I thought yesterday was perfect, but I slightly missed the mark. That honor belongs to today. It is already 71° and will get a bit higher. There are a few clouds but not enough to block the sun. There is a bit of a wind but not a cold winter, almost a summer wind. I am going out later today. It would be sinful to miss such a lovely day.

Nala trash picked this morning. She got into the bag I was readying for the dump. I have to check outside, but I suspect there is trash because she disappeared right after the theft. Henry again was guilty of abetting. He was lapping one of the cans on the floor.

The smoke alarm went off again, the one in the hall. It has a new battery so I’m thinking it is dying. Henry ran upstairs. Nala went to the hall to check it out. She is brazen.

The big news is I have started my first load of laundry. I had to get my step ladder so I was in the cellar anyway. I keep looking for fireworks and listening for noise makers.

When I was a kid, Sunday was family day. I remember sitting in the living room with my dad after church. He’d read the paper, and I’d read the comics. Back then I had my little world which seldom extended beyond my town so I never read the news. My father did. He’d read the paper end to end. His finger tips got blackened from the print. When that happened to me, I’d press my fingers on white paper so I could see the fingerprint. My mother was always in the kitchen making Sunday dinner. That was the only dinner of the week. The other days we had supper in the early evening, around six. Dinner was in the afternoon. Saturday supper and Sunday dinner were the only meals we ate together because my father came home from work the rest of the week too late to eat with us.

The other night I had a real dinner. I had rib eye, mashed potatoes and peas. I had leftovers the next night. Those dishes are parts of my all time favorite Sunday dinner. My mother made that dinner for me on a Saturday night, on the night before I left to start staging for Peace Corps and Ghana. It is one of my connections to family, a favorite memory I still keep close.