Saturday, July 31, 2010

Morning Note

I feel so very blessed to be taking this little trip. Mr. Moon and I travel well together and being together every minute of the day turns out to be a delight instead of a problem.
We laugh so much when we travel. God knows that Helen, Georgia gave us plenty to laugh about.
And sometimes you just HAVE to laugh.

Anyway, we're about to head on out again. I love our time in the car. I've been reading The Yearling out loud and the writing is so fine, the sense of place so strong, the characters so beautifully fleshed out that I feel we are living with the Baxters and the Forresters as we travel down the highways, as we ride along the back roads and through the small towns.
And they are good traveling companions too, those people of the Florida scrub and the critters who live with them and around them.

One more night out and then we'll be home. Where my people live, where my critters roam.

I feel blessed.

Friday, July 30, 2010

More Pictures From Madison, Georgia







Madison, Georgia


Well, another night and things are definitely looking up. This morning we signed out of the Hofbrauhous or whatever the fuck it's called and hit the road north to Anna Ruby Falls, a Federal park where we walked up a steep trail to see the waterfalls. It was lovely.

The pictures don't do it justice. I do not know how to take a decent waterfall picture. Plus, it was in the sun. Oh well. You can get the vague idea of it.

And here's Mr. Moon on the trail:

And me. You can tell I was really prepared for a hike in the woods. And really happy to have my picture taken.

But my favorite picture is this one:

A tree growing from a rock, rising up into the light.
Lot of damn metaphor in that shot.

So we got in the car and decided to go back to our original plan of having no destination. After a night in the Alpine Village of Helen how could we go wrong? And we didn't.
We headed south on roads calculated to allow us to miss Atlanta, almost impossible by the way if you're traveling through Georgia, and we did and we have ended up in the small and very picturesque town of Madison, Georgia which seems to be eat up with The Charm and antique stores. And restaurants.
We drove around the main square, hoping that maybe, just maybe we'd find a place to stay and lo and behold! The James Madison Inn was right there and we pulled up and have paid the big bucks to stay in one of their gorgeous rooms.
I see no trace of any former tenants in this room whatsoever and well, check out the bed:

Hmmmm....
and
Mmmmm....

I am thinking that we may not even leave the room. And we don't have to as there is a sweet little town square just across the street and we have a balcony and a band is tuning up as we speak and so there will be a concert. They sound bluesy.


Did I dream this up?



Oh. We are so far away from The German Christmas Shop. So very far away.
There's a spa downstairs here at the inn where theoretically I could, after ten a.m. tomorrow, get massaged with warm stones or waxed in the Brazilian manner.
Probably not.


Mr. Moon took one look at that shower and stripped his clothes off and jumped in. Do you know how hard it is for that man to find a shower that doesn't hit him in the chest? Now he's sitting on the bed in a James Madison bathrobe and well, I think I should join him.
Oh wait. I just looked.
He's shed the bathrobe.

All right! Well!
Lovely talking to you.
I think I need to go now.

Happy Friday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Helen, Georgia





So we started out this morning in Albany, Georgia and it was just fine as I said and we walked across the street to the Ray Charles Plaza and I took some pictures and we danced, Mr. Moon and I at eleven o'clock in the hot sunlit morning to Ray singing through time and space and weather-proofed speakers. It was great.

Then we made the mistake of conjuring a destination. We would go to Helen, GA.
Let me just say this about that:
No.
It was a lovely drive here, mostly up Highway 19 through the country-est of country, cows and old buildings and tiny towns with Dollar Stores and Mexican Grocery Stores and Hardees and all of that crap which America is made of these days and a few things that still make it interesting. We had to get in the Atlanta by-pass shit which was stressful and anxiety-producing and then we got back into the country and everything was fine and we got to Helen, Georgia and why, why, WHY?
Okay. I have heard they have nice cabins to stay in and that there was a river and it was in the foothills of the mountains and all of that sounded great and I had also heard that they had a sort of Bavarian theme going on here and well, I guess I sort of chose to ignore that fact but let me tell you- don't ignore that fact. It's true.
Fake Bavarian theme. Yes. It's the Little Olde Bavarian Village here, folks and honestly, it is the most random place I have ever been in my entire life and that includes Disney World. Gift shops selling crap that no one in their right mind would want and restaurants serving crap that no one in their right mind should eat.
The place right next to where we're staying serves a pork LEG (really? yes) with sauerkraut and potato salad for $29.95. Sadly for us, by the time we walked there the restaurant was closed so I didn't get the chance NOT TO ORDER THE PORK LEG.
I don't even want to talk about what we did eat at the Olde Troll House or whatever the name of the place we ate was except to say as I did to the waitress when she asked how everything was, "Well. It's food."
She nodded sadly and said, "I know."

