Things In My Kitchen (And if you click on the pictures you can see them better.)

This is a picture of my beloved started-from-a-special-seed mango tree which was taken from my kitchen which, as you can see, is a fairly cluttered mess of a kitchen but I love my stuff.

I love my funky rooster and the little hanging ristras of vegetables and fruit that I got from Mexico and the small green prism that hangs in front of them that I got at Lemoyne Art Gallery when Lynn was still alive, still able to go do our Ladies To Lemoyne and shop.

I love the Mexican mirror over the stove and the big crazy flowers on the cabinet over it. My son gave me those for Christmas one year. I love the potholder Billy made for me and I love my mermaid which you can't really see, which hangs on the wall going in to the laundry room on the left. Hold on. I'll post a picture:


Isn't she pretty? I got her at River Lily down in Apalachicola once, which is your favorite store although if you haven't ever been there, you don't realize it yet and I recommend you go immediately.

Unless you're a man.

I think River Lily may be deadly for men. They walk in and are hit with a blast of femininity that causes them to feel faint and reach for their wallets to push them farther down into their pockets while the women they are with stand as if paralyzed for a moment with eyes like saucers, hearing the voices of the angels singing hosannas, praising the goddesses of all-things-beautiful.

Luckily, there is a bar right next door. This works out well for both the men and the women with them because while the ladies shop, the fellows can have a few which means they are far more tolerant of the hit their debit cards have taken when the ladies come find them, their ears newly asparkle with earrings, their necks smelling of guava or rose or lavender or mysterious spices from the east.

I love my pots and pans. The skillets I have collected in my lifetime of cooking, starting in Girl Scouts where we used that biggest skillet to cook in over fires while camping. The Revere Ware belonged to my grandparents who probably bought it in the fifties. These are the tools of my trade and I feel quite certain they will last forever. Or at least until I die, which is good enough for me.


I love the aprons on the wall which are too lovely to hide away in a drawer. Some of them were gifts to me, some of them I found at Goodwill or thriftshops. There is nothing so fine as finding a lovely apron, especially one that someone made. I do wear aprons when I cook sometimes, but these are special.


I don't have a window over my sink (bad, bad design flaw) so I have this:


and I can't even start to tell you where everything came from, but they were all gifts and that' a picture of me and Maxine walking on the beach. It's labeled Carefree Florida and doesn't that just say it all?

Miss Maybelle makes art and gives it to me and here's a clock she made:


It doesn't keep time anymore but it still works for me. Isn't it lovely? She cut her poor fingers, cutting out the tin. We should all have to bleed for our art now and then.

And one more thing in my kitchen I love. A kitchen hutch that I bought while still in my first marriage which means it must be at least ten thousand years old. On top of it is a Christmas decoration but she sits up there and protects me 365 days a year. It's funny. I hate Christmas with all my heart but I have Christmas decorations around me all the time because some of those I do love and am loathe to put away at New Year's.


And those are just a few things in one room of my house that make me happy. None of them are worth squat, monetarily speaking but they make me feel rich with their colors and history and the tugs they give to my heart.

What are the things in your kitchen that make you happy? Tell me about them and I will know more about you.

And I would like that.

They're So Clean And Pretty Now (But The Garden Is Still Neglected)

Buster



Dolly



Zeke

And really? It hasn't been a bad day. I've cooked some venison and some of the first collards from the garden (which were planted as plants and not seeds so they're doing okay) and got some plants moved in and others covered up and I am feeling quite cheerful about play practice which is, after all, play.
And it will be so much more pleasant to snuggle with Zeke tonight now that he's all freshly groomed and smells less like a dog and more like, well, a dog who is freshly groomed.

What Goes Up

Ah, lah.

Yesterday I was still so filled with the spirit of our little trip that when I went to the therapist I believe she wondered what in hell I was doing there.

I sort of wondered myself.

I felt like I could take on the world, that there were endless possibilities and that finally, I was back, I was whole, I was good. I was wearing a new dress that my Lizzie had given me and dark red lipstick.

I found, within minutes of shopping, a few things we need for the radio plays- an antique-looking fan, some clickers to make noises with, and I called my fellow-Foley and left a message saying I felt quite sassy.

It was just a good day.

And today?

Ah lah.

I look around and see that the house is dusty and cluttered. I look out at the garden which needs completely replanting because nothing came up but the arugula and weeds and I have no idea why. They say it's going to freeze tonight and I have exactly one million plants on the porches and scattered around the yard that could die if I don't do something to protect them, including my precious six-foot mango plant that I started from a seed in a pot that weighs approximately one half of a ton. The dogs need to go to the groomer's desperately because part of my mental illness has precluded me from using the phone to call for appointments although I finally did manage to do that last week and today's the day they need to go. My daughter needs me to take her shopping for some winter clothes. And we have play practice tonight.

And I am overwhelmed and I suppose I should get out there and walk for one hour and fifteen minutes to kick that serotonin level up and it's cold out there. Well, cold for me.

In other words, SNAFU.

Not really. It's all in my mind. I need to stop. Breathe. Go put my shoes on, collect the dogs' leashes, herd them into the car, take them to Miss Beverly, come home and take a walk.

Then see where I am and what I need to do.

Because right now I am spinning wheels and gaining no traction and not enjoying the view from the window as I spin.

No Thanks Necessary, Ms. Dooce

Okay. I'm sure Heather Armstrong's hit counter will go right straight through the roof because of this, but I have to say, if you want to ponder the "undecided voter" and if you want a good dose of healthy, healing laughter via David Sedaris, check out this post on Dooce. com.

Twenty-Four Years Of Marriage

We had more fun than the damn law allows.

Hiding Away

Oh goodness. Here it is my anniversary and where is my husband?
He's fishing at the Sebastian Inlet with my blessing.

