Today is sunny and warm. It is 60°. It is the first weekend in a while that it isn’t raining. I have a couple of household chores I choose to ignore. The sloth in me is holding sway.

When I was a kid, Saturday was the best day of all. The morning was dedicated to sitting in front of the TV watching all the kid shows, munching cereal and slurping milk. The rest of the day was set aside for roaming. Sometimes I even biked to one of the towns around mine. I loved the railroad station one town over and would sit on a bench for a while hoping for a train. Supper on Saturday was always the same, but I never minded. I was and am a fan of hot dogs. The Saturday bath after supper was a ritual. I remember my sisters crying when my mother combed the snarls out of their newly shampooed hair. That too was a Saturday ritual. We got to stay up later. TV back then was filled with westerns like Sugarfoot, for which I can still sing the theme, The Roy Rogers Show with Happy Trails to You as the closing song which I can play on my uke, and my favorites like Maverick and Have Gun, Will Travel. I used to read in bed until my mother yelled up the stairs for me to turn off the light. Saturday was the perfect day.

When I lived in Ghana, Saturday was the day to go to town to pick up essentials in the market. I had my favorite egg man and my favorite vegetable lady from whom I bought onions and tomatoes. I used to roam the market hoping to find surprises like that watermelon, the only one I ever saw. From the kiosks lining the street, I’d buy canned goods like margarine and evaporated milk. From small girls carrying their goods on their heads I’d buy bread and bofrot aka puff puff which looked like donut holes only a little bigger and better tasting.

Saturday night was entertainment night at my school. There was tribal dancing and once in a while a movie. I remember Great Expectations and my students having no idea what was happening with the quick dialogue. My favorite was a cartoon about keeping flies off food. The movies and cartoons came from a USAID guy who occasionally dropped into town but whom I seldom saw.

I have an entirely empty dance card this weekend for which I am grateful. I’m going to loll.

Sorry for the lateness of the hour, but it was a busy morning. The plumber came back to check the water pressure in the kitchen. It was the faucet, my old faucet without the water on and off knobs.The actual faucet part was gunky. After that I had a uke concert, the last of the cowboys songs. What was amazing was they gave us a standing ovation, the first standing O!

This is time of year when the days stay warmish while the nights get cold. It is in the mid 50’s today and sunny. Fallen leaves cover everything. My driveway and deck are hidden. Most of the leaves are brown, their color gone. I figure winter has a hand in all of it, the leaves and the cold nights, warnings as to what is coming.

When I was growing up, walking to school was chilly this time of year. Sometimes I could see my breath. I wouldn’t wear my winter coat yet, but I always bundled in a few layers. I wore knee socks. I didn’t wear a hat. It wasn’t cold enough.

We went out for recess except when it rained. In the winter few of us took time for layering or even zipping or buttoning our coats. Recess time was too precious, but coats sometimes flew opened in the wind. If we jumped roped, the coats came off. They hindered red hot pepper and jumping and out of the swinging jump rope. Our cheeks were always rosy.

I feel like a character in some doomsday movie who’s being given signs of the apocalypse but doesn’t notice. The first sign was the death of my washing machine which still sits silent in the cellar. Second was the flood, a Biblical event. Next was the water heater. Last night it was the computer. There I was happily typing away when the computer went dead, went black. I tried to restart it, no luck. I waited and tried again, no luck. On the next try the update slide appeared then disappeared, replaced by blackness. That happened twice. I ruminated. I decide to check the adaptor. Hurrah, it wasn’t plugged in all the way. When I finally got my computer started, it was only 3% charged. I wonder what is next in my apocalyptic revelations.

The day is chilly, in the high 40’s, but it is a sunny, pretty day. Last night I thought I heard something hit the house. It was loud, but the dogs didn’t run to check it out or bark at it so I figured whatever I heard was harmless, but, nonetheless, all of us stayed on alert. In retrospect, I think my Halloween vibes were in full force propelled by the creature movies I have been watching. The sound turned out to be from a heavy wind, not a creature of the night. We were all safe!