So. The place we're staying in is a motel called Hofbrauhaus Riverfront Hotel. Here is the view from the terrace in back of the room:

Not bad, right, with the flowing creek and the rocks and the trees? Not bad at all. In fact, nice enough for me not to pay that much attention to the room itself which, it turns out, has orange walls.
Orange. Walls.
The bathroom is sort of funky and fun and the toilet was Sanitized For Your Protection.
Proof:



But when I opened the drawer in the bedside table, this is what I found:


There is so much to love about this picture that I don't know where to begin. Torn open condom packet on top of the Holy Bible.
Check.
Size of the condom? Extra Large.
Check.
And so forth.
This is the picture we shall show the manager tomorrow when we tell her that we'll NOT be staying another night, thank-you and please, give us that portion of our money back.
I know. It's shameful that we're even staying one night but hell, it was already nine o'clock at night when we checked in and the restaurants were all closing and we were tired and hungry.

And there is that view out the back.

I don't know. Some things are just not right.
Take a beautiful little town in North Georgia in the beginnings of the mountains with a gorgeous little river flowing through it and turn the entire place into a faux-German village and they will come. Because yes, they do. The town is packed with tourists.
I gotta get out of here.

Honestly, on a scale of one to ten of horrible things that can happen, this isn't even a one. It's just mildly amusing and slightly scary and terrifically weird.
But that doesn't mean we have to stay here.
Oh no, it does not.

I think we shall eat our breakfast tomorrow at Ye Olde German Huddle House. Unless we want to go to the nice German bakery down the road where I feel certain we could get a good apple strudel or a schnitzel or a pork leg.

And then, if I have my way, we are OUT OF HERE! To where, I do not know and frankly, don't really care.
Just...god. Not Helen, Georgia.

Poor Helen. Whoever she was, I imagine she's rolling in her grave. Unless she really loved sauerkraut and very ugly glass figurines and Christmas stores open in July with plastic Santas out front.

Night-night, y'all. Or should I say, Gute Nacht?
Or, perhaps, more to the point: GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

Love...Ms. Moon

Albany, Georgia


We're in Albany, Georgia. It's nice here. At least at the Hilton Gardens.
There's a Ray Charles park right across from the hotel and I hope to take a picture of that before we go. Mr. Charles was born in Albany. I did not know that. I know he grew up in Greenville, FL, right down the road from Lloyd.
We still don't know where we're going and we're still not bothered by that at all. We're not getting on the big highways, though.
Last night at a convenience store we asked a man for directions. "Where you going?" he asked.
"We don't know!" we said.
He asked for spare change. I gave him some money and he thanked me and said, "Really? You don't know where you're going?"
We assured him we did not. He seem quite amazed that two people were riding around the state with no destination. He blessed us. We blessed him back.
Same thing happened when we got here to the hotel. The sweet, sweet lady at the desk asked where we were headed and again, we told her we did not know.
She too, acted as if she had never heard of such foolishness in her life.
But she sort of looked like maybe she'd like to come with us.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Birthday Overload

Okay. I now have THREE half-cakes in my house. THREE!
I have gotten to blow out candles on three cakes and make three wishes.
I'm good to go for another ten years. Wish-wise, at least.

No. Mr. Moon and I are not on the road yet. I just got back from more filming and Mr. Moon is on his way home from work. It's cool. I haven't finished packing yet and by the way- WHO TOOK MY BATHING SUIT???!!!
I am mystified.

And I have one more thing to say- I love acting. If that's what I'm doing. I'm not sure. I was watching two real actors today go through the process of finding their characters and motivation and stuff and I was like, "Wow! I've heard about that!"
Freddie tells me to do this, look like this, and I do it. Yippie! It's so much fun! I'm serious. I would do the same scene for hours and not mind it. It's so different from a play where you rehearse and rehearse and then perform and get all nervous and have to remember a jillion lines and so forth.
And Freddie brought me a birthday cake! He really did! And Marcy put candles on it and that was my third cake and third wish and it was another complete surprise. I mean- this person doesn't even know me. But he's obviously very, very sweet.
And we all sat around and ate cake and drank coffee (can you tell?) and talked about religion. It was AWESOME!

Well. I suppose I should go try to locate a bathing suit. We still don't know where we're going but I feel sure we'll end up somewhere. One generally does. As the card says, "Wherever you go, there you are."

I just hope it's cooler wherever we do end up than it is here.
Damn. I should have used that as my last candle-wish.
Oh well. Too late now.

