Every morning when I first wake up, I ask Alexa the time and weather. Today it was 9 when I asked. She told me to enjoy the sunny day. Hey Google told me it would be mostly cloudy but was sunny right now. Neither one is right. The sky is covered by clouds. It is windy and only 57˚. I am staying close to home today.

When I was a kid, Saturday was bath night. I think it was universally bath night. I took one alone as did my brother. My two sisters took one together. After their baths and shampoos, the torture began. My mother had to comb out the snarls. Both of my sisters cried. I was glad for short hair.

Yesterday was clean the yard day. I took my convict stick and poked all of the trash then put it in the bag. I got to see what Nala had stolen. Most of it was paper and cardboard from the recycle bin. Later she was outside an inordinate amount of time. I called her. She didn’t come. That made me suspicious. I know she can’t get out of the yard so I went to look for her. She was sitting just below the deck’s edge looking up at me. I thought she had one of her toys, one of the flat toys missing its insides. She didn’t. Nala had a dead squirrel. She grabbed it and ran thinking I’d chase her to get it. Nope. I learned when she had the possum not to bother chasing her.

My mother used to get our Easter clothes ready on Saturday. She’d snip the tags and lay out our new outfits. When I was young, my Easter outfit included a hat, white gloves and patent leather shoes. My sister gave me one of her Easter hats for my hat collection. It is white with a blue around the outside top of the brim and a blue bow around the head part in the center. It is exactly what an Easter hat should look like. My mother paired it with white gloves and a fluffy pastel dress. My sisters liked to swirl in their dresses.

Our Easter baskets ad all the traditional candy. A hollow rabbit was the centerpiece. We always ate the ears first. It was the unwritten rule. The jelly beans were big and mostly tasted the same. The Peeps were pink or yellow. Chocolate eggs were wrapped in colorful foil. Small toys were also in the basket and sometimes a stuffed rabbit or duck. I remember getting jacks and sometimes yo-yos.

Today I might do laundry. I even brought the basket down to this floor, only one more floor to go, but if past history is any indicator, the basket will sit there for a few days until I get tired of looking at it. That usually takes a while.

Today is a delight. The sun is bright, the air is still and the deep blue sky, unmarred by clouds, stretches across to meet the earth. Everything about the morning is inviting. We will be in the 60’s today. It is a spring day. More flowers have bloomed. White dafs, deep purple hyacinths and a little forsythia, only a couple of branches, have bloomed in the last couple of days. I love going outside each morning to see my garden, to see what surprises Mother Nature has unearthed.

Today is Good Friday. I used to have the day off when I was in elementary school, but there was a catch. I had to sign up to do vigil for an hour. I used to sneak in a book and hope the nun watching us was only looking for noise, not diversions. I figured hiding it in a prayer book and reading with my head down made me look devout. That hour was endless.

I was never much a counter of days except for the days until Christmas. Easter was never big. Summer vacation came with only a little fanfare. The last day of school was a half day, and we got our report cards. We all looked on the back to make sure we were promoted. We all were. Everyone was promoted. I wondered about that. I always figured we just dragged along some of my classmates who maybe should have stayed behind but somehow got caught in the swell of promotion.

Last night I watched The Beach Girls and the Monster. I had to look it up as I hadn’t ever heard of it. The movie was listed among the 100 most enjoyably bad movies ever made. The opening was a slew of dancing girls in bikinis. The theme, Dance Baby Dance, was written by Frank Sinatra Jr. The monster was silly looking with bulging eyes which never moved. The victims screamed but were never heard so the monster had its way and killed three people. The movie, though, did have one redeeming feature, amazing surfing footage. I watched the movie until the end. I needed to know the fate of the monster.

Of late, I have been a flurry of activity. I had a list. I cleared my bedroom of bins and boxes. I mailed Christmas presents which have been ready to mail since the holiday. My friends were excited, my sister not so much. After all, it is April. Maybe I should have wrapped them in pastels.