I have a guy who comes to do the heavy yardwork. I love to grow flowers, but I hate to mow and rake. Chris hates it even more than I, so Donnie Lawnguy is a neccesary addition to our budget.
Yesterday he came around as scheduled and started his big old weed-eater.
The weed-eater hit a rock.
The rock hit my car.
The back window exploded.
Fifteen hundred dollars worth of damage. It's only a Ford, for crying out loud!
My car was lovely, once. Now it has a plastic drop-cloth duct-taped to the gaping maw that was once it's back window.
It's official- Chris and I are "poor white trash"- at least until the repairmen come on Thursday.

I am so excited that I can't stand it! I am going to to be a regular contributer to our local paper. I will have a column. Yay! Finally, I can introduce myself as a writer. I have been working toward this for a long time. It is only the first step, but my name will be in print on a regular basis, as long as my work keeps the editor happy. This will allow me to build up "clips" that I can show to prospective publishers. Writing is one of those professions where you need experience to be hired, and to be hired to get experience. Wish me luck!

Chris and I took our honeymoon in western Maine. We drove there. It was crazy, as we drove from Georgia to Binghampton, N.Y. in one day. The next day was a bit more liesurely, with only New England to meander through. Once we got to our little cottage on the shores of Moosehead Lake we spent most days driving around the countryside, seeing what we could see. Maine has lovely villages, not many big towns, and some really creepy back roads. Stephen King doesn't have nearly the imagination that we think he does; he draws from his surroundngs.
One day we were toodling along between hamlets and happened on a sign advertising fresh seafood. Now, everyone knows that Maine is most famous for seafood and vampires, but we were nowhere near the coast, and we were eating a lot of garlic, so we hadn't seen hide nor hair of either. We turned around and started up the drive. As soon as we rounded the first curve, we knew that we were in deep doo-doo.
An old, sprawling house, the paint long since baked off in the Northwoods sun, loomed at the top of the drive. Nailed to the side that we could see were the skins of various unlucky critters. A large dog lunged at the end of a logging chain, bent on sinking his impressive teeth into unwelcome visitors. And to top it all off, there wasn't a sign of seafood anywhere.
I began agitating for Chris to turn around and drive like the wind. I figured that if we were lucky, and got enough of a head start, we might escape the chainsaw-wielding shape-shifter who was obviously waiting in the shadows for just the right moment to strike. But Chris hasn't read a lot of Stephen King, and he didn't know the kinds of things that live in sun-bleached old farmhouses off the beaten path in Maine, so he blew the horn.
Well, I decided to run for it, and had the car door open, when a tiny, washed out lady opened the front door of the house. She weakly raised one hand in a wave, the other clutched at her throat. She called out for us to continue on down a path that ran into the woods. There, she swore, we would find her husband, and the well hidden seafood. So off we went, and our fates were sealed.
There was an out-building just out of sight of the house, and as we pulled up in front of it a very large and disheveled fellow met us at the car. He appeared non too happy to see us, and rolled his eyes when Chris, in his sigature hale fellow well met style, asked if he had any lobsters for sale. "Follah meh" he intoned, and headed into the little building. He merely turned his head and glared when I screamed. I had nearly tripped over the fly-blown carcass of some dog-type animal. I couldn't tell what it had been- it had no skin.
Once inside, I tried my best to crawl right up Chris' side. He couldn't have moved an inch without me. The fellow indicated that we should look into a rather large freezer chugging away in the darkest corner of the room. "What's in there?" I asked, backing toward the door. "Yah wanted lobstah, didn't yah?" he asked, looking at Chris. Chris said that yes indeed, we were in the market for some of the famous Maine lobster, and let's have a look at the beauties.
They were alive. Now, I have a hard enough time eating things that once had lives and families, and I was horrified at the thought of actually having to do the dirty work myself. "Um, don't you have any that are already dispatched?" I asked timidly. "Whaht?" the fellow was beginning to lose patience with me. He looked at Chris with a mixture of sympathy and confusion. "What my lovely wife means is, do you have any that are maybe frozen, or otherwise not moving?" The man pulled out a filthy hankie and wiped his brow. "Sign sehs fresh seahfuhd. Doesn't seh frozen seahfuhd. Look, yeh kill flahs, dontcha?" I nodded yes. "Yeh kill rohches, dontcha?" Another yes. "Wehll, lobstahs ah the rohches of the sea!"
About this time, there was a thud at my feet. I looked down to see one of the lobsters making a break for it. He had crawled over the side of the freezer while we talked. The man made a disgusted noise in his throat and stomped the lobster flat. "See? Just lahk rohches. Do yah want lobstah owa not?" I think we said yes just to get the heck out of there. We had no taste for the poor little things, and even contemplated driveng the three hours to the coast to set them free. But we did eat them, after all. We decided better them than us, and it had been a close call!