I'll try to post from the road. You know I will.

A Good Day's Grace

Well, here I am after my walk on my fifty-sixth birthday and here I was last night at the Opera House with my hat on my head and Judy trying to steady the one on hers.

Marcy took that picture with her phone and I took the one above with my Mac.
So. Here it is and I've gotten so many sweet e-mails and some calls and I keep tearing up. I do. I don't know why but it's just almost impossible for me to accept sweetness on my own behalf.
I shall ponder that one today and maybe by the time I'm ninety-six I shall have figured it out.

I was born in El Paso, Texas, my daddy in the service, my mother giving birth to me in a Quonset hut of a military hospital and I feel certain that it was as hot then and there as it is today here in North Florida. There was a virus going around or an infection, in that hospital (I wonder if there was even air-conditioning?) and they sent her home after one day and also, they were trying out a new spinal drug for childbirth but they didn't give it to her until seconds before I was born and that makes me so sad.
Well.

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon died fifteen days before I was born and I like to think that maybe one tiny molecule of her essence found its way to my corporal being on that hot day just over the border between Mexico and Texas. Who knows? Who knows what birth and death truly mean and from what place we come or to what place we go or how the energy of what we call a soul is formed and focused, or dispersed, either one?

I have no idea but I do know that I've been on the planet as it has made its way around the sun fifty-six times and the view looks good from here. I look at Owen as he has just turned ten months old and I can't believe all that he has accomplished in that amount of time and then I step back and think of the fact that I have come so far as to be able to watch him make these giant baby-steps, my own grandson, just as I made them myself so long ago.
It's all whirling, this life. The earth turns daily, it makes its way across its orbit and the entire solar system flings itself through space and we hold on for dear life.

Dear life. That is what it is.
Made all the dearer by the ones we love, the ones who love us.
How I wish I could share some of my cakes with you. I have two now. Both delicious. Both perfection.

I wish I had something cosmic and profound to say right now to end this but I don't. It's my birthday but just another day in this life. And in its own way, perfection, as all of them are, even the ones we would never want to live through again.
But this is a happy one and even if my eyes seem to continue to well up over and over, it is just heart-leak, as I say, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Cake spoils after a few days but life just seems to get sweeter.
Isn't that something?
Isn't it all something?

Amen, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon


Tuesday, July 27, 2010

A Tiny Surprise Party Which Was Actually A Surprise!

I swear to god, I can be, as my friend Sue used to say, a funny little critter.

When I got to the Opera House tonight for a rehearsal I was very late as there'd been a wreck on the road into town and it held up traffic for quite awhile and anyway, when I came in the door I was quite shocked to see everyone already there, sitting in a circle wearing funny party hats.

What the fuck? I mean- I had no clue.

And there was a cake and cards and ice cream and even a present! For me!
The thought had never crossed my mind that they would do that, despite the fact that we celebrate everyone's birthdays at the Opera House and I have made a few of the cakes myself. And still- I was completely taken aback!
There were plates and napkins and the hats which all said, "Birthday Princess" on them and I was just so touched. I don't know the last time I felt like a birthday princess.
Ever?

Well. It was something and it's been a grand birthday week and the other night I told Mr. Moon that the party had been wonderful but all that fru-fra! Really? For me? And he said, "A lot of people love you and they just want to show you that."

It was somehow shocking to hear those words. I mean, in theory I know without a doubt that I am loved but in my heart, there is still that fat little girl who knows that the people at her party are only there for the cake and Kool-Aid. Really. I know because they treated me like shit at school and tormented me and then there they were at parties making nice and pinning the tail on the donkey.

Yep. Cake and Kool-Aid.

Which is not to say I haven't had some amazing birthdays. I truly have. My thirtieth birthday was the one where Mr. Moon made me a coconut cake from scratch and asked me to marry him. That was the best one, I would think. So good, in fact, that perhaps it ruined me for the rest of them. I mean really! They have to be downhill from there, right?

But my fortieth birthday was fine and fabulous too. My old friend Mary Lane from Jr. High came to visit and a bunch of us maybe or maybe not partook of some tea made from the local fungi and canoed on a lake at night and it was magical.

And last year? In Cozumel? Ah. We went out for supper, we danced, we went and got ice cream and drove home on the little scooter-bike through the island jungle to our precious, cozy little room on the water.
Hold on a moment. I'm closing my eyes and remembering how that felt, how it smelled as we drove through the hot, soft night beside the sea.
Yeah. It felt real good.

So I've had some good birthdays. I have had some GREAT birthdays.
And so far, this has been one too.

