The doors and windows have been open since last night. My bedroom window even had a breeze so it was easy falling asleep. Now, it is hot in the sun so I’m opting for shade under the umbrella where the slight breeze can find me. Henry was with me here on the deck then went back inside. He likes the coolness of the den, and he stretches out on the couch.

It is getting hotter and the breeze has just about disappeared. It will be in the mid-80’s today and down to the high 60’s tonight. I’ll be delighted.

I have a few errands today so I’m being forced to get out and about. I also have a play tonight, South Pacific. I am not crazy about musicals, but I sort of like this one. When I was a kid, I used to take records out of the library. I remember taking out South Pacific and Camelot and some Christmas records. I have favorite songs from each of these musicals, and I’m a sucker for Christmas music.

I have these weird little memories. Once I was on a bus and an older woman was sitting on one of the long front seats, the ones which face each other. She was talking the whole time to a woman across from her as she lit her cigarette. I watched as she put the lit end in her mouth. One night in Ghana I was visiting a friend who lived not all that far away but too far to walk. I borrowed a bike. As I was leaving, my friend told me to be careful at the end of his driveway as there was a dip I wouldn’t see in the darkness. I got close to the end and fell, in anticipation. I got up, walked the bike over the dip then got back on and rode home. When I was around ten, my brother and I were befriended by one of the zoo keepers. He let me in with Babe, the elephant, to feed her. I remember hearing a kid saying out loud he was amazed that a girl was in with the elephant. I felt proud and masterful, though I didn’t know that last word yet. I just remember the feeling. I remember my first bank account and how proud I was every time I put in money, mostly coins and a stray dollar bill. I still feel the same way even though the amount is a bit bigger. Learning to tie my shoes was a huge accomplishment not up there with riding a bike but close. I still remember the concentration it took on the loops.

Over time I have forgotten so much but sometimes a memory bubbles to the surface. Good or bad doesn’t matter. I’m just glad for the memory, for the added piece of my life.

The thunder woke me up. At first I didn’t realize what I’d heard then it thundered again. I got out of bed to check, but it wasn’t raining, at least not yet. I came downstairs, put the coffee on and went to get the papers. Big drops of rain started just as I got back to the door then it poured. It was a sheet of rain falling straight down, rain so loud it muffled every sound except the thunder. Henry barked hoping to scare off the thunder, but when it cracked overhead, Henry howled. Since then, though, the rain has just about stopped. The sky is getting lighter.

The week has been quiet, but I’m not complaining. I got to finish a book, catch up on some DVR’ed programs and take a nap or two. Tomorrow night is my play at the Cape Playhouse, Saturday is movie night and Monday I have a doctor’s appointment. The rest of my date book for all of next week is empty.

When I was a kid, the summer seemed endless. Every day was filled with fun. I remember once my brother and I rode our bikes to East Boston to visit our grandparents. We knew the route from all the times my father had driven there on Sundays. I always sat by the back car window so I watched how we went. That route meant a ride along 1A, a busy highway. We went pass the miniature golf course with the giant dinosaur, risked our lives crossing two rotaries, drove by St. Anthony’s church, went by the dog track, the oil tanks and the oilers moored by the tanks. It smelled gross, like oil. We were getting close to my grandparents when we saw the Madonna on the mountain. My grandfather was shocked to see. He immediately called my mother who was shocked, a bit scared because of the traffic and angry we’d do something like that. My grandfather gave us each a dime from his endless supply on the table by his bed and sent us on our way. Our trip home was uneventful.

The thunder started again a bit ago then the rain came as heavily. I looked out the back door at the rain and saw the lightning. The rain is slanted this time, coming from the north. I get to stand at the back door and watch. I so love a good thunderstorm.

I am getting cranky. Being inside all this time is beginning to feel like house arrest. I go out on the deck, but it doesn’t take long for the heat and humidity to chase me back inside. Today, though, I get to go to the dump. I know it will be be hotter than almost anywhere else on Earth, but I don’t care. I would never have expected the dump to be my salvation.

During my life I have observed and learned many new things about me and the world around me, but some of these have raised mostly unanswerable questions.

