PEG'S NEW BOYFRIEND

"I've got a date!" she says just now on the phone. 

"A date."

"Yes! My first in a long time. With guess who?"

I said I had no idea. "The guy who had a crush on you in first grade and told you 'Margaret' meant 'Pearl' and called you last year but won't give you his address or number because he works or worked for the CIA or Secret Service or something?"

"No!" she said. "Dominick!" Dominick, who works for her, whose name she normally can't remember and calls Montague. "He's taking me to lunch! Insists. On him! At Salmon Run, in Lee! Isn't that nice?"

Yes, it is. Extremely nice. Not to mention kind of a relief. 
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Other big news is that she could "actually taste" the codfish soup yesterday they bought at Berkshire Organics, after Tina the Hairdresser's, after Price Chopper, after Home Depot for autmun mums to replace the unsuccessful begonias in the front window boxes. And that she has had Outside Bob buy her a portable metal clothes rack off eBay (to go with the three she already has and the four falling-apart ones I sent to the dump). 

"Another one?"

"Don't tell me what I can and can't have. I NEED it! I need a place to put all the clothes I don't want anymore!"
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BOUNDARY NEWS:

This close to an agreement. Boy is this guy sick of me. Am hoping he's thinking I am one sharp business woman shewdly playing The Waiting Game rather than someone who can't figure out shit and dithering only because I'm too scared of making the wrong decision. His latest "and final offer" is that he has now offered to have not just our common boundaries surveyed but Peg and Odd's entire property done, all 28 acres, at his expense. Plus he gives me the 300' triangle. Plus I get fourteen more feet frontage than the existing deeds currently specify, making a grand frontage total of 84'. Except…now only trying to sort out why 84' on paper measures out to 94' on the actual frontage, which Jenkins kindly measured for me yesterday, three times. The guy's "looking into it". Anyhow I am now happy with my decision, it feels right. And in ten years time when five hotels and a casino have gone up surrounded by 12 high rises and a gas station, well, I will be sitting here contentedly in Suffolk changing catheter bags or looking up cheap airfares to Digitas.