Yesterday I did my laundry. I also dry mopped the downstairs floors, especially the corners where puffs of white fur seem to hide and grow bigger. I ordered dog food on-line, but today I’m going to Agway for the cat food and litter and whatever catches my eye as something always does. Last time it was a new bird feeder and three small plants since potted and moved to the dining room window sill. I haven’t put the bird feeder out yet. It has been too cold. It is now at the top of my to do the list but not today. It is colder than yesterday.

My life continues to be quiet. I talk to my sisters and that’s about it. I don’t go out often. Usually I save all my errands to do in one day except for the trash. Trash has its own day.

When I was a kid, I never saw our town dump. I didn’t even know we had one. The weekly trash truck picked up everything, even the things they weren’t supposed to, the dump things, but a six pack always eased the forbidden trash into the truck. I remember a chair stuffed into the back of the truck.

When I was a kid, the square in my town, we always called it uptown, had wonderfully, amazing smells and sounds. Just before the movie theater was a set of stairs going below the square. When the door opened, I could hear the sounds of bowling balls and pins dropping. It was a bowling alley and a pool hall. I never went there. None of us did. It was a mysterious place where we figured the leather jacket crowd hung out. I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it was a rumor spread to keep kids out of there. It worked. We went to the big bowling alley or the one at Redstone Shopping Center.

I remember the smell of popcorn popping. Somewhere behind the square was a candy making building. The aroma of fresh bread wafted from Hank’s Bakery. The fish market had a gross smell, a combination of smells of fish, dead and on ice, and salt water, but standing on the sidewalk in front of the fish market was worth tolerating the smell because the fish market had a great window. Lobsters swam in a tank you could see. I always watched. The lobsters never did anything. They just stayed on the bottom, but I watched anyway. That’s how I learned lobsters are bottom-feeders.

On Sunday I felt accomplished. I went to the dump though I will never go to the dump again on a Sunday at 1:44 pm. At the recycling area, both sides of the road were filled with parked cars so, having nowhere to park, I skirted the area and went to the trash bins. I found a free bin so I tossed the trash. The rest, the cardboard and such, can stay in the car until the next trip. After the dump, I shopped for cat litter and cat food. I also bought myself a Milky Way. I cleaned the litter box before I put in the new litter. It was a gross job. I rewarded myself with the Milky Way.

Now that Christmas is gone, there are no colors left to brighten my world. Last night was dark. No houses near me were lit, inside or out. The only light was a bit of a street light through the trees from a couple of streets away. The trail of white lights across my fence had been turned off by the timer. Henry wouldn’t go into the dark so I turned on the outside light for him. He is still afraid of stuff but not so much stuff.

The other day I was cleaning up some old photos. I saw my pictures of snow storms from past winters. I don’t love snow, but I think freshly fallen snow on the trees and bushes is lovely. I have lots of pictures of the snow in my yard. Of the few trees around me, the furs seem most at home with snow. Their covered branches look like flocked Christmas tree branches. A yellow or red light through the melting snow around the bulbs wouldn’t be unexpected. Scrub pine are ugly trees, but the snow makes them look their best.

Last night I asked Hey, Google how to spell Hawaii’s state bird. I wanted to know how to spell nene (easy, I know). Goggle started, ” Capital H-a-w-a-i-i, and that’s where I stopped Google. I felt silly.

A friend wrote about the pit he was growing in his kitchen which would become a palm tree. All of a sudden I remembered avocado pit plants. They were the things for a while. Just about every friend’s house I visited had a tall plant growing from an avocado pit balanced between the sides of a glass by toothpicks on each side of the pit holding it mostly out of the water in the glass. I think the plants were always on windowsills in the kitchens. I know mine was. It is strange what I forget, what I remember. Today it was the avocado pit plants.