I Can't Possibly Title This

I ate that pork chop last night AND half a sweet potato AND some green beans and they were good. Especially the pork chop.
God, I love the pig. I feel bad about the way they raise pigs on factory farms. I do. I wish we raised our own pigs. Humanely and so forth.
Not enough to do it, though.
My first husband and I raised a pig once. It was a terrible experience. She got huge. I mean, as big as a hippopotamus and she'd get out of her pen and come stand by the steps of our little trailer and terrorize my children. I was afraid she'd knock the trailer off its blocks, rubbing her itchy back on it. We called her Pigosaurus. When it finally came time to take the nasty critter to the killing shed, we couldn't get her onto the back of the truck. Every time we'd throw a rope around her head, she'd fall over squealing in what sounded like death throes. What did we know? We were hippies. We'd traded a car for a truck and a pig. We couldn't get the pig on the truck. It became an amusement to try and get that pig on that truck. Every time a guy or guys came over they'd go out and try to get the pig on the truck. Finally a group of guys girded their pig-rasstlin' loins and hauled that pig up the ramp successfully. She was driven away and came back wrapped in white paper in the form of hams and chops and so forth. I didn't feel bad at all about eating her. She'd been a torment to me and insisted on wallowing in her poop, even though her pen was plenty big enough to avoid it and she'd poop in her water for no reason that I could see although maybe she had a reason- I don't know much about swine behavior and never have.
I had grown up on a book called Clarence The Clean Pig and it was not highly informative as to real pigs and the foulness and hugeness of their poops.

Anyway, that's why I don't raise pigs.

And knowing all that I do know about pigs, I shouldn't even want to eat them but I can't help it. I do. I can't and won't buy a ham to bake because I would eat it all to the bone, every scrap and morsel, all by myself, a ham as big as a Volkswagen, I would eat it, and then I would cook the bone with beans and eat them. Oh yes, I would. As it is, I don't use any pork in my beans or greens as good old lady Southern cooks are supposed to do. I have learned to enjoy them cooked without any pig at all but I tell you what- when I do eat beans or greens which have been cooked with bacon or with ham or with smoked hocks, I moan in pleasure, I swoon in ecstasy.
I realize I have been fooling myself about not missing the pig in the vegetable.
But. What is one going to do?
I hear that lard is making a comeback and if we still spent our days tilling the fields and milking the cows and busting rocks it would be fine to eat lard but we don't and it isn't.
Ah. We are so dainty now with our work-outs and our olive oil.

We're all going to die anyway.

Lily and Jason and the boys are already in Jacksonville. Lily has been sending me pictures.
Here are two of Gibson:

He is just starting to eat puffs which are a baby-version of a cereal and I think he looks like a baby bird, opening his mouth to get one. He kisses that way, too. When he wants kisses, he opens that bird mouth just that wide and thrusts his face towards the face he wants to kiss. He is a joy, that boy and I could kiss him all day long.

Here's Owen, already hot and sweaty, studying the map with his Aunt Kelly, Lily's best friend.

I know he's my grandson but isn't he beautiful? Isn't he just purely beautiful?

Well, I need to get busy. I am going to go take my mother to the eye doctor today. They took her yesterday for an injection for her macular degeneration and although these treatments have saved her vision, they are becoming increasingly apt to give her side-effects and I hear that this morning her eye is swollen shut and very painful and needs attention. This will be my mission today.

But first, two more things.

That guy who set the grass on fire accidentally while trying to stage a protest at General Mills because he didn't like their pro-gay stance? He died! Oh my god. Not in a fire.
Article here. 
I guess that whole thing wasn't a fake. And I would not wish his death. He was foolish and inept but at least he just set some grass on fire. He didn't take a gun and shoot anyone.

And finally, this:

Go here to read the article.

As I told Mr. Moon last night when I saw the pictures from the article, Bill Clinton's face always showed exactly what he was feeling. And it obviously still does. There is something so human about that man. He feels joy and as cliched as it sounds by now, he did indeed feel your pain.

How rare and marvelous in a politician!

Good morning.

Love...Ms. Moon