Nothing New And That's Okay

This is the note I found this morning when I got up at the shameful hour of nine o'clock.
Oh my! How I love my fishermen!
When Mr. Moon got home I asked him how the adventure had gone.
"The best," he said. "Just the best."
Aw.
I think Owen must have enjoyed it too.

He caught that bass all by himself from cast to bringing it in. 

He was such a joy to have here last night. He ate his whole salad and a hamburger and when it was time for bed I asked him if he wanted me to read to him and...he did. 

My heart was happy. 

We read an old favorite. 

I personally find the book a little disturbing and have never been quite sure of the message, if indeed there is one, but I've been reading this book to Owen his entire life. All the rest of the kids like it too and August always asks for it. If I had a nickel for every time I've read it I'd have enough money to buy a new Johnny Was dress, not even on Ebay or from Goodwill. 

And that's a lot of money. 

Anyway, I hear that Owen had two sips of the cup of coffee his Bop fixed him and that was enough of that. But they had breakfast at the Waffle House and lunch at a Denny's inside a truck stop so I'm sure it was a near-perfect day. And now Owen and Gibson are at Uncle Hank's to spend the night and the amount of fun that they'll be having there is going to be absolutely without comparison. 

Hank just posted this picture on Facebook with the comment, "He said he was worried it was going to be boring here but instead it is fun!" 

Oh Lord. Things could get wild. 

How could anything involving Uncle Hank be boring? I mean, seriously. 

So what have I done today? 

Well. Practically nothing. 

Lazy, lazy, lazy. 

And sweet. 

I spent some time just watching my chickens after I let them out this morning and gave them some scratch. I love my chickens. Bet you weren't aware of that. I had to laugh at tiny Violet who was pecking at the new chickens to establish her rights over the corn because she's about half their size but they obeyed her and backed off to scratch somewhere else. The rest of the big chickens don't seem to mind the new ones one bit but Violet's a banty and as such, a bit wild. 

I'd say crazy but that's unfair. She's just who she is. 

I worked on Maggie's dress a tiny bit. I picked a few vegetables from the garden including one rather alarmingly-sized cucumber. 

Ants and mosquitoes and a yellow fly bit me while I was at it. 

Mr. Moon hung the new chicken feeder and drinker up for me and he got approximately forty mosquito bites (no hyperbole) even though he'd sprayed with repellent. It's maddening. 

When I was in the garden I looked up into the sky and saw a beautiful swallow-tail kite drifting high, high above. I've seen so many of those majestic birds this year, usually in pairs. I love the way they float on air exactly like a kite, turning this way and that to catch currents and thermals.

Here's a good link about them from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology where it says, "...at times they soar very high in the sky, almost at the limits of vision." 

Isn't that just a poem? 

And so it goes today. Slow and easy, not getting fussed about much unless it actually pierces my skin in search of my blood. We have to take days like this, I think, where we slough off whatever it is that we don't need like a pretty little green anole shedding its old skin so that we will be more suitably fitted for whatever lies ahead. 

Well, it's a theory. 

And I have a million of 'em. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Holding Tightly

I don't want to talk about the fear today. Or the terror. Or the evil. Or the ghastly realities of it all.
No. I really don't want to.
I'd rather say that I took that picture last night of my beautiful rooster-in-training with his wings over two hens, Apricot and either Vera or Viv. I can't tell them apart.
Look at the colors on that bird! He is otherworldly, he is of another time. He is gorgeous.

I just woke up from a tiny nap and when I went out to the kitchen I found a note informing me that Mr. Moon and Owen had gone to go get crickets. They are going to get up early, early tomorrow morning to go fishing on a lake and need the crickets for bait. Boppy is going to make Owen a cup of coffee (don't tell Lily) which will no doubt be 90% milk and sugar, but still- coffee. So grown up. Mr. Moon's daddy did the same for him when he was eight years old but instead of going fishing, they were going to go move a mule or something involving a mule and my husband has never forgotten that and he wants to give that memory to Owen. They went shopping together yesterday for a new reel for Owen and I would not want to have to lay a bet on which of them is more excited, although I think the money might be on the grandfather.