The difference between men and women:
Yesterday we were walking on the beach and a stiff wind was blowing against us and the sea was rough and the sky was gray and I was loving it! I was dancing with the wind, prancing with the day, skipping through the surf, holding my hands up into the air to feel all of the wind I could feel. I was thinking of Lynn and how she would have loved this and of all the times I'd walked this beach as a child and of my grandfather and how he would get up before dawn to walk on the beach and how he'd pay my brother and me to find him cat's eye shells and I was in a glorious, heavenly place.

All of a sudden, Mr. Moon opened his mouth and spoke:
"They say the pompano are biting in the surf."

He was thinking of fishing.
Of course.
I love that man.

Anyway, I'm about to go take a walk. I feel slovenly and lazy. I got up at six to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic and it was amazing. The clouds parted in the darkness and the silvery hook of a moon appeared, sharp and clear as anything I've ever seen and the sky eventually lightened and became pink and I watched a plane fly across the sky, blinking, blinking, blinking, as the surf rolled and hissed and pounded the shore.

Then I went back to bed and slept for two more hours.

Yesterday we went to the bar in the picture above down in Sebastian. As a child, Earl's Hideaway held more than a little mystery for me. "Hideaway" was where the bad cowboys went after they robbed the stagecoach. Why, I wondered, didn't the police just go there to catch the criminals? As I sat at a table yesterday, I was still wondering that because surely, at least a few of the folks there are wanted for something although the bikers I eavesdropped on were discussing their cholesterol levels and blood pressure medication so maybe not.

We drove down to Roseland yesterday, too, and my spirits dipped a bit when we left. I believe that in my heart I always thought I'd end up there, beside the river. We drove down the river road in Sebastian and everywhere I looked, there were memories. I realize that this place, this area, was filled with the most magic I ever experienced in my life, and I do love it. It wasn't necessarily the type of magic that is conjured or manipulated or surreal. It was the sort of magic made up of water and jungle and long days of kids playing. It was fishing for catfish off the dock and playing marbles in the dirt road and pretending Tarzan in the woods. It was wild mangoes, sticky and tasting of turpentine, tangerine trees in every yard, and always that slow-moving mucky river, flowing past like a dream of pirates, of treasure, of too many secrets to ever know.

I miss it but I am lucky to be able to come back and enter the mysterious again. Luckier than that, I lived it as a child.

Love from a Magical Place....Ms. Moon

Vero

Well, here we are in beautiful Vero Beach, Florida.

You can't quite tell from the above picture but the wind is gusting around forty mph (I'm guessing) and it's sort of raining and the ocean, she is angry, my friends.

But it's calmed down since last night when the wind was roaring like the raging spirits of all the
sailors drowned at sea. It whistled and blew and pushed everything out of its way. It whipped the surf and pounded it into the sand like a noisy dense lace of froth.

It was great!

It IS great!

The palm trees are dancing, the sea is rolling and roiling and I am a happy woman.

I'm so glad to be here.

Why I Hate The Medical Profession

So yesterday, as I said, I was ANXIOUS. Back to crazy-levels. It was pretty bad.
It didn't get better when I got a phone message asking me to call the doctor's office about "test results."

The only test I'd had was a pap smear. For those of you who are not aware of this, a pap smear is a test for cervical cancer. If they don't get in touch with you after the test, that means you are OK. If they do call, something is probably wrong.

So. Steeling my courage, I called but the person who had the information for me had already gone home. She'd call tomorrow.

With my anxiety levels through the roof, I made dinner, I took an over-the-counter sleep aid and I went to bed around nine. I mean, really.

This morning I got up and as soon as possible, I called the doctor's office. No waiting around for news of doom for me. No sir.

The nurse who had the information actually answered the phone. She wanted to tell me that although my pap was normal, there were changes that suggested I was losing "muscle tone."

Is this TMI?

Sorry. This is my blog.

So yeah, a fifty-four year old woman who has had four children, one of them weighing over ten pounds is losing muscle tone in the baby-incubation area.

She said if I started having problems, perhaps I should consider hormone replacement therapy, which they seem to really want to push.

I wanted to tell her she should consider having human decency therapy.

Instead, I thanked her and hung up.

And now I am packing to go to Vero, feeling much more light-hearted knowing that I am simply aging and am not diseased and feeling even less inclined to ever go to a doctor again.

I'll report in from the road if at all possible.

Now get back to work.

Party On

It's a drippy, chilly morning. I'm going to go back to yoga for the first time in weeks here in a few moments and I'm mighty glad of that. Mostly because that means my teacher is better now and also because I need it.

This extra walking thing hasn't really done much for the old anxiety levels, I have to say, but then again, I did not walk yesterday except around Apalachicola with the darling girl, Miss Maybelle.

It's funny how tenuous the gains I've made in sanity are, how thin the membrane between feeling so much better and feeling not so well.

I woke up this morning around six and laid in bed worrying about each and every thing I could manage to think about. It was one of those internal conversations usually held around 2 a.m.
Yes, I was late to the party, but I made up for it like a sober guest who shows up after the dancing has already begun and slams a few shots to catch up to the level of merriment, to loosen the old bones and gristle so that dancing is possible.

My mind raced from this to that, from the radio play (HOW will we build Fibber McGee's closet? How WILL we make the sound of a ray gun? What will I wear onstage?) to a friend who's traveling solo in the west (Dammit, is he okay?) to this little trip Mr. Moon and I are taking for our anniversary (Shit. I don't have anything to wear. What if I'm depressed and morose the entire time? Will everyone and everything be okay while I'm gone?) to my diet (Why didn't I get the salad yesterday? Why did I eat so many grits?)

I mean, really.