I don’t remember ever wearing costumes to school. I do remember how long the school day was on Halloween. It went on and on, endlessly. At recess we all talked about our costumes, what we were to be. Hoboes were big as were ghosts, the easiest of all costumes. You just had to remember to make big eye holes in the sheet. We hated cold Halloween nights. That meant bundling, wearing a jacket, even hiding our costumes. Maybe we should have given thought to being Eskimos.

When the front lights were out, we’d finally give up the ghost and go home. My mother would give us each a bowl for our candy. We’d empty the bags into the bowls, toss the apples and the popcorn balls into the trash then we’d begin the bargaining. We’d trade bar for bar, what we didn’t like for what we liked more. After that, we’d munch and watch a little TV then go to bed. We’d take our bowls upstairs with us and keep them handy under our beds. I remember the bowls were Fire King bowls with tulips. I have a set of the exact same three bowls which I bought in an antique store. They came with memories.

Nala just gave me a laugh. She was in the hall standing by the den door looking at me. She had papers in her mouth she had stolen from the recycle bag by the front door ready for the car. She looked so proud. She raced out the door to the deck. I yelled treat. She dropped the papers and came in. I gave her the treats and retrieved the papers. Treat is the magic word.

The morning is dark and rainy. It will stay that way all day. When I woke up, the rain and the wind were heavier. Now the wind is quiet, but I can still hear the rain, a gentler rain. Henry has been barking all morning. The men came to put in the new water heater, and every time they make a noise, Henry barks. Nala keeps ringing the poochie bells to go out, but the gate is open. They are both driving crazy.

I always used to keep a dictionary by my bed in case I ran into a word I didn’t know. It was a paperback. Downstairs, I had a huge, hardcover American Heritage Dictionary with a red cover. Though I still have both of them, I rely on disembodied voices to tell me definitions. I remember learning how to use a dictionary, how to hunt down a word. I learned what the abbreviations meant. I learned to look at the top of the page to find quickly what I was looking for. We even had to take tests. I always thought it was one of the best skills the nuns taught me. Now it is obsolete.

All my Halloween candy is ready. I taped on the pencils last night. I also filled a few small brown bags with a Halloween pencil, eraser and small pencil sharpener. The bags are my back up in case I run out of candy or, more likely, I decide to save a few bars for myself. All the Snickers are gone, all five of them, but there are still Milky Ways.

When I was a kid, I don’t think my parents ever watched the news. My father read the newspaper, the Boston American. My mother did the crossword puzzle. I do both, but I read the Boston Globe. I also read the Cape Cod Times. Some people are amazed I still read an actual paper. My day always starts with two papers and two cups of coffee. It is a ritual.

It’s raining, loudly right now. It will rain all day, but the storm clouds are lighter than I expected. It is also warmer than I expected at 51°. My deck and lawn are covered with leaves. When I look out the back window, I can see the leaves being tapped by the rain. I can hear the rain on my window.

My sister in Colorado has a foot of snow, and it is still snowing. It is freezing at 31°. She said she had expected snow but not enough to see her entire world buried. She is happy to be home, warm and cozy.

The new water heater will be installed tomorrow. There was a leak in the back which caused the flooding. The plumber emptied the heater before he left, no hot water until Monday. I suppose I could always heat water and take a bucket bath. I am proficient at bucket baths, even with half full buckets. That was one of the unexpected talents I brought back with me from Ghana.

I’m going to get ready for Tuesday. I have chocolate bars and Halloween pencils. I’m going to tape a pencil onto each candy bar, a double treat.

On Halloween I’ll be glued to TCM. The schedule of films is amazing. It includes all of the classics starting with The Mummy at 10am and ending at 5am with The Bride of Frankenstein. Looks like an all nighter, a right night.

When I was a kid, I never saw a ghost or a goblin, but I believed they existed, and Halloween was their special night. Walking home in the dark after a long night of trick or treating I was alert, just in case. A loud noise or even worse, footsteps, would have sent me running. I would not have looked back but would have kept running at breakneck speed while protecting my candy bag the whole way.

I do remember being scared one night but not on Halloween. My parents had gone grocery shopping. We, my brother and I, were home alone with each other. I was watching television in the living room when I heard a noise, a rapping at the window. I looked out and saw nothing, but I heard more rapping a short time later. Thoughts of the man with the hook ran through my mind. I was scared. I locked the door and we hid. Next we heard knocking at the front door then we heard the door being opened. The lock had been breached. We thought death and mutilation were imminent. We didn’t dare move. The next sound we heard was my father laughing. He had been the intruder. He thought it was funny. We didn’t see the humor.

