Good News, oysters, and eleven fishes

My cough has gone away at last. Instead of trying to sleep sitting up in bed, I sleep in a normal position, and I SLEEP. I’ve been sleeping late this week. I’ll ease off on doing that over the weekend to get back to my usual routine.I’ve been writing daily to finish this revision of THE HOUSE AT HOPE’S END by January 2nd so I can get it off again to my agent, perhaps with better results. In any event, this is it for the moment. As a result, I’d only written a couple of poems this month. But in the last couple of days, I’ve written two new poems I really like.I’ve been disappointed in many of the submissions to my June juried intensive poetry workshop this year. I’ve found only ten poets to work with so far and many, many ones I cannot. I’m hoping January brings at least two more good submissions and then two alternates. Always somebody doesn’t have the money or the additional poems by the deadline May first. There are more bad poets around than you can imagine and they’re all submitting to my workshop.Wednesday I had an eye appointment, and for the first time in at least eight years, my eye pressure went down considerably, easing my glaucoma. The doctor agreed it was the medical marijuana I take nightly, sine my meds haven’t changed. I am so grateful for medical dope, I can’t express it.Winter has really come. We had snow on the ground till yesterday, when it finally all dissolved. It’s been quite cold but today, Cape Cod is lucky and only supposed to get rain while the rest of New England [except the islands] gets up to half a foot.Tonight I’m making cream of chicken soup with leftover chicken that we’ll have with oysters Woody just got. We plan to eat a lot of oysters this holiday season. Later in the week, I’ll make oyster stew, Woody will make oysters rockefeller and I’ll reserach many more recipes. Wellfleet oysters are the best I’ve ever had except for some I had in France that were almost as good.This morning the cats are stoned on Meowajuana – catnip in the form of buds. They love this time of year, with the tree on which to bat ornaments and carry out have many ‘kills’ and the wrapping paper to dive into, play with and destroy. Beautiful while Willow [from Joan Norris’s The Last Resort no kill shelter where Willow was born to a pregnant stray] has turned into even a better mouser than top cat Xena. Here in the woods, mice are a problem. She caught two this week so far.Everybody’s hungry. This morning when Woody went downstairs, there were four raccoons on the front porch. We have three kinds of woodpeckers at the feeders and many finches, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches,jays and juncos, the latter on the ground picking up seeds that fall. Every couple of days, I see a new kind of bird at the feeders. We used to be one of several people who fed birds at this end of the road. Now we’re the only ones. One woman died, the people next door moved to Arizona and sold their house to summer people. We’re the only provider for the flocks around here now. We must keep filling our feeders for them to survive.Tomorrow night, we go a traditional Italian Xmas eve party, but instead of seven fishes, there’ll be eleven. It’s at the house of Karen, the mother of the chef who runs Terra Luna, one of our favorite restaurants. He and Karen will be cooking. A real feast we’re looking forward to. She is also a great baker. Her cookies are sublime. A great way to spend the evening.

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