It’s always relaxing to go and spend the weekend at Sunset, but I’m going to have to figure out a way to get myself to actually write when I’m out here because I invariably neglect it in favor of watching movies, cooking, drinking, getting stoned and doing stuff to get the place in order. I mean, look at this picture below and I think you will get the idea of what I’m talking about; how can a person be expected to focus on writing with a triple white Russian (with chocolate milk; maybe “brown Russian”?) on hand, a pig hanging around on the other side, and a friendly outside cat continually trying to jump on one’s lap? It’s just not going to work. But apparently, there’s a rolltop desk out in the garage, and it has been proposed that this desk could be cleaned up and moved inside so I can work on it as I do at The Den (where I also have a rolltop). See, the people I bought the place from were kinda semi-hoarders, which is not unusual for folks who came of age during the Great Depression. So actually, they left a LOT of things out here; most of them were just junk and we had to get rid of them in order to make use of the shop, garage and barn, and when we expanded the barnyard over the weekend we found lots more that will have to be removed for the safety of the animals. For example, we keep finding old box springs and mattress springs buried just below the surface of the ground, interspersed with other metal rubbish, broken bottles, ceramic fragments, electrical transformers, car batteries…I have no explanation other than hoarding behavior. But the yard is expanded and the animals now have more lush grazing area and trees, and there are now three proper gates. We’re about to start the bookcase-building project, and once we hit the dry season next month it’ll at last be floor-repair time. Now do you see why I have trouble writing out here?
Diary #468
June 18, 2019 by Maggie McNeill
Posted in Diary | Tagged animals, blogging, drugs, psychology, Sunset | 3 Comments
3 Responses
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My recollection from spending a year or so in Seattle almost fifty years ago, is that the dry season lasted several days.
People who live around Puget Sound love it though.
Did you know that Margo St. James, founder of WHO (Whores, Housewives and Others) and later COYOTE, a generation or so before you, lives not very far from you? She also founded the St. James Infirmary Clinic to provide health care for sex workers in San Francisco.
She has lived on Orcas Island for many years.
Looks lovely there!
I dig the pig.