The morning is cloudy and dark. Every now and then a wind blows. The high will be 71°. Tonight will get down to the 50’s. I could do errands today, but I’m thinking today is a good day to stay home. I’ll do my errands tomorrow.

Yesterday, I filled the bird feeders, my single accomplishment for the day. Today, I have no to-do list. I’ve decided, instead, to support my inner sloth.

Today I muse.

When I was a kid, one of the talents I developed and was most proud of was my ability to dunk a Graham cracker in cocoa and eat it before it dissolved into the cup. It took timing and finesse. I still dunk, but now I use a biscotti and dunk it into coffee, a grown up choice I guess.

I always thought the milk left in the bowl after the cereal was gone was the tastiest. The only way to drink it was by lifting the bowl to your mouth, but you had to be careful as sometimes the milk sloshed from the rim of the bowl.

We always had white bread. It was soft white bread. Peanut butter, when I tried to spread it on the bread, always tore a hole, but I used the peanut butter like paste and repaired the hole.

I always thought the praying mantis was the most amazing bug. I remember watching one for the longest time when I was a kid. What I found amazing was it stood upright and really did look like it was praying. Its eyes were bulging and a bit scary looking. It never flew. Last night I watched The Deadly Mantis from 1957. It flew. It ate people.

Saturday was the busiest day. My father did his errands uptown. He’d drop off and pick up his white shirts at the Chinese laundry, have his hair trimmed and visit a few friends. At home, he’d do his mowing in the summer and his raking and burning leaves in the fall. The winter meant no outside work unless it snowed. Every father on the street did the same. It was an unwritten rule.

We didn’t have much when I was a kid, but we had butter, not margarine, and the milkman always left one bottle of chocolate milk with the white. It was supper during the week but dinner on Sundays because there was always a roast, fancy meat.

We couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Sometimes we’d have frozen fish sticks with French fries for supper or English muffin pizzas. My favorite supper was fried dough slathered with butter and a bit of salt. We stood in line at the frying pan.

I’m watching, in between words, a science fiction film from the 50’s. It is Saturday and time for Creature Double Feature. I chose The Crawling Eye, but The Tollenberg Terror, released in 1958, started instead. I tried twice for The Crawling Eye with no luck. Finally, I set Google on a task. Come to find out they are the same movie with different titles. The Tottenberg Terror was the name in England while we got The Crawling Eye. For my second creature feature I’m hoping to find The Fiend Without a Face.

Today is another delightful day, sunny and warm. It will reach 75°. A few clouds dot the pale, blue sky, but the sun still streams. I have nothing on my dance card. I’m glad for the quiet day. I’ll fill the bird feeders and water the deck plants. That’s it.

When I was a kid, our neighborhood was seldom quiet. Every house had kids, and they played outside. A hill dominated the backyards. Each house took care to mow the patch of grass nearest them on the hill. We had one grass fanatic. She was one of the few to use a power mower. She mowed in rows and mowed a square on the hill behind her clothesline. In her mind, the square was her hill grass property border. If anyone walked on her square, she always yelled for the transgressor to get off the hill. We figured she kept guard through the kitchen window. All the kids laughed at her and made fun of her behind her back, but she did have the greenest, most well-kept hill grass.

My father loved his grass. He always mowed it in the same pattern. Saturday was mowing day. I can still hear and remember the clicking sound of the blades as he mowed up and down the lawn and around the bushes in the side yard which had the biggest patch of grass. The last house they lived in had a front lawn. When I’d visit, my father always asked if I’d seen how great his grass looked. “It’s the best lawn you’ve ever had,” I’d tell him.

Dinner last night was fun. I had everything ready so I could sit and enjoy my friends. We started on the deck. The night was quiet. I had a fire lit in my chiminea. The burning piñon wood filled the air with its sweet aroma. We noshed on a charcuterie board and sat for a while. The dogs were good. They even fell asleep on the deck. We moved inside for dinner which was pesto lemon shrimp fettuccini and crispy bread. For dessert we had cannolis. We sat eating and talking and laughing for the longest time.

Dinner was delicious but being with old friends was the best part of the evening.