And when I finally got up, the sense of dread and worry followed me out of the bed and obviously it's still tap-dancing on my head but... shit.

So what?

It's all just in my head where everything begins and ends.

I plan to breathe deeply in yoga. I plan to stretch through the pain and I plan to be incredibly grateful to have this wealth of silliness to worry about.

I swear.

And I'd like to say Happy Birthday to a dear friend who knows who she is and who has been a sort of rock for me in the past few months. She has a huge talent for showing up when I need not to be alone, for never advising or showing concern, only a shining cheer even though she's been going through things herself that would have me in the loony.

Thank-you, dear K.

Happy Birthday.

And We're Going To Apalachicola To Celebrate

Worst day of my life.
Best day of my life.
She did not die.

Hunting and Gathering

So. The new bow works. There is the body of a doe, skinned and gutted, on ice somewhere in the garage. Mr. Moon is very smart in that he does not ask me to participate in the deer hunting process AT ALL. He doesn't say, "Come look at my dead deer!" He doesn't ask me to hold the flashlight while he skins it. He does not ask me to bury the guts. In fact, he allows me to pretend that he came upon the deer meat, all wrapped in white paper and labeled "back strap" while in the woods.
He even washes his hunting clothes himself.

This is a good man.

And I try to reciprocate by cooking his deer meat in a respectful and delicious manner.

When I met Mr. Moon I had never dated a man who was anything like him at all. Seriously.

First off, his height. Six feet, ten inches. Honeychile, that's tall. I stand five feet, four and a half inches in a good day. This means that when I hold his jeans up to fold them, they come to my chestular area. Uh-huh. Really. He has a thirty-eight inseam. And I'm not going to even tell you how big his shoes are.

Secondly, he was a jock. He'd played basketball all through high school and college and he'd played some pro ball in Europe and when I met him, he played Ultimate Frisbee. All of the men I'd ever dated considered loading amps to be their main form of physical activity.
This meant that Mr. Moon was formed in a somewhat godlike fashion when it came to his physical being which was a novelty for me. Loading amps doesn't build muscle the way playing basketball or Ultimate Frisbee does. Funny, huh?

Thirdly, while I was, and am to this day, an avid reader, Mr. Moon did not ever even consider once in his life picking up a book to read recreationally. This was beyond understanding to me. I mean...no reading? Oh, he could pick a contract apart like a lawyer but when it came to reading for pleasure, it was not part of his reality.

Fourthly (is that a word?), he hunted. With a gun. Wearing hunting clothes.
Huh?
I was practically a vegetarian. The culture clash of an almost-vegetarian and a hunter was huge. I remember looking at the man pulling the feathers from some sort of small bird he'd bagged IN MY KITCHEN and thinking, "Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?"

We're about to celebrate our 24th anniversary though so I suppose it's all worked out. He eats tofu on occasion now and I cook a mean venison chili. It makes me feel secure to have a freezer full of white packages labeled "back strap" and "loin" and "roast," not to mention "grouper," "snapper," and "flounder."

We both love to work in the garden and eat what comes out of that, too.

I still read voraciously and he now listens to books on tape that I get him from the library.

And most importantly, I think, our family is the most important thing in the world to both of us.

And he makes me laugh and he makes me feel safe and he's the hardest working man I've ever met. And despite the fact that he sells used cars, he's the most honest man I've ever met as well.

And thank God he's a Democrat. Phew. That would have been a deal-breaker for sure.

We take care of each other, Mr. Moon and I, in the best ways we know how. We've learned to live with our differences and we've come to respect the very things in each other that are the most different.

I don't know how you can get much better than that.

Except, oh yeah, the fact that we love each other tremendously.

On Thursday we're going to head down to Vero Beach to stay for a few days to celebrate our anniversary and I'm looking forward to that. He can take his fishing poles and fish the Sebastian Inlet and I can walk on the beach. And we can spend a lot of time together doing not a lot of much and I think we're going to have a lovely time. We'll eat our anniversary dinner at the Ocean Grill which is where that picture of us was taken about a million years ago.

I still have that dress.

I still have that man.

And a deer on ice.

Ain't I lucky?

Magic And Houses And Being Home

Mr. Moon wanted to buy a new bow to shoot deer with yesterday and so we drove up to Cairo, Georgia where he'd located one big enough for a man almost seven feet tall. We made an excursion of it, taking the Cutlass down country roads and it was lovely.

You've heard of the "magic hour"? That hour right before dusk when the light is perfect? Well, this time of year every second seems like the magic hour and as we drove through pine forests with wire grass and blooming golden rod and big oaks bearded with Spanish moss tossing in the wind, everything looked like something from a movie, or a coffee table book, perhaps entitled, Scenes From The South, A Glorious Day.

We stopped in Thomasville and ate lunch at that farmer's market restaurant, I forget what it's called, but at one point, sitting there with a plate of three kinds of beans, two kinds of greens, okra and tomatoes, a piece of baked chicken, and carrot salad before me I said something like "I could just sit here for the rest of my life."

Bring me some more tea, please, Honey, and pass that Crystal hot sauce, if you don't mind.

The bow-purchasing took, quite literally, a few hours but I had two New Yorker magazines to read so I didn't mind. I sat in the shade and read my magazines and occasionally went inside to use the restroom or check on the progress of the transaction which took so long because they have to do all sorts of stuff TO the bow before you can use it.

While I was waiting, I talked to a little boy who got inside a camo tent set up on the porch of the store next to where I was reading.

"Hey!" he said to me. "I'm a bat! I like the darkness!"

"Really?" I asked, looking up from my magazine. "Are you upside down in there?"

"I am!" he said. "But now I'm going to turn back into a human," and he shook the tent and made it tremble and when he popped out, he was indeed a real human little boy with brown hair and brown eyes and a very wide smile and his parents called to him and he got in the car with them and drove away and they all waved to me and I waved back.

