June 20

  Well, I'm sitting here wondering/ would a matchbox hold my clothes?

  Carl had it right! I've been secretly packing, putting an extra bag in the car every time I go out there, just to hasten my departure tomorrow morning. LL informs me that he has someone taking my place Wednesday, so maybe I'll even get my unused rent and security deposit back -- no harm, no foul, right? All he said was that he'll "settle" with me, which could mean anything from cash renumeration to pistols at dawn, but I'll take whatever it is gladly and get out of town.  He certainly owes me something: I only lived there about a week and conserved the bejesus out of that water.

  I never drank the tap water at the house because it always tasted vaguely bloody, which says to me it's either full of iron or, alternatively, that the LL killed someone and threw the body down the well. Probably the last tenant. Okay, I'm pretty sure he's not a murderer -- I borrowed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the library, so I've been seeing rapists and criminals everywhere. I also mowed my fair share of the lawn, as specified in the epic length lease agreement I foolishly signed, and didn't do a terrible job, no matter what this dude said. Considering that a) I'd never done it before, and b) I'm a 115 pound girl, what did he think was going to happen? I was pretty proud of myself before he started harping -- I was always kind of scared of lawn mowers and dreading the day I'd have to use one and watch it cut my foot off.

  The overlap between tenants and hired help is fairly large with this guy -- this morning I heard him reject an applicant for the cottage next door based on the fact that this kid was disabled and wouldn't be able to shovel snow or help LL lift stuff -- pretty sure that's discrimination and makes him look like an asshat.

  Have not seen the new place, but there's no way it could be worse than this one, with its crappy old appliances and aura of being uncleaned since the Nixon administration. Not that I have anything against antique appliances -- my grandparents have been using the same toaster since their wedding in 1947 -- but when rust sets in and one or more latches or parts are connected with twist-ties, it's time to push that thing off the bluff, my friend.

  I'm hiding from the LL in town today -- quelle surprise -- but actually told him I was at work, so I've been paranoid about running into him all morning. It's unlikely at best; he makes the twelve or so mile trip into town about twice a week, tops, for supplies (what is this, Little House on the Prairie? C'mon) but I anxiously peer over my shoulder when I'm on the sidewalk lest his old junkbucket come tooling up the hill behind me and I have to swan dive into the shrubbery. I sought refuge with a Stephen King book inside the Starbucks this morning, because there is no way in hell LL would ever patronize such a  bourgeois establishment. Don't you know big chains like this are ruining our environment and destroying local independent coffee growers? Yes, I do -- now please stop telling me. And back out of the shop before you burst into flames.

  It's a little better inside the library. I'm sufficiently comfortable thinking he'd never venture back to the large print Nora Roberts aisle, or if he did, that I'd see him coming. There's currently an unseen person lurking off to my right, but I can tell by its right arm that it isn't LL. He doesn't wear a watch -- he doesn't need to -- because to him it is always 7:47 on planet Z-Tron, and that's the only time that matters.

  God I'm mean.

  I don't have any pictures today either, unfortunately, which is a shame because yesterday had some good ones, aka Kelder's Farm and Gnome Chomsky. I'll have to lug the big comp out and put them up later this week. Didn't find either of the boxes but went on a nice wild goose chase through Kerhonkson -- at least now I can say I've been to Holy Trinity Ukranian Catholic Church? Kerhonkson is so Ukranian that there's a whole Ukranian club, complete with suspicious members who stared me down from the private driveway. Letterboxing, why do you take me to these places?

  One more night in G'er, followed by a lifetime of celebration that I am no longer there. Huzzah!