Word

We've had another really fine day. We went to the Early Girl Cafe for breakfast because the last time I was there, which was three years ago I think, the bacon was so good that I've never forgotten it. 

Hey! Bacon is important!

And it tasted just as good today as I remembered it. It was local bacon, of course. And that pig must have been a mighty healthy, happy Asheville pig right up until the moment it was slain for my benefit, which, I'm sorry but thank-you, pig. 

We did some more shopping and visited Vergil at his office. We walked and walked and then we went and got Greta and walked to a farmer's market where we bought heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers and goat cheese with jalapeños and a loaf of artisan bread and everybody was so sweet and the young women are strong-looking and beautiful and the young men are just darling. DARLING!

You know what? I am falling prey to the Cult of Asheville. I don't have the strength to resist it anymore. I'm not even rolling my eyes anymore every time I see the words "local" or "in-house" or "on-site." I am just digging it. When we were eating breakfast this morning a family came in and sat down and an old long-gray-haired grandfather held his darling little infant granddaughter who was plump and jolly and all dressed in pink and I just cried. Just cried. I am loving the kids with dreads and tattoos and sweet smiles and the hippie-hipster blend of it all and I am just too tired and stoned on endorphins from walking up and down hills to summon up much cynicism about any of it. Yes, it takes a real sense of first world entitlement to mention that the tap water in the coffee shop is filtered but so the fuck what?

It's all pretty darn lovely. 

Tonight Vergil has circus band practice for the VOLUNTEER CIRCUS and so Jessie and May and Greta and I are having a night in. We're going to eat frozen pizza with all sorts of lovely things added on and we're having a little cocktail and "Bull Durham" is on the TV. Yes. I just watched it. It bears repeating. Over and over again. I bought an enamel-ware pot with a lid today for my kitchen compost at home and somewhere very nearby someone is singing and playing guitar. 

There was a sweet old couple at the farmer's market today playing guitars and singing and I put two bucks in the tip jar. There was a woman wearing her baby on her back in a sling and I asked if I could pat that baby's butt and she said I could and I did and then we hiked on back to Jessie's house with our heirloom tomatoes past all the houses with blooming flowers in the yard and it's just been a real good day. 

I feel so lucky. I can still feel that sweet plump roundness of that sturdy little boy's butt through the fabric of the sling he was so securely held in on his redheaded mama's butt. 

Lucky in Asheville, lucky in life. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Happy

The high point of the film for me last night was from a performance Springsteen did just last year at the Hyde Park festival in Great Britain. Before the rest of the band came onstage he stood up there and with just piano accompaniment, sang "Thunder Road," my favorite of all his songs. He probably wrote the song when he was in his young twenties and now he's sixty-three which makes it a completely different song and it was powerful and gorgeous and that alone was worth the price of admission to me. 

Well. Music. 

By the grace of it, I am still here. 

It's raining in Asheville this morning and I'm not sure what we're going to do. We walk everywhere. Of course I didn't bring an umbrella. There are so many crazy-good shops and galleries here. It's not ALL breweries and coffee shops, you know. We're waiting for Jessie to call to plan our day. We slept late this morning. I'm finally truly relaxed enough into it here to enjoy myself which means we'll be leaving soon. 

Sigh. 

The people-watching in Asheville is excellent. I could just sit and watch the hipsters and street people and older people all day long and be happy. Sitting right here on the balcony of the condo I just saw a woman with silver white hair pulled back into a sort of ponytail that hung to her knees. One thing I really do love about Asheville is the way that no one feels compelled to dress "appropriately." Not for age or anything. Which is very cool. 

And speaking of cool, it is today. The sweet, gentle rain bringing cool air. It's a beautiful day. And I ain't a beauty but hey, I'm all right. 

I need to pick out my costume for the day. Jessie's on her way over. 

Love to all...Ms. Moon

Wow

I am quite aware that Bruce Springsteen is not God nor even a god but...

Well, he might be a little Demi-god. 

That was fabulous. I cried a lot. It was very fine. 

Here are some pictures from today. It's been a good one. 

Okay. That's all lunch. Sorry. Hold on. 

That'll do.  

Sleep well, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Anticipation

We're sitting in the theater waiting for the Springsteen documentary to start and I'm so excited that I should really be embarrassed. 

But I'm not. 

Further

Jessie is working today so May and I are on our own. We've walked downtown and are having coffee now. I asked Siri to show me the coffee places in our vicinity and she gave me fifteen options within a .3 mile radius. None of them Starbucks. You could literally swing a cat and hit five or six places. This is the one we hit with the cat first. 

We didn't really swing a cat. 

We used a dog. 

Just kidding. 

More later. 

Much love from your intrepid reporter and world traveler...Ms. Moon

Ashville is completely eat up with breweries. These are über-cool places that make their own beers. Pilsners and IPA's and wheat beers and blah-de-blah beers and the gleaming stainless steel tanks rise to the ceilings of old repurposed warehouses and so forth and it's all so awesome and impressive and even on a Monday evening there are folks galore at the breweries, older folks and younger folks and hippies and hipsters and hikers and bikers and the dreaded and the tatted and the pierced and their dogs. And they are all cooler than me. 

But here's what strikes me- breweries are bars. Say what you will, folks are not coming to sip the crafted offerings for taste alone. They, meaning me, are there to drink. Yes, we are all drinking in a civilized and locally crafted manner and many of us are wearing cowboy boots in a sort-of ironic manner and no one is getting overtly soused or obnoxious and well, it's sort of really cool and a little odd. 

And I'm on vacation so fuck it.

Here are Jessie and May at a brewery. 

As you can see, it's got a bunch of cool ironwork going on. I think it was called The Wedge. We hung out there while Vergil took Greta to her puppy training class. She's such a sweet and smart puppy. 

i llike her very much. She is calm but curious, obedient yet sparky. She is already a fine companion to Jessie and Vergil. 

As you can see, Vergil is still looking at Jessie with sweet concentration. Can you believe they are husband and wife? I still have a hard time believing it. 

You may have noticed that I'm not posting pictures of myself lately. I'll be honest with you. I am so gravely shocked at what I look like these days that I just can't bring myself to do it. The aging is proceeding at warp speed, it seems to me, and add to that the scabbing and oozing spots on my forehead and I am having a hard time dealing with the physical reality of my own being and I realize I'm going to have to come to terms with it or face some sort of denial-based mental breakdown but I'm going to have to do this in my own space and time. 

I will say that my hair looks great! 

I suppose that's something. 

Anyway, it's almost midnight and it's time to sleep. Not sure what tomorrow will hold but it'll be lovely, I'm sure. I'm glad I'm here although I have to admit that I miss my home fiercely. And all that the word "home" means. But Jessie and Vergil and May mean home as much as walls and floors do, if not more. And Greta the smart dog. 

Goodnight, y'all. I am hoping this moon shines down on all whom I love, wherever they are. 

Let's get good sleep. May our dreams be as hoppy and yeasty, as crafted and cool as the offerings at an Asheville brewery. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Asheville Days

Jessie and May and I have been walking around downtown Asheville, doing a little shopping, being all groovy and shit like the locals (haha! as if- oh wait- Jessie IS a local) and now we've collected my grand dog and we're about to go find some healthy LOCAL food for our lunch. Seeing as how we're in Asheville that will be no problem. 