Tomorrow I hope to get up and take a walk and pack some things and then go for some filming and then come home and wait for Mr. Moon and then we'll get in the car and head up north and I think it's going to be just so much fun. It'll be hard to leave my loves behind. When Owen left today Lily said, "You might not see him for a week."
"Oh no," I said. "No way."

You know what he did today? I took my glasses off and he kissed my eyes. He put his little mouth up there and gave my eyes that open-mouth, full-on baby kiss and he let me tickle him with my eye-lashes and he loved it.
Now can I leave that behind for long?
No.

And Jessie's leaving for Colorado on Monday and I need to see Kathleen almost every day because I just do and there's the play and my chickens and my plants and my home. My home.
And my kids. Whom even if I don't get to see every day, I need to feel as if I could if I needed to. Close enough to get my arms around them, lay hands on them if they need that. Or if I do.

God. I feel like some old oak tree so firmly rooted that she can't move.

But I'm not. Not an oak tree at all. I do have roots but I can leave them behind for a few days and go off and have fun.
And I'm not a birthday princess either, but tonight I felt like one with all those sweet people singing to me.

Mmmph. Who knew that life could be so damn sweet at the age of almost-fifty-six?

Well. I'll see you on my birthday.
And you know what?
All of you- all of YOU- make me feel very loved and very supported and well, I can't even say how lucky I feel to have you in my life. The ones who leave comments and the ones who don't but come back to read almost every day.
I am as taken-aback by that as I was to see everyone wearing party hats tonight. Probably more so.
I never would have imagined.

Night, y'all. Thanks for everything. You have no idea how much I mean that.

Love...Mary

No. I Am Not On Facebook


Okay. I have a lot to talk about. Okay. Not really. But you know me. I can blab for days about anything.
But I need to clean up the areas which Hurricane Owen trashed and wash the breakfast dishes and finish the laundry and make the bed and get to rehearsal.
So.
I will say that I have had two people ask me if I was on Facebook today. One was a woman I have known for thirty-six years and she delivered two of my babies and I ran into her at the New Leaf which used to be the Food Coop. We used to do home births together back in the olden days and she played music in a band with my first husband and well, as you can tell, we go back a ways. She's gone through some hard times but she looks terrific and is taking care of her own grandchildren now. It was mighty fine to see her beautiful face.
But anyway, she asked me if I had a Facebook page and I told her that I did but now I don't.

The second person who asked me was Freddie who communicates via FB and I don't know what-all social media. Me he has to call. He could e-mail me, of course, but I don't think he likes e-mail. When he asked if I had a Facebook page I said that no, I did not because when I did, people whom I hated wanted to be my "friend," so I got off of it. I didn't even tell him I can't text. I suppose theoretically I could, but in reality, no I can't. Not on my phone, anyway.
"Well," he said, "I guess I'll just have to make a note to communicate with you some other way. You're special." He said that with a slightly ironic tone to his voice.

I wanted to say, "You have no idea," but I did not. Besides, we are all special in our own little special ways.

Okay, okay. Blah, blah, blah. I had a great time with Owen today. Can you tell?


Elvis, his rooster, always tries to go home with him. He literally gets in the car.
Then he gets under it.

I know how Elvis feels. I sort of want to do the same thing.

The World Really Wants It To Be My Birthday Today


Mr. Moon called me at eight-thirty this morning to wish me a happy birthday.
"It's not my birthday," I said. Then I went to the calender to make sure. Nope. It's tomorrow.

Then I got an e-mail from my dear friend K. wishing me a happy birthday.
"Not yet," I wrote him back.

And then MAY called me to wish me a happy birthday. I went to the calender again. I checked the date on my computer. Still not my birthday.
This is odd.

Listen- when you're my age, it's quite easily possible to think that you yourself have gotten the days wrong. But I really think that no, today is not my birthday.
Tomorrow.
But I'll take all good wishes and why not?

So it's not my birthday but tomorrow is. And I believe that Mr. Moon and I are going to take off on a little trip up north. Now, what that means, I do not know. We are vaguely talking about "the mountains," fantasizing that somewhere within driving distance there is a spot cooler than here. We have no agenda, no map, no plan.
Just...north.
Hoping for...cooler.

