Today is cold and rainy. I even had to close a couple of windows. Last night a heavy wind was the opening act for this rain which didn’t start until after I’d gone to bed but has been steady ever since. Tonight I have company coming for dinner, and we’ll have to eat inside, and they’ll miss the loveliness of an evening on the deck. I took an inside shower this morning, the first inside one since early June.

Today isn’t like a summer rain, the sort which falls gently and cools the day a bit. It feels more like an autumn rain with a hint of the colder weather to come. When I was a kid, my mother used to make us stay in on rainy, chilly summer days like today. I never minded. It was always a favorite sort of day when I could nestle under the covers with my bed lamp lit over my head and a good book in my hand. Most times I wasn’t bothered. My little sisters often played in the cellar with their dolls and doll carriages, and I don’t remember where my brother went. I got to be alone with my book.

This is a busy week for me. The last plays are this week for both my Wednesday and Friday theaters, and on Saturday I’m having a cocktail party. I know it sounds really fiftyish, even to me. I picture women in puffy skirted dresses and men in suits and ties all carrying martini glasses complete with olives on toothpicks. The table has several cheese balls, some covered in nuts, and a variety of chaffing dishes. I think one must have cocktail franks and maybe another has Swedish meatballs. Is that a fancy jelly mold with suspended fruit on a plate beside the cheese ball? I can even picture the groups of men standing and the women sitting. Most are smoking. The men discuss sports and the women discuss their kids and maybe even other women.

That is not my party. Dress is casual, and there won’t be a single cheese ball or cocktail frank.