Two pictures. One of a very cool water feature beside a business and one of Jessie and Vergil's house. With Jessie, Greta, and May's elbow. 

Asheville

We made it. We laughed so much, May and I, that the hours (approximately 48 of them) flew by. 

Here they are, my sweeties. 

Happy birthday to me. 

I just got off the phone with May and I also spoke to Jessie and we are all so excited but it is occurring to me how much I am going to miss Lily and those boys. Hank, too, but we often go for days without seeing each other whereas I see Lily several times a week and yesterday when I told her and Owen and Gibson goodbye I pretended like I would see them today, before I left, but of course that did not happen and it is tugging at my heart so much.

Packing was easy as pie. I have traveled so much in the past year that it took me all of fifteen minutes but now I'm doing the little stuff- reminding myself to bring my hormones, my Benadryl, my almonds and coffee and the Keith Richards autobiography on CD as well as my Rolling Stones collection so that if, in the book, Keith talks about a certain song and how he came to write it or how he got a certain sound, we can stop the book and listen to the song and won't that be awesome? I think so. Who knows? May and I may not listen to it at all or we may listen a lot. Doesn't matter. We are going on a road trip and we shall do as we please, which is the very essence of an America Road Trip- this road or that? This route or the other? Stop here or stop there? In the end, it won't matter and we'll get there when we get there and we have people who love us at our destination and a grand place to stay which even has a Jacuzzi tub and a kitchen where one night, I am going to make tomato pies and arugula salad.

And even though I honestly keep forgetting that tomorrow is my birthday, the fact of the matter is, it is, and it will be the first of my birthdays of my entire life that my mother is not alive and I am okay with that. Every birthday, I would dread talking to her but of course I had to- she was the one who gave me life. Without her, there would have been no birthday. When I was in Asheville for my birthday two years ago I talked to her and I will never forget what she said which was, "Happy birthday to my first baby. Who lived."
Which. No. Did not make me feel good and all I could think about was her having a stillbirth full-term child and a miscarriage before I was born and all of that sorrow and what could I do but laugh a little uncomfortably and try, in my heart, to be understanding but it was hard, as the image of death and blood had been handed to me so easily, as if on a silver tray for my birthday.
But tomorrow, I will not have to have that call which could always go so horribly wrong and I will be on the road with May and if the Jesus y Maria taqueria in Omega, Georgia is open, we shall stop and have frijoles and tortillas and salsa and grapefruit sodas and we shall stop wherever we want to stop and I shall eat M&M's if I want and believe me, knowing me and May we shall stop for coffee and peeing about every forty-five minutes.

A good birthday for me because I do like my birthday, I just don't want anyone to make a big deal out of it. I can make it within my own self.

Lon and Lis are in Sopchoppy, Florida tonight, playing, and Mr. Moon is on his lawn mower, loving it, and I am going to go figure out something to make us for supper.
I am going to miss him.
And it is odd- he is always the one who leaves while I stay behind and I worry. Will he figure out what to eat and will he get his laundry done and oh, hell, he'll probably have a great time, playing poker on his phone into the wee hours but I will miss him. He is the other half of the sky for me.

So. Tomorrow I turn 59 years old and I feel every moment of it and at the same time,  I feel like a little girl and I feel like life is passing so quickly and that we never, ever know what is around the next bend and that can be either incredibly exciting or horribly frightening and it can be both at the same time and I will wake up on my birthday with my husband beside me and Lon and Lis here and then May will come and we will load up the car with our clothes, our pillows, our excitement/anxiety/anticipation/Keith Richards autobiography/appetites/thirsts/electronic devices and their chargers and everything else we think we shall need and probably a few things we won't need and we will head north and I will be 59 and I better make supper now and this place I live and my grandsons and my other daughter and my son and my husband and my chickens will be here when I get back.

What a life. What a fucking incredible life in its own quiet way.

Amen.

Addendum

Okay. Mostly it worked.
Y'all might have to forgive me a few glitches until I figure this all out.

Thanks for your patience.

Keyboard Test Post

All right. I got my keyboard synced with my iPad and it appears to be working fine. It

s a bluetooth thing and I say that as if I knew how in hell that works but I have no idea and if you do, don't even bother to try and explain. I'll just be happy to accept it all as magic.

So. Words. Picture. Blog.

Let's see if the magic works. 

Birthday Weekend, Travel Countdown Edition

Good morning! Lon and Lis are here and we went out to see them play last night and so you know what this means- it's almost noon and we stayed up until 2:30 in the morning and I'm slowly making biscuits and eggs and grits and sausage.

Yep. That's what it means.

There is no one else in this world I would drink martinis with at midnight.

Okay. That might be a lie but as a general rule, pretty much.

So hello and I'm alive and supposedly I'm leaving for Asheville tomorrow. I talked to May and so far we've both bought travel sizes of mouthwash in preparation.
Period.
I am a little worried that on this trip we are going to find out that we are not mother and daughter but actually, in some weird quantum physics way that we can't understand, the exact same person.

Okay. Time to put the biscuits in the oven.

Love...Ms. Moon

Did You Think I'd Forget?

It's Sir Mick's 70th birthday.
Dear god. Miracles abound and we are the richer for it.
Happy Birthday, old boy, you Brenda, you!

Test Post

First post from the iPad. 

Appropriate, no?

Gibson, fifteen months old. 

And Owen has already started up the Rolling Stones on the CD player. 

Rock and roll! 

Friday morning, 7:15 a.m.

Sweet. 

Friday Early Morning

My boys are coming very soon and it is early morning, the sun just beginning to be bright enough to give some color to the grass, everything else still shadowed black and white. Lovely-eerie.
The roosters crow.
Lon and Lis are coming in today and my house- well, there will be clean sheets and towels but my standards have slipped incredibly when it comes to tidiness and cleanliness. I merely trust they will love me, even if there is grit on the floor, even if toys are not all in their places, even if there is clutter. Just as my standards of my own appearance have slipped. I have crusting craters on my face and I can't believe that everywhere I go (and even that I dare to go anywhere!) people don't ask me what in hell happened to my face.
Only the sweet old Indian lady who works at Publix has asked me. I told her, she nodded.
So what?
Little children still smile at me and when I smile back and say, "Hello!" they wave.
That is good enough.

Early morning and no, I didn't get enough sleep but it'll do. It'll be fine. I'll show Owen and Gibson the little baby chick if her mother will let us see her. She is a protective mother, that Mrs. Baby, of her one remaining chick-child. It is a funny thing to see them scratch together in the dirt, both so determined and skilled at this activity.

Good morning from Lloyd. I think of all of us, sipping our coffee, our tea, waking up or getting ready for bed, depending on where it is on this great blue planet you live. Let us take this day to love and be loved, to tend and to be cared for. To ignore the grit on the floor if there is someone to be hugged, to be changed, to be amused, to dance in the hallway with.

