is ever to be found, my deck will always have it. This breeze is from the south. The red, white and blue pinwheel stuck into a big flower pot is turning so quickly all its colors are combined into a blur.

Last night all the newly strung lights were lit. Strands of white lights are across the yard gate and lead to the big star on the outside of the fence near the door. The spawn of Satan’s lights are no longer clear, maybe no longer a target. The new string is red, white and blue and is on the back end of the deck rail. Every other set of lights strung there has been chewed by the spawns. The last set of big white bulbs had many wire pieces missing. I’m guessing there are spawn nests somewhere with light bulbs as decorations and pieces of the missing grill cover for the roof and inside insulation. That is the summer conundrum. Where in the heck was that grill cover dragged and by how many spawns working in tandem?

Mother Nature was piqued at all the complaining about the sun, heat and humidity so she struck back. She took away the sun and left us with cloudy, rainy days and, for added discomfort, she threw in more humidity. Everything felt sticky so I put my air conditioner on to dry the house. It helped but I don’t need it today. I’m thinking Mother Nature must be in a forgiving mood as it is sunny and dry and even a bit chilly when the wind blows. I love today.

Yesterday I treated myself to a me sort of day. I did get the pet food, but I also bought a really neat wooden rocking chair for the deck. The rocker part slides. I then went to the farm store and bought corn, wild Maine blueberries and fresh figs. Next, I took the ocean side road from one town to another. I even snapped some pictures. My last stop was for Thai food. It was dinner last night and will be again tonight. It was a wonderful day.

Skip, my factotum, is here to finish sanding and painting the hole in the bathroom wall upstairs. Henry barked and then howled when the doorbell rang. Skip later came downstairs, and Henry growled and didn’t stop growling until Skip left and went back upstairs. That is a new protective move from Henry.

The summer is winding down. Fewer cars are on the road. I don’t have to wait impatiently for lights to change before I move. Getting into traffic is much easier. My last play is tomorrow night. But I’m okay with this change in seasons. Fall on Cape Cod is lovely. The days are still warm. The nights are wonderful for sleeping. The sky is such an amazing blue it takes my breath away. The ocean is still warm. The cranberries are nearly ripe. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to see some bogs harvested. I can still sit on the deck during the day, and at night I can light my chiminea. I’m looking forward to the smell of the piñon wood. I’m thinking it’s near time to take out my sweatshirts.

Last week we all complained about the heat, the endless heat and humidity. The powers that be must have heard us. It has been rainy, cloudy and cold since Saturday. I have been keeping the windows closed because of the cold breeze. I’m thinking it might just be sweatshirt weather.

Yesterday I stopped at a farm stand. I bought sweet corn, fresh Scali bread, homegrown tomatoes, fingerling potatoes and freshly made salsa chips. Everything was loaded into a cardboard box with carrots on the side.

Thieves need to give more thought to permanent retirement or good disguises. Their photos from cameras centered on the scenes of their crimes are plastered on the news, and the public is asked for help in identifying them. One thief stole a package from a porch. When his picture was on the news, he returned to the porch what he had stolen and added a letter of apology.

In Ghana, a thief was caught during the commission of his crime. I saw a crowd beating  him all the way to the police station. I was the victim of an attempted purse snatching, a successful pickpocket and a home invader. Not a whole lot was stolen in either case; a few cedis was all. The “perps” were never found. I didn’t expect they would be especially the pickpocket at the train station.

My cups of coffee were especially delicious. I always eye the amount of grounds, and I was right on the money this morning. I never mind too strong a cup of coffee but too weak isn’t worth the effort. I had toast, Scali bread toast, slathered in butter. It was delicious.

Today I have to shop for dog and cat food. I’m bringing my camera and taking a ride afterwards. It has been a while since I’ve taken random pictures. I saw a few unique houses yesterday on my way to the farm stand and wished I had my camera with me.

I’m thinking of buying lottery tickets. I’d like to take another trip, but I haven’t enough money to go anywhere. I do have a last Ghana trip in mind for 2021, the fiftieth anniversary of my finishing Peace Corps service and going home. I have been lucky enough to be back to Ghana three times but those trips have left me wanting more. I don’t think I could ever have enough of my second country. I am getting older, and parts of me don’t work all that well any more. I’m thinking three years away might be the perfect time.

