Little in, much out

Our barely more than a year-old KitchenAid dishwasher broke down.  It’s been a lemon since shortly after it was installed and h as been fixed 3 twice, but this time about 3 things have gone wrong at once,  Okay now three hours later, Woody fixed it –temporarily, we know but at least we don’t have to buy another right away.We have to replace our truck this weekend.  Just about everybody who lives on the Cape and is active at all has a truck.  Woody just hauled half a ton of manure in our old one.  Salt hay to mulch the garden, plants, bushes, trees, refuse to the dump, branches after a storm, part of broken trees, busted lawn furniture, used & new house furniture being transported, machines rented two towns over. It’s used much more than our old car. We use that primarily when we visit friends on narrow sand roads where it would be hard to turn the truck around.The few poets who were pre-accepted last year – high quality but their poems and applications came in after the juried intensive June workshop had filled – are letting me know if they still want to be in next June, and if so, they’re sending their deposits.  December first I’ll open the workshop up on FB and a classified ad in Poets & Writers magazine.I’m putting the finishing touches on my poetry ms.  We’ve agreed on price and as soon as the contract is signed, I should have it ready to go in to my editor at Knopf. Melenie is back with me after her sojourn in Florida and she’s running down all the poems in the ms, where and when they were first published, so we can put in the acknowledgments.  I just added one new poem.  I wrote and rewrote it during the time Melenie was away.  The first place I sent it took it immediately.  I wrote four poems this week.It’s turned cold and windy and most of the leaves have blown off the sugar maples, all off the birches. The driveway and the turnaround are golden underfoot.  Only the oaks are clinging to their leaves and the huge weeping beech has only begun to turn color.  When we drive the back road, now that the leaves have come down the greygreen lichen, old man, is visible and eerily attractive.  I’m still getting winter clothes out – it was warm for so long, I began late. When I look out my office window from my computer, the garden is mostly white humps, agricultural cloth protecting the salad greens and cole crops except for the Brussells sprouts and kale – too tall to cover and pretty hardy.  Tonight we’ll have fish and leeks and kasha.  Woody is picking up the black hoses from our irrigation system so that he can add  manure and plow it in before the ground freezes.I am going to have to have a knee replacement.  I dread it.  I’m afraid, but my knee is deteriorating from that gym accident when the treadmill went from zero to maximum and threw me across the whole gym.  I went flying through the air and landed on my knees.  My left knee hit first and it has gotten steadily more painful. If I have to walk any distance at all – like half a block – I’m using a cane.  All my life I have loved walking and done lots of it, but now I can’t.  I have places I love on the Cape that I haven’t been able to get near.  I also love to dance.  I’m the first generation in my mother’s family that writes instead of dancing professionally.  Now I can’t dance at all.  All the garden work is getting progressively – or should I say regressively – harder. I’m trying to reach the doctor my knee doctor recommended yesterday but nobody’s in his office till Monday.  How very sensible to take Friday instead of Monday for a holiday weekend. Melenie and I are working half a day this Monday in spite of Veterans Day since we lost so much time when she was in Florida.  Lots to catch up on.  Today, Saturday, we drive to Hyannis to get the new truck and look at sleeper chairs for when I can’t climb the steps after my operation to the bedroom.  Also it would be nicer for Elise when she visits [or the occasional other visitor] than the old camp bed there now.I had a nightmare last night in which I was supposed to have an operation on my left knee but they cut off my right arm instead.  I don’t have a huge amount of faith in doctors.  But the operation’s necessary.