Besides all the trees and fields we passed on our way there and back, we passed a lot of beautiful old houses, some large and handsome and some small and more cabin-like and one of the cabins was the prettiest color blue. I said a silent thanks to my grandfather who had moved from his native Pennsylvania to Tennessee long before I was born because I believe it may be against the law in the farming country of PA to paint your house blue and I'd hate to live in a place where there are no blue houses. Or pink ones, for that matter.

I'm one of those people who has always seen houses and thought, "There. That should be my house. I could go in there and find the kitchen and make biscuits and I could lie down in a bed in a room in that house and sleep peacefully and I would be happy there."

All my life I have done that. I remember doing it when I was a child, passing shotgun shacks with geraniums blooming from tomato cans on the front porch and and I remember doing it in high school, craving to live in a tiny stucco house in the middle of Winter Haven that had a tile roof.

The one thing that all these fantasy houses had in common was that they were old. Those old houses with character and personality developed from housing generations of people are the ones I have always craved to move into. Slip out of my own skin and into another.

But I don't do that anymore. I have the house now that I used to drive by and think, "Oh, I should live there." And I do. I live here. It's unbelievable to me still, after four years.

Sometimes when I'm outside, people will slow down as they drive by and they ask me questions about the house. I'm always happy to talk to them. "It's a beautiful home," they say wistfully as they drive away and I nod in agreement. It is a beautiful home. It's not especially fancy and it's not especially huge and it's not especially ancient, but it's graceful and it looks almost as if it grew here, like the oaks, the way it rambles on with its additions and porches.

It's not everyone's idea of a dream home. But it's mine. And the fact of that matter is, for the first time in my life, I feel as if I really am home. When we were in the process of buying this house, I was in a big Dixie Chicks phase and their song, A Home, constantly went through my head. I almost feel as if they had something to do with the magic of us finding the place, (and so did the Beatles, but that's another story), selling the house we were living in, and buying this one. Their song spoke so fiercely and eloquently of the regret of not living in a home that might have been. And I knew somehow, that if I didn't live in this house, I would live with that regret for the rest of my life.

Tonight I went out front and did something I've never done before. I stuck a political candidate's sign in front of my house. In front of my home. It says, "Change." It's a sign for Barack Obama, the man who I am fairly certain will be the first president of our country whose skin is not lily white. His sign sits in front of my white house, built for white people by the labor of black men, most likely, in a time when those same black men probably couldn't even dream of a time when they could cast a vote for president, much less run for president.

Times change. History moves on. And here in this house, my home, I feel part of it.

I love the south. I love my home. I love my community which is made of white people and black and where the golden rod blooms and people live their lives and live in all sorts of houses.

This is our home.

Mr. Moon is out in the woods with his new bow and it is the magic hour as the last of the day's light pours itself onto my trees, my flowers, my house.

And I am about to go make soup in the kitchen of my house and there is no house I'd rather make soup in and there is no place I'd rather be but here, in my community, where I belong.

My home. My beautiful home.

Where I have no regrets; none at all.

Sleepy Dancing Frog And How I Pray

Last night I went to turn out the light on the porch before I went to bed and there, on my lovely Rooster lamp, was a small green frog. He was blinky and sleepy-looking, his little red eyes slitted shut. I think he was perched up there to grab bugs attracted to the light but it seemed to me that he'd fallen asleep before the main course was served. Or perhaps he'd already eaten and had fallen asleep at the table, the way a child or a drunk might do.

Either way, I had to grab the camera and take his picture. The fact that Hula Girl was right there playing the ukulele was an added bonus.

I feel a great affection for the small creatures I share my home with, the frogs and the lizards. I don't especially want to touch a frog or lizard but I like to watch them. I have become aware of the fact that these animals are extremely territorial. This guy lives on the back porch near where I sit and of course I've mentioned the green lizard who lives on my screen door in the kitchen.

The other night I got home from play practice and Mr. Moon held the door open for me when I got in and let it slam behind me. I saw Mr. Lizard go flying through the air and I moaned, "Oh God. We've killed him."

I didn't see him for a day or two and in fact, another small lizard had taken his place but then yesterday, I saw him there again and I can't tell you how vast my relief was.

Strange.

Such a small world I inhabit and yet, for now anyway, it suits me perfectly and makes me happy.

I just got back from my walk and I was actually gone for more like an hour and a half than for the hour and fifteen minutes the therapist prescribed but I must admit I cheated. I stopped to pee by a little pond in the woods and I also stopped to pick flowers and ferns and wild elephant ear and once to look at the creek. Because of the increase in the time of my walk, I chose to take a road down into the woods where I usually don't go. It dead ends at the banks of Lloyd Creek or at least an arm of it and today it was just a clear, tannin-stained trickle of water, flowing over white sand, the banks rising above it, ghostly and set with the old trunks of dead trees. All around me though, was the evidence of the recent flood we had. Bushes and trees twenty feet or more from the banks were brown, four feet off the ground and how I wish I had made the trek to see it, when it was swollen from the rain and had burst forth from its banks. But you know, I never did and it's not such a huge regret.

Yesterday, walking the extra miles, I felt a bit resentful, as if this therapist was forcing me to take something I love, my walk, and turn it into a chore, something I dread.

But today I felt better about it, more grateful for the push I needed to make me walk that path through the woods to see the creek. How can that be a bad thing, to go further, to go far enough to see the creek? To stand silently beside it for a few seconds, to feel blessed to be there, alone, and witnessing the slow-moving water? To know that I am strong enough to easily walk those extra miles? To think that perhaps I will become stronger, even as I grow older.

