Rubbing Two Sticks Together...

Here's a recent picture of Paco. If you haven't been keeping up with the condition of things out here, you may have missed what we are lovingly calling our "primitive period." In the last month we have foregone the pleasure of hot water in favor of falling-cascades-of-ice in our shower supplemented by pots of boiling water we haul up the stairs. Our lawn mower has also been incapacitated--I think it threw a belt or coughed up a screw or something. The resulting effect has been pristine. Picture waste high green grass waving in the wind. When you breast your way through it, it gives a pleasant Whoosh. We were pricing scythes on-line when, indeed, lawn mower returned from rehab and resumed its activities. Now we are faced with a baling quandry. What to do with rows and rows of cut grass? About six weeks ago our microwave blew one day when I was making pies. It's a combo micro/convection/regular oven, so who knew that cranking it up to 400 would cross its line?? An internet search revealed that we now belong to a select club of other consumers who have crossed that exact line as well. Living without a microwave is right up there with foregoing air for five minutes. We've eaten lots of cold leftovers and had to resort to sticking pork chops in our armpits to defrost them. All this aside, we could have and HAVE limped along muttering as we go, had not our dishwasher been recalled the other night. Is there no decency left? What kind of karma is being rained down? I rant and rave. Paco grunts. But isn't his body paint becoming?