Cooking show chefs never scrape and always leave things in bowls and pots while I religiously scrape. Are they really that great in eyeing measurements? I don’t dare to add something without using my cup and spoon measures.

Why is it in cleaning one mess, I often inadvertently cause another? How silly it is when cleaning the floor I don’t check above me and end up banging my head on something.

How do I always step on that one slick spot which takes me down? What kind of luck is that? The last time I slipped I did no damage. The time before that I fractured my wrist.

I find when stuck in rush hour traffic that when I change to the fast moving lane it becomes the slow lane.

I always get behind the school bus which stops at every two street corners. I suspect it is not the original route but a bus driver being nice. It drives me and the long trail of cars behind me just as crazy.

I swear I am being watched. Every time I lie down to have a nap the phone rings. The calls are from states like Alabama and Texas.

I always step on the acorn. That sounds cryptic I’m sure, but think of the acorn as symbolic. If there is one thing to step on, I find it. That also includes cat or dog pooh.

Why did that that one goat turn into my motorcycle while it was standing still and I was holding it? Of course, I would get a burn.

Mostly I consider myself lucky, but these small things seem to dog me. Are they preventable? I don’t think so. They are part and parcel of who I am. They are the fabric of  my life.

Yesterday, the rain started in the early afternoon and continued into the evening. It rained heavily at times, and I could hear the rain hitting the windows, but I wished for a tin roof like the one on my house in Ghana. During the rainy season, I used to sit and listen to the rain pounding the roof over my head. I love that memory. I love the sound of rain.

Henry wanted out early this morning. The air was still damp from the rain, and I could smell the ocean. I stayed on the deck a long time. Henry went inside without me.

I love the morning sounds of the first birds. Their singing starts just before the sunrise.  At first light, the other birds join the chorus.

Every morning I get my newspapers from the driveway in front of my house. This time of year I stop and look at the garden. Yesterday I noticed the hollyhocks have begun blooming. The white with pink centers are in front, and the red hollyhocks are in the back. The flowers are eye-catching.

There have been extraordinary moments in my life. My memories of these moments  delight me. Graduating from college is one of the first. No one in my family had ever gone to college. I always expected I would. Getting a special delivery letter on a Sunday from the Peace Corps announcing my acceptance still stands as one of my favorites. In Ecuador, I remember standing at the equator with one foot in each hemisphere. In Lapland, Finland, in the Arctic Circle, I remember the herd of reindeer running on the road followed by their Lapp herder. Watching my boat being pulled through the Panama Canal at night under a blaze of lights was amazing. The mules, really electric locomotives, pulled the ship through. Stepping out of the plane onto the steps at the airport in Accra, Ghana was almost overwhelming. I was in Africa. Being with my family and walking under the falls at Niagara is one of my first travel memories. I rode a camel in the Sahara Desert. We rode up Mount Washington. My father drove. I remember how cold it was at the summit. There are more, but these are enough for now.

My life has been a series of moments strung together to form a lifetime. Some have been momentous but most of them have been ordinary. I’m happy regardless.

The house is dark: no sun is streaming through the windows. The prediction is for rain, even thundershowers, so the sky is filled with clouds. The branches and leaves of the backyard oak trees blow back and forth in the wind. The air is wet, humid. Early this morning, around three, when I let Henry out, I stuck my head out the door to check the weather. The air was so thick with humidity I could see it hanging there almost like fog, and I swear my hair got wet just from that quick look.

I will go nowhere today even though I have a small shopping list and bags of trash to go to the dump. I’m going to take an early nap then watch the Sox play the Yankees at 4. The last two games between them have been amazing. The Sox won the first with a score of 15-7. I was on my feet clapping and cheering. Last night Rick Porcello pitched a complete game one-hitter. That one Yankee hit happened in the first inning when everything else happened. Porcello hit Brett Gardner at the start of the game with the count 0-2, obviously not intentional with that count. New York’s Luis Severino answered with a high-and-inside fastball when Mookie Betts led off the bottom half. The ump warned both benches. Cora, the Sox manager, took umbrage and ran toward the ump who  gestured to him not to get any closer. Cora kept running, was ejected and watched the rest of the game on TV.  Porcello faced 28 hitters and threw only 86 pitches to win. That game was a masterpiece.