I am always amazed at this time of year to see all the blooming flowers. Our spring here is amazing with the dogwoods and azaleas and I love the winter bloom of camellias but it's in the fall that plants which appear to be nothing but weeds all through the dry, hot summer months, suddenly burst into flower. We may not have the gorgeous turning of the leaves here, but we have the purples and yellows of blossoms and we have the oranges and yellows and blacks of the butterflies which float about the flowers, taking what they need and what they want.

It is something to see and appreciate- this late-year unexpected burst of glory, this unearned (by me, at least) flash of beauty.

And I remember once again why I walk where I walk, why I take my exercise out of doors instead of in a gym in front of a televison flashing nothing but the same old bad news, over and over again.

I would rather watch the water flowing, the flowers blooming, the sudden, always surprising show of life, whether animal or plant, so different from my own, but somehow tied to me, somehow part of who I am and what I think and how I feel as I go about my day or even when I sleep at night, the world dancing and drowsing around me as I walk through my dreams.

Well. What More Is There To Say? Click It So You Can Read It

http://www.shewee.com/how.html

Answers To Everything

So the lady therapist was quite beautiful and her office was warm and inviting.

Check, check.

I shoveled out my shit and she, being a different sort of therapist, I believe, offered her opinion that there were at least seventeen reasons why I got to where I did but for now, let's just go from where we are.

And that I should walk for an hour and fifteen minutes daily (instead of the fast forty-five I do now) to "kick up the serotonin." And cut down on coffee.

Because she can tell that I still have anxiety.

Perhaps me telling her that I have a hard time leaving the house clued her in there.

Anyway, here I go, to walk for one hour and fifteen minutes. And then I HAVE to come back here and do yoga because I haven't done any in a week because my poor yoga teacher is IN THE HOSPITAL and that's a long story but I can feel my joints freezing up and my hip hurts. Which means I need to do yoga.

God. Who would have thought that getting this old would be this much WORK?

Now. Speaking of old, did you see McCain last night? His facial expressions were...how shall I put this?

Painful. Strange. Bizarre. I feel certain that if a chimp had been sitting across the table from him, he would have jumped up on the table and pummeled the crap out of the old man, rightly thinking that those weird grimaces meant either (a) he was about to attack, (b) he was dying and needed to be put out of his misery, or (c) he'd been constipated for several years and needed a good shaking up to get things moving.

Personally, f I have to look at that face for the next four years there won't be enough walking in the world to sooth my anxieties.

That's all I have to say about THAT.

But here's what I'm thinking: In a month, I'll be trimmer, fitter and less anxious, Obama will be the president-elect and the financial world will settle down on the good news of that and we'll all have world peace, forty acres and a mule, and a chicken in every pot (unless you're a vegetarian in which case there will be tofu in yours) and see? It'll all be fine.

Breathe with me now.

We can do this.

One step at a time.

And one more thing. Do they make sports Depends? Because there's no way I can walk for one hour and fifteen minutes without having to pee, even with less coffee.

I should have discussed that with the therapist.

Let Me Compare Thee To A Fall Day When The Butterfly Ginger Blooms

I woke up this morning feeling as if the hole I've been living in had somehow gotten lighter and far less dank. As if a sharp ray of sunlight had pierced all the way through to my heart.

Huh.

It's cooler again. And it's such an incredibly beautiful day. I've had some good days lately. The weekend with my kids and my dear friends. Yesterday Miss Maybelle and I did some Goodwill shopping and she made me laugh so hard I told her to stop talking because I was driving in traffic and I couldn't laugh that much and drive at the same time. I'd tell you what she said to make me laugh but it was an idea for character names for some book she HAS to write now and by golly, if she doesn't use them I'm going to steal them and I don't want anyone else to.

Nothing makes me happier than being struck once again, over and over, with the realization of how funny and smart and wonderful my grown kids are. Lucky for me they do it a lot.

I'm going to go talk to "someone" today. I do not especially want to do this because as Miss Maybelle and I were discussing while looking at dresses in the Goodwill, the things you least want to discuss are the very things you HAVE to discuss in order to get better.

Bah.

I tend to spend the first months of therapy (okay, I've only done this once or twice before) convincing my therapist that I am the most intelligent, funniest and most well-adjusted person they'll ever have the good fortune to meet.

Hah.

I don't want to spend months in therapy. Really. So I need to get in there and just shovel all the dirt out and spread it around and let her study it like some shaman studying the entrails of a chicken and let her tell me what to do.

As if.

It's a beautiful morning. I'm going to go for a walk. Then I'll shower and get dressed and pack my shovel and go see this person, this shaman, this so-called sanity expert.

And then I'm going to go to Publix and then I'm going to come home which is where I live and where these beautiful butterfly ginger lilies are blooming. And I'm going to remember to go smell them at least five times today because ginger lilies?

Heaven.

And today?

Fine.

And the good days?

Precious and rare. Like the butterfly ginger.

Yes. Oh yes.

Let Us Praise Great Endings

I love to read. No, no. That's wrong. I live to read.
And that's been true ever since I realized that C.A.T. spells cat.
Reading has been the key to the magical doorway of ten million other worlds that I can visit just by opening a book. Or reading a web page, for that matter. I don't know what I would have done as a child if I hadn't had books to take me away from the decidedly non-magical world I inhabited. I went from Alice and Jerry to Little Women and Kidnapped in about two weeks.


My main problem in life as a child (as I saw it then) was that there were never enough books to read. The tiny community I lived in had a library, sure, but what it actually was, was one room with about four book cases in it, and only one of those was for children's books and by the time I was in second grade I'd read every one of them. I remember distinctly reading Mary Poppins from there and a book entitled Marooned On Mars, and I'm not really sure which one was the more otherworldly. Both were fantastic!



