Some days are just ugly by nature. Today is one of those days. Light showers are predicted, and it will stay in the 50’s. I will be cozy and warm at home.

My finger still hurts. I figure it will hurt for a while. Right now it is a useless limb which objects to my hand being used at all. I have to keep stopping because typing is a problem.

When I was a kid, clothes were divided by function. I had school clothes, my uniform, and school shoes. The rule was I had to change as soon as I got home into my play clothes and my sneakers. I had church clothes, usually a skirt and blouse. I never wore that outfit anywhere else. It was a once a week outfit. My school shoes, though, were for Sundays as well. I had special outfits like a new Easter dress every year and usually new clothes, in wrapped presents under the Christmas tree.

In college, I had to wear skirts or dresses, no pants, until the winter of my sophomore year. That was about the coldest winter in a long while. We had fierce winds and snow. Walking to class between buildings was like taking your life into your hands. The winds buffeted you. Your legs and feet froze. That was when the rule changed. We were allowed to wear pants. The dress code disappeared forever.

In Ghana, I had to wear a dress every day. Only yama yama girls wore pants. They did their business mostly in the cities, proverbially on street corners. I brought with me several dresses, skirts and blouses,, but in a short time I had dresses made with Ghanaian cloth. They were all I wore. Ghanaian women wore beautiful dresses, often two piece dresses, made with local cloth in vibrant colors. Their more formal outfit was three pieces, a top, a long skirt and a matching cloth wrap around them about the middle. They were beautiful.

When I went back to Ghana after so many years, acceptable clothing for women had changed. I saw far fewer women wearing traditional cloth. The ones who did were mostly older women. I was sorry for the change though I understood it. Pants were now acceptable, but I knew that ahead of time so I had brought pants to wear, but while I was there, I had blouses and dresses made from the beautiful cloth I had bought in the market. They were my connection to my memories of that earlier time in Ghana. I love those clothes.

Today is another cold, windy, cloudy day with rain expected. It is currently 54°. My house was chilly enough this morning that I turned on the heat for a while. I need cozy today. It is a sweatshirt day, a flannel day.

I don’t even have a dance card. My uke still has to wait for my finger to settle down. The good news is it’s my strumming finger, not my chord finger, so I’ll be back soon. I really miss my uke.

When I was a kid, I was never really into dolls except for a brief dalliance with my Ginny doll. She was small. Her legs could be moved, and she could walk. I used to comb her hair. My Ginny was well dressed. She had fantastic outfits. She had furniture, pink furniture. One Christmas, under the tree, were new clothes and new furniture. Ginny got a bed and a wardrobe which was filled with clothes on small, red plastic hangers. My mother and my aunt had made the clothes. Ginny looked spiffy that Christmas. Amazingly enough, that same Ginny doll of mine is kept on a high shelf in my bedroom safe from Nala. Her outfit is yellowed and her hair needs combing, but she is still beautiful despite her years.

I always envied my mother’s coloring talents. She was delicate with her colors. I was blunt. She stayed inside the lines. I sort of meandered in and outside the lines. Using only one crayon she could shade the color so it looked like many colors. Her blue was a light blue, a dark blue and a sort of middle of each blue. Mine was just blue. She and I used to sit at the kitchen table and color. In the middle of the table were the crayons from the cigar box where they were kept. The crayons were all different sizes. Some had no paper wrapped around them so we had to guess the colors. I tended to be a traditionalist. I even colored the clouds white though you couldn’t tell unless you rubbed your hand across them. We tended not to talk too much as we concentrated on our masterpieces, but those times with my mother were among my favorites of all.