Slip Sliding

One dead mouse and three crows, did I mention how competitive that could be? The squawking is so outrageous I finally get two more mice out of the freezer (mouse-sickles) and toss them up on the outhouse roof. The various piles of papers, junk mail, manuscripts, not to mention the piles of books, finally get to me, and I spend several hours sorting things and actually end up with some cleared surfaces. Also, several wonderful photographs that I had forgotten about and immediately push-pin to the walls. More things to look at. My walls bristle with visual information. There are six sculptures, four of them on fairly massive wooden bases (60 to 80 pound stumps), under my stairs, and the dust and cobwebs situation has become critical. I'd like to hire Deleena to come in for half-a-day a week for a few months, to come in and restore order, but I'm afraid of her husband, B's nephew, as he is the strongest man I know and prone to rants; and I'd hate to think he would think I was coming on to his wife. I can solve that by giving her a key, and having her come up when I'm not there. I should do this. It only occurs to me when B comes over to talk about the work on the driveway. Scott, the Bulldozer Master, is available, but we need to clear blackberry canes and sumac, chainsaw a few small trees, and generally clear the verges, so he won't be whipped to death while he transforms our goat-track back into a drivable reach. The reason those thoughts follow is that Deleena would have to able to drive to the house. B and I talked about the contour of the driveway, the grader ditch, and several books we'd both read recently, about William and Henry James. Decide we can clear the brush away first thing tomorrow, barring rain, and that Scott can provide the fill and dig the ditch to drain the frog-ponds, so that I can actually drive to my house. In my limited scope of things, this is huge, and the timing is perfect. New rear shocks and aggressive tires on the Jeep, my life is going to be a little bit easier. I might hire a local kid to come up and help me clear brush. I'm afraid of fire as well as heights. You could scare me with a stick. Another positive benefit of re-doing the driveway, is that other people might be able to visit. Not that there's a long list, but TR wanted to bring Megan up and have me cook a domestic rabbit (his family raises them) because she hadn't liked the one he'd fixed for her. I do rabbit and squirrel very well, dredged in a highly seasoned corn flour, fried, then finished in the oven with root vegetables. Domestic rabbit is one of my favorite things. I do a great pate with rabbit, mushrooms, and chicken livers. The tomatoes I bought from Ronnie at the farmer's market yesterday are incredible, bursting with flavor, and I just eat them sliced, on buttered toast, with lots of black pepper, sometimes I have an egg on top, just to thumb my nose at the gods. The season of plenty. I can live on acorns, the rest of the year, as long as I have six weeks of tomatoes. My AC keeps time, clicking on at 80 and off at 74, not so much me, as that Black Dell needs to be constrained, within certain parameters. I'd just as soon be completely honest, listen, nothing else completely demands my attention.