When I was a kid, I loved the Celtics and the Red Sox. Seats were cheap in those days so I’d go to the Garden to see the Celts in the winter and Fenway to see the Sox in the summer. I could take a bus then the subway to get to both places. I sat in the bleachers at the Sox games. My best view was of the outfielders and the bullpen. At the Garden, my seats were somewhere in the middle, and I could see all the action. Back then, the Celts were always champions while the Sox were closer to the bottom of the standings. I didn’t care. I was just thrilled to be there in the middle of all the excitement and to see my sports heroes in real life.

I have some Cracker Jacks and some corn to pop. I’ll wear a Red Sox shirt and cheer for the home team. Go Sox!

I tried to emerge from my cocoon this morning by opening doors and windows to the world, but it took the humidity only a few minutes to start making the house uncomfortable. I gave in and turned on the air conditioner. Mother Nature is vacillating. We have sun for a few minutes then clouds then sun again. I have no preference. I’m inside the house.

I have an iron. It was a house warming present forty one years ago. It looks like new. Before I could afford a dryer, I used it a lot to iron blouses, but it has been gathering dust for years. Now I need it. The clothes I just bought arrived wrinkled. I thought about washing and drying them hoping to get the wrinkles out, but I decided it was laziness and beyond the pale so my iron and I will get reacquainted today.

When I was a kid, every summer day was filled with possibilities. I saw my town as a giant place. I could go to the square and check out Woolworth’s or walk inside the post office because it always felt cool no matter the outside temperature. I’d stand at the Chinaman’s side window and watched him iron clothes with a big flat machine. Just up the street was the barber where my father went. I always looked inside that window too. If I had a dime, I’d stop at Middlesex Drug Store for a vanilla Coke. It was made at the soda fountain with Coke syrup, fizzy water and real vanilla. The drugstore counter had a dark granite top though I didn’t know what it was called back then. I just knew it was cool to the touch. Sometimes I headed home from there. My route took me passed the fire station. The firemen always sat outside on warm days. Next was the town hall. If I was hot or tired, I’d sit on one of the benches under the trees for a stretch. I’d keep going and walk through my empty school yard. From there I’d take the familiar walk home I took every day from school.

I  can close my eyes and still see it as it was. I never thought the square was small. I loved all those stores. I loved the smell of baking bread from Hank’s Bakery and the less than pleasant smells coming from the fish market. Popcorn aroma filled the square when the candy factory was making it. The firemen always said hello. My town was just right for a kid looking for possibilities.

Yesterday morning was lovely. I sat on the deck and read my papers and had my coffee. I could hear the acorns from the oak trees hitting the deck. I could hear the birds. It was a wonderful morning.

Today is suck your breath away humid. If I just looked out the window and stayed inside, I’d think what a beautiful day with sun, a blue sky and every now and then breeze. I’d be wrong. It will be in the mid 80’s with humidity almost as high.

This morning I got my papers, yesterday’s mail, put some boxes in the trunk for the dump and cleaned my little library. I rearranged the books and added a couple of new books. I never see anybody but there are books added by other than me.

As I age, I notice changes. I, of course, have more grey hair than brown. I wrinkle. I feel hot and cold more than I did. In the summer, I love the AC running. In winter I like the heat and wear a sweatshirt around the house. My feet get cold so I wear socks. Oddly, I don’t wear my winter coat outside. I wear a hoodie. I have hats, mittens, gloves and scarfs. I sometimes wear the knit cap just because I like it, not because I’m cold. I like naps but that has always been true. I am lazy about meals. I used to make a good dinner, but now I grab whatever is convenient. Lots of times it is just cheese and crackers. Sometimes I have cereal. Lately I’ve thrown in blueberries, but I prefer bananas. My word retrieval skills are dimming. I can’t think of the word I need at the time so I substitute non-descript words. My favorite non-descript word is thing. I drop it into conversations all the time now. I like staying home. I like lazy days. I used to do everything. I cleaned my house, took care of the lawn and shoveled in winter. I grocery shopped and hauled in the bags, usually in a couple of trips. Now I don’t. My house gets cleaned every two weeks, but I do some cleaning in between Mostly I swiffer Henry’s hair as it is in clumps on my floors. I have a landscaper who does all all my yard work. Peapod delivers my groceries to the kitchen. Skip, my factotum, does everything else including plowing and shoveling and opening and closing the deck. I talk out loud and pretend I’m talking to the animals. I get distracted. I’d be on the way to the kitchen but I stop when I notice clumps of fur to clean, a picture to straighten and a chair to align so by the time I get to the kitchen I forget why I’m there.