Life is busy here right now. Very, very busy and honestly, I think I just want a few days of sweetheart time, as Lis calls it. Time for the world to go away and leave nothing but me and my man. Even when it's just the two of us here there are always so many things to do and so many places to be we lose track of each other. We are loving, we are appreciative, but dammit, we need that time together.
I hope to read The Yearling to him as he drives. I hope we can listen to the new CD I ordered after hearing an interview with the musician on NPR. It's a good one. Pimps and Preachers by Paul Thorn. His lines enchant me. Plus, the art in the lyric booklet includes a bunch of chickens and a rooster who could be Elvis's twin brother. So you know I love him. Yeah. I want to listen to that as we drive.
And I want to stay in a motel and crank the AC down to zero and I want to eat breakfast at the Waffle House. Instead of smoothies with almonds and fruit and fat-free yogurt, I want eggs and bacon and fried potatoes.
And I want to hold that man's hand all day long if I feel like it. And stop along the way for coffee and maybe I'll wear a hat. Who knows? Who knows what Mary will want? I don't. She might wear a lot of jewelry. She might paint her eyelids in sparkly mermaid colors just for the day's driving.
I know she'll want to lay down beside that man at night in the cool refrigerated air of a room somewhere not at home next to the man who makes everyplace she's with him home.

So that's what we're going to do. Tomorrow. On my birthday.

And then, eventually, we'll turn around, head back south and come home where our chickens live and our grandson comes to visit and where my friends and family gather on the porches and in the kitchen and we'll be better off for having gone away.

That's the plan-with-no-plan but there's a lot to do before we leave and so here I go, off to do it. Off to do it although part of me is already on the road, heading north, looking for a cooler place to be, holding that man's hand.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Betty's Being Broody And Other Important News From Lloyd





When a hen is said to be broody, it means she's sitting on her eggs. Or, sometimes just sitting on an empty nest. Bless their little hen hearts, they can't fight their destiny and hormones and when it's time to sit on a nest, it's time to sit on a damn nest.
And so Miss Betty is. I don't think there's one egg underneath her but she's bravely sitting there in the dim heat of the hen house, patiently doing what God made chickens to do. Day in, day out.
Miss Betty is my favorite of all the hens because when she was young, our rooster Sam (who is now part of my very bones in that I ate him in a delicious dish of chicken and dumplings), used to peck at her head until she bled and I saved her life with golden seal and Neosporin. And oh yes, by asking Mr. Moon to kill Sam.
Which he did.
She wasn't broody last year but she sure is this year.
My friend K. sent me a book on raising chickens and I'm almost afraid to look at it. Every time I open it I learn something but what if I learn that I'm doing chickens all wrong? What if I get more information than I need?
Well. There can never be TMI, in my opinion, and I m going to read that book.
If I'm going to be a good chicken mama, I need to know what I'm doing although Mr. Moon and I have done pretty well so far with nothing more than our instincts and the internet and the advice of Kathleen who brought our chickens to us in the first place. She has two mama hens raising three peeps right now and I'll bet that's something to see.
"I Have Two Mothers," by The Three Little Chickens.
But still, there is something to be said for book learning.
Speaking of which, I got the results back from my homeschooling continuing education credits today and I did pass the Medical Errors course and also the course on Mindfulness Meditation and Psychology and I immediately went online and renewed my nursing license.
So there!
I am still a registered nurse in the state of Florida and although no one in their right mind would hire me as such, it's still a possibility, even if a mythical one, should the need arise.

To continue on in the book vein, Lily and I took Owen to Goodwill today to buy him some clothes because he's busting out of all of his and clothes at Goodwill are half price on Mondays from noon to eight. Lily found a few things while I toted Owen around trying to keep him happy. He was a little bit cranky but that's a man for you- unless you're shopping at Home Depot or Bass Pro World, they can't really be bothered.

Or, of course, the toy section of Target.

Anyway, after Lily found him some clothes, we checked out the children's book section and we both spent some money there. I found the Golden Books and that was about it for me. I have so many happy memories of my own Golden Books and of course my children's, too, and so I'm a sucker for a good copy of The Saggy Baggy Elephant or The Shy Little Kitten.

Don't even get me started on The Little Red Hen.
One of the very best things in the world about children is reading books to them. Owen likes books a lot and will look at them by himself and he likes to sit in my lap and let me show him the pictures of some books but his concentration time is fairly limited before he wants to start eating the book. I have great faith, though, that he will eventually learn to settle down and look at the pictures and listen to the stories.
He is, after all, my grandson.

I came home after our outing and Mr. Moon had already left to go to auction in Orlando and he actually has some car orders this week. He also has a tummy bug and I can't believe he got in a car and took off for a five-hour drive but that's Mr. Moon. He doesn't let something like a little old bout of the stomach flu slow him down. No sirree.
So the house was empty and I finished up the breakfast dishes, finally, and did the laundry and responded to comments (and if you don't come back and read my response to your comment then you are making Jesus cry- no, not really, but really? do you realize I mostly respond to your comments?) and watered the front porch plants


which is a Monday ritual for me. They are looking good, from the ferns to the coontie palm to the papyrus to the bird's nest fern to the philodendron to the whatever-the-hell I have growing out there. Begonias. Yes. Begonias. The babies of my plant world.
Eventually it will be cool enough for us to sit out there and enjoy the lushness.

