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As April Ends
This may come as a shock to few but it looks like I'm behind schedule on the Rocheblave job. And judging by my apparent need to rest once in awhile it appears I will not be making up any lost time any time soon. But it does have a more finished unfinished feel to it so I am now getting a jump start on the acclimation to a new home process, which includes hot boiled crawfish and cold beer in the middle of the day followed by a nap.
The bottles rise to the surface showing themselves as possible shards but are easily spied as more than that by the avid bottle hunter/renovator/archaeologist. Today's specimen is an intact three inches tall with a short tapered neck and a beveled rim, the opening ostensibly shut by a stopper such as cork. The light weight and the visible seams on either side lend a sense of cheap imitation, but imitation of what? The five three inch lines of raised lettering say this:
Sample Bottle
Dr. Kilmer's
Swamp-Root
Kidney Cure
Binghamton, NY
I didn't say damn yankee carpetbaggers but I might have been thinking it, standing in the side yard over at Rocheblave clutching the now empty cure.
There is a full house at Dumaine.
Friday I met briefly with the more frightening alter ego that inhabits Shelton.
I found the belt I had been missing for six months; it was right where I left it, in a place where I would almost touch it each night; I ordered six new pair of painters paints and had them delivered to this front door without leaving the keyboard or talking to a salesperson; I found a ten dollar bill in a parking lot and a pair of cheap sunglasses picked up from the Dumaine gutter are the lenses I prefer.
There was a good bit of confusion going on between me and the Sewerage and Water Board over what the actual address is at Rocheblave. It ( a former structure) used to have five addresses attached to it and I picked one of the middle ones while Sewerage and Water Board was using the first one. It came down to an all business letter with a threat to disconnect which would then put me in a category placing me at risk to be visited by another city agent who could determine my home uninhabitable. I did not want that to happen so I went down and gave them the deposit they wanted plus a few dollars for the current water bill. There was that little bit of irony that I had yet to be hooked up to city water at the time but if all the previous confusion between us could be cured by the greater part of a Ben Franklin far be it from me to bring up a distracting detail like that. Three days later in the mail I received a check for the amount of deposit. And I can say it was a pleasure doing business.
The weather has been lovely which I say while I still can.
There's a new guy beginning a renovation on Rocheblave and if I see the sculptor who allowed her trash haulers to pile trash in front of his place I'm to tell her..."yeah yeah, you betcha, I'm all over it, let me write this down," I mumble to myself as the aura of his self-importance diminishes the smaller his back becomes.