Good morning.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Big Enough

Being, as I am, the luckiest woman in the world, I received an early birthday present today- an iPad mini with a cover/keyboard which means that technically speaking (haha!) I can now blog from anywhere in the world which gets cellphone reception. Which is amazingly awesome for me. I mean, I can and do blog from my phone but really? That's a bit difficult.

So of course right now I'm in Techno-Hell, trying to figure everything out. Not with the iPad. That is just like an iPhone, only bigger so I'm zipping along with that, setting up things, downloading the apps I need, familiarizing myself with everything and loving it so far. No, the problem I'm having is with the keyboard cover which is NOT an Apple product. It came with a very small instruction book which to my mind is completely inadequate. And although I am following directions to charge it (and of course the iPad came fully charged because Apple is awesome) it does not seem to be charging and the power button does not seem to be working and Mr. Moon may be taking that back for me tomorrow as I have the boys.

I remember when I got my first computer which was probably about the worst Mac ever made but it suited me fine and I learned how to use it with the help of a Mac's For Dummies and for about a week I was obsessed to the point where I actually lost weight and every time I get a new device, I seem to go through the same obsession (although no longer is any weight-loss associated with it) and it makes me anxious but not the same kind of anxious as I was talking about this morning so, perhaps, it's a good thing, who knows? Not me. Using anxiety to fight anxiety makes no sense but neither does using fire to fight fire and they do that all the time.

The sweet lady who was our saleslady at the Verizon store sat me down to explain the iPad to me and I think she was expecting me to be a complete idiot and I wasn't. I am proud of that. But hell- like I said, if you can operate an iPhone, the iPad just isn't that difficult. I even showed her something she didn't know about the iPhone which I discovered completely by accident last week. When taking a photo on the iPhone (and on the iPad, I have discovered), you don't have to press the little camera icon at the bottom of the screen. No, you can take that picture by pushing on either of the buttons on the side which control volume.
The lady was amazed! AMAZED I tell you! And I felt like a genius. An Apple genius.

Anyway, it's after eight o'clock, Mr. Moon has gone to Lake City to buy a lawnmower and if that sounds a bit odd to you, well, you just don't know my husband. So I think I'll go heat up some soup and let it all be for awhile. I just checked that damn keyboard cover again and it's not charging. I think the charging port is fucked up but what do I know? I just know it's not working and that's crap.

I want to thank all of you so much for the sweet and precious words you left me today on my earlier post. I think that so many of us go through the same things and we shouldn't feel all alone and we shouldn't feel that we are weak or flawed in any way. We are human beings and we are doing the best we can and here we are, holding each others' hands saying, "I know, me too."

Nothing could be better than that.

I thank my lucky stars for this community. And I thank my husband for buying me the devices I need to be a part of it. And I'd like to send a special shout-out to Owen who, when my hip was in his way while he was trying to unlatch his seatbelt today said, "Mer, you quite a big woman."
Which made me laugh so hard.
I felt like Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. A little bit. I may not be quite traditionally built, as is Precious, but I suppose I am big enough. Still small enough, though, to sit wedged between my boys in their car seats in the back of Lily's van and there I will sit until Owen gets tired of me being there. Which will happen way sooner than me getting too large or not nimble enough, I feel. He's growing up so fast.

Okay. Stop, Mary. Just stop! Go eat some soup!

Love, love, LOVE...Ms. Moon

This Time Of Year Has Its Perils

Five years ago I lost my mind at this time of year. I suddenly and without warning began to experience anxiety which, I realize now, I had always experienced but this was different in many ways including duration and intensity, meaning, I was in a state of unrelenting panic every waking moment for weeks and weeks which stretched into months.
I had only had two other times in my life which even came near this experience and both of them were directly related to external and very real circumstances but this time, there was no correlating event, simply a battle between two parts of my mind and thus, there was no way to win.
Both parts were me.
Now there had been stressors leading up to this but just life stuff. We talk about the perfect storm and I think perhaps this was a case of that. The life stuff (and some of it fairly intense) combined with plummeting estrogen and who-knows-what-else? to create this...insanity.

I can only call it that.

After trying fruitlessly to combat or come through it on my own with exercise and diet and meditation and every other thing they say to do, I went and got medication which helped and eventually, I got on a form of natural hormones which I think may have helped more than anything and I am no longer on the medication and have not been for several years and mostly, I am okay in the sense that I can live my life without the panic although I think I will probably always carry traces of the anxiety around with me. It is who I am and may well stem from a traumatic childhood as so many of these things do but, I can live with it.

But sometimes, that panic returns and this time of year it usually does. The body holds anniversaries with cellular memory, even if we do not consciously think of them. And so it is that as my birthday approaches, the panic creeps back in and so it has. And as it creeps, as it begins to form and take shape in my mind and in my body, I always have the fear that it will be as it was five years ago and take over entirely again and I will be left in that place of no-hope and fight-or-flight.
I do not really think that will happen but it is a fear. I admit it.

I woke up with it today, not a level 10, by any means, but an uncomfortable 6, say. But not fully bloomed. Not with all of the elements involved and for that I am grateful.

I have taken my walk and exercise does help. I take my natural hormones. I get good sleep. Perhaps too much but I have always loved sleep and needed more of it than many and I am old enough to realize that this, too, is part of who I am and I do not fight it or berate myself for it. I take of much of it as I need which I can take.

I know that this has been a year of extremes. Deaths and marriages, mostly, and far more traveling than I am accustomed to or feel comfort with. And as I write this, I am getting ready to leave for Asheville to visit my youngest daughter and my oldest daughter will be traveling with me and I know that the trip will be a joy and I can't wait and yet...of course I am anxious.

Well. As Matt Haig said, writing can help. When I had the horrible time, five years ago, I never quite quit writing. Even as I felt my most frantic, I wrote. Sometimes not too much because to truly write about what was going on sounded and felt too extreme and panicky and of course I didn't want to really worry the people I loved, even as I knew I desperately needed them.
It was a fine line and crazy people are not so good at those. BUT, I came through it, I am still here, and I am still writing and it is still part of my soul-salvation.

As is sleep, as is friendship, as is reading, as is cooking, as is exercise, as are my chickens. All of these and most especially, love, are the antidotes to the irrational thoughts which anxiety brings.

So thank-you, for your part in my difficult times and in my joyous ones too. Even as I isolate myself sometimes (which is a symptom AND a contributing factor), I never feel alone. And am able, eventually to push through or wait patiently, and come out the other side. Experience has proven this to be true and I write it down and send it out to remind myself, the universe, and perhaps you.

And now I am going to go to town and I will see my grandsons and their very presence fills up too much space in me for the anxiety to be in control and overall, I do not feel so bad. Not so bad at all.

As Always...Ms. Moon

It has turned out to be another dark, rainy day interspersed with bright patches of sun which come quickly and unexpectedly and which are then swallowed by the clouds again.
I slept very hard for about forty-five minutes and I finished reading that Matt Haig book. The Humans. I'm not sure if it was a really good book or just a book which suited me in this time and place in my life. Either way, or maybe a bit of both, I enjoyed it and I will remember it which these days is saying a lot.
In an afterword note, the author wrote that the idea came for this story when he was in a period of acute anxiety and panic and that one of the few things which helped him control these things was reading and also writing. Perhaps that is why it touched me the way it did- I, too, have experienced those same vibrational disturbances. It felt, the book did, like an attempt to explain them and breathe them into reassuring control. I think he succeeded on more than one level. For me, at least.

