This week the cottage burned. To. The. Ground. We went up to look at it and it is amazing what a fire will take. The only things remotely recognizable were the cast iron frying pan and the shell of the brand new cast iron sink (minus its enamel) that we had just bought for the kitchen renovation. There is some good news in all this though:
• I didn’t wash the sheets before we left last weekend.
• I don’t need to clean out the fridge before winter. Even better, I don’t need to deal with duplicate condiments for two or three months after bringing everything home.
• The new kitchen cabinets had not yet been installed and were stored far enough away from the cottage to be perfectly intact.
• I had just finished paying for the siding that got installed last year. Far worse to be still paying for something that doesn’t exist.
• Although we usually go up until the snow flies, it is pretty much the end of the season.
• The mattresses needed to be replaced anyway.
• We were about to get a new stove because the glass top was cracked.
• The wood flooring hadn’t been installed yet.
• Lucy is still dead.
Which isn’t to say there is no bad news:
• All of my bathing suits are gone. Any woman knows the amount of effort it takes to find one bathing suit that you like and likes your body, let alone five.
• My niece bought me sturdy martini glasses for my birthday in August. They have now reverted to silicon.
• Four needlepoint cushions that collectively took about 15 years to complete and four quilts made by my own sweat and sometimes tears (one just competed this spring) literally went up in smoke.
• I hadn’t finished reading the October Vanity Fair so I will never know what Lindsay Lohan thinks about her career prospects.
• My herb garden is toast and my Buddha statue is now at one with the universe.
So onward to rebuild in the spring. That is, if the insurance company honours the increase in insurance coverage they authorized in early September, even though the paperwork they sent me last week says it is effective September 23…