This is my favorite time of year. Most of the traffic is gone, the ocean is still warm, the days are pleasant, generally in the 70’s, and the nights are cool for sleeping. Scattered thunderstorms are predicted for today, and, of course, it is dump day. I also need cat food and bread. My cleaning regimen of doing at least one room a day starts today. Here in the den is about as dusty as I have seen it. I could write an entire novel in the dust. Wash me isn’t enough.

Yesterday I left the dogs alone for about three hours. Nala kept herself busy. She concentrated on the table above and the baskets below. My wooden back scratcher no longer has teeth. She chewed my pen. I found pieces of it in a couple of different rooms. She pulled apart a catalog, one page at a time. That was it. I was pleased. Clean up was quick.

Both dogs are asleep beside each other and me on the couch. Nala has the end cushion, and she is sort of stretched. Henry is next to her and me. He is sleeping with his head on Nala’s back as he didn’t have enough room. He looks comfortable now.

When I was a kid, I used to beg my mother to let me ride my bike to school. It was such a good ride, the best ride. I’d speed down the steep hill where I lived then ride quickly across the road at the bottom. From there I’d coast, still using momentum from the hill, until I had to pedal on the straightaway. At school, I parked my bike in the wooden rack under the trees. I didn’t have a lock. I knew my bike was safe. On the ride home, I’d usually end up walking my bike up the last part of the hill, the steepest part of the hill, to my house.

My mother packed great school lunches. She never gave us peanut butter and jelly or fluffernutters because we thought of those as a snack, not as a school lunch. She mostly packed bologna, cut thinly and evenly unlike my jagged thick and thin slices or ham sandwiches. On both sandwiches I had mustard, yellow mustard. Friday was always, and I mean always, tuna. I don’t eat tuna now, haven’t for decades. I had my fill when I was a kid. We always had dessert, and it was never fruit. I didn’t like fruit in my lunchbox. Sometimes we got Oreos. My mother would hide them after shopping so she’d have them for lunches. We never found them. I remember potato chips in wax paper bags. I remember an occasional Hostess treat. They were special. Sometimes they were cupcakes, other times Snowballs, pink ones. Ding Dongs were my favorites. I usually ate them with a flourish from hand to mouth. I wanted the other kids to know I had Hostess.

I don’t have the time this morning to write Coffee. I need to be in Hyannis and won’t be home until late afternoon. Enjoy your day. It’s a pretty one.

The morning was tiring. Both dogs woke me up by playing on my bed. One attacked the other then both attacked me. They licked my feet, dug under the sheet when I tried to hide my feet, got tired of looking for my feet and tried to lick my face. I could take it for only so long so I got up up, let them out and waited for Henry. We both went back to bed. Nala would come in on her own when she was ready. We slept another hour. We’re talking sleeping the morning away, at least for me. The dogs woke me up by jumping on and off the bed. It was time to start the day. It was close to noon. I took my time to read the paper. I completed the Globe crossword puzzle. It had an error. The clue was Hawkeye’s home. We all know he came from Crab Apple Cove, Maine. Radar was from Iowa, the answer.

Both dogs have been in and out. The day is dog perfect for running in the yard and for chasing one another back and forth below the deck. It is 74˚. The high will be 76˚. The streaming sunlight has a cold look about it, a slant, a sharpness. It is a different light than summer light. It is still warm enough in the daytime for short sleeve shirts, but nights in the 60’s mean a sweatshirt for me, but I like the feel of these nights. The chill is still comfortable, even welcomed after a hot day.

I wrote a list of chores on Tuesday. I have crossed off two. One of those was cancelled so I really only did one. I was a slacker, a sloth of epic proportions, and I enjoyed doing nothing. Today, however, I feel like doing something so I’ll reactivate my old list. I never did throw it away. It sat on my table.

When I was a kid, I loved days like today. Mostly I rode my bike. I’d pack a lunch, roll up a sweater or a small jacket, put both in my bike basket and take off for the day. I remember riding to get uptown then walking my bike on the sidewalk so I could look at the windows to see what was new and what was old. Uptown was interesting when I was a kid. It had many little stores and many drug stores but they were a bit different from each other. The Middlesex Drug was grand to me. It had an epic soda fountain. It had the best vanilla cokes. Pullo’s had only four stools at the counter on the left. If I went with my dad who would often drop in to say hello, I got a coke while I waited. I never really went into the drug store at the furthest end of the square, at a corner which was never a corner for the stores. They were a sort of arc with the drug store in the middle.

On one side of the square was the men’s store, Finnegan’s. It was in a block of long stores with small store fronts. I never went inside, but I remember looking in the window and seeing long racks of suits. The luncheonette was beside Finnegan’s. I don’t know its real name. I remember a long counter with stools. When we’d get back from an orthodontist appointment in Boston, my mother would buy me a sandwich from there. I’d eat before I checked in at school. I remember the sandwich was always toasted.

Memories pop up unexpectedly. I think today I could have remembered every store uptown by name or function. My favorite has always been the cobbler’s. It too was in a long building. Inside was one counter the length of the shop. It was covered in shoes paired together. The cobbler was always hunched over a shoe. He wore a bib apron. I remember he was old, but I was young so old was different to me. He had the most interesting window. I could watch him work shoe by shoe. I don’t know when his shop disappeared. I just remember looking and not finding it there. I was sad it was gone.