Found It

A couple weeks ago I looked out the patio door and was surprised that the first rat trap had disappeared overnight.  I found it today in the garden behind a bale.  I don't know how it got there and I don't want to know but I'm just glad to have found it.  

 It was a lovely day that started out a little damp but got sunny around 10:30 and stayed that way.  So I cleared out the garden and picked all of the carrots, the few remaining onions, and the last patty pan squash.  There were a couple mutant radishes that didn't get picked earlier.  I'm not eating them, they're way too spicy when they get like that.




 



I scrubbed all of the veggies, cut them up, along with a big onion, and roasted the whole tray.  Nothing smells better than roasting onions.  Okay, maybe frying bacon does but it smelled pretty darned good.  


Most of the carrots were singles, except for this quintuple one.  Looks like a mutant creature.



 



And I captured the flyover before the Packer game too.  I was smart and set my phone timer so I wasn't bent over in the garden when the planes came over.



This afternoon I finished OJ's mittens.  I hope they fit him as well as LC's fit her.


After 4:30 was the time to call the Clerk of Courts special jury duty number to see if I have to go tomorrow.  I don't!  Hooray!  Fingers crossed that every day I get the same message when I call.  I know I should be eager to go and do my civic duty but I don't wanna.

20 October, Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire 

The first crack in Dimitri’s façade came when Major Clemment and his wife Sonia arrived on the island. Billie Holland-Smythe said that her brother Bertie told her that Major Clemment, George, had been something important in the British government but when anyone asked him he was vague about exactly what.  George usually fobbed people off with how boring it all had been, but when pressed would lean close to his questioner’s ear and say, “James Bond-type stuff you know, old chap.”  Which when said to a man would earn him a knowing nod and wink, followed by a gruff, “Not a word.”  Onlookers would notice that the man gifted with the secret would stand more erect and preen a bit.  With women, the major’s whispered confession usually produced an indrawn breath and a quick glance to check for eavesdroppers.  Many women would blush, look to see where their husband was standing, and become visibly more flirtatious with the still handsome and fit Major.

            Sonia, on the other hand, was one of those women who made it her business to ferret out every tiny detail about everyone, and wasn’t at all shy about spilling everything about her and hers to anyone with the slightest interest.  Many times a woman who had just spent a few moments in quiet conversation with George would be heard to murmur to a friend, “You’d think the Major would have a more discreet wife.”  To which the friend would respond, “I’m sure he never tells her anything important, anything secret.”  Then they would both turn and look down their noses at Sonia, each of them thinking, I would have been a better wife to George, I’m sure, than that silly woman. 
            The chink in Dimitri’s façade came at the party a bunch of the British expats threw for the Queen’s birthday.  The party came at the end of a long period of time when many in the non-native community had been away and the number of barbecues and cocktail parties had dwindled to near zero.  George and Sonia had arrived a few weeks before and were just getting to know their way around.  Billie Holland-Smythe had hosted a small get-together to welcome them to the island and introduce them to a few people.  Dimitri and Irina were off-island at the time and missed that party. 
           Billie and Sonia had become fast friends and the two of them could be seen scouring the island shops for ingredients for pseudo-British fare and decorations fit for a distant Queen’s birthday.  Sonia was easy to spot.  She was a tall, thin, birdlike woman who wore clothing made of Indian sari material that fluttered around her like a swarm of butterflies.  Billie, on the other hand, was reliving her hippie days with her long nearly-white hair worn parted in the middle and tapering down her back to fade into a point just above her still-firm behind.  She had an extensive wardrobe of kente cloth dashikis and gauze wrap skirts she wore over ancient Birkenstocks.  Her jewelry was made of bone and petrified wood and oddly shaped pieces of various semi-precious stones that she changed to suit the state of her charkas or to enhance her aura.

Despite her appearance as the antithesis of a royalty lover, Billie took her British-ness very seriously.  Many of us thought that living so far from “home,” as every expat in the world called where they came from even if they were most glad not to be there, made the celebration of any special holidays peculiar to said home all the more important to maintaining one’s cultural identity.

That's all there is.  I spent an hour at the dive shop trying to copy a DVD but there must be something on there to prevent it.  Which means KS and I made a set of 3 coasters (i.e. ruined 3 DVD blanks).  Grr.
--Barbara