It’s not winter even though my heater is going so I’m stuck calling this spring despite the cold and cloudiness. I suppose it could be sprinter, a new name for the shoulder season which isn’t one or the other. Rain is expected later, and I can already feel the dampness and the chill. I just put on some socks.

That weird trap caught another mouse yesterday. That’s two for the trap and one for the washing machine. I checked around 10:30 last night, and there it was inside the trap circling the small perimeter. I got Gracie and the two of us went for a ride. The mice are being freed at a different spot than last year’s just for novelty sake. This second freedom run went rather quickly because I had already figured out on the first run how to get the mouse out of the new trap. I watched it running toward the woods lit by my headlights and wished him well and hoped he’d find his friend, the mouse freed the other day. Today’s update: no mouse this morning.

When I run into weird words, I always wonder how I know their meanings. They’re not everyday words, were never vocabulary words and are used mostly by pompous people who scatter their conversations with archaic words so as to appear learned and intelligent. I chuckle. Pomposity does that to me.

My mother made great tapioca pudding. I liked it hot, scraping the pan hot, and I liked it cold. It was also one of my dad’s favorites. My mother made it more often than any other pudding, even more than chocolate. Sometimes I buy already made tapioca, and none of it ever compares to my mother’s.

I loved my mother’s pepper and egg combination. She made it for the beach and for road picnics when we were young. When we were older, it was often a side at barbecues at my parent’s house. My mother originally got the recipe from her sister which, I figure, gives it the stature of a family recipe. The squash dish always on our Thanksgiving tables came from another of my mother’s sister, but my mother unknowingly tweaked it. She switched butternut for zucchini. My uncle’s sausage cacciatore is one of legend. My sisters and I make it.

Food ties us to each other more than anything else.