I went shopping today with Lily and Owen and Magnolia for camp stuff. Shorts and shirts and underwear and socks and pajamas and bug spray and so forth. Gibson was at his aunt and uncle's house, playing with the Darling Lenore. While we were in Target, it began to pour rain. It thundered down on the roof of Target and all of us raised our eyes upward. It was so loud that we would not have been surprised to see the ceiling simply collapsing, allowing that sky flood to have its way with the mannequins, the clothing, the pharmacy, the check out lines, the Starbucks, the toys and books and electronics and housewares and all of it, washing it all useless, us too.

Then we went to Midtown Pizza where May works, to say good-bye to Jessie and August and Levon although they are only leaving for a week. Still. My heart aches at the thought although honestly, Vergil needs more time than that with his family on the cool and shady mountain where he grew up, to be part of all of that again and those boys need love and kisses from their mountain kin.
Levon is suddenly running a temperature but not very fussy. Jessie debated about taking him to the doctor but decided against it. Odds are that he's got a virus and there's nothing to do except nurse him and watch him and hold him. He was happy, despite the fever, grabbing at whatever food he could grab, happily gnawing away at a piece of pizza crust. Maggie and August sat together companionably and shared conversation and stickers and pizza and when we were leaving, they hugged and kissed so sweetly that all of us melted and said, "Awwww..."
The little blonde curly-headed cousins. They could (and are now) being mistaken for twins, simply on the basis of their hair.
Did I get one picture?
No. Because I forgot to bring my phone in.

While Jessie was trying to eat a salad and hold both babies on her lap, I said, "Give them to me" and she did and because his brother was sitting on my lap, August happily did too, and I sat there, sharing pizza crust with Levon, able to bend and kiss one head and then another and thinking, "This is. We are. I am. I love," and it was a silent poem prayer of gratefulness for all of my children and my grandchildren and for Rachel who was with us too and for Gibson, who was with Lenore, and for my husband, who was working, and for all of our sweethearts and for all of us and how lucky we are, how fucking blessed to have what we have which is not great wealth or riches but simply the opportunity to live without fear of being torn from each other and to be able to reach out and hold and touch and kiss each other, to want to do these things because we are family and we can pass on memories of a cup of real coffee at the age of eight and fishing and checking for eggs and eating MerMer's pickles and loving and being loved, being loved, being loved.

That's all any of us want if we have the sense to know it and it's not too much to ask and it's a sin to deny it to anyone because of race or creed or color or belief or gender or gender identity or geography of birth or ability or anything at all. We are humans. We are mammals. We are animals. We are created of stardust, we are part of this earth and its life and as such, we have the right to struggle along with all of the apes and the birds and the trees and the lizards and the fishes and the insects and all of the sentient beings to make our way as best we can on this tiny water rock as it flows through the cosmos carrying us with it.

All right.
That's all.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Another Day

First things first, here's a picture of the Body Glide which I use to prevent chafing while walking. 

It works quite well if you remember to use it. 

Secondly, is anyone getting email notifications of comments from your Blogger blog? Because I'm sure not and it's annoying. 

Third- this is me:

I almost feel as if I should make that my permanent header. 

So. Another day, another opportunity for Donald Trump and/or his minions to do something which none of us can believe. And when I say "us," I mean people who think as opposed to people who gave that shit up a long time ago.

Today was his wife's day to do something that absolutely no one either understands or can believe. 

I almost Snoped it when I first saw it. 

I'm sure y'all have all seen this but here you go.

That's Melania on the left wearing the jacket you see on the right. She was on her way to visit a detention center in Texas. 

Fuck me, Jesus. I really don't even know the questions to ask about that. 