Beyond that, I have moved slowly back and forth across the house, washing sheets and rugs and sweeping, doing a little cleaning and tidying. Not much. But some.

I am cooking a supper of a quiche with a grated potato crust. I have steamed the broccoli and will cook the peppers and onions and mushrooms and tomatoes to go in it and I will bake it and it will be good, the eggs all so fresh and we are spoiled there.

Buster has been quiet too, moving even more slowly than I have been, but up and walking, all the same.

Mr. Moon has replaced the rusted handle on the screen door. It will be strange, I think, to reach for that familiar handle and find a different one. There are so many tiny small objects in our lives which we never even think about but which we touch and use daily without thought, our fingers knowing them like the faces of lovers.

It has been a quiet day and a slow one. A resting day, neither good nor bad. One of the days of my life, this very human life, and I am simply grateful for it and all that it has held, neither good nor bad but with elements of it all and I can not and will not ask for more.

Update

The ocular thing passed before I was completely blinded which I think is good although now my head just feels like a wad of gray cotton which is swollen a little more than it should be.
If gray cotton should be in your head at all which I'm fairly certain it should not be.

I have no energy. It got soaked up into the gray cotton.

I gave Buster some tuna juice. You know, that stuff in the tuna can which is not the tuna. He drank it and then got up and walked to the Glen Den and laid back down on the rug. I think he has something called Old Dog Vestibular Disease. I'm pretty sure my mother had this too, although it wasn't called that because she was an old human and not an old dog. Something similar, anyway. I shall probably get it too.

I want to scratch my face off. I want to scrub it with apricot shells. I want skin again. I put some magical comfrey creme on it. It hasn't done anything magical yet.

The baby chicken is still dead.

I'm going to go put some laundry in the dryer and then I am going to go lay down and feel the weight of the world settle in on my body as it wants to do sometimes, as if it were the world's biggest dog and needs a cozy place to rest. This reminds me of a quote I just read over at Syd's which is this:

"Joy and sorrow are inseparable...together they come and when one sits alone with you...remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."
Kahlil Gibran

I'm not usually a big quote person (for instance, I read one today on Facebook that it took all my will not to comment on saying, "Bullshit!")  but I've been thinking about that concept for awhile now and I think it's pretty true.

Maybe.

Maybe sometimes just when you feel the most sorrowful, joy is in the process of waking up, stretching and opening her eyes, straightening out her pink silk nightie, getting ready to take her shift with you.

It's nice to think about anyway, isn't it?

Which is almost enough sometimes, until the real thing comes along.

Much love...Ms. Moon

Well, Let's See...

The little yellow chick died in the night, Buster the dog seems to have lost the ability to walk and I'm getting another ocular migraine.

This day is not shaping up very well so far.

Penises And Other Topics

My face is becoming an oozing mess. Lis can't come to Asheville with us. The handle on my kitchen screen door has rusted through. Anthony Weiner can't quit texting pictures of his penis to young women. Republican lawmakers continue to try and make laws concerning what women can and cannot do with their own bodies when they, the lawmakers, obviously have no idea whatsoever how those bodies actually work. AND PEOPLE ARE BEING HATEFUL ABOUT THE ROYAL BABY! IT'S A BABY! A TINY, INNOCENT LITTLE CHILD WHO COULDN'T HELP BEING BORN THIRD IN LINE TO THE THRONE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Is it obvious yet that I really don't have much to say tonight?
(But truthfully, if I were Anthony Weiner's wife, I'd cut his wiener off which would be a public service and I'm not kidding, my door handle did rust through and honestly, my face is disgusting and I swear to you that these Republican lawmakers should SHUT THE FUCK UP OR ELSE TAKE A CLASS IN BIOLOGY, and honest to god- leave that poor baby alone. Can you imagine the postpartum depression that his poor mother will probably go through? )
One more thing:
Restaurant employees need to keep their penises off the food. If men feel compelled to touch food with their penises, they can touch all their own food in the privacy of their own homes they want to but not at work, okay?

Now. As your reward for having to sit through this rant, I give you this.

Tiny tree frog eating a moth. Isn't he cute? 

Oh. And I'm really depressed that Lis can't come to Asheville but I don't want to talk about it. 

Life goes on and quite frankly, I'm pretty happy I don't have a penis and also that when I gave my birth to my children, no one really cared except the people who loved me.

Night, y'all.

Mrs. Baby is holding her children under her wings this morning but I can hear them and the little dark one had his head poking out for a second which was about the cutest darn thing I have ever seen in my life.

Looks like rain again but I got my walk in and it was a good walk, my feet fueled by what I was listening to which was a Stephen King short story and I may have even (possibly) yelped a little in surprise and shock at certain passages. Say what you will about Mr. King, the man can tell a story and keep you on the edge of your seat and make the miles pass quickly.

So. I just found out that there was a screening of the new Bruce Springsteen documentary here in Tallahassee last night and boy, am I pissed that I didn't know that. For those of you who have only known me for awhile, you may think that my one and only rock-and-roll obsession is Keith Richards but that is far from true and I have been in love with the Boss since I saw him in 1979 (I think) in Jacksonville, Florida, and I was wearing a purple dress and I was aware that this man, well, that boy actually, was deserving and more of all the hype which had been going on about him and which had made me disdainful (the new Bob Dylan? I don't think so, I thought) and I had never seen energy like that in any sense of the word in my life and I will love him through eternity.
So yes, I wanted to see the movie, I want to see the movie and I will see the movie.

Here's the trailer.




Maybe it'll be showing in Asheville while I'm there and I'll force everyone to go see it with me.
Reason to live, baby. Reason to live.

But I have plenty of reason to live, actually, and do not feel particularly crazy today and am going to town to meet my Hank for lunch.

I need to pick green beans and I need to make sourdough bread and I need to do laundry and I need to take a shower and I have two new dresses and my husband will be home tonight and next week I'll be visiting my Jessie and her Vergil and I'll be with Lis and May in the incredibly and indescribably hipster-cool town of Asheville, North Carolina and I think we're having a party for Billy and Shayla on the Sunday after I get back, and well, you know, life is pretty sweet at this moment in time.
I just gathered two warm eggs and nine ripe figs.
I couldn't feel richer if rubies were falling from the sky.


Happy Tuesday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

For Small Creatures Such As We

The baby chicks survived the storm quite well and when I went out to check on them when I got back from town, they were under their mama's feathers like children beneath a mother's skirts and that always makes me smile. Such a protected place, completely invisible and one would think, so very warm and soft.
Mr. Moon brought home baby-food for chickens, or as it is called, Chick Starter/Grower and I took some out and spread it around and left more in a little dish for them. The yellow one was trying to make an escape, it appeared, walking around the perimeter of the coop but Mr. Moon placed chicken wire there to prevent such a thing back last year when we had the other babies. I see her mama in her, this little yellow one, not in appearance, but in the desire not to be kept in by man-made boundaries. Or, of course, she could be a rooster. Some people say you can sex a chicken (i.e. determine its gender) when it is a baby but in my experience, the only true way is to be patient and wait to see if it crows or lays eggs which is the definitive method in my opinion. The more I think about having a tiny Elvis, the more charmed I am but I cannot afford to get too attached to these babies. I just can't.

