This weather has me reminiscent of Africa, of the hot, hot dry season. The only difference is I didn’t profusely sweat my life away as I do in this humidity, but I did sweat while sitting in a chair. When I’d get up, my body would be outlined in sweat on the cushion. I only had cold water. I took night showers, didn’t dry off then jumped right into bed. I air-dried which helped me fall asleep. Last night I air-dried. I slept downstairs on the couch which was cooler. I left the back door open, but I did shut the dog door. I do have an air-conditioner, but, to my dismay, it is not working and my finances are low. I’ll have to wait until next month, the hottest month, to have it checked. Meanwhile, I’ll sweat, and the dogs will pant. We make a lovely picture of panting dogs and a sweaty old lady.

The thick humidity dampens sounds. My neighborhood is quiet. I don’t even hear the birds. My dogs are finally sleeping. Nala is on the couch. Henry is on the tile floor in the kitchen in front of the back door. They have stopped panting for the meantime. I can find a way to feel cooler but not my poor dogs.

I am an idler. On the table in my den are my distractions to fill time. I have a crossword puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle, my book and my iPad. My TV is also here in the den. I have been watching movies and detective series on Acorn. My only movement is to drag myself to the kitchen or the bathroom.

When I was a kid, the weather never bothered except me for thunder and lightning storms and heavy rains both of which kept me housebound. I spent most days at the playground. I did crafts, played tennis and horseshoes and pitched for the softball team. I made gimp lanyards and bracelets. I knew all the different weaving styles. My bracelets were flat weaving, and my lanyards round until the hook end which was square. Sometimes I used three colors. I painted a tray. It was filled with flowers. It was the best thing I ever painted, still is for that matter.

I used to love to sit on the back steps in the darkness. It was the coolest time of the day. I could see fireflies. I could hear the clank of dishes being washed after dinner and the muted voices of my neighbors. I could hear TV’s. Usually I was the only one out, the only one enjoying the beauty of a clear, starry summer night.

My father would say it’s a scorcher. It is already 88° with 70% humidity. The cape is always cooler than near Boston in the summer so today is uncharacteristically hot for this early in the summer. My back door has a southern view so if there is a breeze, it comes from there, and I can feel one very now and then. Nala is lying in the hall to take advantage of that breeze. Poor boxers with their short noses don’t do as well as other dogs in the heat. Henry is stretched out in the kitchen by the back door. Both are asleep.

My mother always kept the shades down in every room on hot days. The house was a bit cooler but seemed cave-like in the darkness. I don’t have shades in my windows so the sun travels around the house and comes through the windows from front to back. I am in the back of the house so it is the coolest spot most of the day.

I was on a drill team for years. Every summer we had competitions on the weekends. Our uniforms had long sleeves, and the skirts too were long and were heavy. We wore boots. We’d stand outside in the sun waiting for our turn on the field. We’d start on the third line, move to the inspection line then on to the ready line. Marchers fainted. I remember one of my friends fainting on the ready line. They hauled her off so we could start. Nothing deterred us. If someone fainted on the field during maneuvers, you just had to sort of walk around or over them. If you didn’t, you could lose cadence and step counts which could result in a lower score. We were hardy souls back then.

I have no intention of doing anything today. It is the perfect day for all of us to embrace our inner sloths. Let’s find a big branch on a leafy tree and just lie in the shade. If we need a snack, we can just grab a leaf and take our time eating it. We can listen to the birds and nap a bit. If only….

The morning is sunny and cool. A strong breeze is rolling the leaves on the oak trees. The birds are loud. The dogs are enjoying their morning naps curled on the couch. The weather, though, will probably change as there is a 68% chance of thunder showers starting this afternoon and continuing into the evening. The winds could be as high as 28 mph. I am a fan of thunder showers.

This will be a quiet week. My dance card is empty until Saturday. Because I have plenty of time this whole week to loll, I’m thinking of giving my sloth a bit of a vacation today. My house creates dust. Somewhere a machine is hiding in the walls manufacturing dust balls and strewing them about. The machine is run by a maniacal dust monster. My upstairs is a domestic dust bowl and needs to be vacuumed. Dust flies when I walk down the stairs. The hall I vacuumed two days ago needs the vacuum again.