We haven't discussed the Space Force Trump wants to build. Create? Whatever. We can't afford to deal with Flint's water or Puerto Rico or provide universal health care or decent public education but goddammit! We gon' be the most powerful Space Force in the whole world! 

Beam me up, Scotty. I can't deal with this shit.

The bottom line here is that obviously, Trump has lost his fucking mind if he ever had one. I'm pretty sure he never had soul but he may have had a defective sliver of a mind at one point. 

That's gone. 

 I feel like I've asked this question a billion times but WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET HIM OUT OF OFFICE? 

Hey. I think it might be raining. Yes. Yes it is. Not much. But it's something. 

I've spent the entire day in Lloyd. Didn't even go for a walk. I've been working on a dress for Magnolia June and you know I love doing that. 

I got a very short but sweet visit from Jason and the kids today. Maggie was wearing a dress I made her last summer and it was so cute although she's about to grow out of it. Gibson walked into the kitchen and said, "Mer, can I have some pickled okra?" and I made the mistake of leaving the jar out on the counter and he ate all but one. I believe Owen helped him.

It wasn't a big jar but it was the last jar. 

Owen wanted to go see what was growing in the garden and so we did and as usual, the first thing Maggie did when she got here was to go and wake up one of her dollies. 

Owen's going to camp in a week or so and tomorrow we're going to go camp shopping. It's a camp for kids with epilepsy and I'm thrilled he'll get to go. They do all the usual camp stuff but he'll finally get an opportunity to talk to kids his own age who have seizures too. Not that he's had any in a long time but we know that if he stops taking his medicine, he will, and he's aware that he's had them and could have them again and they must seem so mysterious and weird to him. 

I love that boy so much. 

He's going to be as tall as I am before next year. I swear he is. 

That's been my day. Fretting and sewing and feeding chickens and also I made a chess pie. I had some pastry dough leftover from when I made the coconut cream pie and it was use-it-or-lose-it day. That's such a stupid excuse for making a pie. 

Do you know what a chess pie is? It's a pie made with eggs, butter, sugar, a tiny bit of cornmeal, vinegar, and vanilla. 

Period. The end. 

And it's just a little bit of heaven. 

Koko died today. I'm sad about that. She was forty-six and I take it that that's a ripe old age for a gorilla. She was definitely a celebrity and she stole all of our hearts at one time or another and taught us a lot we did not know about gorilla intelligence and ability and emotions. She also met a lot of celebrities but still, her life made me sad because she never got to live in the wild and no matter how much she was loved and well-tended, she did not live the life she was truly born to lead. And she was never able to have babies although she appeared to have an abundance of maternal instinct. 

Well. 

Bless her heart. As a human being I feel so incredibly honored to be related to the great apes. I'm pretty sure that they don't feel that great about being related to us as we do everything we can to completely wipe out their natural habitats and indeed, their complete various species with our human greed and unconcern for anyone and any thing not of our tribe. 

One last thing- I got to talk to one of my oldest friends today on the phone. Actually, I guess she IS my oldest friend. We met in the sixth grade so, yeah. 

We spent most of the time talking about how much we hate Trump and how we cannot believe that anyone could be so purely evil and how anyone could possibly support him. 

It smells of rain and wet dirt, and thunder is rolling across the sky and shaking the very earth. 

Love...Ms. Moon

A Baby Step For Precious Babies

So, well, Donald Trump signed "something" which somehow stops the policy of separating families at the border and you know as well as I do that he had no idea what he was signing but he seemed to finally grasp that even tyrants can't get away with concentration camps for children.
For very long, anyway.
And let me say- I say his name. I speak it. I am not afraid to name this monster. Fuck that shit. I'm not superstitious. Okay, maybe I am but not about this. He ain't Voldemort and the utterance of his name has no magical powers.
Donald Goddam Trump.
And that's how I feel about that.

But now the questions remain of course on how we get these families reunited which have already been so cruelly separated and in what sort of facilities are the intact families going to be held?

