My Country Cottage

Did I mention how much I love my cottage?
Who needs running water or a stove anyway?

My landlady/ the lady whose backyard I'm squatting in, is Nancy. She's very nice, accomodating and helpful. But there's a weird kind of pagan vibe she has going on. She's just operating on a different frequency. She rents out rooms of her big beautiful antique-y country house (colored tile, clawfoot bath, wood-fired oven, flowers on the windowsill type house), has a lesbian couple who park their RV in her driveway to set up shop for little stints of time here and there (their country get-away from the city). There are several strange little structures on her property, mine being one of them. Next to me, there's a mostly dirty-windowed decrepid old structure that once use to be maybe a greenhouse...? I wandered in there the other day to deposit some empty boxes that she said I could store in there until I needed them again, and set them down on the straw floor next to a little bowl of kitty food- for kitties is her intention I'm sure although I'd assume that's what also attracts the family of raccoons that scurries around on my roof at night and knocks around on the shelf of rusted vases, tin boxes, threadbare rugs and wicker baskets strewn out back of my cottage. In the mornings, I'll look out of my window to see Nancy storming up the path between her house and mine to the clothesline. She wears a faded nightgown flowing behind her in her determined wake, arms piled with sheets under her thick grey bob of hair. She looks almost like a ghost, whisking around through the world without consequentially interacting with her environment. Just moving from station to station. She has lots of friends who hang around her place, many of whom look a lot like her, act like her. I would not be fazed even if I woke up one night to find Nancy and a circle of her friends sitting naked on her lawn chanting under a full moon. I'm not sure if I've been here yet for a full moon, come to think of it.... Anyhow, I really like my little cottage. And I'm finding just how much cooking you really can do with a plug-in rice cooker.