The house where I did most of my growing up was actually small, but to me, it was big enough. The living room was the biggest room. It held a couch, two soft chairs, a table in front of the picture window, a TV in the corner and a desk against the wall behind the front door. The closet beside the desk was where my father always hung his top coat and put his fedora on the shelf. The kitchen was really small. The table and chairs were jammed beside a window. The fridge dominated the kitchen. I remember my father defrosting that fridge. He used a hammer and a screw driver to knock the ice off the sides. My father and tools were always dangerous. I don’t specifically remember, but I suspect he probably cut his fingers. The back door was beside the fridge. It had a screen door which always slammed unless you held it to close. The upstairs hall was tiny. Crowded around it were three bedrooms and the bathroom. I remember lying on the threshold of one of the rooms, my brother lying on another and my father on the third. We had flashlights and sent each other messages by Morse code. My father has taught it to us. He had been a signalman in World War II. In my room, my double bed was against one wall, and the other end of it almost touched another wall. I usually crossed over the bed to get to the closet and the bureau. I loved that I had a window at the foot of my bed. I got so see the morning first hand.

The day is stunningly lovely. It is sunny. The leaves glint in the light. The birds are singing. It is 74°. It won’t get much warmer. The heat starts tomorrow when we may even finally get some rain.

My mother had a wringer washing machine. She didn’t have a dryer. The backyard had clothes lines for both sides of the duplex. My mother had three long lines. A cloth holder hung on one line. It held the wooden clothespins. I remember how she used to hang the clothes. To save on clothespins, shirts were connected at the bottoms while sheets and towels were connected at the tops. Pants were hung by their legs. Some of our neighbors had metal pant forms which hung the pants folded. I guess it made ironing easier. In the winter the clothes froze, sometimes straight out as if they were being blown by the wind. My mother couldn’t fold those clothes. She left them in the cellar until the ice melted. She’d hurry outside to take down the clothes if it started to rain then she would hang them in the cellar to finish drying. I remember the towels were always a bit rough, but the sheets smelled of outside, of fresh air and the wind.

I have a huge number of paper grocery bags. The grocery store double bags. I use the bags to hold my recyclables like dog food cans, newspapers and magazines. I like the ones with the paper strap holders. When I was a kid, we used them as book covers for our school loaned books. First you cut the bag apart then you lay the book on it to measure. You had to make sure you had enough paper to make the folds, the parts that slide onto the book ends. Sometimes we’d tape the folds at top. The finished covers had folds in the front. I didn’t know anyone who ever bought a book cover.

I have to vacuum today. The dust balls are beginning to come alive or maybe it is just my imagination because they move. They sort of skip up and down the hall when the wind blows. My outside uke concerts begin today on the Hyannis village green. I also have a concert on Saturday from 7 to 9. I have nothing in between, no practice or lesson this week. It will be a quiet week.

Today is sunny. The temperature is only 75° but feels much hotter. It is Sunday quiet. I can hear only a single bird. Even the hums of insects sound quiet and uninspired. I’m sitting in my dark den. It is always the coolest room in the house as the windows face west and north. I have a dump run planned for today but nothing else. I am embracing the feel of Sundays of my childhood.

When I was a kid, I was never squeamish. I caught grasshoppers. I picked up garter snakes. A praying mantis could hold my attention for what seemed hours. They looked prehistoric to me. I think a giant version starred in a black and white science fiction movie and ate people and destroyed towns. If you were afraid of bugs or snakes in Ghana, you were doomed. My childhood had prepared me though a centipede did take me back a bit.

On Sunday mornings, we got to have donuts. My father usually brought a dozen home after his ushering duties at the early mass. I remember his favorite was a plain donut slathered with butter. Back then I ate jelly donuts and had perfected eating one without the jelly oozing through the hole. It was when I was much older that my father made bacon and eggs for me for breakfast. His sunny side up eggs always had unbroken yokes.

I stayed close to home on summer Sundays. My bike stood outside in the back yard waiting for Monday and new adventures. I’d read the comics in the paper. Sometimes I’d watch the afternoon movie matinees. They were movies kids could could watch. My favorite was Treasure Island. I was pulled in by the arrival of Billy Bones and his black spots. I still remember how horrified I was to find out that Long John Silver was a treacherous pirate.