This all remains to be seen but I have been heartened today by hearing an interview with a border guard who quit his job when he was told to tell some siblings that they were not allowed to hug each other.
"No," he said. "You can tell them that but I will not."
It is also heartening that Steve Schmidt, a prominent Republican strategist, has quit the party calling it "corrupt, indecent and immoral."
Article here.

Perhaps people are finding their souls and their balls. Of course some people have neither.
What in hell is Sarah Huckabee? She certainly doesn't appear to be human. Where do they find these soulless white bitches in the Trump administration?

So. Yeah. Things appear to be happening. Here in Lloyd what's happening is the heat. Sorry to repeat myself. I'm still just not used to it.

Anyone wearing jeans in this heat deserves to die. 

Every summer it comes as a shock. We're not getting our afternoon rains to cool things off and I came to the absolute realization that walking five miles on asphalt, even on a mostly-shaded canopy road is tantamount to a death wish.
Really.
No.
I can't do it.
Not the seven miles, not the six miles, not the five miles. Today I think was the worst. Honestly, if there had been any way to get out of that last mile I would have done it. However, there was not and so I walked it and then I got in my car, turned the AC up to freezing, drank my ice water and drove to the Wacissa where I got out of my car, unloaded the pockets of my cargo shorts, walked to the water and dove in, full mermaid.
It was arguably the most heavenly experience I've ever had which did not involve a newborn. I could feel every molecule in my body screaming in profound relief and joy.
That may have saved my life.
I hung out a little while and sat in the cold water and watched kids jumping off the rope swing, listening to their bragging banter. One of the things I love about the Wacissa is that absolutely no one batted an eye when an old scarlet woman got out of a scarlet car and jumped into the water wearing all her clothes. And I wouldn't have cared in the least if anyone had.
What I was wearing was the least of my concerns. The fear of death by heatstroke (which is not funny) rated a lot higher.

And after all of that and coming home and eating my lunch and cleaning up a bit, I went to town to pick up a prescription and go to Joanne's fabrics which always triggers the hell out of my anxiety and I do not know why. I was determined to get a pattern and fabric to make Maggie a dress and after about four thousand hours, I finally managed to achieve that goal.
Also, while I was there studying the juvenile prints, my thighs suddenly appeared to burst into flames and I realized that I had forgotten to wear my Body Glide this morning on top of everything else. Why it took a couple of hours for my tender thighs to suddenly start to burn and hurt is a mystery to me but it did.

Here's what I picked in the garden tonight.

Not a very impressive harvest, eh? 

Well, that's okay. I'm going to figure out a menu for tonight which involves some of those vegetables. 

And here's Mick's butt. 

Look at those tail-feathers! Let's hear it for golden seal, the miracle and magical herb which all good witches should have in the medicine bags they keep tied around their waists made from the testicles of their enemies. 

Mix it with a little Neosporin which they allow anyone to buy at the CVS and you won't even need to chant an incantation. 

I promise. 

Love...Ms. Moon

I Said "Give Him To Me" And They Did

My day started early as I got up and drove to town to get my blood drawn for a doctor's appointment I have next week. I've been freaking about this, as those of you who know me would imagine, and have been since the appointment was made six months ago but today I was as calm and cool as can be and I have no idea why. I don't mind getting my blood drawn at all. It's not needles or anything like that which causes so much medical anxiety. It's more the fact that the blood which is drawn is going to tell people things that I don't even know.
I have just about given up trying to figure out why going to a doctor (or dentist for that matter) is the hardest thing in the world for me. It's just the way it is and I have no doubt that something happened in my childhood which would explain it but I don't know what that was and have no memory of anything that was too horribly traumatic. But the fact remains that I cannot bear the thought of anyone (even my beloved new GP) examining me. It's hard. My body's secrets are mine and mine alone, or at least that's how it feels to me.
Whatever.
First world neurosis problem.

