Some mornings seem to rise to near perfection. This morning is one of them. I am on the deck with the dogs. They are lying down in the cool air. A strong breeze is blowing. The branches are whipping back and forth. The oak leaves are rustling. Falling acorns are hitting the deck. Joni Mitchell is providing the soundtrack. I’ve already had my coffee and read the newspaper. My plans for the day are to finish the deck plantings, sweep my outside shower and put up a few more deck decorations. We might get rain, might being the key word.

Miss Nala is continuing her nefarious ways. Yesterday she stole some folded cardboard from the recycle bin and my deck chair pillow. I was only gone a few minutes into the house. When back on the deck, I immediately noticed the missing pillow. I checked the yard and could see Nala running with her prize in her mouth. I didn’t chase her. I stood and watched. I did try to grab it when she got close to me, but I failed each time. Finally I threw a rock which distracted her, and I retrieved my pillow, a new pillow, a filthy new pillow. I washed it and left it to dry. I’m using it again. When I went into the house a bit ago, I took the pillow with me.

I can occasionally hear planes overhead. I wonder where they’re going. When we left the United States for Ghana, we left from Philadelphia. We flew over the cape. It was an unexpected good-bye.

I have a picture of the inside of the bus taking us to the airport. I didn’t yet know most of the people in that picture, but we were to spend three months training together and two years living in Ghana, plenty of time to get know each other. Now, when I look at that picture, I can remember many of them. Standing in the back is Kalman. He will be the victim along with his Ghanaian passenger of a motorcycle accident. Sitting close to me is Emma. She will be assigned with me to the same school. We will never become friends. She will leave after the first year to maybe a different school or even home. She didn’t tell me she was leaving. I never saw Emma again. Roger and Dale are in seats near each other. They will be roommates in Navrongo, a town north of Bolga. They used to come visit so I could cut their hair. They were good guys, nice guys, perfectly matched. I don’t remember the names of the other passengers, but I have what we call the mug book which is filled with pictures of the whole training group. Underneath each picture is a snippet of information about each of us. Bill, Peg and I use the mug book to put faces to names. It is invaluable, even precious.

The weather has changed. The humidity is just about gone. The temperature is in the low 80’s and tonight will get downright chilly, 72˚. I’m out on the deck. The slight breeze is pleasant. Henry is with me. Nala is chasing her ball all over the yard. She makes pit stops on the deck for water. I have house chores today. Plants inside and out need watering. The laundry is down the cellar in front of the machine. I really need to do a load or two today before it overwhelms me, and I become a statistic in some Stephen King short story.

I have a list. I always have a list. Today’s list is for a few groceries and some basil plants as I still need to fill a couple of clay pots. My white lights were eaten. I have more which I will mist with the anti-spawn of Satan spray. I need seed for my bird feeders.

It’s plumber time again. My kitchen faucet needs to be replaced, and an outside spigot where the hose is attached leaks. I used to kept that hose on the deck for watering the plants so I didn’t have to make trips, three of them, in and out of the house to fill the watering can.

The missing H on my keyboard is driving me crazy. I need to call to have the computer guy come to my house. I never realized how often I use an H.

Last night’s concert went well despite the wind. We even had a small audience, mostly friends or relatives, but it was an audience nonetheless. Tonight is practice on a new book, the fab 50’s.

When I was a kid, I took piano lessons for a short time. It was during the school day, and a nun was my teacher. One end of the convent across the street from the school had a stone front and its own door. That’s where my lessons were. My grandparents had a piano. Neither of them played. I think it was some sort of a status symbol. I went to their house to practice, but I could tell my grandmother was not all that keen to have me there so I stopped practicing and stopped my lessons. My one musical triumph was playing the sticks in the rhythm band when I was in the second grade. The audience loved me.

I grew up in really noisy neighborhood. Little kids were everywhere. They mostly played in the backyard. A giant grassy hill was between the upper duplexes and the lower where we lived. Behind each duplex, up and down, were the areas with the clothes lines. We had three lines and our neighbors on the other side of the wall also had three. I remember my mother hanging up the wash. She had a clothespin bag hanging from one of the lines. She kept one clothespin in her hand, the operative one, and another in her mouth, the next one. She seemed to do a wash just about every day.

All I hear are birds singing and Nala rustling through the flora in the backyard. Her tags click, my way of keeping track of her, a necessity as she can be devious.

I saw a rainbow on my ceiling when I woke up.