I’ve been trying to send my poetry ms. to my agent, but the formatting isn’t working for her.  She wants me to retype the entire ms, over 250 pages.  I cannot and will not.  I keep trying to find a format that she will accept. I redo and redo, copy in a new format, then another.  It’s more stressful than I can describe.  I keep waking up in the middle of the night trying to figure out what to do, and I don’t get back to sleep.  So beyond the frustration, I’m exhausted and have eyestrain. I complain a lot too, which is hardly endearing or pleasant forWoody or anybody else around me.

I am slowly, slowly solving some of the formatting problems but it’s endless.  My problem now is getting rid of blank pages scattered through the document.

The weather has been mostly much better for us, cooler.  I’ve been able to weed in my herb bed, dry some herbs, weed my front terrace, etc. Suddenly the hoards of rabbits have disappeared.  As a result, we’ve been able to harvest some vegetables they were eating.  We got to consume eggplants, a couple of last zucchini, some peppers and even two hot peppers on a bush that survived, barely. We have also finally been getting our tomatoes, enough so we have been able to can some sauce and some tomatoes. We have enough to eat for ourselves, but we are not producing enough to give any away to friends, as we usually do, and not enough to can nearly as much as we usually do. I haven’t yet been able to dry any, but I’m hopeful. I still haven’t seen any foxes. We had a resident fox for years who kept the rodent population down.

The negotiations with CBS streaming go on and on and on[WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME] and I keep pissing out money to the lawyer without any return.  Haven’t gotten a penny for them but have spent too much already.

I have one more week of PT. It has helped my ankle.  Not that it doesn’t hurt, but when it hurts, it’s far more bearable, and it doesn’t hurt as much of the time. But I think I’ve reached the end of PT being helpful. They want to strengthen the ankle past what is really feasible for me.  I still can’t walk much, but I can get around reasonably.  We’re planning to go toMaine as we do every fall, so I will see how that works out. 

I am hoping that Melenie can come next week.  I have missed her.  We’re expecting her Friday and I’ll make a feast. We’ve had trouble managing to get together.  She is working full time and more, got sick so that cancelled one trip, I got sick so we cancelled another .  Holidays are impossible here.

The traffic has thinned some so that it’s possible to go to the doctor, shopping, to have the car serviced, to the hairdresser, and to getinto local restaurants again.  There’s still a fair amount of people here.  The summer people with kids in school have left along with what seasonal workersTrump has permitted here.  September is mostly for seniors on vacation. There aren’t as many biking families four abreast on the country roads, or people parking on a curve of a narrow windy road to pick flowers, look at a bird, pick berries, whatever. It takes us much less time to go wherever we need or want to.