I also headed a bunch of my phlox. About a month ago, Kathleen asked me if I'd ever done that. "No," I said. "I never even thought about it."
The phlox just bloom like crazy for awhile and then the blooms go away and that's it. But when she was coming over to spend the night a few weeks ago, I cut a few heads of the lovely purple flowers to put on her bedside table and this is what happened to the plants I cut them from:

Excuse me?
Do you see all of that new growth? Those are all going to be new bloom-heads. I think.
So tonight I went crazy and started cutting phlox blossoms and I brought them inside and put them in vases and here they are:


Or at least some of them.
Wow. Who knew? I get the joy of the flowers in my house AND new and continued blooming.
You learn something all the time.

So since I had my camera out I decided to try and take a few pictures of the banana spider on the side porch. This mama has gotten bigger than any spider I have ever personally seen. She is huge. She is the King Kong of Spiders.


The picture does not do her justice. Her abdomen is at least an inch thick. Babies will be showing up soon, I think. Mwa- I know you hate spiders but can you relate?
I think you can.

And then just to finish things off, I thought I'd give you this picture of a blooming phlox nestled up to a blooming Four-O'Clock. They are called that because they don't open until late afternoon.

This is just to illustrate the fact that no, even in nature some colors just do not go together.

So that's it. I have had an afternoon at home by myself with nothing that had to be done and so I have gone outside and checked out my flowers and watered my plants and done the things that keep me connected to my life. It's been a joy. Thank you for letting me share.
Thank-you for letting me be all broody and sitting on the eggs in my nest, which is really, when you think about it, what I am doing here tonight.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I'll go eat some pizza or maybe some hummus or maybe some left-over salad or hell, I don't know. But I am quite sure that I will eat some chocolate birthday cake and maybe, oh just maybe, some coffee ice cream.

Well. You can bet the ranch on that one if you want to know the truth.

It's my birthday week and I am celebrating in all the sweetest ways possible whether that means with Little Golden Books for my grandson or vases of flowers or chocolate cake or coffee ice cream or a call to a friend or sitting on my imaginary eggs.
My birthday will come and go and then the hurricane lilies will start to poke up overnight and Kathleen will start her treatments and her sister-friend Vicki will come to visit and it will be as hot as it is now and the phlox may re-bloom and we'll work on the play and Owen will walk with even more confidence and will begin to say more words and all of that will be the hatching of the eggs I am sitting on and have been sitting on for days and months and years and a lifetime.

There is something to be said for broody hens. They are protecting the very eggs from which life springs.

I guess I am one too. And am not ashamed to be one. And I am glad to have my sister-hens to help raise the babies which result. Because it takes a village to raise a child and it takes a lot of love to make a life.
Or to make a life worth living.

And thus, we sit on our nests.

Pictures From A Party


Oh Lord, Lord, Lord. It's been a weekend. I don't think I've ever had a busier weekend in my entire life. Not in recent memory, anyway.
And I need to run to town to baby sit my grandson so that his mama and Jessie can go to a movie and so I need to hurry but everyone has gone and I am taking this moment to sit down and come here and try to make some sense of it all- the whirlwind chaos of the past three days.
But I am a bit overwhelmed so I think I will mostly give you pictures.
And let me say that I haven't had a second to reply to comments or to visit other blogs but I will. I will catch up. I know I will. Right? I will.

It's all been wonderful but for me, such a creature of habit, such a woman so firmly entrenched in her routine (rut?) that I am truly looking forward to that. I miss you all so much.

Last night all the children came out and Billy and Shayla and Kathleen and Lon and Lis were here and it was a throw-down. Just a pure old throw-down. Beer and martinis and pizza and hummus and salad and a most amazing and delicious chocolate cake that Miss Jessie Moon made for her mama and decorated with all our beautiful old cake decorations.

Kathleen needed to go home before the cake part of the evening and so we cut a piece for her to take home and therefore it has a little smile in it, as May said. I was so glad she was here and she gifted me beautifully with Mexican glasses and a pitcher in swirly reds and also a scarf from Spain but my favorite was the card- it said, "Chicken Little: The Later Years," and Chicken Little is saying, "My breast is falling! My breast is falling!"
Well, exactly.

Here are my babies and my grand baby and me and some pizza and the beautiful irises Lis bought me. Am I the luckiest, luckiest woman on earth?
Yes. I am.

