Today is warm, almost sultry at 48°. I have no reason to venture out though I am hankering for a piece of pizza with sausage and caramelized onion and that may just beat the sloth in me.

Snow is predicted for tomorrow. The amount of it varies by station. The common number has been 3 inches.

When I was a kid, weather, except for the exceptions, was no big deal. We walked to and from school every day whether in the rain, in the wind, in the snow, the sleet, the sun or the cold. I didn’t know a single family with a second car. The one and only family car was what my father and every other father drove to work so we all walked to school. On weekends, the car was reserved for usual activities, grocery shopping, the cleaners, maybe the barbershop. My father was the only driver. We were at his mercy. He was always early.

I had some groceries delivered the other day. Included with the bread, the dog food and the rest of the mundane, were some Oreos, double stuffed Oreos. It has been a long time since I last bought Oreos and I was taken aback by the changes. Either the double stuffed bag was mislabeled or the definition and measurements have changed. I can’t imagine what the cream in regular Oreos looks like, but, then again, I am old and maybe waxing nostalgic about a cookie long gone.

When I was in Ghana, my mother sent packages. The biggest and the best each year was her Christmas package. That first Christmas it came two months late as my mother didn’t realize it came by ship. The second year she overcompensated, and it came almost two months early. But time didn’t matter. Only the treasures inside the box did. I remember books, games, paint by number, origami, packaged foods and candy and the best thing ever, the paddle with the red rubber ball on an elastic. The paddle was labeled Paddle Ball on the front but it went by many names. It entertained us for the longest time until the elastic broke. When knotting the elastic didn’t work, the paddle was retired.

I didn’t have a TV in Ghana or a radio or a phone. I wore a watch when I taught so I could keep track of the time, and I wore one when I traveled except that last one, the traveling watch, was unnecessary. Nothing left on time. I was never late but always early.

I am still housebound by choice, but I am happy and comfortable and still wearing my cozies. I am much better but today I’m coughing again. This plague tends to reinvent itself every couple of days, but I do feel better.

I have been in deep thought these housebound days. I have entertained myself by reading, watching movies, lazing on the couch and ruminating. The over and under toilet paper debate surfaced. Why, I have no idea. I guessed lack of sleep and no Snickers. Well, to go on record, I am an over. I think it the quickest way to find the end of the paper. Why is there no controversy about paper towels? Do they all have to be over, some sort of unspoken kitchen law?

I have had a strange sleeping schedule lately. I’m up roaming into the wee hours and then waking up close to noon. I’m fine with this but am unsure as the right wording. Am I up late into the night or am I still awake early in the morning?

I have been watching sci-fi movies from the 50’s. One was new to me, The Slime People from 1963. It kept me quite entertained. The Slime People are huge, prehistoric creatures covered with scales. They are actually subterranean reptile people who ooze slime and who have come to the surface because of underground A-Bomb testing, a 50’s common cause of monsters surfacing in movies. Think Rodan and Godzilla and our homegrown Them!

This movie is terrible, and I love it for that.

I got a chuckle out of a cave being called their headquarters. They don’t speak so I wondered what they did in their headquarters where they seemed to meet often. The cast includes three men and two women. One man is the father of the women, another is a marine who lost his unit and the third is a pilot who just landed. The Slime need fog to survive. Their fog machines, generated for a special effect, went feral. There were so many and so much fog you sometimes couldn’t see the cast. You could just hear their disembodied voices. They quickly figured out how to dissipate the fog, using salt water, which they carried in buckets to the fog. One of the women, in appropriate attire for the early 60’s, a sweater and skirt, is carrying a bucket in one hand and her pocketbook draped over her arm in the other. That is my favorite scene. The next scene which was only closely defeated and came in at number 2, the screaming woman held by a Slime man. She screamed so much and so loudly I wanted the Slime Man to despatch her. She could have saved herself, but she waited for her guy. The water dissipated the fog and the Slime People died. All this happened only over a day or two but it didn’t take long for there to be couples and marriage proposals. The father gave his blessing. My favorite line was the pilot’s to his new love, the older sister, “I know we just met but I have a lot of things I want to tell you if we get out of this.” Her reply, “Me too.”