I am writing this on Wednesday night because the electric company will be working on my street tomorrow and will turn off the electricity somewhere between nine and one, my blog time. I could wake up really early and write it, but I enjoy sleeping and hate the intrusion of an alarm. Even the dogs jump when one goes off.

I do have a new story. Last night, that would be Tuesday, I was out with the dogs. Nala was being Nala and trying to get under the wire fence protecting the strawberries, or rather where the empty strawberry plants are, so I went to Nala and the fence in the dark and bent down to close it. I couldn’t see so I missed the upended tomato cage on the fence post when I bent down. One spike hit my eye. It hurt enough that I sat on the ground and put my hand over my eye and moaned for a while, a longish while. After the pain had subsided a bit, I got up and went inside. This morning my eye was really painful. There was blood on the eyelid and below the eye. I went to my uke lesson anyway but left half-way through. I called my ophthalmologist and was told to come on over. By then my eye was bloodshot and a black and blue had appeared in the corner by my eye. Come to find out I had lacerations on the left side and a puncture on the right. I was given an antibiotic, told to use cold compresses, and that it would take a few days to heal. It is painful and ugly and more, but I’ll leave out the graphic details. I have decided that Nala can now dig to China, and I will not interfere.

Friends are coming to dinner on Thursday. I have chosen the menu, written the shopping list and finished my flow chart, but after the eye fiasco, I decided I would just do the appetizer, a charcuterie board, but have the rest of the dinner delivered. I won’t tell my friends until they arrive as they would insist on postponement. I can be a wonderful hostess. I just can’t roll my eye or look sharply left or right.

When I was a really little kid, I fractured my wrist jumping off a fence backwards. I do remember the fence, a wire fence gate, and the cast, but I don’t remember the fall. Once I fell off a ladder when washing windows and broke a bone in my elbow. That was 25+ years ago. Since then, I have been lucky when I fall. Knock on wood!!

Last night got cooler around midnight, down to 71˚, but the humidity hung around. For late afternoon today a thunderstorm is predicted. We haven’t had rain for a while so the storm is welcome. I love the rumble of thunder and the flashes of lightning. I remember when I was a kid I used to watch out the window hoping to see jagged lightning across the sky. I’d count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, five seconds a mile. Storms never scared me. The more tremendous the storm the better I liked it. That hasn’t changed. I still wow at thunder and lightning.

When I was a kid, my family played games together. The games we played the most when I was little are Go to the Head of the Class and Candy Land. I still have our old Go to the Head of the Class game. The booklet is yellow, but the pieces are intact. My brother always wanted to be Cowboy Joe. I was Bonnie. The favorite of all which even followed me into adulthood is Sorry. I introduced it to my friends. They love and hate the game. Nothing is worse than being close to winning and have your opponent get a Sorry card and happily knocked you back to start. Cursing is an appropriate response.

My friends are coming to dinner on Thursday. It has been so long since I last saw them I told them to wear flowers in their hair. I will plan the menu today and shop tomorrow. For myself, I don’t cook so much. I eat fruit or crackers and cheese, a sandwich or hot dogs, my most elaborate meals of late. If I am feeling especially energetic, I toast the rolls and add cheese.

When I was a kid, my favorite lunch meat was bologna. I’d cut it from the roll, add chopped hot peppers and slather it with mustard, the old stand by yellow mustard. The bread was always soft and squishy. Sometimes the pepper juice leaked through the middle of the sandwich. That just made it tastier.

The high today is 82˚, the current temperature. The low will be 58˚. I can hardly wait to feel cold.