In Which the Poet Buys a Blue Fish and Eschews Work to Shop for Cabinets

Well. Things are going well. The contractor and his crew have been going above and beyond at my house--all of the sheet rock in the half of the house that was damaged has been replaced, floated, and "sprayed," whatever that means. Bryan and I will be priming this weekend along with getting debris out of the attic. I know, I know--we should have done that when the ceiling was gone, but at the time we were too overwhelmed to make even small decisions, much less act on them. The sheetrock man, Adrian, also installed the two bay windows that were crushed in the crushed area of the house, and he will be pulling out another window in the kitchen just so they will match. Something tells me insurance won't be picking up the tab on that one.

I finally did get a little money from the insurance people--anough to pay the people who were holding checks of ous. Now we're back to using our own money, but I don't care, because things are coming along so well. Our next big expense will be tree removal--if you can believe it, I think the three trees on the house and the two teetering precariously will end up costing us $16,000 to be removed. And no, that isn't a typo.

Once on a WITS trip I had a student write the lines "I got the blues and I'm broke but I'm happy." That's how I'm feeling today.

On the front of smaller aggravations, I'll note that this storm has posed a real problem to the professional side of my life as a poet--I can't receive proofs or copies or rejects or book offers, and I certainly can't send anything out.

I am so happy I bought a fish and named it Bishop.