I had a good time in town with Lily and the boys although Owen was in a mood. He refused to eat more than a few bites of pizza at the place we went where they make your pizza to order and the whole-wheat crust must indeed be whole-wheat and not fake whole-wheat because, as I said to Lily, eating it sort of makes you wish you were eating the white flour crust. It's fine, it's good, it has to be at least a little bit healthier and so we choose it. As if eating whole-wheat pizza crust is going to keep us alive forever. We went to the library and to Publix as well and then I stopped by Costco on my way home for vitamins and frozen blueberries and barely beat my husband back to the house. He is going to auction and so I made his snack bag and his coffee drink and his popcorn and kissed him good-bye and washed the dishes and finished the laundry and now it is six-thirty at night.
I am not cooking salmon tonight. I could not care less about what I eat tonight and have no energy to cook anyway. I actually bought some sort of "all-natural" chicken pot pie (I am such a hypocrite) but I don't know if I'll eat that or not. It may be "natural" but it has plenty of calories and fat and it may well be that it's the chemicals that make frozen chicken pot pies so delicious anyway.
We'll see.
I am not a food snob. To add to last night's post about restaurants, let me just say that one of my most memorable meals ever in my life came from Hardee's and consisted of two pieces of fried chicken and a biscuit. I will think about that supper on my death bed and I will be glad I ate it. I like food that tastes like it's supposed to taste but what I don't like is when restaurants tell you what the chef has prepared in terms like "aged balsamic-infused golden raisins" and then to eat the salad those raisins are in and to find it bitter and not in a good way, like an arugula-way which is a fantastic bitter that I never grow tired of. The best food we ate in Apalachicola was a tray of oysters baked with crab and parmesan cheese and they were so good that after I ate the oysters from their shells I tipped the shells up and swallowed the liquid. The liquor of them. They were perfect. If Mr. Moon and I do build our house down there and live there, I hope to eat lots of delicious seafood, and most of it caught or harvested by my husband and cooked by me. I will cook it simply and let the freshness and flavor of it be its glory and yes, I will use balsamic vinegar but I doubt I'll be infusing anything which makes me think of nursing school, that term. Infusion. 

And so it has been another day on this planet. I tickled my grandson's face with my hair and I made him laugh and I was shocked and delighted when my other grandson figured out what his mother and I were talking about when we spelled words out because we didn't WANT him to know what we were talking about and how can he have done that? Owen is still not quite clear on the difference between letters and numbers and yet, suddenly, he seems to be grasping phonetics and I guess it's like with Gibson who doesn't say a whole lot but who seems to understand about fifty percent of what WE are saying and who any day now, will start spouting language like a pro.
(Does it bother me that he can and does frequently say "Boppa" referring to his grandfather and yet hardly ever says anything even resembling MerMer? Not really. Okay. A little. But I love the way he says Boppa. I love how he loves his grandfather.)

The human brain is (not to put too fine a point on it) amazing and watching how it develops in my grandchildren is a continual wonder and delight.

Here.

That's Mrs. Baby and the yellow chick. I am assuming the black one is huddled under her wings. The chicks are peeping in their high, loud voices and Baby is crooning comforting nightsongs to them. I can't help but think of the new heir to the throne in Great Britain, safely born and hopefully snuggled into his mother's breast now.

We are animals. We love and want to protect and sooth our babies if nothing has interfered with that process. We do the best we can. We are completely blessed with our ability to love and be loved.

Here is a Carl Sagan quote which was delivered to me via Matt Haig's The Humans:

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."

I think that says everything I am feeling tonight.

And I am honoring love in its many forms, even the ones we can't begin to grasp in our infinite smallness, even with what we are convinced are our amazing brains.

This, That, And The Fucking Other

God. What a morning. It's only elevenish and I feel like I've lived four different days already.

It is pouring rain and lightening and cracking thunder so close the house shakes with it. I can feel it in my feet, the windows rattle. We've had so much rain that there's standing water everywhere. I took a walk and the ground was just plain damn soggy. Squish, squish on the dirt paths. And the air is so heavy with moisture that it's a bit like trying to breathe underwater.
Well. Florida. And by god- the aquifer is getting refilled and for that and that alone, I would be grateful.

Chicken news- okay, Mrs. Baby is the little black hen who eats sometimes at the bird feeder because she can fly. The third hatchling died yesterday and I feel terrible and guilty because in a way, it was my fault. Baby was ignoring her completely and Mr. Moon and I had her in the little off-the-ground shelter in the pot where she'd hatched and was drying out (this is a process) and we were so STUPID and put a waterer in there and she got out of the pot and crawled to the water and she drowned. All this while Glen and I were debating going and getting her, bringing her in the house and putting her in a box with a lamp because of Baby's ignoring her.
So.
I'm not only not a good chicken mama, I'm a chicken killer.
Live and fucking learn. I guess. But as of an hour ago, the other two little puffballs were completely alive and following their mother around the coop, scratching and picking at whatever they could find. I hope in this rain she has taken them to shelter. I've had enough with drowned chickens for this week, at least.

Can I say that I am very glad that at this moment at least part of the world is a little obsessed with a woman having a baby? I hope all the best for Kate Middleton and her child and I hope that she does indeed get the natural birth she wants. As I would wish for all women. And I would wish that every day the news was about women having babies which were wanted and desired and hoped for and planned for and which, once born, would be cherished and protected and honored.
That would beat the shit out of what the news is mostly about.

On to another subject. I am reading a book called The Humans by Matt Haig. I had never read anything by Mr. Haig and I am enjoying the book. I looked him up, as we do, and he has a website and a blog and I am enjoying that too. He wrote a thing about depression on it and I think it's as good as anything I've read recently on the subject. You can find that here, if you would like to read it. I am adding him to my Feedly Reader. Because I FUCKING WELL NEED ANOTHER BLOG TO READ.

Oh well.

Here's one more thing I wanted to say before I take a shower and get to town to go to the store and the library with Lily and the boys. It is this- I am eternally grateful to the internet for the way in which it has enriched my life. Sure, yes, sometimes I think we all overdo it and it drives me crazy to see people, everywhere I go, glued to their tiny devices and I do it too. BUT, this very morning I have been able to "talk" to people whom I actually and truly do care about a great deal, sharing worries and concern and offering and receiving reassurance and information.
Not to mention being able to access information about authors, musicians, actors (who IS that guy who played blah-blah-blah in that movie?) chickens, recipes, and anything else I can wonder about.
And I can find pictures like this.

Pioneers in Central Florida near Orlando probably in the mid-nineteenth century. I am fascinated with the sort of people who braved the snakes, the jungles, the heat, the bugs, the malaria, the bears, the panthers, the hurricanes, the...well, every damn thing in the world except mountains, to make a home in Florida before roads, electricity, air conditioning, DEET, and Publix. 

They are heros to me. 

So okay. Was all of that scattered and random enough?

