The sun is elsewhere. It has been gone for weeks. No one knows anything. No one saw anything. The clouds have taken over. It is 44° according to my Google, but I’m doubtful. It is cold. I am hibernating again. My dance card is empty until Tuesday. Yesterday was a banner day. I had a morning uke lesson. I went shopping for human and animal food, got gas and went to my first uke concert since the mighty fall and the plague. Life now has a familiarity about it.

Last night the dogs went crazy. When they play, they make growling sounds. They were loud last night, almost scary loud. They chewed each others’ muzzles. Nala chased Henry around the house. They weren’t two dogs from the sounds they made, but a herd. I pat them, feed them, give them room on my bed, but that doesn’t matter. They ignored me when I yelled for them to stop. I live to serve.

I remember the measles. I remember the dark bedroom. I remember staying in bed the whole time. Though I had every childhood disease, I don’t remember the rest of them. You’d think I’d remember chicken pox.

When I was a kid, I had mysteries in my life. The washing machine was one of them. I had no idea how it worked. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I bested the beast. I didn’t know how to cook anything. That was my mother’s job. I was a junior in college before I peeled my first potato. I was living in an apartment, an illegal one as juniors had to stay on campus, so I cooked my own food. I became a master chef with ground beef. My mashed potatoes were a bit lumpy but still tasty. I ate a lot of canned peas. I also ate a lot of spaghetti with ground beef and bottled sauce. There is some irony there as cooking and baking became hobbies. That started in Ghana where I made my first sugar cookies.

My friend and I used to camp in the backyard. We’d put a tarp on the ground first. We had our blankets and pillows. It was always her yard. My yard was an open one with houses up on the hill and all around it. Her yard had a fence behind it separating the project from the houses on Green Street. I remember a large white house with a front porch. Pear trees lined the fence on the other side, but a few branches hung over. We picked those pears. I remember they were always hard.

Today is cold, downright chilly, but for the first time in a while, the sun is shining though the sky is still a bit cloudy. The high today will be 30°. It seems so wrong to call 30° a high.

The dogs are out back barking. Well, mostly Henry is out back barking. Nala just goes along for the ride, so to speak. She follows him out then follows him back inside to the front door where he barks at nothing.

Yesterday I found the dogs’ nail cutter. I had hidden it from Nala as she has taken it outside a couple of times. The handle is chewed. I trimmed Nala’s nails yesterday. Henry had one look and took off running. He is not a fan of nail cutting, at least by me, but he definitely needs his nails trimmed. The last time I tried I managed to trim only a couple of nails on one paw before he got away. I will be persistent rather than pay to have them done.

Last night I was overcome with nostalgia. I watched the first Zorro episode, the Disney Zorro, and the first Spin and Marty. I was ten when Zorro started. Even then I always wondered why nobody knew Don Diego was Zorro, just like I wondered about Superman and Clark Kent. Even Don Diego’s father didn’t recognize him behind the mask despite the same mustache and a familiar voice.

When I was a kid, my mother always made her cakes and brownies from scratch. Her brownies had chocolate frosting and jimmies, sprinkles to those of you not from here. No other brownies come close. Hers still define chocolate for me. She also never bought biscuits for her strawberry shortcake. She made cream of tartar biscuits, my father’s favorite. That’s how I serve my strawberry shortcake. They are the tastes of my childhood.

The field and swamp near my house were bleak in winter. The grassy field was brown. The swamp usually turned to ice early on because it was shallow. We skated there. The swamp was a straight walk through the fields from my house, but if I turned right beyond the field, there was a small hill with a water tower at the top. I always wanted to climb that tower, but there was no way up, probably a good thing.

I saw a cooking video the other day. The cook had mealy flour. He explained that you could sift the flour to get rid of the bugs or pick them out. He went on the say that leaving the bugs in gave the food more protein. I immediately called my friends. In Ghana, our flour came in huge bags and flour weevils moved right in. We never bothered with them. We used to say they were added protein. That cook must’ve heard us.