A Very Social Week and a Reading
It all began with the arrival of Melenie and Jay on Friday, when we served a duck. I have the scraps and bones, neck, etc in the refrigerator freezer ready to make duck soup next week. Then Saturday I made paella with chicken parts, chorizo and shrimp for Natasha and Stephanie and of course, Melenie and Jay. I made a red currant [we had an abundant crop last June] clafouti for dessert and gravlax Woody and i made recently for hors d’oeuvres.
Monday, the excellent chimney sweep arrived and fixed out fireplace and chimney.
Then we went to Bruce’s house with his partner John and two friends of theirs who turned out to be interesting and sympatico. She brought fancy cheese puffs and Bruce served grilled lamb and potatoes and asparagus. He made a pineapple pie for dessert. We don’t really like to go out on the workdays except Friday, but we had a good time.
Wednesday Woody took me to Dr. Libby my osteopath, for a tuning. Thursday I was wakened from a very sound sleep by the arrival by a crew to put in the fireplace insert Woody ordered back in early January. I never got to do my usual eye [ I have glaucoma] and exercise routine but groggily shut myself into my office while enormous banging and drilling went on. Both cats went into hiding. Willow was so traumatized, she stayed hidden until time to eat supper and went back into her condo immediately. She didn’t sleep with me Thursday night.
She hid in her usual way while company was here. So she is really put off by all the interruptions in her routine.
I hadn’t read to a live audience in over two year, but today, I’m reading at the Wellfleet library in the afternoon with another poet I/’ve never met and some kind of music afterward. I’ll read only from my newest book, ON THE WAY OUT, TURN OFF THE LIGHT. I haven’t had a live audience since Covid hit. I fear I’m a bit rusty, but this should help me get back in the groove. The fine poet Anastasia Vassos and her painter husband are coming down for the reading. Afterward, we’ll get pizza.
It feels a lot like spring, although it will get cold again next week. Crocuses both lavender and deep yellow, are in bloom and also the first daffodils. both Woody and I can feel in our sinuses the tree pollen on the heavy side already. We heard the spring peepers last night under the Worm Moon.
As I was doing the laundry last week, I almost passed out from a terrible stench in the dryer. It seemed like dead mouse, the vomitous scent of petrification. Woody spent the next morning taking the dryer apart and cleaning it out. I had him I could not do the laundry again with that foul smell blowing in my face. That motivated him. He got buckets of dust and lint from the dryer’s innards, but the stench was not coming from there. Finally, he crawled under the sun porch to where the dryer vent opens outisde. He found a dead wood rat there. That was the source.
The joys of home owning are endless….