Peaceful Sunday Night

Another rehearsal and I was made painfully aware that I am going to have to study lines in Mexico. Yes. Seriously. I HAVE to. There is no way for this old brain to cram lines. It can't be done. It is a process. A slow, painful process.
Well, I made the choice. And it will be fine. It can't possibly be as hard as Steel Magnolias, right? Of course not! Except that it's a 90-page play and there are only four of us in it. No, no, it's going to be fine. Just FINE! I can do this! And it's good for me. Good for the old brain to have to flex and stretch. Yep! I'm not worried one little tiny bit.

(Help!)

I got out the old sewing machine today and did some mending that I've been putting off for years. Quite literally. And tomorrow, I hope to make Owen's name blanket for Christmas. I have made all of my children blankets with their names on them and now it is Owen's turn. He picked out dinosaur flannel. I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to go see my lady in Monticello too, to get my hair trimmed. See? It's all working out lovely.
Now. If I just don't ruin my hair with the L'Oreal color I bought. Jesus. Why did I do that? Because it costs about a hundred dollars to get it done by a professional and the L'Oreal hair dye cost $7.50. Kathleen offered to come help me. I should let her. I used to do it all the time back in the olden days. But I'm not as brave as I used to be.

I had a friend once, an African American woman who asked me why all the white women she knew kept on dying their hair blond even into their older age. I thought about it for a moment and then I said, "Because so many of us WERE blond as children and we think of ourselves as blond always and so, we just make it happen."

She said, "That makes sense." But I think she thought it was pretty ridiculous. Well, it is. But women of all races do ridiculous things to our hair to conform to some ideal of beauty. Let's face it.

Well, I'm not going to go into THAT rant. I just want lighter hair for my trip. Ain't no sin. Ain't no sin at all.

And that's about the biggest thing on my mind tonight. I've been thinking about Keith Richards all day long. It's Brad Pitt's birthday too! He's forty-eight. And Stephen Spielberg's as well. He is sixty-five. My, my. December 18 must be a fortuitous day on which to be born.

All right. I'm going to go make ground-venison meatloaf and bake some potatoes. Sounds like a fine cold-night dinner to me. Mr. Moon just cut all his hair off and he looks like a different man and so I'll be dining with a stranger. Not really. He's so handsome. A guwt-lookin' man, as we sometimes say around here in Lloyd where driving home tonight I saw folks standing out and talking in their yards, saw the sun crazy-beautiful in the west, saw orange leaves shining like copper and gold in the setting sun as I drove that curvy black-ribbon road to where I live, to where the chickens were pecking their last morsels before bed, to where home is, to this place I love to call home.