My gawd -- them of us as ain't drooling mad is nesting to a fare-thee-well. What sad choices.

Here in the latter camp, our house is a complete stack of sixes and sevens, a chaos of overabundance overcome by chaos. Every room in the house is partitioned with Viscleen, and a stack of stuff huddles in the center of each space under a layer of the filmy plastic, which murmurs softly as you walk by in little plastic sibilant whispers. . I feel like I am living in a box of condoms, I swan. The painters are good-hearted and helpful, but they get sloppy and miss things and are needing herd-riding.

The carpenter has hung all the new doors but they are as yet to be painted and they look like new recruits, lost in a Marine Corps induction camp, or boys at camp for the first time--a little naked, lacking in hardware and finish.

These last few days we have been practically camping out--the bed has been unwrapped each evening, and we have used take-out dinners. It is slowly getting better, though. I had enough kitchen this morning to make French toast, which is delicious when you use a whole-grain bread. Maple syrup and melted butter...Canadian bacon and OJ.   Who could ask for more?

Today I am living in exile, sitting int he garage working on a laptop, leaving the chaotic piles of too many belongings in the various rooms of the house to the barbarian wielders of caulk and primer and paint. I think it will be weeks before we re-discover the pleasant familiarity of a space in which we know where things are by feel.

But, we will have new doors and new paint throughout the house. Followed, soon, by new carpets. But first, we will bring in a troupe of gals with eagle-eyes and brillo pads to make sure everything is put clean, and the endless dust of sanding an dplastering is banished from the house.

Sooner or later we ill again have a home we can enjoy, nothing luxurious or overly fancy, but it will have the paintings back on the walls, the knick-knacks back on the mantel, the books--so many and so loved--back on the bookshelves and the guitars back int he music room.

Oh, MOM!!!! Next week, we hie ourselves away to far Halifax, a town I have never seen, and then drive up to the end of the Island of Nova Scotia, up near Antigonish, and spend a week out of communication on a primitive farm with my cousin the sculptor, a man I dearly love. He wrote me of late that he had not been able to get a guitar for my visit, and I was unable to stand the thought of a week in primitive lands without one. So I hied me, modern geek folkie that I am, to CraigsList and found me therein a lad of some fourteen years who was selling his, only two miles away. It is a fgine looking cheap instrument, meant for teenagers or beaches, but it was designed by Washburn, and is clean and in good shape. It was missing three strings and a peg, but when I tested it out the scaling was true, the neck was straight, the harmonics were clean, the fretting was functional. The lad had bullied his parents into buying it for him and then lost interest, and I expect they spent $100 bucks on it. I gave him forty and walked away pleased, and he was thrilled to have good Yankee dollars in his little fist, too. I cleaned it up nice and put new strings on and it sounds downright good, good enough to play around a campfire with. So now this is a music thread!

I leave you with this noble reflection from our best friend Sam Twain:

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting older, and soon I shall remember only the latter.

I think I know how he felt.

That's all the news that is pit to frint, I think!! Vaya con dios, Mamacita!! ANd congratulations on your great accomplishment of the next of Kay!!