The morning is lovely. The sun is bright in a cloudless blue sky. It is 74˚, a perfect temperature. Every now and then a leaf at the end of a branch flutters, from a puff of air, not even close to a gust.

I do have one item on my dance card, practice tonight at 6.

Yesterday I did make it to the dump. It was quite the place to be. I had to bypass the recycle area as both lanes were filled with cars so I dumped the heavy bags and decided I could recycle another day. The dump is closed until Thursday.

This morning I couldn’t find Nala in the backyard. I knew she had no way out of the yard, no holes to China and no open gate, but she wasn’t there which made no sense. I called frantically. No Nala. I went into the house in case she was upstairs watching the cats, one of her daily diversions. She wasn’t. Henry and I went back outside. All of a sudden running at breakneck speed came Nala from somewhere at the back of the yard. She ran at Henry and the two of them took off chasing each other. I looked around. Yup, a new box had been torn apart. Nala had ignored me out of a weird sense of dog guilt, and the yard and she are dark so I didn’t see her hidden in the back, tall grass. Of course, I had picked up the rest of the trash earlier. Nala has a perfect sense of timing.

Tomorrow is the first day of fall. I remember when I was a kid, and the early mornings started to get cool. The sun was bright but took longer to heat up the day. The shards of sunlight fell between the leaves and made shadows on the long sidewalk, the straightaway to school. On some of the trees, a single leaf or two had already changed color, mostly to red. The afternoons were still warm, in the 70’s. I remember walking home with my jacket, the one my mother had made me take, either unzipped or stuffed into my school bag.

Soon enough all the leaves will change. I always think of all that beauty and color as Mother Nature’s last gasp before the drab and cold winter. I remember gutters filled with piled leaves and sidewalks covered in red and yellow. Our lawn didn’t have a whole lot of fallen leaves. The side trees were fir, but my father, though, dutifully raked every Saturday. He had a pattern from back to front. He raked from the sides to make one giant pile of leaves he’d rake down the grassy hill, the same hill we always rode our bikes down. From there the leaves were raked into the gutters below the long sidewalk. The last part, the burning of the leaves, was my favorite part of this Saturday ritual. I always hung around for the burning of the leaves. There were fires up and down the street, all monitored by men with rakes. The smoke rose into the air in streams from the individual piles. I can close my eyes and vividly see it all. I can remember the sweetness of the smell of the burning leaves. Fall has always been my favorite season.

My house was TP’ed yesterday, inside. I went out a couple of times. The first time, after my uke concert, I went home. Everything was just fine. I fed the besties, let them out, changed my clothes and went to Event the Second. It was a birthday/barbecue for a friend’s son. I stayed for a few hours, chatted, drank a couple of mimosas and ate the best barbecue. When I got home, I saw white TP all over downstairs, some tiny, soaked pieces, some huge pieces of the roll and finally the dead cardboard roll itself. I say dead because it had no paper. That was all over the floor. Miss Nala had taken a full roll of toilet paper from the upstairs bathroom, not usually her hunting spot. What amuses Nala always surprises me. She did bring a few stolen goods back to the deck from the yard this morning, but many more remain. I am going to the dump today so maybe I need to pick up all the cardboard and paper in the yard. Then again, maybe not.

The house is quiet during morning nap time. Nala is here with me while Henry is upstairs on my bed, or rather our bed. The cats too are sleeping, but I am only guessing about Jack. I didn’t see him when I gave Gwen morning treats, filled her water bowl and gave her a few cans of cat food. I put some in Jack’s dish too, but Gwen may get there first.

When I was a kid, I hated feeding Duke. He got two cans of dog food every day. It took effort to use the can opener, the silver one almost every kitchen in American had. Slicing a finger was always a possibility. Still is. I slit a finger last week on a dog food can top. The last reason and the most overwhelming was the smell. That food looked and smelled disgusting. I’d plop it into Duke’s dish, break it up a bit and then put the dish down. Duke had been circling while impatiently waiting. He’d immediately attack his food as if it had been days since he’d last eaten. My two dogs do the same thing now. Henry is food motivated. Nala is still a puppy who eats everything. This morning the three of us shared a banana. They looked disappointed. I think they were hoping for Cocoa Puffs.