This morning I got up early to go to the bathroom. My back and hand didn’t hurt, an unusual occurrence, so my first thought was maybe I’m dead. I went and looked. Nope, no dead body in my bed so I hadn’t left my corporeal remains behind though needing to go to the bathroom should have been hint enough. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. I heard a loud buzzing and immediately thought it was either a giant insect or an electric saw. Reluctantly I went with the saw. Having no cream and bread meant no coffee and toast so I decided to go to Dunkin Donuts. I grabbed the leash and figured I’d try to take Henry. He saw the leash though I did attempt to hide it, and he took off outside. He is a fraidy cat ( I do love the juxtaposition in this metaphor) when it comes so many things, but I won’t give up easily.

Last night it rained. I thought at first it was Mother Nature’s tears as the Sox lost yesterday but it was just rain. That made me glad I hadn’t washed away the muddy dog paws. It rained again early this morning so there are even more muddy prints. They’ll stay until the sun shines.

No movie night again tonight because it will be cold and damp and sitting outside dressed in woolies seems a bit much.

I’m not big into fashion. My wardrobe never reflects the current fads. Not a single blouse or shirt has holes in the shoulders. My idea of fashion is clothes which are eternal.

I hate the skinny suits men are wearing. They always look as if they stole their younger, smaller brother’s clothes.

I still have a pair of saddle shoes which I may wear this winter. Getting away with almost anything sartorial is a privilege granted to those of a certain age, an older age. Maybe I ought to bring high tops back as well.

Once I rode in a hot air balloon. It was spectacular. There were three balloons in the air at the same time. People still in their pajamas and robes raced outside to see us. Pigs scattered left and right when we floated over a pig farm. The bright colors of our balloon were reflected in small ponds below us. That is one of the most memorable rides ever and up there with the camel ride in the Sahara.

Last night it was so cold I didn’t need the air conditioning upstairs or down. Right now it’s still chilly and it’s damp. I had to shut the windows. Yesterday afternoon we had thunder and a short, tremendous rain storm. The clouds are still here. They’ll be hanging around the whole day. All in all it’s an ugly day.

I’m not doing anything constructive today. It’s my God-given right. Instead, I’ll watch baseball while sitting on the couch and ignoring the clumps of dog hair in the corners and the muddy paw prints on the kitchen floor.

When I was a kid, a summer Sunday often meant an early mass and a day at the beach, but on Sundays like this one, it meant finding my own way to spend the day. I’d try to commandeer a spot to myself and read. Sometimes that was upstairs in the bedroom I shared with my sister. If the cellar was empty, that was another choice spot. Other times it was in the car. After I got my parents cast-off portable TV, I’d stay in my room comfy on my bed and watch TV. Most times it was the Sunday matinee. The only family time was dinner. I had no choice.

My father was not a big baseball fan. He liked football the most then hockey. I have always been first of all a baseball fan with basketball a close second. I don’t remember watching the Red Sox on TV in those days. I don’t even think they were on. The Red Sox back then were usually in the middle of the standings, not television material, and their attendance was low. Now they play to sell-out crowds. My dream is to have Green Monster seats for a game. Every year I put my name in the lottery for some of those seats, and that’s as far as it gets.

Days like today make me wish for chili and cornbread. I want something to warm the innards.

I woke up at six this morning and heard the rain. It was a quiet rain. I wasn’t ready to stay up so I went back to bed. When I woke up, I noticed that parts of the deck were dry. The rain didn’t last long, but it lasted long enough to ruin the day. The sky is cloudy. Despite the breeze, it is hot and humid, hot enough to need the air conditioner. I’m going nowhere today.

My birthday was wonderful. Edible Fruits arrived with a gift from my sister. I’m thinking few foods taste better than pineapple half covered in chocolate. I had dinner at my friends’. We had the sweetest corn, burgers, one of my favorite all time foods, potato salad and a marinated onions, cucumbers and tomato salad. I think I smacked my lips at the aroma of the burgers cooking. I wasn’t disappointed. I opened presents and ate lemon meringue pie, my favorite. The lemon was wonderfully sour. To top off the day, we watched the Sox win. It was the best birthday.

