Finders Keepers

People come and stay at our weekend place all the time. Last weekend 23 whole people stayed here and reports are the laundry was staggering. My middle girl Annie who hosted the weekend was here until 10 o'clock Sunday night doing load upon load of sheets and towels. Even so, when I drove up just now to get the jump on this weekend  I saw a few more things: Saw that one guest had gathered all my hair elastics into a nice bouquet. Saw that  n order to have a giant inferno on the little beach another guest had taken out a fire permit by pretending to BE the homeowner, leaving said permit posted on our fridge, edges charred for comic effect. And saw that two other guests had left their underwear. So if any of you folks out there are missing a pair of sexy black boxers and an even sexier Body by Victoria bra, both freshly laundered, then COME ON BY and stake your claim. ‘Til then, could be the lady of the house herself may be using ‘em to jazz up my look a little!

Mission Impossible?

I TRY to be mad at them but the truth is I like the mice who live  in my kitchen, because they accept me as I am. In spite of the spilled flour, the boxes of bran bought back in the early ‘90s, the  potato chip crumbs lining the shelves of my cabinets. Still they choose and befriend me. They appreciate my pantry.And I feel just awful having to kill them. But just yesterday a person newly arrived on our shores told me it’s the mice or my health. “Their pee-pee,” he said. “It brings death.”My pals at the hardware store sell me the classic wooden mousetrap, which you can buy for a buck, bait with peanut-butter-coated string and boom! But of course it is then that you really see them in the perfection of their small forms: The tiny feet. The little tails. The guillotined necks you can hardly bear to look upon.It makes me nostalgic for the era when pee-pee and related 'matter' were prized as fertilizer, as it still is in China where, under the name “night soil,” it proudly stands as the inspiration for a patriotic song. I say sick of “The Star Spangled Banner?” Try having to sing “The Night Soil Gatherers Are Coming Down from the Mountain” at the start of a few ballgames!