But this morning went fine and I even cracked a few jokes in the tiny packed waiting area that caused some people to look up from their phones and laugh. There was a mother and her darling daughter and they were doing educational things on Mom's phone and I couldn't help but eavesdrop and watch as the smart little child could attribute letters to sounds and I'm sure I was smiling in that gushy I'm-A-Grandmother way when I looked across to the woman sitting there who was about my age and she had the same look on her face and our eyes met and we both knew what we both were feeling.
It was a sweet moment in time.
My phlebotomist was no nonsense and she had that blood drawn before I knew the needle had entered my vein. She was amazing. And I told her so.
"Thanks," she said crisply, as she undid the rubber tourniquet, put a bandage and a pressure wrap thing on me and threw away the stuff that needed throwing away. She didn't have time for niceties. I'm sure I was simply one more faceless vein in her day and that was fine with me because no one goes to get their blood drawn hoping to form a deep and personal bond with a clumsy phlebotomist.

After that I joined Lily and Jessie and their kiddos at the main library for Baby Time. It was a hoot. I knew it would be. So many beautiful babies and their mothers. Babies everywhere! All the babies! And some grandmothers, too.
Owen and Gibson were not feeling it. Owen was okay and didn't complain but sat in the back and read some books.

But Gibson? 

Not so much. 

Poor child. 

Of course, Baby Time is not really for the babies at all. It's to get the mothers out of the house and into an environment where baby behavior is not only socially acceptable but appreciated. Here's what August and Maggie were doing during at least 80% of the song-singing and story reading.

August had kicked back in Levon's seat and Maggie was trying to buckle him in. That child has never met a buckle she did not want to fasten. And she does fasten them. And unfastens them. It's one of her many talents. 

At one point I took Levon and followed Gibson out to where the books are and we all went into the play room. 

I do believe that Levon is truly beginning to know me and when he sees me and he grins one of his great big baby grins, my heart is so happy. 

There were more adventures today, mostly with Levon and August and Jessie. August was having a Mer day which is rare and lovely. When we went into the coldy room at Costco he said, "Hug me up!" as he shivered his little body. And of course I did. 

It was a good day although the heat has suddenly hit us full force like a hammer from the gods. I took a screen shot of yesterday's weather and found it most interesting that Monticello, which is the closest town to Lloyd, had the highest heat index of the whole area. 

And I am not tolerating it well. My walk yesterday was only five miles and I felt as if I could not have gone one step further than I did. 

But what can one do? I am as unable to control the weather as I am to control what's going on with these children who are being taken from their parents. And I have thought of them every moment of this entire day. And my anger at the monster who is in the White House and at those who support him and at those who do his bidding grows exponentially every one of those moments.

When Hank was very young, about six months old, I had a miscarriage. At the age of twenty-two I had somehow managed to get pregnant not long after he was born but I lost that baby. And to be honest- I was still so vastly and romantically and practically in love with my first-born that I couldn't even imagine having another baby so soon. And so when I began to bleed and had to go to the hospital because the bleeding was intense, I was mostly upset about having to be separated from my already-here baby, Hank. He was entirely breastfed up to that point and we had not been separated (by my own choice) for more than an hour in those six months. 

The whole story of the miscarriage and how the hospital handled it is long and complicated but the short version is that I had to stay in the hospital overnight before I could get a D and C the next morning. And at that time, the policy of the hospital was that children could not spend the night with a parent, breastfeeding or not. 

And I cried in complete agony and despair that entire night. Not because I'd lost a baby that I'd never really wanted to begin with (and go ahead and judge me if you want) but because I knew that my precious child was crying because he did not have his mama. 

I'll never forget that. And I'll never forget the complete joy I felt when I woke up from the anesthesia and the first thing I said was, "Where's my baby?" and they said, "He's here with your husband," and I said, "Give him to me," and they gave him to me and I put him to the breast and we both dissolved into bliss. 

There. 

That. 

That's all I can say tonight without breaking down entirely. 

Donald Trump is a monster and we have let him take control of the lives of the innocent. 

