Today is warm but ugly. Yesterday’s rain left a damp, cloudy day. I’m going nowhere. Today is a good nap day. The dump can wait until Wednesday.

This is a quiet week for me. My dance card is pretty empty. I have my usual Tuesday and Wednesday uke practice and lesson, and I don’t have any concerts. The next one is at the mall on Sunday. We’re doing the Irish book. I will be clad accordingly.

I am a sloth today. I have no ambition. The dust balls can grow to huge proportions, black and white science fiction monster proportions. I’ll arm myself with my hand vacuum just in case!

When I was a kid, we had a TV console. It was big and wooden. The TV was hidden behind a couple of doors. Its screen was small. We always sat close risking permanent blindness.

The skates I had when I was a kid were one size fits all. You could pull the skate in the middle to fit your shoe length. A key tightened the grips on the top sides of the skates. I always kept my roller skate key on a string around my neck though sometimes I’d tie the ends of a shoelace together and use that to hold my key. Sneakers were never good for roller skating. I couldn’t tighten the grips enough. My skates had leather straps which went across the tops of my feet. They always held. The grips didn’t. Sometimes my foot would come loose, and the skate would dangle by the strap until I stopped to tighten the grip again. If you ever lost your skate key, it was the end of skating.

I loved the sound of the skates rolling on the sidewalks and the tingle on the bottom of my feet. One sidewalk beside my house was a hill which had road on one side and grass on the other. It was steep. It wasn’t for the fainthearted.

Rain is coming, of course it is on this warm day, a day in the 50’s. I went out on the deck and was appalled by my yard. Trash, stolen by Nala, was mostly chewed into pieces, except for the paper plates. They looked like flying saucers in a B science fiction movie. A bag of cans had opened, and Coke cans were strewn about the yard. I imagined a crowd of my neighbors carry flaming torches and demanding I clean the yard. I did so the yard is now presentable, and the crazed crowd has dispersed. Pine branches are all that are left. They need a chipper.

When I think back to grammar school, a few nuns and teachers come to mind. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Kerrigan, could have been the poster woman for teachers in the 1950’s. She had white hair in a bun and always wore a flowered dress and clunky black laced shoes. She stooped a little. She was soft spoken. In the third grade I had the nun who told me not to sing during the May procession. She took some joy away. Miss Konopacka in the fourth grade was stern. She had gone to school with my aunt. I didn’t mind her but my sisters hated her. Sister Eileen Marie in the fifth grade was huge. She mostly sat at her desk. She gave candy as rewards for answering questions. She had favorites. I wasn’t one of them. Miss Quilter in the sixth grade was my favorite. She gave me a love of learning. She gave me a sense of curiosity about words and language. Sister Hildegard, in the eighth grade, had already gone past her use-by date. I’ll never forget that year. I was a favorite and got away with everything. I left school, with permission from her, and sometimes never went back. I hid my brown lunch bag and went out for lunch. Many times I arrived back late from lunch. She never cared. She didn’t even like us.

Today I have to clean downstairs. The dust balls whirl into the air when I walk down the hall. I could write clean me on the table dust. On my dance card, besides uke, I only have my dump run. That’s for tomorrow. I can hardly wait says I tongue in cheek.

I am running out of time. I have a concert today, and I have to leave in ten minutes. I, of course, was up until nearly morning today so I slept late.

It is the first of our St Patrick’s Day music so I am decked in green. Luckily I brought it all out last night. My fascinator has sparkly shamrocks that wiggle when I move my head. My green sweatshirt has Ryan in the middle with a harp in the background. Even my socks are decked in shamrocks.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig ort!