A Laborious Labor Day! (Plus Today's Fashion Tip!)

Dahlings, it will take me AGES to forget this nightmare of a weekend...wind, wind, wind! And that was just my dinner guests!

But seriously (even a maven of modishness such as myself can crack wise once in a while), the storm was Quite Too Much. Quite, quite too much! The havoc it has wreaked is simply devastating. My Zen Rock Garden, lovingly cultivated, has been destroyed. My beloved hydrangeas--or chrysanthemums, I'm not sure, I'd have to ask my gardener--blown to bits! My windows covered with sand! Now my beautiful oceanfront home is really on the ocean, if you get my drift...get it, drift, drift? Another joke! Oh, dear me, I'm getting hysterical...

I beg your pardon. I took a short break and downed a few Xanax, I feel ever so much more sanguine. Returning to the subject of Ernesto, a charming name for a bloody awful, messy storm. All night the wind howled about the house, the windows rattled, and when I dared look out the window, the ocean was an angry vista of white froth! I wrapped my wisp of chiffon (trimmed with navy marabou to denote the seriousness of the occasion) tightly about my Rubenesque figure, and pondered what a tragedy it would be if I and my (featured in Architectural Digest) mansion were swept out to sea. Something like that makes one ask oneself the big questions:
What Is It All About?
What Am I Here For?
What Is That Strange-Looking Metal Thing Out On The Deck?

Fortunately, I fell asleep before I could answer any of the questions, save the last one (a blown-over hibachi).

I awoke to a scene of disaster, dahlings, pure elemental disaster. Nature had spoken, and not in my garden's favor. Not only was my Rock Garden a mess of pebbles, everything else was simply covered in gleaming white sand. Which, on the previous afternoon, had been on the other side of my garden fence! The entire dune had been BLOWN INTO MY GARDEN, if you can believe it! With my infallible sense of the appropriate, I changed out of my wisp and into a sturdy costume of tweed and leather patches that would withstand the lashing rain. Not to mention a fetching hat with a leather tie-strap. I walked to the stairs beyond the deck that led down to the dune...

Or used to. Now, there was merely a foot of drenched sand, the churning ocean, and a few idiotic gawkers who had used my stairs to sneak onto my beach! A few shots from my pellet gun scared them into my neighbor's territory, thank God.

Since then, it has been time to take stock, to clean up the mess, and to look ahead, as was said after Katrinka or whatever that other storm was called--

Oh, dear, dahlings, I must dash. That IDIOTIC gardener is trying to use a snow-blower to blast away the sand, and in the process he's blasting away what is left of my precious petals. By which I mean the garden of course.

Kisses,
Elisa and Bucky the Wonderdog

TODAY'S FASHION TIP: (Special Ernesto Version)

If you are going to sneak over my stairs to gawk at the ocean, PLEASE put on a proper pair of shorts with a decent inseam under your 'poncho,' and not a bathing suit. In a time of crisis, we can do without seeing your cellulite. And the bottom of your buttocks, God help me.