Thursday

Let me begin with the absurd and disturbing coincidences that we've been dealing with here at the farmette.

First, there is the matter of Isis. It is deeply troubling to us that our cat quite suddenly has to share his name with one of the most horrific terror groups in the history of humankind. How could it be?? Ed named his pet something quite innocent and beautiful in a quirky sort of way and suddenly boom! The name calls forth tragedy and horror.  Lucky break for us -- at home, we nearly always call him Isie. Henceforth, on the blog, he shall appear with his nickname. Isie, consider yourself renamed for the purposes of Ocean.

The second disturbance again has to do with sleep. Ed came upstairs rather late last night and, as always, I slightly woke up when I heard him coming. And then I had a question for him about how the stock market functions. You wont believe it, but it has been bugging me that, being a product of a "communist" society, I did not understand many aspects of how some people become rich and Ed is a walking encyclopedia of esoteric information. By the time he explained things to me it was almost morning. Still, I would have gotten a fair amount of sleep, had it not been for the storms. Crashing, violent, torrential -- these are the words that well describe the remaining hours of the night.

At 6, I was, of course, wide awake because of the storms. Isie (I know, we all have to get used to seeing it in print) had no interest in going out and Ed was fast asleep. Having bothered him with a question about capitalism for a substantial portion of the night hours, I now thought it would be cruel to throw him out to free the cheepers, so I went out myself and then, of course, could not return to that deep sleep that should have/could have been mine, but for the weather, my economic curiosity and the cheepers. In that order.

Enough grumbling? Oh, just a little more. The forecast said -- hot and muggy. The last of such summer days. I am okay with that, but I was a little put off by the fact that this seems to be nirvana for mosquitoes, so that even though I tried to do some garden trimming, they won and I retreated.

On the up side? Oh, so much!

Breakfast!






Too, I finally was satisfied with my query letter (asking for a consideration of my manuscript) to the first handful of agents, so out it went! And I got two immediate (automated) responses, to the effect that "if you don't hear from us soon, we don't want you." At least in the past, there was a pause between when you sent things out and when you got your first dismissive comment. Now it's instant whatever is the opposite of gratification.

But in any case, on the upside, the query letter went out.

And, too, the weather toyed with our sensibilities. It was sunny. It was stormy. It was windy. It was muggy. It was pleasant. We had it all! Here's "stormy:"





And here's "pleasant:"





Finally, as it's Thursday, we went to our local farmers market and I'll just note a couple of things: our French bread baker was not back from vacation. Perhaps that's to be expected.  It's only been three weeks. Our cheese person was there and ready to do an egg and cheese swap (our eggs for his cheese). And veggies were at their September best.





After, Ed and I played tennis. Wonderful, joyous, delightful, cost-free tennis.

Clearly the upside has it. By a landslide.