Happy Monday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. I do not have a recipe for sweet potato biscuits. I just make them. The ingredients are self-rising flour, shortening, baking soda, a little brown sugar, buttermilk and mashed baked sweet potato. 

Does that help at all? Probably not. I am sorry. 

I Love To Cook

Because we ate our meals in restaurants all weekend and none of them made me very happy except for the oysters, I'm just going to say this- I'm a damn good cook.
And tonight I'm cooking some grouper that my husband caught, some okra that my friend Tom grew along with canned tomatoes (yes) and peppers and onions, sweet potato biscuits, brown rice with vegetables, and a salad of greens, our tomatoes, avocados, onion, lime juice, salt and mayonnaise.

It is going to be awesome.

I swear. I feel like I should sit down with some of the chefs who cooked our dinners this weekend and say, "Honey, let me tell you...this is how you do it."

And that's as braggy and ego-y as Ms. Moon is ever going to get.

But I will admit freely that it is very nice to go and eat a supper that someone else cooked and not worry about cleaning up. Worth the price of the meal.

Almost.

The frustration of a tasteless mango salsa on a piece of grouper that was obviously old and previously frozen was enough to make me pissed off. And to call a piece of Key Lime pie the best in the world when really, it was just skinny and skimpy in its girth really, really made me mad.

But still. I appreciate the effort.

Addendum

Well, somehow the little yellow chick which had gone missing reappeared during the rain storm and at this point, all three babies and Mrs. Baby are in the coop where there are shelters galore for them.
As well as the unhatched eggs. So we shall see.
The problem is that we are meddlers, we humans, and we want to DO something. This, of course, is what has led to the complete over-medicalization of childbirth and does no one any good and certainly not chickens. So we're trying to let things be, having provided safe shelter, food and water.

Isn't this exciting?

Also, I have done a little research and it would appear that standard chickens can mate with banties. I would be thrilled beyond belief to have a miniature replica of Elvis running around. Now wouldn't that just be lovely?

New Additions In Lloyd

Got a message and calls from Hank last night that I needed to call Taylor at the house. Taylor, our dear friend, was housesitting so of course Mr. Moon and I were worried, sitting at the Grill, sipping our Meyer's and Coke, waiting for our oysters baked with pico de gallo.

I called the house and Taylor answered and she was giddy. Miss Baby, whom I had not seen for a week, at least, indeed had been sitting on eggs and indeed, had obviously had some sex with a rooster because there were suddenly two puffs of baby chicks AND Miss Baby (although I think we shall call her Mrs. Baby now) and well, howdy! new ones!

They were all in the pump house the whole time, Baby and the eggs and so there was nothing for Taylor to do but be happy and she was. When she got up this morning, though, only one of the chicks was to be found. Damn. The heartbreak. Something obviously snatched it in the night.

But as soon as we pulled up this afternoon we discovered where the eggs were and darn if another one wasn't in the process of hatching and as it stands right this second, Baby is with her one child and ignoring the plaintive peeps of the second and our plan, our HUMAN PLAN is to move them all, including the unhatched eggs and newest chick into the coop where there is already a chick shelter and hopefully, at least one may survive.

But as soon as we started to put the plan into place, the sky ripped open and rain began to pour and Baby huddled back into the pump house with chick One and as soon as it stops raining, we shall somehow catch Baby who is going to fight like the feral banty she is and take her and the children and the eggs over to the coop and hope for the very best. Everything in this world loves to eat a baby chicken and that's just the truth. The dangers are myriad and lethal. And last year, when we lost so many, we learned a few lessons. One of them is not to get too attached, the other is to keep the chicks where they are protected from larger animals and hawks and owls, at least.

Stay tuned.

And The Birds Have Taken Shelter

I am sitting on that porch you can see, second floor of the Gibson Inn and 

the rain is pouring down and the wind is blowing the water, the trees, and I am wearing a new dress I bought today which is as gray as the sky and soft. 

All we have done today is eat and sleep and shopped a little bit. 

Great gulps of sleep as this rain has poured down, the river and bay and ground receiving the water, us receiving the rest. 

Water

It is what I am drawn to. 

Short, Not Entirely Sweet

Okay. Owen spent the night due to a long-story's worth of events and all is well and he is a great sleeping buddy, never even moving all night long on the magically comfortable bed and he's still asleep and I need to shower and pack and the people who bought the Airstream are coming at ten and my face looks like a battle zone due to the dermatological crap I'm putting on it and it's almost to the point where small children are going to take one look at me and scream and run, and not just Waylon, either.

But. You know.
I'm feeling cheerful and excited about the little trip with my husband and we're staying at the Gibson Inn and I'll be sending blogettes from the road.

I think that's about it.

I have a LOT more to say but no time. I WILL say that pRick Scott, our governor, is refusing to call a special session to repeal Stand Your Ground but he has offered to make Sunday a day of prayer.
Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Not Sure If I've Ever Done This Before

But. Damn. This commercial just makes me laugh.

Maybe you have to be Southern. I do not know but I am and I like it.

Disclaimer: This is definitely not an endorsement of the product although a sip of Southern Comfort can be a very fine thing, driving through the dark piney woods of Georgia with a tall handsome man in a convertible on a late summer's night with the moon shining above. 
Maybe. 
I would imagine.

Quiet morning and I can't wake up. Coffee, coffee, not enough, too much, doesn't matter, isn't helping. Believe it or not, I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. Maybe a tiny bit of PTSD? Like, one grain of sand on a beach of the real thing. Still, enough to make my body hum at a level not conducive to sleep for quite awhile. Once I fell, though, I fell to the very bottom of that dark well.
And now I can't seem to climb myself back out.

Mr. Moon and I may run away this weekend to Apalachicola. I am happy about that. Maybe this time we'll stay on the river and that would be nice.

That's what you see when you drive over the bridge into Apalachicola. 

Yes. 

A weekend away would be nice.

And next weekend, on Sunday, my birthday, I'll be getting in a car with my Lis and my May and we'll be making the long drive up to Asheville to visit Jessie and Vergil. Can you believe that? 

Today, though, I am at home. I think I will mop my kitchen simply because my feet want to feel a clean floor. And do laundry. Of course. Are we breathing? Laundry must be done.

I need to take a walk. I am not awake. I've been up a very long time and I am still not awake. I am between places and states of consciousness. I am in Apalachicola, I am in Asheville, I am in a car on a bridge over a river of dreams. I let polished rubies pass through my fingers like rosary beads, I float down a silver stream of forgetfulness. I sit on a beach and watch the eternal movement and breath of the planet. I watch silver fishes flash, boats with hand-painted names drift at dock, pterodactyl pelicans bump the water, open mouthed and rise with fishes captured in improbable beaks. I wake, I sleep, I rise slowly through mist and green water towards light. 

Somedays it is easy to believe it is all a dream. 

Tired Yet Blessed

The green beans are really just starting to come on and we are still getting the cherry tomatoes and the peppers and tonight I'm going to make another salad of tomato and basil and if I ever get tired of that, well, it's simply time for me to go on, die, be done with this earth and all of its magnificent joys and troubles.