My mother seldom used the oven to cook Sunday dinner. The kitchen was small and held the heat. We often had corn on the cob and, if we begged enough, my mother made peppers and eggs as the main course. From the grill, cheeseburgers were my favorites. They were topped with yellow American cheese. I used ketchup on them back then. I never turned down a hot dog in a toasted bun.

My dance card is pretty empty this week. I don’t even have my uke practice or lesson. Our first concert on the green in Hyannis is tomorrow at 5:30. On Saturday we are playing from 7 to 9 in front of the Kennedy Museum in Hyannis. For the rest of the week, my sloth will reign supreme.

Today is Mother Nature’s thanks for abiding yesterday’s ugly day. It is sunny and warm, 74°. The humidity is just about gone. A light breeze is coming in through the window behind me, a north window. The day is wonderfully lovely.

I was lying in bed this morning trying to decide whether I would go back to sleep or get up when memories of my senior prom popped into my head. I thought it a strange memory to surface as it has been sitting way back in my memory drawers gathering dust, sixty-one years of dust. I have no idea what prompted it.

My mother and I shopped for my dress but didn’t find one I liked so she offered to make one for me. Though my mother had never sewn anything like a prom dress, I trusted her.

We went to Hyannis, to Buttrick’s, to find a pattern. I always thought of Buttriick’s as an old lady’s store. The window had mannequins wearing aprons and house dresses. I remember one section of the store had full and half slips and support hose. Anyway, we found the perfect dress pattern, a two piece dress with a straight bottom half. Next was the fabric store in South Yarmouth. The material I chose was lilac colored with brocade for the top and plain lilac for the bottom.

My mother sat on the living room floor to cut out the paper pattern pieces then she pinned the pieces to the dress material and cut around the pattern. The living room rug was covered in the pinned pieces. She sewed for days. The finished dress was gorgeous.

I invited a friend to be my prom date. We had been friends and co-conspirators since the eighth grade. He sent measurements, and my father reserved a tux locally for him, a white tux. My mother ordered the flowers. The day of the event I went to the beauty shop to have my hair done. Every chair in the shop was taken by one of my classmates. My hair was the style of the day. It was puffy on top with the little flip-ups on the bottom.

Getting dressed was almost a solemn occasion. I got into my dress then put on my tiara, my elbow length white gloves and my rabbit fur stole, also white. My mother took pictures. I have one of us standing in front of the fireplace. I remember the rain. My mother and father held a sheet over the two of us as we ran to the car, no limos in those days. We doubled with friends of mine. Our prom was at the Chatham Bars Inn, ritzy even back then but now a 5 star resort. The closest door was through the kitchen. The kitchen staff stopped to watch us as we walked through. The prom was perfect.

After the prom, we changed then went to a house party. The highlight of the party was a scavenger hunt. I remember two of the stops, one was at a cemetery where there was a clue at a certain gravestone. The other was at the principal’s house where we had to find out his middle name. It was Adolph.

It was so exciting being out late. Cars on the road were sparse. Houses were dark. I got home in the wee hours.

The humidity is oppressive. The air is so damp every surface feels a bit wet. A slight breeze just pushes around the thick air. The house is dark. Unsurprisingly, rain is predicted. It is 74° making the air feel a bit chilly. Tonight will again go down into the 60’s. June’s weather is quirky.

The dogs and I have a morning ritual. When I stir, they greet me with kisses. They get pats and scratches then leave to wait for me on the stairs. If I don’t come, they return to bed. If I do, we all go downstairs where they wait at the door for me to open it. I put the coffee on and get the newspaper. Yes, I still read the newspaper. I love reading it and doing all the word puzzles. When they are done outside, Henry waits at the door for me to open it, and Nala strolls in on her own. They get treats, a dog biscuit each and one other small treat. I take my coffee to the den and read the paper. The dogs nap. There is comfort in rituals.

I found The Mona Lisa disappointing. She was dark and tiny. David was impressive, every part of him. I was amazed to walk inside Notre Dame, but I was dazzled by the walls of stained glass windows in Sainte-Chapelle. They were jaw dropping. I had dinner at the Eiffel Tower. The views of the city from every window were amazing. Though the show was all in French, I enjoyed the music. It was winter when I arrived in Rio. Copacabana Beach was desolate. I took two cable cars to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil. From the top I could see the city and beyond. I remember seeing a submarine heading toward the harbor. Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain was exactly as I had hoped. It was the picture in my geography book of the back of the statue with its arms extended. The statue stood at the top of a tall mountain from which you could see Sugarloaf and the city spread below.

