Could Be Worse, Could Be Raining.

The past few weeks has had sort of an end of days feel, the earthquake, the hurricane, the remodeling, the fleas, the backed up plumbing and tree root clogged pipes, the new gallon paint can bouncing to coat the driveway, the flooding basement, and the Ark rain.

The house, at least phase 2, is half done, and I'm sort of loving the stark bareness of the bedroom. All that is in here is my bed, my dog and my laptop. The floor is gorgeously refinished and the walls are Dune Grass. No curtains, not one other thing. And I like it. I wish I could keep it this way. Of course the other bedroom is so jammed with everything you can't get it in.

So here in the Harvey Dent hideaway, half gorgeous, the other way a mess, I'm trying to keep from getting stalled. There are now two more rooms to finish, which means I have to reshuffle all the furniture again, and move the boxes and boxes of books. I plan on having the biggest book sale ever once life calms down a bit. I probably have a hundred boxes of books, easily. Somewhere there's still a POD in Timonium half full of books and crap that's not worth the cost of storing it. The book collecting is out of control, no doubt about it.

Then, there's phase 3, which I'm starting to doubt will get done this year. That's going to be the most drastic renovation. And thank God, because both the kitchen and back porch leaked this time around. And I'll have a dishwasher. And real cabinets. And a bathroom on the main floor, like a real girl. Or as the plumber said when I told him the only bathroom was in the basement, "get outta here."

Voodoo Fest is just around the seasonal affectiveness corner. My diet to get into to shape is to just stop eating. I just got tired of eating, worrying about eating, what I could eat, what I shouldn't eat. And it didn't help to toss out several hundreds dollars of food. Nothing curbs an appetite like cleaning out a moldy, sticky refrigerator after losing half a dozen bottles of excellent salad dressings and packages of grade A steaks and burgers. But after reading The Family That Couldn't Sleep, I've given up meat. The human form of mad cow disease, JCD (and no that's not Jean Claude Van Damme)

VooDoo Fest should be rolling. Of course we will be in New Orlean the last days of the hurricane season tempting the fates. One costume is a group ensemble of the Mexican Day of the Dead revelers, not to be confused with any George or Cesar Romero production. The last I heard, the crew making part of the costume was popping the heads off Barbie dolls. The rest of the costumes we are on our own. I've got my red cape that Ali made for Kate long ago, and a luche libre mask, and anything else I can smash in a suitcase. New Orleans, Halloween and three days of incredible music, 8 people and a rented house. I can't imagine anything but extreme mischief.