Gloomy is the best I can say for today. It was late last night when I heard the rain start. It wasn’t a dramatic storm with thunder or lightning was rather quiet and gentle. I could almost hear each drop as it fell on a leaf or the deck. When I woke up, it was still raining, still a quiet and gentle rain. Since then, the rain has stopped. Everything is still except for one raucous crow.

I didn’t go to the dump yesterday. I didn’t feel like it, but today we’re going. I have collected all the recyclables from the cellar and put the trash bags by the car. The rest of yesterday’s to-do list got finished. I felt quite accomplished. I even filled some bird feeders which were not on the list. I’m thinking some sort of a trophy would be nice. It should be engraved.

My first grade teacher was a menace. She scared the heck out of me. Her name was Sister Redempta. She was really old, at least to my six-year-old eyes. Her habit was black and white. She wore blinders on each side of her white coif (I looked up what that was called. I always just said headpiece). It wasn’t until I was a little older that I realized that coif gave us an advantage. The nuns had to swivel their heads back and forth to catch us so we had a bit of time to do whatever. Every nun I had in elementary school kept a handkerchief up at the end of her sleeve. A bit of white always showed. That’s sort of gross when you think about it. We could always hear the nuns coming because the giant rosary beads they wore around their waists made a lot of noise. It was like an early warning system. I had more good nuns than bad throughout my elementary school years. Considering it was baby boomer time and some classes were huge, with 30 kids, you’d think discipline problems, but there were none. Our parents would have killed us.

When I was in the seventh grade, the habits were changed, and the blinders were replaced by what looked like small visors. Now the nuns could see everything. They had the advantage. That was a sad day for us.

My aunt is a nun. That’s all I’ve known her as. She used to wear habit. Now she wears regular clothes. We all call her my aunt the nun as if she has no other name.