Africa never disappointed me. I think it was because I didn’t know what to expect, and everything I saw was like nothing I had ever seen before. The first morning after my arrival I stood outside my room on the second floor and could see the ocean, palm trees and family compounds with rusted metal roofs and smoke rising above them. I heard sounds I couldn’t identify. I could smell the thick greenery. Everything felt unreal, almost dreamlike. I stood there for a while taking in the first of what would be the most amazing experiences in my life.

The weather is perfect. It is 79° and sunny, but the breeze is strong and cooling. The leaves seem to dance, a gyration, a spinning up and down. The nights have been perfect for sleeping, down to the 60’s. If I could control the weather, this is the day I’d make.

I have a black and white picture of me standing against a tree. I remember it was taken the summer we vacationed on Islesboro, Maine. We stayed in a secluded house close to the water. There was a short pier and a rowboat upside down on the sea grass. I was ten. The angle of the picture makes me look tall, exaggeratedly tall. I am wearing shorts, a blouse and a visor, a white visor. I wore that visor every day that summer. I loved it. I wore it everywhere, inside and outside, which is strange as I never really liked hats. Having to go to church was painful enough but having to wear a hat to go made it even worse. Perfect irony is I now have a hat collection, and I have several baseball type caps. I think of those caps as the ancestors of my visor.

I have seen so many wonders. When I was a kid, the wonders came every day. I remember walking to school and seeing small sheets of thin ice over puddles. Crystals shined from the ice. Sometimes I could see the reflection of the sun, blurred and small. In the winter, the dew froze on the grass. I loved the cracking sound when I walked across the lawn, across my father’s lawn. The colors of the trees in fall were amazing, red and yellow and orange. We ironed the leaves in wax paper to preserve the color. I’d cut the paper around the leaves to use as bookmarks. They were forever fall. The sidewalk on the way to school was overhung with branches. I remember the buds of the leaves at the start of spring sprouting from those branches. They were furled. I watched the buds grow into tiny leaves then get big enough to shadow the sidewalk. The murmuring of voices on summer nights carried from house to house. I’d sit on my back steps and listen. They sounded almost ethereal.

I have seen many wonders in my travels, but I expected to see them. It is the unexpected which still stops me to look, to hold and to wonder. Wow is all I can say when the sky at sunset is covered with reds, oranges and pinks. The colors seem to dazzle. Morning fog draws me to the deck. Birds singing to greet the day still makes me smile.

I am glad I still see the miracles of every day.

Yesterday it finally rained. Today it will rain again. The house is dark. Last night I lit all the white lights in the living room and the pepper and clam lights in the kitchen. I am comforted by the coziness the lights give the rooms.

I love the sound of rain, the way it pelts the windows and the roof. When I was a kid, on a rainy day, I’d lie in my bed, read and listen to the rain. It surrounded me. Out my window I could see the slant of the rain. If some drops came through my window, my mother always made me shut it. I did, reluctantly.

I had my uniform for every summer day. I wore a sleeveless blouse, shorts and sneakers. The sneakers were originally white. I’d dress in the morning, eat my cereal then spend all day exploring. I remember once we happened upon a small pond and a handmade wooden raft was beside it. We launched the raft and used a stick to pole it. One end of the raft was under the water so we all stood crowded at the other end. I was Huckleberry Finn rafting down the river. My sneakers got soaked, and I cut my hand on the stick pole, but I didn’t really mind. It was an adventure. I’d explore not only the familiar woods near my house but also the woods further on, foreign lands. Sometimes because of the heat and the distance, I’d get so exhausted I’d just fall into bed still wearing my clothes. My mother never objected. I did take off my sneakers.

Summer has such bounty. Sugar corn on the cob was my favorite. I’d slather the ear with butter and sprinkle on the salt. I used the typewriter technique to eat the corn, to go from row to row. I’d take a short breath and keep moving. I’d clear the cob with award worthy precision.

