Keep the Coffee Comimg

The morning is wet and chilly. If Nala hadn’t whacked me a couple of times, I’d still be in my warm bed. I turned on the heat so the house will be comfortable enough for my shower a bit later. I have to go out.

Rainy days in fall are sort of ugly. The leaves on the ground get soaked and stick together in a brown mess. The bark on the trees looks almost black. The sky is ominous. Everything is dark.

When I was a kid, my favorite subjects were English followed by history and geography. I wasn’t a fan of arithmetic. I remember memorizing the times tables, the only way to learn them. One, five and ten were easy, eight and nine were not as easy. I also remember learning coins. We got work papers with pictures of coins and problems to solve like adding together a dime, a dime and a nickel. I’d practice at home with real coins.

I converse with my dogs. Nala usually answers. Henry listens. He always looks right at me when I chat with him. They have favorite words like treat, dinner and out. They both come when I call, Henry right away and Nala after a few calls. When she doesn’t come, I know she’s caught a critter. I don’t check anymore. I’ve learned she’ll come in when she gets bored or, in the case of possums, when they dupe her and pretend to be dead. She doesn’t kill the critters. She carries them around the yard then just leaves them.

After school, I’d go out on the warmer afternoons to play. I was never out long. Darkness came early. Once in the house, I’d watch TV until supper. My mother was always in the kitchen cooking. Supper was meat, potatoes and some sort of vegetable, a canned vegetable. We ate a lot of ground beef, but my mother was a whiz with ground beef. She served it in so many different ways. Her meatloaf was my favorite, especially the one frosted with mashed potatoes.

This is a four event ukulele week.