May this end soon, one way or another. 

Love...Ms. Moon

I Don't Know What We've Become

Last night when I went to close the hen house up after the usual head count, this is what I found and I swear- I almost died with the love. Remember when Mick used to put his wing over Trixie at night? I haven't seen him do that cuddling since she died but last night, he had Darla cuddled up next to his side and it was not for warmth. In fact, the thought of sleeping in that hen house with a feathered wing flung over me sort of makes me want to die but then again...the sweetness. 

Let's talk about my new header photo. Someone posted it on Facebook along with this poem:

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.

your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.

no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.

it's not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did -
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.

you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.

who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.

no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage -
look what they've done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?

the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child's body
in pieces - for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.

~ Warsan Shire

I had never heard of Warsan Shire but it turns out that she is a British poet who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. 

Here's an article about her from the New Yorker.

It was in an issue from 2015 so the odds are good that I did indeed read it but of course, have forgotten. But I wish that every ignorant, racist asshole who claims that "illegal immigrants" who try to enter our country to suck the tit of the Big American Eagle Good Life Without Earning It deserve whatever happens to them up to and including having their babies snatched from them (that'll teach 'em!) could be forced to read this poem over and over until they get a molecule of understanding and empathy. 

If that's even possible which I doubt. 

And the picture? That stunning picture which says everything? It was painted by Kelly Latimore, an iconographer. 

I do not have the words within me to express how I feel about children and parents being separated. I just don't. The people who came down with this decision and the people enforcing it and the people who defend it are simply evil. There is no other word which comes close. There is absolutely no justification to this. None. The inborn necessity of a parent to take care of and protect their young is so strong that we humans cannot even claim unique possession of it. Creatures throughout the entire animal kingdom will fight to the very death to prevent their offspring from being taken from them. And to randomly and with malice do what is being done on our borders is the very definition of cruelty.

And evil. 

I can't even bring myself to talk about what this must be doing to the children. I feel like if I did, my soul would rip apart. 

So. That's the story of my new header. 

I have done a terrible job of trying to say what I wanted to say here tonight but look- see that rooster, holding one of his wives close? She is part of his family. And he almost died protecting her and the other hens. 

Chickens. Chickens. Domesticated birds which we rationalize eating by thinking that they have brains the size of a pea and no feelings or emotions. 

I've seen a mother hen and the way she reacted after a hawk took her baby and I will never forget that. 

This is truly how Hitler acted but we do not have the excuse that "no one knew" because yes. We do know. 

The whole world is watching. 

May we not die in shame before this situation ends. 

Call your representatives. Repeatedly. And refuse to let anyone tell you that there is one thing defensible about this. Because there just isn't. 

Love...Ms. Moon

In Praise Of Good Daddies

You honestly cannot imagine the chaos which occurs when all five of my grandchildren show up with their parents. Oh, it would be worse if their parents weren't here. I shudder at the thought.
But seriously- from Owen's almost-nine-year-old-more-like-a-fourteen-year-old teenager's attitude down to Levon's crows of merriment, it's never a dull moment, to say the least.
I am thinking about becoming a completely different sort of grandmother. I would wear beaded dresses and lacy things on my head and really impressive jewelry and speak in an upper crust British accent and demand respect and good behavior with nothing more than my very presence. Like the queen. Or like Mick Jagger in drag. A different sort of queen but an imposing one, nonetheless.

Thank you, Jo. 

Like that. 

The children would be terrified of me instead of thinking of me as someone who is here for their own personal service and pleasure. 

"Mer! Can I have a pickled okra?"

"Mer! Can I have hot cocoa?"

"Mer!  Can you come swing me?"

"Mer! Look at this!"

And so forth. 

Sigh.

But it's always fun even though a nap afterwards is always required and thank god I am the grandmother because that means I can get a nap whereas my daughters, who have had even more demands placed on them probably do not. 

