Darned If You Do

Epitaph in Pownal, Vermont:

Solomon Towslee, Jr.
Who was kill’d in Pownal
Vt., July 15, 1846, while
Repairing to Grind a sithe
on a stone atach’d to the
Gearing in the Woolen
Factory, he was engangled,
His death was sudden & awful

A few weeks ago, I thought I lost my silver-banded Indiglo watch.  Not real silver, “silver-toned.”  I looked and looked but couldn’t find it.  Finally I decided I needed a replacement – I try to keep on hand a gold watch and a silver one.  I went to Target and searched for something like twenty minutes or half an hour among the Indiglo selections, fussing and fretting, before finally deciding which one to get.  A week after I bought it, I found my old one – and it was the identical model of the new!

Some years back, when computers weren’t as reliable as they are today (ha!) I somehow deleted a chapter of a book I was writing.  I hadn’t printed it out yet, so it was really gone.  I was very fond of that chapter, thinking it was particularly fine, and angry that I had to recompose it.  But, growling the while, I did.  Then the original chapter was wrenched from the bowels of my computer by my savy husband –and it was almost word-for-word identical to my new one!

I’m not sure what those two incidents mean.  Maybe I’m more predictable than I think?

The weather here has been spectacular the last week or ten days.  Sunny, low-seventies during the day, much cooler at night (good sleeping weather).  And the trees have been starting to show color for a few weeks.  Some now are fully ablaze.  Then Monday summer has returned and it must be close to eighty degrees outside.  But as this photo attests, The End is Near.

I’m working on the notated manuscript of Darned If You Do.  It’s already in production, my publisher is sending out the preview copies of it, though I don’t think it’s ready for that.  I had stopped working on it when Ellen was diagnosed with kidney cancer, though I sent what I had of it to my publisher.  Now I’m ready to continue work on it – and they are sending out a print version of it to reviewers!  Aaarrrggghhh!  So I’ll be making what changes I can to it before the final version goes to be printed.  The cover is gorgeous, but I wish the contents were in better shape.

I went to Sam’s Club on Monday to pick up a few things and found something wonderful: a big bag of peeled garlic.  The 29th is Michaelmas and who eats goose at Michaelmas won’t want for money for a year.  We’ve been doing it for over thirty years, and while it hasn’t made us rich, we’ve always been solvent.  But my recipe calls for the goose to be stuffed with garlic, apples, and onions – and peeling the garlic is a smelly pain.  But this year I’m saved from more than bankruptcy!