The morning is cloudy and chilly. The backyard has bare trees and a deep carpet of dead leaves. The lawn and deck are covered in brown leaves with curled edges. Gone are the glorious colors of fall. Drab winter is making a headway.

Yesterday I waxed the kitchen floor and hall. I dusted the living room. I am exhausted. Housework does not become me. My flamingo is now a turkey. He is wearing a pilgrim hat, a coat with a turkey tail and has a wattle.

My dance card is full this week with 4 uke events and company coming. I have already planned dinner, and I have a dessert to make or even two if I get really ambitious.

Language changes. Words and phrases are added as others disappear and are lost in time. When I was a kid, other kids had cooties. It was one of the worst insults. We even made cootie catchers out of pieces of paper. Cars were parked by Spot Pond for the submarine races. I really believed there were races. I never noticed all the steamed windows, and I doubt I would have known why if I had. We had party poopers and wet rags. We used to cluck at other kids and call them chicken. My father went to the can. My mother used to say everything is copacetic. I knew what a beatnik was because we watched Doobie Gillis. I remember yelling dibs when I wanted to ride shotgun. Don’t have a cow. Don’t be a fink. I wore pedal pushers and guys wore pegged pants. You gave someone the bird.

Lately I have noticed a few new phrases. People don’t die anymore. They are unalive. I’m hearing the phrase I’m not going to lie peppered in conversations. It always seems to come before an opinion. “Do you want to come with?” Dude is now ubiquitous.

I know I’ve told you before about Ghanaian English. It is both colorful and wonderfully descriptive. “ I went to your house and met your absence,” is my all time favorite. I wasn’t home sounds drab in comparison. “I’m going to come,” my students would say as they were leaving my house. They would return. Obroni waaru was loosely translated as dead white man clothes which were sold in the markets and thought to be castoffs or charity contributions.

I will always be a lover of words.

My calendar is still on October. I’m just not ready for November. The year is far too quickly speeding away. Winter is intruding. 39° will be the low today.

Yesterday my membership in the Organization of Sloths was in jeopardy. I did errands, grocery shopped and washed the kitchen floor. That last chore took a long time. Poor spiders were sent scurrying. They had thought they were safe. I hand scrubbed under bottles and bins and chair legs. Today I’ll wax the floor and fill the bird feeders. I may also nap just to maintain my revered status as a sloth.

When I was a kid, storing my bicycle in the cellar was a sad ritual at the beginning of winter. I rode as long as I could, but the cold got to be too much. The freezing air whipped at my face as I rode down the hills. I needed mittens to hold on to the handlebars. My coat would puff from the wind riding up the sleeves. I had to walk everywhere.

We counted down to Halloween, and we counted down to Christmas. Thanksgiving just sort of happened. We did color turkeys in school and used the outlines of our fingers for their tails, and my mother put up a few cardboard turkeys and Pilgrims on the insides of the windows, but there were no real festivities. There was just turkey and a few days off from school.

When the weather got cold, Saturday matinees started at the movie theater uptown. We went almost every week. My mother gave us ticket money and money for popcorn or candy. She got rid of my brother and me for an entire afternoon for less than a dollar. We walked to the square and stood in line at the ticket window which was on a side wall inside the door. The candy counter was at the top of a small incline. Al owned the theater, and his wife ran the candy counter. The popcorn machine was on one side of the counter. Nothing was better than the aroma of corn popping, but I seldom bought popcorn; instead, I usually bought a long lasting candy like a Sugar Daddy. Coming attractions were usually first followed by a cartoon or two and the movie. The theater was never really quiet. In the back rows were the teenagers. They never watched the movie. I remember walking home in the late afternoon in the early darkness.

As usually my dance card for the week includes uke and not much else. This is the start of the busy season with two concerts this week and three next week. We’ll be playing transportation this week and bluegrass starting next week until December and Christmas music. I do love Christmas music.