Owen actually got quite put out with his mother because she told me that I did not need to make pancakes or waffles because I'd already made biscuits, pounds of bacon, and a frittata the size of Godzilla's bicep. Not to mention the fact that Vergil had brought what he wanted for Father's Day which was a Costco sheet cake. That cake was so big that when I saw "Refrigerate" on the plastic covering, I wondered just who in hell had a refrigerator that big. It was gorgeous!

Not to mention delicious.

So yeah, pancakes or waffles were probably not necessary as our carbohydrate needs were definitely being properly taken care of without them. 

Which did not deter Owen from a fit of pique which he recovered from when I made the children's table a plate of cheese toast. The frittata did have a lot of vegetables in it and as I told Jessie, I had answered the age-old question of whether there can ever be too much spinach and the answer was "yes."

And then Gibson decided that he needed some time alone and would not come to the table. August and Maggie were pretty happy though, and all-in-all, it was a satisfactory Father's Day celebration. 

What great papas! 

Jessie made all the fellas tell us what the best and worst things about being fathers was. 

Vergil said that the worst was when August wanted to be with him when he trying to do certain projects and that the best was snuggling him and reading to him before bed. 

Right before Jason got to tell us what his thoughts were, Maggie fell off her chair and got a bump and cried and said, "I want Daddy!" and he said that the best was being wanted. And that the worst was school and sports schedules. 

Amen to that, Daddy Jason!

And Boppy? He said that the best was watching his children grow up to be such wonderful adults and the worst was knowing that he wouldn't be around for all of his children forever. 

We all teared up. That man. I kissed him on the head and said, "Well. We've seen them into adulthood. We have done our job."

Which is pretty poor comfort but was the best I could do at the moment. 

Jason and Vergil helped Mr. Moon on his bathroom project a bit. He's been working like a demon. He was cutting tile at 11:30 last night and by the time I got up this morning he'd already been to town to buy a saw blade and was back home. Here's how it's all going. 

How beautiful this bathroom is going to be! I'm so proud of him. 

That man sets his mind on something and he does it. He's done the design, he's done almost all of the work, and he's created something beautiful and practical. 

Sometimes I still can't believe I married a man like him. I can't believe I was that damn smart. 

And my daughters have gone and married men who, like their daddy, believe in supporting their families in all the ways possible. They are responsible, patient, loving, and can change diapers as well as I can. 

Jason is doing Maggie's hair these days. Which charms Lily more than he'll ever know. 

Here's one more picture of our little gathering. 

Gibson was there somewhere. We had a cuddle puddle and book reading. Mer and Bop's bed is big enough for everyone. 

And after everyone left, I took that nap. Meanwhile, Bop reports that he's got five more pieces to cut. He's pretty excited. 

It's Father's Day and that's a day which can potentially be a bit of a minefield for me. I had one daddy who I saw exactly one time after the age of five. Another daddy who abused me and probably two of my brothers and who made our family life a living hell with his paranoia, drug addiction, and pure meanness. Whose actions caused a rift between me and my mother which never could be healed not to mention about a thousand other things that he robbed all of us of which included any semblance of a happy childhood. 

But. Here I am now. Damaged but still standing, and quite capable and able to recognize and honor the good fathers I love so much. And still capable of making breakfast for many and able to laugh at chaos and madness and know that it is chaos and madness and love which, all together, are what life is all about. 

When Gibson and Owen came in the house today, I hugged them each separately and said, "Happy Father's Day. One day you will be a father and you will be a good one."

Gibson just grinned and showed Jessie the tooth he lost a few days ago and Owen said, "That's a little early, but well, okay," and sauntered off to see what was going on in the rest of the house. 

And I bet they will be fathers and I bet they will be good ones. 

Mr. Moon and I may not be around to see that day but I'm pretty sure that it's going to happen whether we're here or not. And that's the important thing. 

Here's to all the good daddies. You mean more to this world than you know. And I appreciate each and every one of you. 

Love...Ms. Moon