Today will be in the 70’s. Tomorrow will be a quick return to fall with rain and a temperature in the 50’s which is about right for this time of year. My sister in Colorado is already a season ahead of us. She has welcomed, says I with tongue in cheek, winter with a temperature in the bottom of the 30’s and with snow expected.

Yesterday I heard a beeping, three short beeps over and over. I went hunting for the source so I went down cellar where I found no beeper but I found water, so much water. The cellar is flooded on one side, and the water is starting to move to the other side. I checked my water heater as that has to be the source of the water. It is all rusted on the bottom. I wrote a message on Facebook to Kevin Sullivan, one of my favorite former students, who is the president of Ready Rooter. Someone is coming today. I just hope they find the source of that beeping. It is driving me insane. I expect I’ll be down the cellar for days sweeping out the water and drying that side. The sloth in me is screaming in horror.

When I lived in Ghana, I had a stove and a refrigerator. I seldom used the stove as it needed gas which my town didn’t have. I had to go 100 miles each way to fill the canister. My refrigerator always worked. I used to put my meat from the market in the freezer. Sometimes it turned green anyway. I also kept water bottles in the freezer. Nothing was better on a hot dry season day than the coldest water. I had no water heater. I always had to take a cold water shower except for the start of my shower when the still water in the pipe had been warmed by the sun. I learned to take really quick showers but I was always refreshed anyway.

I haven’t been to a movie theater in forever, sorry for the hyperbole but it just seems that way; however, I have watched many movies on TV. This week I watched mostly black and white movies. I even watched Godzilla, the original. Rodan is next. It has been like a trip to my childhood where every Saturday I used to watch Creature Double Feature. One of my all time favorites is Them. I can’t remember how many times I have seen it, but I know it is plenty as I can say some of the dialogue along with the characters. I shout Them with the little girl, the survivor, in the same horrific voice. I think I’m believable.

Today is another lovely day and already 71°. The sun and clouds will take turns. Right now it is cloudy. I have an empty dance card, but I do have a few things to do around the house. I need to replace the lights on the fence and add books to my little library. Today is a wonderful day to be outside.

When I was a kid, the nuns at my school used to tell us to share our desk chairs with our guardian angels. Some of my classmates would slide slide over to one side of their chairs. I never did. I was a bit of a doubter, not at the existence of angels but that they needed a chair. I always figured mine just flew or hovered along side of me.

Popcorn balls on Halloween were my least favorite. They were usually wrapped with colored cellophane to which they usually stuck. I never ate mine. I always threw them away. One time, though, I found a penny shoved into the popcorn ball. In the scheme of things pennies don’t seem like much, but in my day, a penny was worth a piece of candy. That was a wealth of sorts.

I remember hounding my mother on Halloween to let us loose. We’d watch out the windows hoping to see a trick or treater so we could point the kid out to my mother. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t. Once we were set free, we’d start in the neighborhood first then move out to other neighborhoods. We had favorite houses which we never missed. We’d stay out as late as we could. It was time to walk home when the lit houselights were fewer and darkened house were more common. I remember walking home down Pomeworth Street, a deserted Pomeworth Street. We could hear our footsteps on the sidewalk. The only lights came from the streetlights. We were the only walkers on the street. Our bags were heavy, filled with candy. The night had been a success.

We seem to be in the middle of a spate of lovely days. Today will be in the 60’s, but the rest of the week will be in the 70’s. I’m thinking a ride or two is in order. I’ll take all lefts this time. Most of those lead to the ocean.

Nala loves being in the yard. She stretches out in the grass, soaks up the sun and naps. Henry is straightforward, his task foremost. He runs to the tree, lifts his leg, does his business and comes back inside hoping for a treat or a sip of my coffee. If the sees my cup, he is relentless.