Owen, Jessie, Waylon (not yet sure about being here) and Billy.

Billy styled Owen's hair. He looked GOOD!

Owen getting Billy num-nums.

Billy told us the best joke. What to hear it?

What's the difference between a boner and a Corvette?......
I ain't got a Corvette.

It's all in the delivery so practice in front of a mirror before you attempt to tell it.

Here's me in the kitchen wearing my fabulous vintage-never-before-used egg-gathering apron which Lis gave me, pointing to the fabulous chicken potholder she also gave me on the fan hood of the stove.
Pioneer Woman: EAT YOUR HEART OUT!


Me and Lizzie kissing.
Wanda Sykes: EAT YOUR HEART OUT! (But seriously, Wanda- call me.)

The GORGEOUS ribbon magnolia hair ornament that Lis made for me. My hair was messy but made beautiful nonetheless. Interested? Go to Lis's site, which is Mon Amie Ribbonerie
where you will find the very definition of charming.

And then of course

What did I wish for?
More.
That's all.
Just more of it all.
And Owen and I blew out every candle (and there were not fifty-six but enough to get the job done) on one easy go. Do you see me keeping him from grabbing fire?

And my birthday isn't even for two more days.
Dang.
It's been some year. At one point last night we looked around at the babies and the toys and them walking and crawling and playing together and I said, "This time last year, they weren't even born yet!"
And it was amazing.

Life. There is just no stopping it.
It was such a good weekend for celebrating that fact. I am still reeling and now...must run.

LOVE!...Ms. Moon

P.S. For more pictures and a different perspective, go to Tallyhassle, Hank's blog.
Love you, boy!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Your Batshit Crazy Sunday Sermon. Get It While It's Hot.

It's Sunday morning at the Church of the Batshit Crazy and Lis has gone to town to drop Lon off and we're going to go to Costco later on to buy pizzas to fix up and bake for tonight and it's so hot and I had terrible dreams.

Yeah. Normal Sunday here.

I keep reading in the paper about how the Tea Partiers are REALLY, REALLY fed up with how the liberals are taking their country away from them and stepping all over the Constitution and there are even chapters of RV Tea Partiers.
I love the idea of them getting their way and taxes being cut like crazy so that they don't have decent roads to drive their gas-hogging RV's on around the country while stopping along their journeys to meet and bitch about the government and talk about how decent health care is going to destroy the country.

I have to ask again- WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE?

Are they, as it would appear, just a bunch of dimwit shitheads who deep down are merely racists? Are they just people who are truly afraid of change?
Are they ignorant assholes?

I don't know.

I don't even know what they want but I sure wish they'd spoken up when GW was president because it seemed to me that he punched holes all in the constitution and used the litter as confetti to throw in the eyes of the people, calling it a Parade for America.
Or something like that.
Yes. I am still angry. I'm still angry at GW and I'm angry at us liberals for being so fucking polite that we let him get away with it and that we're still so fucking polite we're standing back and letting people like Glenn Beck say whatever he wants, no matter how incendiary and ridiculous he is.
I suppose it has something to do with liberals believing in free speech and not just when that speech is about something we believe in.
Still. I'm pissed.

It's probably just the heat. In a few hours it'll be so hot that I won't have enough energy to give a shit and that's sad, too, I suppose but it's just the truth.

And I get to see Owen and all the kids tonight and I'll feel better about the world then. Things make so much more sense when I have my kids and the grandson around. Or maybe they don't make any more sense but I just don't care as much. I am a person who would far rather deal with diapers and chickens than The Big Picture but someone has to take out the trash. Someone has to dance with the babies. Someone has to gather the eggs.
Here I am, raising my hand to volunteer for all of that.

Glenn Beck is good at wrapping himself in the flag and posing for pictures. I'm not. Plus, it's too damn hot to wrap myself in anything.

All right. Well. I'm done.

Let's all remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Whatever that means to you. I hope it means something fun.

And perhaps involves bacon.