My elementary school was so poor that it didn't have a library. Each teacher was expected to bring in and keep a few shelves of books, which they did, but there were never enough to keep me going past the first two weeks of school. I remember reading one book over and over in the second grade which was about a girl who had to go to the hospital to get her appendix removed. In the more realistic manner of writing children's books that was accepted back then, it even talked about the little girl having to get an enema. I had no idea what an enema was, so of course I asked my teacher.

"What's this?" I asked Mrs. Hendry, pointing to the word with my chubby little finger.

"Uh, hmm. You should ask you mother about that," she said.

However, I did not. Even at the age of seven I somehow knew that discussing certain things with my mother was not an option. So I spent the next few years of my life looking up the word "enema" in dictionaries.

This is quite possibly why I so fear all things medical.

Books have had an astounding and profound influence on my life and that's just all there is to it. They continue to do so but I find that as I grow older, it has become harder and harder to find books that make me sit up and pay attention. Now I must admit that I have become somewhat of a lazy reader. I haven't stooped to Danielle Steel yet, but I'm not exactly reading Proust if you know what I mean.

I get most of my books from the library (which to me, is the highest temple of civilization) and I choose my books with some sort of subconscious selection system which is probably based on cover art (yes, I do judge a book by its cover), title, author's photo, back blurbs and possibly a random sampling of a sentence or two inside.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I was talking to Miss Maybelle yesterday and she said she'd read four books in one day. None of them, she said, was great. We discussed the endings of books and we agreed that a book's ending can make or break it. I think this is very true. Last night I had a touch of the insomnia and found myself reading the end of a book I'd been enjoying immensely for the last several days.

However, the ending was just...predictable, flat, and not worthy of all the pages which had come before it and I was more than disappointed.

Ending a book (or even a story or a blog post) well is a rare talent. I think some of the best book endings I've ever read come from Larry McMurtry. His writing is plain but not simple and he's a natural born story teller whose characters swagger and sweat and dance and cry and make huge mistakes and take on great things and dwell on the past and frequently act without thinking.

Just like all of us.

I especially love the ending of his novel The Evening Star. I'm not sure why, but to me, it was practically perfect. I wrote Mr. McMurtry and told him that. So far, he hasn't written me back, but I didn't expect him to. He doesn't owe me a response. He wrote that book with the perfect ending and I'd be a selfish little self-absorbed reader to expect more than that.


And you can't have a great ending unless it's been a pretty great book. To my mind, for an ending to really matter, the story and the characters have to been so engaging that when you come to the end of the story, you don't want it to end. And yet, it must, and I want to be left with a feeling of satisfaction and melancholy when I put that book down.

When I put my book down last night and turned off the light, I just wasn't satisfied. The ending didn't live up to what came before it. It was like a dirty hem on a beautiful dress. Like someone serving you a terrific meal of fresh, well-cooked ingredients and ending it with a bowl of sugar-free Jello for dessert. It made me think twice recommending the book. It made me doubt the author's skill which before I finished the book, I had been quite sure of.

Some book endings just leave you panting for more. They aren't horrible endings but there's no resolution at all. The melancholy is there but not the satisfaction. I'm thinking of Gone With The Wind here. I remember reading that entire book in one huge gulp, getting to the end and reading, "I'll think about this tomorrow, when I'm stronger," or whatever the last words were and thinking, "WHAT?"

Give me a break.

Give me an ending!

And speaking of endings, this blog post requires one too so I'm going to ask you about your favorite book endings. Which ones left you thinking, YES, YES, YES! (sob)?

Are there any that come to mind?

Because if there are, there's a pretty good chance the book was fine enough for you not only to have cared how it ended but to remember it too and maybe I'd like to read it.

Discuss.

Oh Sarah Palin

Big Lou and Maxine suggested I might want to post this.
They are right.
It's sort of sweet and sort of wicked at the same time which is my favorite sort of sorts.

The Big Wide World And My Little Place In It

That is my front gate. It opens up to Old Lloyd Road, otherwise known as Highway 158. From this road, and thus, from my gate, you can get almost anywhere in the American continent.
Isn't that an amazing thing?
I could drive out of my driveway and get on that road and depending on the roads I took and which direction I took them, I could end up in Arizona or Wyoming or even somewhere way, way up in Alaska or way, way down in South American. Peru? I have no sense of geography but I know there are very few places you can't get to from here.
And when I say "you" I am speaking euphemistically because after years of joking about being agoraphobic, I am finding that really, I think I am.
It's getting harder and harder to leave the house, even for my walk and that is severely wrong. The thought of going to Publix, my safe, safe place where I am surrounded by people I know, foods I love to cook and eat, and the great Muzak which plays Joni Mitchell and John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, makes me feel a little tense and finds me going through the cabinets to see what I can throw together for a meal without a trip to the store.
Mental illness is just the weirdest thing in the world. I mean, I completely understand and admit that I can't control much in this world. Not the economy or the election, surely, but doggone it, doesn't it seem like I should be able to control my own mind?
What I'm finding out is that the illness is also part of my mind, of course! and as strong as I think "I" am, that's how strong the part of my mind is that is...what? I'm struggling for the right words here. Trying to take over? I'm battling? I'm being mystified and confused by? That is ill?
Yeah. All of that.
Whoa.
Anyway, this has been a perfectly lovely weekend. I thought I was going to be alone for much of it but it turns out that I have been alone for very little of it. I don't know if my friends and family got together and decided to tag-team babysitting me or if they really wanted to come, but come they did and I, at least, had a wonderful time with Hank and Lily and Jason and Billy and Shayla. We had fun meals and fun drinks and played fun games and I had overnight company two nights, which is such a treat.
And in a few minutes I'm going to leave the house and go to Monticello for a script run-through for a radio play I'm going to be involved with and I know I will have such a good time there. I went last Sunday for auditions and after about an hour, being in that beautiful old building with those beautiful people, I felt better than I'd felt in weeks, so this is something I know I truly want and need to do.
And yet. I can't kid you. I'm stressed out at the idea of leaving the house and going there and I can't put my finger on why. It's just a vague sense of oh, do I HAVE to go?
And I do, dammit. I have to go. That is all there is to it. For my own sanity, I must.
I will get in my car and drive down Highway 158 towards Highway 90, I will take a right, I will end up in front of the Monticello courthouse and I will park by the Opera House. I will walk in and it will be wonderful and it will be fun.
And when it's over, I'll get back in my car and head home and end up, right here where I started, the better for it.
And Mr. Moon will be here with fish and dirty clothes and kisses and tales of adventures on the sea.
All roads lead somewhere. All the oceans do too. It's good to go out on them sometimes, have adventures, both great and small, and then return.
I know that.