Speaking of troubles, I spent a good part of the day in my bedroom, going through everything and I discovered where the rat got in (and yes, according to its poop, it was a rat, forget that mouse theory) and it's the same place the rat got in a few years ago and you may be sure that the hole is now patched. It was not nearly as bad as it was a few years ago when I went through the closet where the hole was and discovered an entire rat domicile, its kitchen, its dining area, its sleeping quarters, its bathroom. Which, I have to say, was removed from the rest of the areas.
Anyway, none of that today, just some random poop and oh yes, I realized that I have so many beautiful clothes and shoes and wear none of them, ever. The clothes are too small for me mostly but the shoes still fit and yet, do I ever, ever put on the gold mules? The Donald Pliner suede sandals? The darling little red sandals with kitten heals?
Oh hell no.
And there they sit, cluttering up the universe, growing moldy, sad and neglected.

I did throw away a bag full of stuff that no one will ever use again and that felt good. It always does but it's never enough.

Britain has legalized gay marriage and Queen Elizabeth has given her official (and completely unnecessary, I guess) stamp of approval and Three Cheers For The Brits!!!
We're being so clumsy about it here in the states, aren't we? This state says yes, that state no. And the Supreme Court is going to have to weigh in on this and take care of matters. It's completely illogical that a man and a woman can get married in a two-minute, last-minute ceremony anywhere in the nation and have it be completely legal in all fifty states with all rights and entitlements accorded to marriage under our laws but if a man and a man or a woman and a woman gets legally married in California, the state of Florida will not recognize such union as a legal one.
No. That will not stand and eventually, it will change but oh, we are so stubborn with our holy State's Rights and no, don't get me started on God and Guns and Gays.
I'm too tired and not in the mood.

I just want to make some clam spaghetti and that salad and sit down and eat with my husband and watch some stupid TV or maybe some good TV. We finished watching the Lewis And Clark program on PBS last night and it was a stunning series.

A couple is here to look at the Airstream to maybe buy to fix up and they just wanted to look at the house, as people do sometimes. I would, if I had never seen it before. I so often wonder what people think when they come into my house. I have so many madonnas and Mr. Moon has his deer heads and we must appear to be as crazy as we, in fact, are. And it seems to me that every month our decor becomes more and more child-centered. Toys in every room, kid books and trikes and entire shelves, even in the kitchen, devoted to things for the boys.
Oh well.
This is what it is. This is how we live. I'm not sure I'd know what to do if I lived in a house with no sign of children about it.

Well. Let's eat and let's all sleep well tonight. Perhaps we shall dream of dancing in golden slippers wearing our old favorite dresses or perhaps we shall dream of picking green beans, their leaves on our bare shoulders sticky and scratchy as we pass under them to reach up and pluck the beans or perhaps we shall dream of Queen Elizabeth, giving her royal approval to more freedom in her country. I do not know. I only hope that we do sleep, that we do dream sweetly and that Mr. Rat dances somewhere else, his clumsy crashing feet far away from my bed.

Too Much Nature, Part Ten Million

Last night, I had a hard time falling asleep and to make things worse, every time I got to that sweet, slightly hallucinatory sleepy drugged place, what I thought was Buster bumping our bedroom door kept bringing me back to full-on consciousness. He's been sleeping right outside our door and I've put a rug down for him because he's old and if that's where he wants to spend his last days (or more likely, years) then that's fine with me. But the sound was annoying me so I got up and moved him and the rug away from the door. He didn't even wake up. Neither did Mr. Moon who was sleeping as soundly as a brick.

I went back to bed. The sounds continued. I felt like something had run across my hand. I heard bumping sounds, I heard what I SWEAR was the tiny tinkling of a bell. Somewhere nearby. More bumping sounds. Mr. Moon not waking up. Me on hyper-alert mode, sleep not even an option. Finally, a crashing sound. I mean a CRASH! Still, my husband did not even stir. Was the man even alive? I shook him awake.
"Baby, I'm sorry but there's something in this room."
I honestly thought it was a bat because I definitely heard something crashing into what I thought was the glass shade on an antique oil lamp on the mantle and then right after that, crash into what sounded like my vanity. You know the sound, the timbre of the wood of your own furniture and to me this sounded like my vanity.

Mr. Moon came awake, groggily and slowly. "What?"
I explained again. Something. Flying around. In the room. Crashing into things.
I turned on my light. He turned on his light.
"I see it," he said. "A rat."
"A RAT???!!!"
"No, no. " He corrected himself. "No. It's just a mouse. Just a mouse."

He got out of bed. He went and got the broom. He beat the broom about and tried to flush the rat/mouse out into the open where he could do something about it. The rat/mouse was wily and did not become flushed. We decided to just try and go back to sleep. I was not afraid of a mouse or a rat and by now it was almost two o'clock. Surely...sleep would come.

Mr. Moon fell back asleep instantly. He was so tired. The sounds began again. Finally, another crash, this one so loud it woke my husband. Again he tried to locate the vermin. No luck. We decided to move back into the old bedroom. This required toting pillows, the fans, the alarm clock, unplugging, replugging, resetting, resettling.

Then my poison ivy began to itch. I tried to ignore it. I couldn't. I scratched so hard I almost bled. It was like heaven. Is there ANYTHING that feels better than scratching poison ivy? For a little while. Then the pain. And the itching continues.
God no.
Yes.
And then...AND THEN! I started to hear little bumping noises in that room too. Perhaps the smaller sister of the rat/mouse who is obviously now living in the old bedroom.
I didn't even bother to wake up my husband. What good would it have done? I got out of bed and gingerly and carefully made my way to the kitchen where at three a.m. I took a Bendadryl, ate a yogurt and read an article in the New Yorker.
Three a.m. and I doubt I'd had ten minutes sleep all night.

I again made my way cautiously back through the house and got back into the bed and finally, I slept.

I swear to you, if I didn't love this place so damn much I'd hate it.

I took a walk this morning despite my lack of sleep, my Benadryl hangover. I saw a beautiful fox in a field. I observed him and he observed me. He let me take his picture from far away.

Can you see him? Or maybe her.
I wish that fox had followed me home. He (or she) could dine nicely on my vermin. On my rats or mice or whatever they are. When I tried to get Mr. Moon to explain to me how in the world such a small creature as a mouse could make such a noise, he admitted that perhaps it had been a rat. A small one, though. Was he wearing steel-toed boots? Was he jumping from mantle to vanity? Was there, in fact, a rat/mouse AND a bat?

I am not thinking clearly today. I know that I must, absolutely HAVE to, get in that room and clean it top to bottom. Both closets, the the beautiful hand-made-by-my-husband cradle which is filled with diapers and baby blankets and stuffed animals. The little doll beds which Glen's daddy made where there are more blankets and stuffed animals. Indeed, one of them right now is the stand-in for a hospital where Owen left an ailing chimpanzee and a baby doll when he left the other day. "They're sick," he told me. "They have diarrhea. You take care of them." When he left he gave me further instructions. "If you smell poop, change they diapers."

So yes, all of that must be gone through and cleaned out and I don't know what. I don't know. Should I go get Lily's mellow old cat, Bogart, and bring him here to see if he'll hunt? Should I get a snake? A snake would eat the mice. Or rats. But what about the bats? And then...well, there's a snake.

