Today is April on Cape Cod. It is cloudy, windy and cold. Henry is upstairs sleeping while Jack is here beside me. Gwen is in her room. All is right with my world.

My to do list is blank. It is just one of those days, a sloth day. I have a trash bag, a litter bag and boxes to put in the car but not yet because Henry has an appointment tomorrow with his therapist, and I need the back seat empty. I’m already nervous about Henry and the car. His new halter is still in the hall lying on the floor. I don’t want to traumatize him twice. This is his one year follow-up appointment.

I always thought most Sundays were wasted days when I was a kid. I had to go to mass and then hang around the house waiting for dinner. The only good Sundays were in the summer when it was often early mass and then the beach for the rest of the day. Lunch, at the beach, was a sandwich, a gritty sandwich. Oreos were snacks. They never got gritty.

When I was a kid, dogs roamed. I remember Duke, my dog, and his son Sam would meet up and roam together in a pack of two. One time my father got a call from a neighbor that both dogs were in the neighbor’s front yard and wouldn’t move. The neighbor was afraid to leave the house thinking the dogs would attack, but both were boxers, gentle dogs who looked fierce. Come to find out, the neighbor’s dog was in heat, and neither Duke nor Sam had any inclination to leave. My father went and put both dogs into the car. I suspect they were disappointed.

My friend Bill sent me a video filmed in Ghana. It was filmed in the Northern Region, about 100 miles from where we lived in Bolga. The tourist was a Ghanaian who hadn’t ever been north. She flew from Accra to Tamale and filmed the approach and landing at Tamale Airport. Out her window I could see the savannah and the brown grass. That went to my heart. I wanted to be there, dry season or not. When I wrote to Bill about my reaction, my longing, he said he had felt the same way. It is not easy to explain why. Just know that Peg, Bill and I love Ghana, and we’d like to make one more trip, one more return home.

The morning is mostly cloudy, but the sun is just waiting its turn. It will even get as high as 60˚. Yesterday my iPad fell out of my hands and went down the stairs a single step at a time, bang, bang, bang. I was horrified. I screamed and ran after it. The cover is cracked but it works fine. I looked on-line and found a place in Hyannis to have the cover replaced. It is now on my to-do list. I went to the dump yesterday. At one convergence there are lights for all four roads. I turned to wait in the right lane. When the light changed, I went right on the arrow and got honked at a couple of times. I had no idea where the car came from as the only cars moving at that green light went right, left or forward. He had to have jumped the light on the other side. That car then seemed to follow mine. We went left together then right then right again. We both turned left. I decided to drive to the police station, but the car turned right while I went straight ahead. That car spooked me. I wished Henry was with me. This morning I had no newspapers. I hate the start of today. Did I mention a cheeky chipmunk was in the no squirrel feeder?

When I was a kid, my father always started his day with coffee and the newspaper. My mother didn’t like coffee, and I don’t remember if she read the paper or not. They are my father’s mornings which are clearer in my memory. I can see him at the kitchen table, coffee cup to the right, ashtray beside the cup and the newspaper opened in front of him on the table. He always sat with his back to the rest of the kitchen. After his retirement and when the mornings were warm, he’d sit on the front step with his coffee and he’d read the newspaper. Cars honked and my father always waved. He became the neighborhood icon.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with today. It being a Saturday carries responsibilities. When I was a kid, it was the best day of the week. I got to eat cereal in front of the TV. I could go to the movies on a winter Saturday afternoon or hike around town or ride my bike hither and yon. I could read the day away if was rainy or cold. Saturday was all mine.

I’ve been retired almost 17 years. I’ve come to view every day as Saturday, and I have the same sense of property I had when I was a kid. Every day is all mine to do what I will. Wow!