PROGRESS

We have finally received Planning Permission from the Parish Council for the "Little Peg House" we are hoping to build at the bottom of the garden but still waiting for the fingers crossed "big YES" from the District. After which I can line up builders and a start date and make girlie decisions like what kind of boiler and heating system I want (no idea besides the kind that gives you heat and hot water when you want it), how the drains should be configured (um, in a pretty figure eight?) and what sort of flooring. All I know here is that I don't want tile, stone or cement, it's too hard on the back and feet. 

On top of which Peg won't like it. All she ever wants is carpet. Carpet carpet carpet rugs rugs runners and more runners. She and my father spent fortunes on a parquet floor in the dining room and kitchen, covered it with rugs and more rugs, especially when it started buckling, eventually had it torn up and replaced with engineered pine boards which Peg also covered with rugs and filled in any gaps with stick-on runners you cut off a roll, including a little 4 inch wide strip over the door jamb into the laundry room (also carpeted) because "the dogs don't like wood floors". All of which makes you wonder why, if no one there's liking wood floors, they had any installed to begin with. But now you can at least see them again because, as you may or not recall, I had to pitch the four rugs and various runners she had in there when they became saturated with collie urine.

So I guess what I should do is stop worrying about floors for the Peg House, put down what I want (wood), then wall-to-wall over it all for Peg and rip it up when she has moved on to heaven (which I hope to fuck better be carpeted).
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The Motion Picture Retirement Fund runs a home in LA, and they want Peg scripts to perform and film. So today, while I am feeling distinctly fluey--certainly enough to give Keep Fit and a ladies lunch a miss but not enough sadly to lose my appetite--I am listening to Peg's comedy shows and choosing  appropriate-for-elderly-actors-to-perform ones. Am also sending DVDs of her Old Time Radio convention performances so these retired film types can see how these shows should be played, for timing and delivery. I then find the script to the episode, scan it if not already scanned, or ask Terri to go into the files in Becket and scan it. That was the easy part. The hard part has been explaining Dropbox to Terri and the fact that I have 3 Dropbox accounts and only, it seems, the right passwords for two. And both of these are full so I need access to the third. Four hours and 1,200 emails and phoned calls and security questions later, I am happy to report we are getting closer. Closer that is to posting in the bleeding mail and forgetting Dropbox.

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DK, meanwhile, when not busy opening dodgy emails thinking they were from a neighbor, which consequently entailed my spending a few hours on the phone getting DK's security question changed via a dim AOL Customer Services rep named Amy who had to have the DK's "favorite film" spelled for her about eleven hundred times using "Brava" and "echo" and all those others I can never remember--has completed the orchestral score of Black Beauty, and all the parts, with a view to renting it out, as we keep getting requests from orchestras. Today he is off getting it copied onto A3 paper. As opposed to sending the original out, as he did, once, and never getting it returned. Or he wouldn't have had to re-score the sucker. He is also about to launch into a heavy PR campaign to publicize the launch of a newly-mastered cast album of a musical of his from 30 years ago, Worzel Gummidge. Stage Door Records, the company behind all this, has organized more radio and TV interviews for him in three days than his agent has done in the past three years. We're thinking of asking StageDoor to handle the PR now for DK's memoirs, launching early 2015. 

I am also hoping that he returns from Halesworth with more aspirin for me. 

ME to PEG: I'm toying with the idea, Mama, of coming over for Thanksgiving. What do you think?

PEG: Are you worried you're not going to see me before I die?

ME: Well--no.  I know you won't die before Christmas, you have Steve Hiss [a fan] coming, and Laurie [another one].

PEG: I really only called to tell you how pretty you looked last night on the phone. I don't know why you want to get your face done--!

ME: [RESIGNED BUT KINDA PLEASED] Oh--Mama. Am sure it was a trick of the light. But thank you.

PEG:  MY eyes are driving me wild! They water so much I can't see a damned thing anymore, it's like looking out through Niagara Falls.
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