Talking About Breasts Today

It would appear that the next issue of W magazine is going to feature a cover shot by Brad Pitt of Angelina Jolie breastfeeding one of their twins. It is, as you can see, a gorgeous picture of a tired but radiant-looking new mother. I remember that feeling of being completely overwhelmed and exhausted (and I had my babes one at a time) and yet at the same time, feeling as if I was doing the exact one thing I had been put on earth to do, which was to nurture the baby with the same body which had produced it.

We are, after all, mammals, which means we have mammary glands to produce milk for our young. We don't have to go out and catch bugs to feed them or regurgitate partly digested fish into their beaks. We simply put them to our breasts and with a little instinct on both the part of the mother and the baby and a little learned-skill and some initial pain, milk flows, the baby drinks, all is well.

You can even read while you breastfeed, which for me meant the best of all possible worlds, and probably why I nursed my children for eons.

When a woman nurses, her body produces a hormone called oxytocin, which is a sort of natural bliss-producing drug. You can see its effects on Angelina's face. It was more than brilliant of Mother Nature to develop this system because if there's anything harder than being a new mother I don't know what it is. Especially if you have other children to tend to.

Of course there are a myriad of other reasons to breastfeed our young. And yet, even today, when we know all of the benefits of breastfeeding it's something that many women do as surreptitiously as possible because they never know, no matter how discrete they are trying to be, if some ignorant flight attendant or restaurant server is going to ask her to cover up.

I myself was once told by a mall security guard that nursing my baby in public was indecent exposure. Since my daughter's entire body was under my voluminous shirt at the time I have no idea how he made this deduction but it was completely disconcerting and disturbing and I'll never forget it.

So I love seeing pictures of celebrities breastfeeding their babies. It may be a ridiculous notion on my part but I believe that these images give credence to the fundamental right of mothers and babies to nurse when and wherever babies need to nurse. These pictures say that even famous, extremely busy women know the value and beauty of nursing their babies.

One of my favorite celebrity mother and nursing child images is an Annie Leibovitz portrait of Jerry Hall, former supermodel, former wife of Mick Jagger, nursing her son, Gabriel.

It's a stunning image and strikes me as being, well, ridiculously humorous and at the same time, incredibly powerful.
It shows a beautiful woman, a completely gorgeous woman, dressed to the nines, holding her naked fine, fat cherub of a son to her breast, studying the camera with a powerful, almost cruel gaze. It would appear that in this woman there is at least as much testosterone coursing its way through her veins as oxytocin.
What was she thinking when this picture was taken? Was she thinking about her dinner reservations? Her husband's latest peccadillo? It would not appear that she is worrying overmuch about her child or the damage he may be doing to her fabulous breasts. He is simply there, doing what breastfeeding children do, amusing himself by playing with the neckline of his mother's shirt, nestled into her lap with his foot in her hand. He doesn't know that his father is one of the world's most famous rock stars or that his mother has some of the longest, most celebrated legs in the universe. He doesn't care. He is simply a son, nursing his mother's breast. And she is, along with everything else she is, simply a woman doing what women do, which is to nurse her child.

Beautiful.

The image of madonna and child is one of the most rendered works in art and yet, somehow in our culture, the sight of a woman with a baby at her breast is considered a great deal less than sacred and it has taken actual laws to ensure that women can nurse their babies whenever and wherever they deem fit.

I was actually told to go nurse my baby in the mall restroom if I needed to nurse at the mall which just points to the fact that to this young security guard, my nursing was more of an excrement issue than a nutritional one. Let's leave the sacred out of it entirely. And I was the mother of a very young child and I wasn't dressed to the nines but in a very baggy t-shirt and skirt, and I wasn't famous and I was no doubt sleep-deprived and despite the fact that I had already nursed three children and believed to my bones in my right to do so, I was not only taken aback by this stupid guard but I was shamed.

My initial reaction was to feel shame.

And that's so ridiculous.

How I wish I had seen that picture of Jerry Hall before that day. I might have knocked that uniformed and badged yokel to his knees with my powerful, disdainful gaze. I might have whipped out the other breast and squirted him in the eye with a shot of breastmilk.

Or, perhaps, if I had seen that picture of Angelina, I would merely have smiled at him with a blissed-out gaze and told him that surely, he was mistaken and now please, little man, run away because he was disturbing a very sacred moment and was harshing my oxytocin mellow.

I hope that young nursing mothers see these images of celebrities breastfeeding and take them to heart. Give them the courage and spunk to do what they know is right. To not feel shame if some ignorant fool tells them to cover up and go to a stinky public bathroom to nurse her baby.
Because dammit, breastfeeding is our right as mammals, it is our right as mothers, it is as sacred to nurse any infant in the world as it was for Jesus' mother to nurse him.

