The morning started later than usual. The dogs, especially Nala, no surprise there, got impatient and jumped on me to wake me up. I let them out then gave Gwen her insulin and me my coffee.

It is cold. I saw sun for a brief time earlier then it went behind the clouds, but it didn’t disappear. I can still see the light. Maybe it will be a nice day after all.

I haven’t any plans for today. Sunday is the day of rest. When I was growing up, it was Sunday dinner and visit the grandparent’s day. It was a formal day of sorts except in summer when Sundays were more relaxed. We sometimes spent the day at the beach. It was never a day to work.

When I was a kid, I had no interest in baking. I only liked the results. My mother made the best brownies. I loved that she always frosted them with chocolate frosting and chocolate jimmies. I’m a corner of the pan sort. I like the crispy sides of the brownies. My mother made chocolate chip cookies. She always followed the recipe on the back of the package. We used to snag cookies straight from the oven. They burned our hands and mouths, but we didn’t care. The cookies were warm and the chocolate still melty.

When I was in Ghana, I made sugar cookies for the first time ever. I had to ride a hundred miles each way to Tamale to fill the propane tank for my stove. I never used the stove or oven as there was no place in my town to fill the tank, but I needed the oven for my Christmas cookies, for what I hoped would be Christmas cookies in recognizable shapes. My mother, in the Christmas decoration package she had sent, included Christmas cookie cutters, stuff to make frosting and colored jimmies for decoration. I found a recipe in Ghana Chop, the Peace Corps Ghana cook book of the day, and bravely faced the ingredients. I even splurged on canned Australian butter, an expensive treat. I used a Star beer bottle to roll out the cookie dough. I had bought some flat metal in the market for a cookie sheet. It worked. The cookies were perfectly baked. They had a bit of brown on the bottom just as they should. I decorated every cookie. There were trees, stockings and Santas. They were masterpieces of a sort, being the the only decorated sugar cookies in all of Bolga, of that I am sure.

When I woke up, I thought it was yesterday. The sky is grey, and there are snow showers just the same as yesterday morning. It is still cold, 30˚, and the wind makes it feel even colder. I’m glad I have nowhere I need to be.

Nala woke me up. She was lying beside me whining. It was boxer speak for get up and let me out. I did. I am nothing if not obedient.

I have been lazy of late. Each morning I make a few tentative plans then I make the same plans the next morning. Today, though, I did bring my laundry to this floor from upstairs.

Both dogs are sleeping beside me on the couch, one on each side. Nala has her head on my lap. Henry is twitching. He is dreaming. Every now and then he stretches. Nala snores.

I used to wear slipper socks. My mother bought each of us a new pair every Christmas. The soles were leather, and we used to drive my mother crazy by shuffling our feet when we walked across the floor.

When I was a kid, we had yellow egg cups from Fannie Farmer. They were chickens and roosters and a single duck. Some school mornings my mother made us soft boiled eggs. She always sliced off the top of the eggs and put one egg in each egg cup. She also made toast and sliced it into four pieces, the perfect size to dip into the eggs. When I moved into my house, my mother brought down the egg cups. Some have missing beaks, but I don’t care. They are filled with memories.

We always called them dropped eggs on toast. When I was older, I found out they are officially poached eggs. My mother used to put the eggs in a pan with boiling water and swish them around. The cooked eggs were odd shapes, but they tasted the best. Later she got a special pan to cook the poached eggs. Each egg was perfectly round. They didn’t look like dropped eggs on toast anymore.

I used to like oatmeal, the old fashioned sort you had to cook on the stove. My mother made it in the winter so we’d be fortified for the walk to school in the cold. I usually sprinkled sugar on my oatmeal and added milk or my favorite, maple syrup. The oatmeal was always lumpy.