My father drank instant coffee. He preferred it to brewed. My mother liked Coke in the morning. She was neither a tea nor coffee drinker. My day has to start with coffee, usually two cups. My coffee beans come in the mail, a package every month. This month I’m drinking coffee from Uganda. I have some instant coffee in the cupboard. I needed it for a recipe. The only time I drank instant coffee was in Ghana, proof positive that taste buds can be muted, even ignored.

When I was a kid, my life was easy. It was a routine with school all week and church on Sundays. I patiently waded through through those days, through the week, until Saturday, my day. In warm weather, I was all over town on my bike. In the winter it was a matinee at the theater uptown or ice skating or sledding if we were lucky enough to have snow. I never minded the cold.

The books I read when I was a kid were classics or series like Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins or the Hardy Boys. I remember Heidi, Black Beauty, Little Men and Little Women. I remember Five Little Peppers which was about five poor kids growing up in the little brown house with their widowed mother Mamsie. It was a tug at your heartstrings book. I read several in the series and had my heart tugged every time.

This is a busy week. I have my usual uke practice and lesson and also two concerts in Brewster. This is transportation 2 week, walking songs.

Around 4 am the rain started. I was in bed so I heard it, heavy and loud, above my head. The storm started fast and ended fast. It is a chilly morning, just 56°, and it will stay that way. The sun comes and the sun goes. Right now it is cloudy. I have no plans for today though I do need a few groceries, but not enough to get me motivated to go out.

My mother mostly grocery shopped on Friday nights. My father had to drive her as she didn’t have a license. She did her big shopping at the start of the month when my father got paid. During the rest of the month she’d send one of us to the red or white store usually just for bread but sometimes for milk. She used to try to hide the cookies so they’d last for lunches. We could always count on Oreos.

When I was a kid, the future was tomorrow except when we counted the days before a big holiday. The big three started with Halloween, moved into Thanksgiving then in what seemed like years and years later came Christmas. With a week to go before Halloween, we’d start planning our costumes. We didn’t buy costumes. Back then the bought costume masks covered the face and were plastic and the costumes tied in the back at the neck. The masks had one elastic spanning the sides. The costume I remember seeing the most was a clown.

My mother was inventive. She was our costumer and make-up artist. She’d buy Lone Ranger type masks. The rest of the costume was homemade. My sister was a hula dancer one year. She wore her dancing recital grass skirt and a lei. I was once a bum holding all my possessions in a tied bundle at the end of a stick. Another year I was a farm girl with jeans and a flannel shirt. I always carried a pillowcase.

Last night I ordered my Halloween candy. I always buy what we used to call nickel bars. I bought a box of Mars candy and another of Hershey’s. I have some leftover Halloween pencils so I’m going to tape one on each candy bar. In case you’re wondering, my Mars box has Snickers. Those I’ll keep.

The morning is sunny though clouds are predicted for later. Alexa won the morning weather report. Google said it was cloudy while Alexa said sunny. I suggested Google should look out his window.

It’s a pretty morning with a blue sky, a bright sun and a small breeze. It will be in the 60’s. Today is dump day, how exciting! This is a four uke week: practice, a lesson and two concerts. We’re doing cowboy for the concerts then starting transportation 2 with mostly songs about walking for the concerts.

I vacuumed this morning. My house was filled with tumbleweeds, aka dog hair balls, which flew when I walked by them. The dust gave the house a bit of a haunted look, a seasonable look.

When I was a kid, I loved fall. I loved the colored leaves. I’d save them by putting the most colorful, usually yellow, between two pieces of wax paper then I’d iron the paper. Sometimes I’d use cardboard and glue to make a bookmark with the leaves. I’d save the best for Christmas presents.

I remember how wonderful the air smelled on a crisp fall morning. We’d walk on the sidewalk to school. It was covered with fallen leaves from the trees, a sort of arbor, hanging over it. Our steps were silenced, muted, by walking on the coats of leaves. While we were in school, the day warmed. It was perfect for recess and for playing outside in the afternoon.

I was never good at drawing. I drew stick figures and could only differentiated between male and female by giving the females a single line of flipped up longish hair and triangular shaped dresses. The males were au natural, just sticks. I’d give them all fingers, 5 straight lines at the ends of their arms. Sometimes I’d draw a flower on one of the fingers. That was when I felt especially creative.