SRS: There are places where scents/fragrances are being outlawed in public places - schools, offices. Friends tell me a concert venue in NYS puts on their tickets to refrain from fragrances. It is a growing movement.

When I lived in PA, I had a credit card at a dept. store. I had phoned a couple times about receiving fragrance "samples" with my bill. So, when I picked up the mail on leaving home and had to hang it out the tailgate in a plastic bag, I drove to the store, marched into their office, slammed the offensive material on the counter and told them I would be contacting a lawyer if it happened again. It did not. Sometimes, the only way to get progress is to get tough! Another store heard me the first time.

Fragrances generally contain neuro-toxins which cause the brain to react in anger. I consider them assault - with a potentially deadly weapon except it is the person who is sensitive who might get angry enough to lash out. I mean this literally.

Yesterday, with great determination, I started the fast thing. with a small corn muffin for breakfast and green tea all day. Lunch was about one inch of a chocolatine; I bought one each for three of us and forgot. Amazingly, I did not feel the need or desire to gobble the whole thing!!

I bought some baby carrots and ate 3 at two intervals and later a piece of foccacia - after checking the calorie count. I am pretty sure I was under 500 c for the day and was amazed that I managed it.

I started out emptying and cleaning a kitchen cupboard - the source of moths!! All clean!! for now anyway. The I drove us to the Mill, ran errands for supplies, drove us to Montreal (50 miles), went to the bank and grocery, read for a while while waiting for R to finish a meeting. We loaded three doors into my wee car, picked up a parcel at the post office, checked on work at another site and drove back to the Mill.

Bruno had finished two more windows - the solarium to be, about 9 feet square will have two walls of window- east and south. Now there is a great view of the road and neighbours. B looked at me in amazement when I said, "Now I am planning what size draperies I need to avoid looking at THAT!" At the five foot level, we will still have a view of the sky - ONLY! I will use white, not too heavy; it is only the view I detest. Also the ghastly big yard light at the property next door. Actually, I am thinking about shades that roll UP from the floor level

I need about a 100 large, fast growing cedars to block the view and road noise. OR a six foot solid fence?

Read in the car as there is still no clean, warm place inside, and dragged R away about 9:30, driving us home and giving him a bite to eat before he took necessary bath. Today, I need to vacuum up the sawdust he dragged in!

Ate breakfast today and feel as though I swallowed a cow. R has plugged in a different heater so the studio is warm and I am hoping to actually get some work done today. He has taken his unregistered truck to the city "keep your phone on in case I need rescuing". I have my car for the first time in almost 3 weeks. No place to go!!

R is, allegedly, renting a box truck to bring windows, doors, and more down for the Mill. He is de-cluttering other buildings, where he has accumulated stuff stored!

We were talking black tiles on top of the concrete floor of the solarium for a great heat sink. However, it occurs to me that simply cleaning the concrete really well and painting it black, perhaps in a swirly pattern with some midnight blue, would work as well. I even have two small rag rugs that are predominantly black. I bought them recently at the thrift shop, telling the nice young woman, "You can never have too many throw rugs!" (Maybe you can! I packed a huge garbage bag full the other day!) Other areas will have wood floors.

Reading a fascinating book calle Cheating Death by Sanjay Gupta,MD. About relatively new ways in which some doctors are saving patients - induced hypothermia for one. Current chapter on comas includes story of a doctor who came out a a coma long after he was thought to be "brain dead". He could hear and see what was going on around him while he was "brain dead". That chapter was, appropriately, prefaced with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe. I am wondering how many people were sent to the mortuary... Dreadful thought. I won't stay there!

Beautiful sunny day. May be in the 50s later.