The wind is terrible. It has the proverbial sound of a freight train. My front fence, badly needing to be replaced anyway, fell, three sections of it. I pulled each section up and used sticks to keep each in place. The sections were heavy and wet. My hands were freezing when I was done. Once inside the house, I warmed them around my cup of hot coffee.

It had been raining since yesterday morning. Now we are left with fog, wind, clouds and chill. Nothing is inviting about today. Today is a perfect sloth day. It is a perfect day to snuggle on the couch under the afghan and watch bad movies. Where are the bonbons?

I have learned certain truths in my life. Buttered toast will always fall to the floor on the buttered side. Wearing dirty underwear is courting disaster. When you are halfway to somewhere, it will start to rain. Your tongue will turn black if you lie. Leaving the house with wet hair will bring on a cold. Sitting too close to the TV causes blindness, but carrots might just be the cure. Darning needles, aka dragonflies, can sew your eyes shut. Swallowing seeds made a garden grow in your stomach, but I had trouble with this one. The only seeds I ever swallowed were watermelon seeds. If I went swimming too soon after eating, I’d get cramps and maybe die, but I won’t fault my mother on this one as she believed it too. If I cried, I was told I’d get something to cry about which made no sense to me. I was already crying because I had something to cry about.

I never doubted my mother. I was sure she wouldn’t lie. I’d spit out my watermelon seeds, wear clean undies, watch TV from far away and never expose my tongue if I lied, but I did cheat a little. I went swimming before the thirty minutes. Strangely enough, I never got cramps. I never went blind and never had my eyes sewed shut. I just thought myself lucky.

Partly cloudy is today’s weather report. It seems to be the weather report for most days. The rain may start tonight, but it will definitely be rainy tomorrow. I believe the weather man said we should expect 40 days and 40 nights of rain.

My dance card is filled with uke, with practice, my lesson and a concert. I am going to have to emerge from my hibernation cave.

When I was a kid, I had to walk to school in the rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or a raincoat so I sat at my desk with wet hair, wet shoes and wet socks, but I didn’t really care. I was a kid. I didn’t know discomfort. That belonged to older people.

Cleaning my house is a lesson in futility. When I vacuum, I swear the dust is hiding and waiting because as soon as I’m finished, it reappears in clumps to plague me. When I was in Moscow, at any museum, we were required to wear covers on our shoes. I figured it was a cheap way to keep the floors clean. I have adopted that Russian cleaning method. Right now I am wearing muk luks over my socks. I drag my feet across floors, and my muk luks collect the dust. Next, I need to find a way to wash the kitchen floor using little or no effort. I’m thinking maybe just gliding in wet socks is the answer.

I remember Jiffy Pop. I remember how long it took to pop while I shook the aluminum package over the burner using the metal handle. My favorite part was watching the foil in the middle expand. Sometimes, if I wasn’t careful, the bottom kernels burned. After the popping, I remember tearing the aluminum off the top and watching the steam escape. My mother salted the popcorn a bit and always added melted butter. My fingers got butter sticky.

My mother used to buy powdered milk. We didn’t drink it; instead, she used to reconstitute it and use it in making pudding, chocolate pudding as we never had any other kind. It was her way of saving the bottled milk. The pudding was cook on the stove pudding, never instant. It always tasted good.

I am watching The Horror of Party Beach. It was made in 1964, is black and white and stars John Scott and Eulabelle Moore. I’m thinking the movie is its own horror.