Should I move?

I can't even take a nap until I've gotten that room cleaned out.

Let me say this- whatever the outcome of my cleaning today is, I WILL be taking Benadryl before I go to bed tonight.

And that's the news from Lloyd, Florida, on a Wednesday afternoon in the summer of 2013. It's not important news and it's not news that you can probably use but it is my news.

Love...Ms. Moon

This Good Day

Here's what I do not understand- why it is that some days are just too bloody hard for absolutely no apparent reason and then a few days later, one is made perfectly happy and satisfied with life simply by remembering when one is in the grocery store that one is almost out of espresso and buys it.

Really. Why?

I do not know. But so it is.

I went with Lily and the boys to Owen's dentist today. He had a check-up and I went along to take care of Gibson. Lily takes Owen (and will take Gibson) to the same office where I took her and her sisters and brother when they were young and it is a pediatric dentist office and now the son of the dentist who took care of my children is the main guy there. And so it goes. But my Lord! The office has expanded and completely redecorated and there is a play room complete with every sort of fantastical undersea motif and toys and walls and carpet and there are bean bag chairs and Super Hero pillows, huge and soft, and books to read and a flat-screen TV with some sort of children's programming on it and there was even one of those Keurig coffee makers for the grown-ups to use (I chose the Paul Newman Robust blend, thank-you very much) and all I could think of was how, when I was a child you were the luckiest kid on earth if the dentist's office had a copy of National Geographic to look at before you were called back. Not to mention that the only sort of refreshment offered was the peppermint rinse at the end of the procedure which you swished around your mouth and then spat into the whirling water of the tiny white porcelain sink sitting beside the chair. And dammit, I still miss those tiny white sinks and I hate the saliva sucker, I do.

Anyway, it was a short and lovely time at the dentist's and Gibson and I played while Owen let the hygienist clean his teeth and he was very brave and got to choose a tiny toy and a sticker and was presented with a most colorful and cheerful toothbrush when it was all over.

For this we rewarded him with a trip to Target for a toy. Yes. I know. But still.

(Question: Why are the giant Target balls no longer red?)

We went to a different Target than the one we usually go to and Owen knew we were not taking the normal path to Target. "How do people remember directions?" he asked us. 

Lily and I looked at each other and laughed because we are the wrong people to ask, forgetting, as we do, the directions to many places all the time. 

But it was a great question and we answered it the best we could. 

After Target we went to lunch where Lily and I could get sushi and Owen and Gibson could get noodles. 

Owen got his own seat right beside the fish tank and although it took forever for the kitchen to rustle up a plain bowl of noodles, he played happily with his new dinosaur and watched the fish while his mother and brother and I ate sushi like it was about to disappear from the planet forever. 

Another grandmother came in with her granddaughter, the girl perhaps about five or six and the grandmother was very stylishly dressed and youthfully coiffed and wore an armful of golden bracelets and drank wine with her lunch. The child was extremely quiet and well-behaved and ate her lunch quietly and it seemed that everyone there knew her and her grandmother who rather made me feel like an extremely inferior sort of grandmother although I had put earrings on before I left the house.

And a sort of bra. 

There may have even been ice cream after lunch and when I dropped everyone off at their house, Owen hugged me good and told me that he loved me. So I guess that even though I am not a stylish wine-with-lunch grandmother, I will do and I am glad. 

And that was my day and it was as perfect a day as I can imagine even in its complete ordinariness. Now my husband is home and I am cooking green beans from the garden (which I am still not tired of) and chicken and carrots and other delicious things and I have talked to May and gathered four lovely eggs. It has rained some and I remembered to buy espresso. There. That is enough. 

One more thing- have you visited this site? We Are Not Trayvon Martin? 

Please. Just go although if you are like me, you may end up doing what I did last night which was to read and read and read and read before I slept. 

It gave me some peace. 

Much love...Ms. Moon

There Was A Wedding Yesterday

Yesterday Billy and Shayla got married in California. And yes, they were already married. They got married in my backyard at your standard wedding eight years ago with all of the relatives and all of the friends and a tent for eating and lots of food and drinks and a DJ and a Best Man and a Maid of Honor and a friend of a cousin named Fancy Nancy who pole-danced wearing short-alls to the bug-eyed astonishment of all.

That wedding was as real as cake but it wasn't legal. Because Billy wasn't yet officially Billy, but still had a name that was uh, feminine, and I remember one of older country relatives, dressed in his Church-going JC Penny's suit saying, "Well now, that was just like a real wedding."
"It was a real wedding," I said. "But it won't help when it's time to get insurance."

And now they can. Get insurance together. Because in California, these two people who have been together for ten years and married for eight and who have a child and a house and a mortgage and two jobs and who are the best people and parents you can imagine and who are beloved and dedicated and in love and committed- well, in California, that sort of thing is recognized no matter what your birth certificate says as to your sex or gender and they will really and truly with Official Documents and everything, let you marry the one you love.

And so it is.

When Billy met Shayla a decade ago, he told a friend of his, "Someday, that woman is going to make someone a good wife." Pause. "And when I say someone, I mean me."

Truer words were never said.

Shayla's a little huffy about having to jump through hoops to have her marriage legally recognized but, as she said, she did just get to have another wedding in San Francisco and she even wore flowers in her hair. Her beautiful red hair. And I think that the picture tells it all. And it makes me cry because they are so damn beautiful. They are who they are and they are married for each other and for good and for their son and mostly, for love.

That's my good news. These are my good people.

Legal as cake in thirteen states. Sanctified by love which is real everywhere. Here and beyond.

Husband and wife. Billy and Shayla.

Beloved.

Love, Marriage, Civil Rights. A Typical Monday From Lloyd

This has been a day of such incredible ups and downs. Not like bi-polar ups and downs. I haven't bought a whole new wardrobe nor have I felt suicidal. Just...real-life stuff.
And I can't really write about all of it now but let me just say that a very sweet, good thing happened today involving two people whom I love with all of my heart and soul. Something that would not have been possible even a few years ago.
More later, hopefully. But believe me- there is great reason to celebrate love.

On the downside, I listened today to Diane Rehm's show while on my walk and it was all about the Trayvon Martin case and according to the legal experts, the jury did indeed hand down a correct verdict based on the laws and statutes of Florida and all that means to me is that Florida is one fucked-up state when it comes to law and statutes and I already knew that and I despaired and I do despair and by god, if every Virgin and Madonna image in my house suddenly started crying blood-tears, I would not be surprised. I would wipe them up like I wipe up the yogurt from Gibson's mouth and get on with my business and think, yes, you understand. 


And in the midst of all of this, I did wipe yogurt from Gibson's mouth and I got so many hugs and kisses, even from Owen who threw himself into my arms a few times and laid like a baby across my lap and loved me. A blessing and a gift from that boy.

One of those days where I am thinking of childbirth and the part where the baby's head comes down to the mother's perineum during pushes and then, between them, disappears and the mother despairs (that word again) and says, "Where did it GO?" One step forward, two steps back.

And eventually- life in all of its screaming reality.

That's all for now.

Love...Ms. Moon