Active Squirrels

At least four of them in the trees right around the house. Scampering about, shaking branches. These are all in their second year and they are feisty. They distract me, when I'm sitting and reading, with their antics and their chattering. B had brought back a few books and added a loaner for me to read Red Brick Black Mountain White Clay by Christopher Benfey. Nice read, nice to spend the whole day reading. An interesting piece of creative non-fiction. A genre of which I am a part, by default. I'm referred to as part of that. I'm not a part of anything, except in the most general way. I have an almost allergic reaction to being a part of anything. I'm an outsider, but I don't pose a threat; I spend most of my time alone, and I hate being interrupted. I'm on the verge of being a hermit, but I'm not completely, an isolate. It's more complicated than that. I enjoy the company of others, but I don't want to engage in bullshit conversation. The Dew Point is a product of relative humidity and temperature. I'm aware of this because I have a metal roof, two of them, actually, and an upper roof 'eyebrows' over a lower roof and I get a jazz beat of condensation, dripping down. Electricity was out last night, so I couldn't write, heard on the radio this morning that a couple of good old boys, drag racing on Route 125 took out a power pole. Spent the day locating Carter paintings in the vault and reshuffling the stacks, so I can re-hang the permanent collection tomorrow and the next day, in time for some promo filming that's going to be shot on Friday. I don't know what it is. Almost called Sara today, to give her a hard time. I had my map, that I had made the last time she was here, for the order of the re-hanging. And a painting, a watercolor, was supposed to hang at the end of the third bay, Fall Sunflower, where it would be in close proximity to another sunflower painting (a much darker sunflower) much larger, in oil. I know the Carter Collection and I didn't remember Fall Sunflower. TR didn't either, but we looked, twice, and then checked the log-book, and there is no Fall Sunflower, there is a Summer Sunflower, which I'm sure is what Sara meant. Then it got reasonably strange. TR had been reading up on Carter, online, and he'd found a site where there were some Carter's in an auction. One of the Egg Prints, that was supposed to fetch $3,000 (it won't), and a watercolor, I swear to god, called Fall Sunflower. Probably sell for between $12,000 and $15,000 dollars. I might bid on it, maybe just a few thousand dollars would buy it, and I have a few thousand dollars buried in Mason Jars. I wouldn't mind having a Carter on the wall.