Today is dark, damp and chilly. Staying close to hearth and home is the best way to spend the day. Sunday is the day of rest, and I intend to comply. The dogs were late waking me up this morning. We all lasted until 10. The dogs are on the couch napping now, such is their lives. I have hidden the cat treats in the closet. If Nala gets them, she deserves them.

My finger is the best it has been since before the bite. The gauze fell off during the night but has been replaced with a nice fresh, white gauze. The finger is still ugly but less swollen. It hurts by the pins where the ache doesn’t disappear, but I figure those pins be gone next week when I see the surgeon.

When I moved to the cape, I was devastated. I was leaving my friends, my school and, most of all, my home, the place where I’d grown up, the place with all my memories. Most of my friends I’d known for the whole of my life. We had been together all the time, in school, and especially, at drill. I was headed to a place where I knew no one. I was going to public school for the first time in my life. I wasn’t excited. Actually, I hated it. I’d get back from school and toss my books. I’d stay in my bedroom. I went back home as many weekends as I could, but as the year went on, I went back less. I got involved with school clubs. I met all sort of new friends. I came out of my bedroom. I stopped throwing books.

When I was in Ghana, my family moved back to my home town, to a different house, not to mine. I had no connection to that house. I had no connection to that town any more. My friends and I had lost track of each other. After Peace Corps, I went home to the cape, and I have lived here since then, but I got lucky in my home town. I found my oldest friends, my oldest friends in time, not age, and we reconnected. We are still friends today many years later. It is as if there is no lost time between us. I am blessed.