This Life I Love

Those peppers are what I used to make a stuffed pepper casserole last night. I had no peppers big enough to stuff with rice and ground beef and tomatoes and onions and all those good things so I made up that combination, steamed the peppers you see there in a little water in one of my skillets, put those in the bottom of the baking dish and added the rice mixture on top. Then cheese. Then I baked it. 
It was pretty awesome. My first real use of the clown peppers although I have used some of the bell peppers. Extremely tasty. I may make a pizza with those peppers on it soon. They are very mild but with a nice flavor. 

So I've been thinking a lot about my birthday, which is tomorrow. I'm about to be seventy-two so today was my last day of being seventy-one which is a pretty obvious fact. I've been thinking, and even saying, that I'm seventy-two for quite awhile now so I don't think it's going to be a big shock. Some numbers of my life years feel more correct than others. Definitely true in the example of seventy-one/seventy two. Seventy-one didn't feel true. Seventy-two did. And now it will be. True, that is.

As I said to someone today, I am fairly amazed at the fact that I've reached what the Bible tells us is a person's lifespan- three score and ten, and then a little bit more. I never expected to live this long. And I am a bit surprised at how relatively healthy I am and how I really don't feel that old. I sort of simply feel like...myself. 
(I just knocked wood.)
I don't LOOK like I used to and there is no doubt about that. But what seventy-two year old person looks like they did when they were decades younger? I don't care how much botox and fillers and surgery you get done, there is just no substitute for youth. Let us not kid ourselves. I don't even try. I absolutely know I feel so much better in my brain and my body after having lost weight even though I no longer have bosoms and my skin is so wrinkled that the grandchildren are fascinated by it which is pretty funny.  

I spent some outside today, perhaps to prove to myself that I can still do it, that I can still work outside in this intolerable heat and humidity but what mainly motivated me was the fact that I could not stand what my little kitchen garden looked like. Probably no one but me would notice the difference but I did what I did for me and let's not kid ourselves. 

It's still wild but the weeds have been a little bit tamed. And then because I'm insane, I did a more weed pulling/bed clearing by the side of the house. 
By the time I quit I didn't even feel up to driving to the river. 
Perhaps that's what I'll do tomorrow. Drive to the river. Sit in a chair under the cypress tree and read my new book. 

We shall see. 

Glen has been asking me for weeks what I want to do on my birthday and I've been saying, "This." 
By which I mean living another day in this very life I live. 
He and Jim, Tom's friend from St. Augustine, spent all day long going through hoarder shit in 108 degree heat and that's their plan for tomorrow too. They want to just get it done, get it over with. 

I know without a doubt that if I had told Glen last week that I would really love to go to Paris or to Florence or, hell, to Las Vegas, he would have figured it out and taken me there. But that is not what I want. 
Like I said, I just want more of this. 

Looks like a thunderstorm is rolling in. Sounds and smells like that too. What a lovely birthday present that would be. 

Love...Ms. Moon