Life is an adventure at my age.

The morning was cool when I woke up. There is still a breeze and it’s cloudy, but I can feel the humidity, and I’m guessing the sun will be back. I figure by afternoon we’ll be behind closed doors and windows again. Today is a stay at home day. I have a couple of new books from the library so I can while away the afternoon reading. I can think of no better pleasure.

Alexa is playing Bob Dylan. I keep stopping to sing along.

Last night I noticed stuffing on the floor and figured Henry was pulling apart another of his toys though I thought I had taken all the stuffing out of them. Well, I had. Henry was pulling out the stuffing from a hole he had made in the couch cushion. The hole is a good size. I turned the cushion over and saw a tiny hole but thought nothing of it until I saw the stuffing. Henry was at it again. I switched cushions with him and will have to remember to cover the hole when I go out. He might get bored and look for something to do.

When I was kid, our boxer had two major incidents. The first was when my father left him in the car while we visited my aunt, the nun. When we got back, we saw Duke had chewed the upholstery over the car windows and strings of it hung down. Later my father cut the strings, but the car stayed like that until we got a new one. The second incident was at a red light in Reading Square. Duke went out the window. My father immediately pulled over and gave chase. A passer-by saw the dog and my father and grabbed the dog. If he hadn’t, the chase would have lasted until my father could run no more. Duke was not penitent.

When I was a kid, my movie theater had one screen and no air-conditioning. Candy bars were a nickel. I never bought popcorn or a drink. I just had that one nickel to spend, and I chose wisely, candy which lasted a while. A penny had value back then. A half-dollar was a fortune. My birthday cards sometimes had a dollar in them. I felt rich beyond compare.

Today I had a late start given I didn’t wake up until after ten because of my still being up and about at two thirty this morning. Even Henry wanted to go to bed so he waited impatiently by pacing until I was ready. It didn’t matter I was so late waking up as I had my usual leisurely morning. The paper held my attention for the longest time. On the sports page, the column by Peter Abraham had me aghast and horrified, not by what he wrote but by the heading “Greiving Cora found solace fleeting in shutout victory.” What happened to spellcheck and even worse what about I before e except after c (there are exceptions, of course, as the English language is filled with exceptions)? The former English teacher came out in me and I circled the word in red.

Last night we had our movie night. My friends decided it was the worst movie any of us had ever seen, even I agreed which is a surprise as I watch bad scifi movies just because. The movie was Beast of Yucca Flats. It starts with a nude woman coming out of the shower who is then strangled by someone with a large hand. This scene had nothing to do with the action which followed. A Russian defector is being chased by the KBG. I gave up counting the number of shots hitting no one including during a car chase. The scientist, played by Tor Johnson, flees into the desert. In the heat he begins to take off his clothes. He then gets too close to the detonation of an A-bomb and is turned into a murderous beast. People get strangled, kids get lost, the sheriff shoots 8 or 9 or even more times at the wrong man, the father looking for his kids. The monster chases the kids. The law chases the monster. The father hunts for his kids. The mother stands all night by the side of the road, purse in hand, waiting for her husband. The monster is found and shot. End of story. Here is the best part: this movie has no soundtrack. The producer couldn’t afford it. The narrator tells most of the story, and when characters talk, you never see their mouths because the sound and the narration were added in post-production, after the movie was finished. We laughed all the way through. I think it is the only way to watch this movie. What saved us was the movie is only 54 minutes long. I’m going to leave you with some favorite quotes:

“Vacation time. People travel East. West. North. Or South.”

“Nothing bothers some people. Not even flying saucers.” ( there are no flying saucers)

“Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast. ”

“Boys from the city. Not yet caught by the whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.”

My favorite: “A hundred and ten in the shade. And no shade.”