The fridge man came just as I was about to call that damned store again. Three aluminum washers came out in three seconds and finally blessed silence! No more alarm clock buzzing at all hours of day and night. My ears are so happy!

I stopped short of kissing the man (he was handsome in a Sean Connery sort of way...) but he could tell  I was extatic - I sure hope that he feels good about his job, making people's lives easier with a simple screwdriver and some knowledge - God bless him!

 So I celebrated the silent NEW fridge by grabbing a plump summer ripe pink tomato from the crisper. I was wondering what to do, and my knife just danced around the bowl slicing and cubing the juicy red pulp, then I got a couple of garlic cloves (the more the merrier as Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown so skillfully showed...) and a splash of lime, pepper and chilli flakes... sat down on the front porch to take in the late lunch in the company of crickets and cycads playing in earnest expectation of the coming fall.

The car is still at the mechanic (cash register singing each time they call with another discovery of a faulty widget) and I have my ex coming over for dinner - yes we are still friends...I am sharing the locally grown organic T-Bone steak and corn for the barbecue.

It is a beautiful late summer afternoon in the country, the grass is getting longer again and I'd better get the lawnmower out as it takes me three days to mow but there is no way I'm paying $80 dollars to have it done by someone else...I am already working on letting half of the front lawn go wild, transplanting trees whenever they show up in unexpected places to the still large expanse of turf - I have five firs, two oaks and two plum trees (courtesy of some friends who have a super-green thumb and plums galore every two years smack in the centre of Montreal- they gave me four trees last fall, three survived the winter, now I have two, but those look pretty good).

It's time to get that fire going, bon apetit everyone!