When I was a kid, on the days leading up to my birthday, I’d sit on the front steps and wait for the mailman certain he was delivering my birthday cards. If none came, I was always disappointed. I’d wait the next day and the next. When one finally came, I’d tear open the envelope and shake the card before I even read it. A dollar usually fluttered to the floor. I was a rich kid. A couple of more cards would come from aunts and uncles and more dollars would flutter to the floor. I’d count my stash, a Scrooge McDuck move. On the big day I’d have wrapped presents from my parents and from one set of grandparents, my father’s parents. My mother usually chose the gift they’d give. I was never disappointed. My mother knew what I’d love. I still have a few Bobbsey Twins books inscribed with Happy Birthday and signed by my grandparents, really just my grandmother for the both of them. I still recognize her handwriting. I was a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, Nan and Bert and Freddie and Flossie.

Today I’ll have some chocolate fruit and a piece or two of lemon meringue pie.

Today is sunny with a bit of a breeze but still humid. I’m thinking maybe a bit of deck time and an outside shower later. I slept late, until ten, as I just couldn’t fall asleep last night. I was awake until 4:30. Both the cat and the dog were asleep on my bed. I could hear their deep breathing. I was jealous.

While my mother was in labor waiting for me to be born, my father went back and forth from the hospital to my grandparent’s house, my mother’s family, in the same town as the hospital. My aunt was angry as she was getting married in the morning and the constant visits were keeping her awake. She asked him not to come back. He ignored her. He was in the waiting room when the nurse came in asking for Mr. Ryan. He was the only one there so he told her, in a testy voice, of course he was Mr. Ryan. She announced my birth, and he ran into the hall and saw my mother just minutes after she had given birth. My mother told him it was a girl. She had known in her heart all along and so everything she had bought was pink and girly. My father drove to my grandparent’s to tell them. My aunt was not happy. My mother told me she wore her wedding corsage pinned to her hospital clothes.

SyFy is filled with sharks, bad movies about sharks, but I don’t care. I’m watching for the fun of it. I’d much rather encounter TV sharks than the Great Whites now close to the Cape’s beaches. They are feasting on seals, but the headline in the paper the other day was, “Shark Bites Man.” They are not sure if it was a Great White or a thresher shark. They are leaning toward the latter based on the puncture wounds on the man’s upper torso and leg. The man was swimming near seals. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy thought this was a case of mistaken identity. Sharks don’t usually eat humans. They often test the waters with their teeth to tell if what they’re about to eat is prey or something to avoid. I’m guessing the man probably gave the shark heartburn as it left him for a tastier dinner.

Later there was a video taken by a woman on the beach. It was a shark attacking a seal. People on the beach kept yelling, “Shark! Shark!” as if they were extras in Jaws.

I am behind closed doors driven inside by the heat and humidity. At nine thirty it was already 81˚. I expect I will spend all day inside though maybe I’ll go out in the early evening to the deck just for a bit of humid, stale air.

I am older than I ever thought about being. When I was a kid, I saw myself old in my twenties and nearly decrepit by my thirties. I wanted to be thirteen then sixteen then twenty one so I could vote and drink. That age seemed the pinnacle of life when I was ten. Now, I am older than 70. Parts of me are wearing out. It takes a bit for me to recall a name or a place. Sometimes if I doodle a little, the waiting time brings back what I need. Other times it comes back to me but long after I needed it. I wear my glasses all the time. I want to see where I’m going, actually, not proverbially. My back is bent and painful. My knee hurts. I have carpel tunnel syndrome in my most useful wrist and hand. I used to carry 50 pounds of cat litter upstairs. Now, heavy is lightweight. I carry things a little at a time. I have adjusted to getting older.