Love...Ms. Moon

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Here We Are



Oh, darlin's, what a weekend it's been. And it's only Saturday night.
I am three days and one hour away from turning fifty-six and you know what? I did things today I have never done in my life. I have felt things I've never felt in my life.
And it has been good.
I got home from the Opera House last night (and I did not spill one thing on any person whatsoever at all) around nine-thirty and Lon and Lis got in a few moments later. And at that point, we all decided that it would be a good idea to crank up the martini shaker. See picture above.
And so we did. And it was fine, thus sayeth the Lord.
We had a great time and I was in bed by midnight but woke up around four a.m. and realized that no, it had not been such a great idea, especially maybe the second martini. I didn't get back to sleep until around six and got up around eight only to realize that I had to GET IN THE CAR AND DRIVE LON TO A MIXING GIG HE HAD TO DO IN TALLAHASSEE, which I did, and then Lis and I got a bagel and some coffee and headed over to FC Rabbath's house for some rehearsal. Mr. Rabbath is having printer problems and there were only three scripts for about seven of us, and none of us knew what we were doing but it was so much fun, rehearsing for a movie that none of us had any idea whatsoever was going on in (and I know now that Freddy is reading this blog and so HEY! FREDDIE! IT WAS AWESOME!) and as I said, Natasha came out and took me over and that met with approval.
After a few hours of rehearsal, Lis and I came home and ate some stuffed peppers and I scrambled around in my closet trying to find something for Natasha to wear. It was ridiculous but I did end up wearing the original Natasha high heels and that was good.
Back in the car and down the road to Marcy's house where filming was going on and somehow, it all happened and I did what I was supposed to do. And Freddie was actually filming two short movies at once and he asked me to step in and play another part for the other movie, which I did, and by the time I got home, I was somewhat soaring.
You know what? It's not that I think I'm the world's greatest actress because I know I am not. And I am fifty-five years old (for three more days and thirty-seven minutes) and I don't have one fucking thing to lose. I am not trying to make it as an actress. I am not an actress. Actor. Whatever. And I was surrounded by people with HUGE talent who have lots of experience and training and I know that and I'm not even trying to compete, I'm just having fun.
"Do this, be that, step here, wait two beats, there you go. Action."
God, it was fun.
My Natasha character got killed. I was going to be dead in a scene and the murderers were going to drag me across the yard but it started raining so that scene got canceled.
I was so disappointed. Oh well.

I found out that Freddie (HEY! FREDDIE!) is only twenty-three years old and that his shorts have won awards and that he was a translator in the Marines and I looked at him and I said, "Oh, you are such a baby and look at all you've done!" I hope he didn't take it the wrong way. I am seriously impressed.

And then he was finished with me and I came home and got ready to go to the Mockingbird and Mr. Moon and I drove to town and it was such a lovely night. Billy and Shayla and Waylon were there and Ms. Petit Fleur and her husband their son, Harley, who could not stop dancing. And we ate delicious foods and had another martini and I got to visit with May and the music was wonderful and on the way home, the almost-full moon followed us all the way. When we got back to the house I went out and closed up the chickens and took this picture of our traveling companion:


And now I might take my second shower of the day and go to bed. I have a rehearsal tomorrow afternoon and Lon and Lis are staying tomorrow night too and I think the kids are going to come out and maybe we'll eat cake. For Kathleen. Whom I hope will be here too.

And I just feel so good. I did something today which should have been, could have been very stressful but instead just felt as comfortable as lying down on a couch covered with down pillows.

Look. My face and body are falling apart and I ache everywhere and I'm at least ten pounds heavier than I wish I were but you know what? I don't care. Today I felt like my age was working for me.
Tomorrow I may feel differently about it all but tonight, that's how I feel under this almost-full moon.

And I'm so glad I could write about it. Could put it down so that I'll remember. Three days and twenty-one minutes before I turn fifty-six, I am as happy as I can be with where I am which is in a tiny village in North Florida in a house I love where I live with a man I love and people I love are visiting here and I got to hear them make music tonight and tomorrow I'll see more friends and my grandson.
And eat cake.

Yeah. It's good.


I am wearing my great-grandmother's tiny pearls around my neck, my old, wrinkled neck, and they are laying on my old sun-spotted chest and I am as content as I can be with this life, this time of this life, and all that it is in it and the people I am sharing it with.
And I have to say that Kathleen and her cancer has already taught me some things about enjoying it all and being comfortable in who I am. How strange to say that a dear friend's cancer has made my soul float freer but it has.
I would trade her good health for my not learning this lesson in a heartbeat but I can't do that. And I am not one to find meaning in everything that happens. I am just reporting what I am learning.

Three days and six minutes. I'll be fifty-six years old.
I feel like an old dog learning new tricks.
Roll over. Play dead. Oh wait. It's raining. Get up. Don't play dead. We'll shoot something else.

It's all fine with me. Here we are and ain't that something?
Ain't that something?
Yes. I think it is.

Natasha


She
is BACK!

I have no idea what I'm doing but when I went over to Mr. Rabbath's house for rehearsal this morning, Natasha pushed aside everyone else and made her presence known.
Mr. Rabbath immediately changed my character's name from Ashley to Natasha.
And now it is time to go be filmed. Maybe.
I am definitely NOT ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.