The traveling I have done has taught me to try new things. I eat local dishes. Some of them had ingredients I never imagined I’d eat. One was Guinea pigs in Ecuador. I ate the traditional dish at a small restaurant in a little town. The meal was delicious once I got beyond it was Guinea pig. I have eaten goat so many times it is now just a regular food for me. I find it bony. Mostly I have eaten it in soup. I ate reindeer in Finnish Lapland during midnight sun time. It was domestically raised so it didn’t have that gamey taste. I’d mention the blinking red nose but that sounds a bit sacrilegious. It was in Africa where I palate got so expanded food was a great adventure.

My dance card is uke heavy as usual. I have practice tonight, the John Denver book, my lesson tomorrow morning and two concerts, songs of the sea music. Our first Monday night outside concert is next week. It is getting summer busy.

This is my annual Father’s Day post, long but not even close to being long enough to tell you about my father, my amazing father, my funny and loving father. It brings back a rush of memories every time I read it. It makes me laugh and smile and long for my father. He was one of a kind in the best of all possible ways. This morning, as soon as I woke up, I wished him a Happy Father’s Day, and the memories came flooding in

I have so many memories of growing up, of family trips and my dad trying to whack at us from the front seat and never succeeding, of playing whist in the kitchen, with the teams being my mom and me against my dad and brother, of Sunday rides, of going to the drive-in and the beach and of being loved by my dad. Memories of my dad are with me always, but today all my memories are of my dad, and my heart is filled to the brim with missing him. When I close my eyes, I see him so clearly.

On a warm morning he’d be sitting on the front steps with his coffee cup beside him while reading the paper. He’d have on a white t-shirt and maybe his blue shorts. He’d wave at the neighbors going by in their cars. They all knew him and would honk back. He loved being retired, and we were glad he had a few years of just enjoying life.

He was the funniest guy, mostly on purpose but lots of times by happenstance. We used to have Dad stories, all those times when we roared and he had no idea why. He used to laugh along with us and ask, “What did I say? What did I say?” We were usually laughing too hard to tell him. He was a good sport about it.

I know you’ve heard this before, but it is one of my favorite Dad stories. He, my mom and I were in Portugal. I was driving. My dad was beside me. On the road, we had passed many piggyback tandem trucks, all hauling several truck loads behind them. On the back of the last truck was always the sign Vehiculo Longo. We came out of a gas station behind one of those. My father nonchalantly noted, “That guy Longo owns a lot of trucks.” I was laughing so hard I could barely drive and my mother, in the back seat, was doubled over in laughter.

My father wasn’t at all handy around the house. Putting up outside lights once, he gave himself a shock which knocked him off his step-ladder. He once sawed himself out of a tree by sitting on the wrong end of the limb. The bookcase he built in the cellar had two shelves, one on the floor and the other too high to use. He said it was lack of wood. When painting the house once, the ladder started to slide, but he stayed on his rung anyway with brush in hand. The stroke of the paint on the house followed the path of his fall. Lots of times he set his shoe or pant leg on fire when he was barbecuing. He was a big believer in lots of charcoal lighter fluid.

My father loved games, mostly cards. We played cribbage all the time, and I loved making fun of his loses, especially if I skunked him. When he won, it was superb playing. When I won, it was luck. I remember so many nights of all of us, including aunts and uncles, crowding around the kitchen table playing cards, especially hi-lo jack. He loved to win and we loved lording it over him when he lost.

My father always said he never snacked, and my mother would roll her eyes. He kept chocolate, those miniature bars, under the couch, hidden from everyone else, but, we, everyone else, knew. He loved Pilot Crackers covered with butter. Hydrox was his preferred cookie. His vanilla ice cream was always doused with Hershey’s syrup. That man did love his chocolate.

My father always went out Sunday mornings for the paper and for donuts. He never remembered what kind of donut I like. His favorite was plain with butter. He’d make Sunday breakfast when I visited: bacon, eggs and toast. I can still see him standing over the frying pan on the stove with a dish towel over his shoulders. He always put me in charge of the toast.

If I ever needed anything, I knew I could call my father. He was generous. When we went out to eat, he always wanted to pay and was indignant when we’d one up him by setting it up ahead of time that one of us paid instead. One Christmas he gave us all $500.00, not as a gift but to buy gifts.

My father left us when he was far too young. It was sudden. He had a heart attack. I had spoken with him just the day before. It was pouring that day, and I told him how my dog Shauna was soaked. He loved that dog and told me to wipe his baby off. I still remember that whole conversation. I still miss my father every day.