Today is warm but cloudy and damp. It rained last night, but I slept through it so I was surprised to see the driveway and the sides of the streets were wet. The high today will be 59˚. I’m rooting for one more degree!

My front garden has shoots a-plenty. I noticed the daffodil bulbs first. There are six of them in the garden beside the walk. This morning I noticed several clumps of croci or crocuses near the driveway. They made my morning.

Because rain is predicted tomorrow, I’m going out to do a few errands today. The dump is not among them. I’m pampering my back so no lifting. The trash bags will have to sit one more day.

Henry has another appointment with his shrink vet. She needs to see him before she’ll continue his medication. I have decided to put a halter on him. This will be halter number three as he chewed through halters one and two while he was wearing them, but that was a while back. I put the newest halter on the floor in the hall where Henry has to walk by it. I’m hoping he’ll learn it is nothing dangerous and something not to be chewed.

Some things used to drive my father crazy. When I was kid, he’d go ballistic if someone left an unrinsed glass on the counter. He’d accuse us of laziness. That never phased us.

My father always spit polished his shoes. He kept the oldest active shoe brush in the world, polish stained small cloths and tins of polish in a drawer by the sink. The polish was in a small round tin with a clip on the side which opened the lid. I remember watching my father polish his shoes. He’d lay some newspaper on the table or on the rug in the living room, spit into the open can of polish, use the cloth to gather the polish then he’d get to polishing. Once the shoes dried, he used the brush to get a high gloss shine on his shoes. When I visited my parents, my father always checked to see if I needed my shoes polished. Sometimes I did, and those shoes never looked better than when they were polished by my father.

Mother Nature is lulling me into a false sense of spring. It was in the mid-50’s earlier but is now closer to 59˚ where it will sit all day. The sun is bright in a deep blue sky. There is no wind. I need to do a bit of deck stuff so I’ll be outside for a while taking in this spring day.

Earlier, my across the street neighbor was out on his riding mower. He was dressed in his puffy jacket and his flapped hat. His mower pulled a small wagon behind. I watched clandestinely as he threw shovelfuls of something on his lawn. I hope his lawn comes back. It sort of died of thirst last summer. My neighbor and I don’t talk. We seldom see each other. He and his wife are fairly new to the neighborhood. Last Halloween they shut off their lights and pretended they weren’t home hoping, I figure, to thwart the onslaught of the ten trick or treaters we usually get. That gave me pause about my new neighbors.

My downstairs is clean. All that is left is washing the kitchen floor. Last night my back was as bad as it has been. I considered that a message to stop my cleaning for a while. Upstairs will have to wait a bit longer.

When I was a kid, we knew all our neighbors up and down the street even as far as the houses on the street above us, a cul-de-sac where we once lived. Every house had kids, mostly multiple kids. The only exception I remember was my aunt and uncle who lived next door for a while. They had only my cousin Susan. There was a grassy hill behind our house. The Burns lived in the house directly mirroring ours but at the top of the hill while we lived at the bottom of the hill. I remember watching Mrs. Burns, Dottie, mow her portion of the hill. It was always the greenest section. One summer we had a Slip ‘n Slide on the hill, our part of the hill. We kids slid all day then that night the adults tried. I remember watching my next door neighbor sliding down the hill screaming the whole time. She flipped at the bottom.

March seemed a long month when I was kid. We had only St. Patrick’s off from school. Every weekday morning was the same. My mother woke us up, fed us, made us get dressed, gave us our lunches and sent us off to school where we were stuck for six hours or more. I don’t remember exactly how long. I just remember it was the best of the day lost.