Staying in Place

I wrote copiously on Monday and hope for a repeption today, despite the fact that usually the day after an exceptionally productive session usually isn't. So it may be that I'll simply type my longhand draft and clean it up and determine my word count, though I'd very much like to put that chapter behind me. If I succeed, then I need to finish up some research--thereby qualifying myself to treat a 17th centurh case of smallpox. Then I can start my next chapter.

I was reading late and I slept late this morning. Sort of. At some mysterious early hour (battery in the alarm clock died) a team of roofers arrived next door. My bedroom windows are large and, at this season, left open at night. The dogs and I were startled...thinking a pack of men was climbing into our cottage, they barked and whined. I managed to calm them and, bizarrely, also managed to go back to sleep for an hour or so, despite the fact that the workers were many and not exactly quiet. When I was officially awake and alert, I counted six of them. But there might well be more. The neighbours' roof is hardly big enough to hold them! With so many hands, they rapidly and efficiently ripped up the old shingling and tar paper, stripped the roof to bare boards. And now they're reversing the process. They're a friendly bunch, very good-natured, calling back and forth to each other, thoroughly professional, and not obnoxious at all. The girls and I have got used to them being here. Ruth and Jewel sleep through the constant noise, which isn't as intrusive as I feared when I first woke this morning.

No signs of life from the compound on my other side. The house party gang were swimming and laughing very late into the night, and they slept in longer than I did!

It's a bright day on the Bay, and quite breezy. The girls and I had an hour-long walk this morning. There's no wind to speak of up on the road. They each had their swim. The water is a degree cooler than yesterday--I wasn't deterred by that but am hoping the winds will die down by late afternoon. Haven't had a sunset swim in a while.

Our private Road Association is having a part of it paved on Thursday, and we've received a schedule and instructions about parking cars off-site if we need to get in and out. I don't plan to be around then.

I've rescheduled my mandolin lesson so I could stay here today. Tomorrow afternoon I head for the capitol city for a task force meeting at the State House and a downtown dinner with my Chap. Mexican.

Here's one of those fancy hats I alluded to yesterday. The kind I don't own!



It's a pic of a pic, so the image is not terribly crisp. Our electronic, plugged-in, rustic-with-mod-cons cottage has everything but a scanner.