The morning is overcast and humid. Nothing is moving in the thick air. Even noises are dulled. It is already 80°. The weather reports for today disagree. Some say spotty rain while others say no rain. I’m pinning my hopes on spotty rain as it has been so long since it last rained.

My mood matches the weather. I have no energy. I think I’ll spend the day reading. Turning pages is about all I can manage.

When I was a kid, my favorite hamburgers were made by Burger Chef. There used to be one in my town. I don’t know what it was about them or how they differed from Carroll’s, which also sold burgers, 15 cent burgers, in my town around the same time. I just know I liked them better. I don’t know when but both of them disappeared and were replaced by McDonald’s and Burger King. My mother loved the burgers at Friendly’s. They were served on toasted bread, not rolls. I am a burger fan, well a cheeseburger fan. Burgers are my favorite out to eat foods. Fill the rest of the plate with fries, and I am a happy woman.

In my town in Ghana, there was a butcher and a meat factory though calling it a factory is a stretch. The butcher was in a building in the market. I bought beef there, mostly tenderloin as that was how it was cut. The meat was tough because it was from old cows. I always ate it in some sort of a gravy so it could spend some time over the fire. I didn’t compliant though as my fresh beef, well sort of fresh, was only sold in the area where I lived, not in most of the rest of the country. At the factory we, my friends and I, could buy hot dogs. We’d pack up the small charcoal burner and the hot dogs then have an adventure. We’d ride our motos into the bush and then stop for a picnic. Once we stopped by a village watering hole. I’m sure the small boys carrying buckets and fetching water wondered what the heck these three white people and a toddler were doing sitting on a blanket by their watering hole and eating. I think that was our oddest picnic spot.

Years ago I was an English teacher. Even now I take umbrage at poor grammar in scripted TV programs. The correct case for the object of a preposition seems to be out of reach. I is used instead of me. I suspect people think it sounds more sophisticated as in give it to John and I.

We were interviewing a woman for a secretarial program. She prefaced one answer by saying we had hit the nose right on the head. I just heard a man say you could knock him over with a brick. Yes, you can!