I consider myself lucky because I love living every single day. I marvel at sunsets and starlit nights. I remember the first time I saw the man in the moon. He was grinning then and he still grins now. I have a wonderful family and amazing friends. I have seen a bit of the world and am chomping (or champing) at the bit to see more. I have a list. My body may ache but it gets where I need to go, just far more slowly. I haven’t lost my sense of humor or my appreciation for the absurd. When I’m driving, I sometimes have to stop to appreciate up close the beauty which caught my eye: the garden filled with flowers, the ocean or a cranberry bog red with berries. Christmas delights me just as it had when I was a kid. I love the smell of the tree and the colored lights in my yard. I stand and admire my garden every morning. I watch really bad science fiction movies and love them every time. I am happy with life.

I had an early appointment this morning, and I was stunned when I went outside. The air was so humid I had trouble getting a deep breath. Nothing moved: not a leaf, not a branch and not a bird. Even they were quiet. I jumped into the car and got the AC blasting just so I could breathe. This humidity has to stop. We need a dry day. Even one dry day would make all of us happy and much less grumpy.

The sky goes from sunny to cloudy. I actually have no preference. I wish the cloudy meant rain, but it doesn’t and hasn’t.

After I learned I couldn’t be a priest, I decided to be a teacher. Professional women in my younger days were generally teachers or nurses, but I didn’t know I was bound by these choices. I just figured you could be whatever it was you wanted to be, and I wanted to be a teacher. These women were my heroes. They had such power they could bring me back to attention with a single look or word. They also had these amazing talents like being able to see behind them, identifying whisperers without looking up from their desks and writing straight and beautifully on the blackboard. That was the one I envied the most. No matter how hard I concentrated, my blackboard writing tended to angle up so high I almost couldn’t reach it, and the letters were so cramped you couldn’t read them. Teachers always knew all the answers. Stump the teacher was a game doomed to failure. I knew by the time I was ten that I would be a teacher.

I started college on the teaching track but got sidelined junior year. The law grabbed me with such intensity that teaching faded from my memory. I saw myself as a female Perry Mason confounding my Hamilton Burger with legal tricks pulled from my magician’s hat, tricks which always showed the innocence of my client and exposed the guilty.

Senior year I applied to law school and to the Peace Corps, even got an offer for a teaching job, but it was the Peace Corps pulling me. It just seemed the right thing to do: to give a paltry two years for the life I’d had and the opportunities I’d been given. When I was accepted, I was so joyful I wanted to run up and down the streets announcing my good fortune to the world. I was also accepted into law school but decided to defer if I could for the two years. I could, and I did.

I taught for those two years and couldn’t imagine spending my life doing anything else. I never went to law school though I still think Perry Mason and I have a lot in common. Instead, I chose to teach, and “…that has made all the difference.”

Okay, today was another mirror under the nose morning. I slept until after eleven. My guess is all the activity of the last couple of days did me in. I shopped, schlepped bags into the house, and yesterday I was on my feet cutting up veggies and fruit for dinner and going back and forth to the deck bringing stuff. Luckily one of my friends cooked the dogs and both of them cleaned up the deck at the end of the evening. I sat like a queen on her throne.

The movie Dick was well received as I knew it would be. We laughed a lot. I so love my movie set-up. It is such fun watching a movie outside. Last night there was even a little breeze so the leaves rustled a bit. We could see fireflies and hear the night sounds. We got not only the movie but also the best parts of the nighttime.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the drive-in. The one we always went to had a playground, and at intermission kids clad in pajamas, slippers and robes played on the different equipment. I always gravitated to the swings. I liked to jump off in mid-air. Little kids seemed to like the slide. Behind us was the concession stand, and I remember the smell of burgers cooking and popcorn popping.

I have returned from the doctor. What amazed me was I noticed the driving I did today equaled the same number of miles I drove all of last week when mostly I stayed close to home and shopped only in nearby stores. With nothing planned the whole of the rest of this week, my mileage this and last week may end up the same. I am most decidedly a homebody.

My mother would have been 91 today. I think of her always. Happy Birthday, Mom!!

Today is hot and humid. It is also dark and cloudy. The forecast is maybe rain. The storms of the last few days bypassed us. North of us got inches of rain. We got clouds. Nothing is worse than clouds by the seashore.