In my opinion, all nursing mothers are madonna and child, whether they're hanging on the wall of an art museum or sitting at McDonald's and we need to grow up and realize that. That breasts are here for a reason which has nothing to do with titillation. Great word, huh?

And if someone notices a woman nursing her baby in public, he or she has every right to avert his or her eyes if they don't want to see it. In fact, that would be the polite thing to do. Or, they could fall to their knees and worship at her feet.

I think Jerry Hall would have liked that. I think she would have liked it a lot. And Jesus? He would appreciate it too.

All Blog, No Philosophy

One of the things I love about having a MacBook is the Photo Booth utility. I have always hated having my picture taken. The camera, she does not love me.

I'm serious.

But with Photo Booth you can take like a million pictures and then just delete every one of them that doesn't make you look glamorous and beautiful.

See that picture above? That's me. Glamorous AND beautiful, right?
Well, compared to the ten thousand I just deleted, anyway.

So it's Friday morning. I've just talked to EVERY ONE of my four children. Plus, Mr. Moon called. He's on his way across the bay to get the boat fixed because something is bad wrong with it and despite the fact that he's a fine amateur mechanic, he can't figure it out and is having to bring the boat BACK to Tallahasse to take it to the expert.

Bless his heart. The man can't catch a break and without the boat, he won't catch a fish, either.

But he's handling it in his usual Zen Glen way and that's part of the reason I love him so much. He doesn't get all upset about things he can't change, he just figures out the best way to deal with whatever he needs to deal with and then he does it.

Quite the opposite of me.

So I had a bit of an adventure yesterday afternoon. I went out to the side yard over by the neighbor's goat pen and started pulling up the nasty potato vine that wants to take over the world. This is a never-ending task and one that is always there if one wants to do something outside. The vine goes straight up into the trees and I was pulling some of it down and by darn but I obviously pulled something else that when it brushed my neck, face, legs and arms, left stinging, itching welts that demanded my immediate attention. I'm getting the shivers just thinking about it.

I came in the house, popped a Benedryl, tore off my clothes and got in the shower. The pain and itching subsided but for a while my shoulder was the color of raw hamburger. It was all quite dramatic, but I am fine today. The next time I pull potato vine, I will be wearing more substantial and protective clothing.

I believe my eldest is coming out tonight to watch TV and eat some supper and hang out with his mama. I have the option of going into town tonight to go to a concert with Lon and Lis but I don't think I'm quite up to that sort of fun times, although being with Lon and Lis is like my favorite thing in the world and I'll have to live with the regret of not going for THE REST OF MY LIFE. What can I say? I'm a wuss. Who has a hard time leaving the house.

Tomorrow night it looks like we might have a good old-fashioned game night with Billy and Shayla and perhaps some of my other kids. And that's always a good time. Our favorite game is called Apples To Apples. I see by the Wikipedia article on the game that they make a Apples To Apples: Bible version.

We will not be playing that one.

And so goes my weekend. All is well on my end. I wish it were better on Mr. Moon's.

I hope all is well with you. I really do.

Happy Birthday, John. I Miss You So

Sometimes When I Have The Most To Say It's The Hardest Thing In The World To Say It

It's a perfect fall day with the all the trees fresh-washed from the beautiful rain we got yesterday and last night. The sun itself seems happier, more kindly disposed to its task of lighting and warming and less inclined to burn us all up with its hot poisonous super-beams, making their way through our reduced ozone layer.

No, plenty of sweet air for us today here in North Florida and I picked a bouquet of wildflowers and berries on my walk and left the trash for tomorrow.

(Financial note: buy stock in Steel Reserve Malt Liquor.)

Everywhere I go outside I see tiny, tiny froglettes, the fruit of the spawning orgy that occurred during Tropical Storm Fay's amazing rains. They are smaller than bugs, these baby frogs, and the birds are happily dining on as many as they can scoop up. When I was sweeping the kitchen the other day, a dust ball quite shockingly became animated, hopping itself across the floor. I realized it contained a small frog and swept him gently outside to the back steps where he disappeared into the border grass.

They are not a pestilence, these frogs. Not only do they make the birds happy, the ones that grow up will eat mosquitoes and I am all for that.

Mr. Moon has taken off for four days of fishing with men and I sent him on his way with a huge batch of chili, a loaf of bread and several dozen chocolate chip and pecan cookies. Also, all my love and best wishes.

The man needs to get away and get out on the water and hang out with other uncomplicated men to fish and pee over the side of the boat and drink beer and grill steaks and do whatever it is that men do on fishing trips.

Bless his heart, he deserves to get away from a wife who's been so crazy she doesn't even recognize herself, who cries at the drop of a hat and who has turned in on herself like one of the roly-poly bugs the kids used to play with in the dry summer dirt. Honestly, I'm not sure how he's tolerated me the last few months and it's the least I can do to send him off with a smile and just hope he thinks of me fondly while he's gone and doesn't decide to abandon me to my despair and insanity. I don't think he will, but hopefully if he does have thoughts like that, the cookies will remind him that I do have my uses.

I'm not quite sure how I'll do, being alone for four days. Even six months ago just the prospect of that would have sent me into shivers of anticipation but since the black beast has come upon me, being alone is not always the best thing for me although, contrary-wise, at the same time it has become almost impossible for me to be around folks, even the ones I love, for very long. Except for Mr. Moon. After almost twenty-four years of marriage, being around him is my comfort and my joy and I can be quiet if I want or talk if I want and just having him there beside me at the supper table or in the bed makes me feel safe and more stable.

But I will gladly give that up for a few days to let him take his Viking-blooded self out to the water where he is happiest, to renew his spirit and restore his soul.

We all have something that washes us clean of our worries and our cares, just as the rain washes this dusty old planet with its cool, clean waters. Something that heals us, something bigger than ourselves and more important.

For Mr. Moon, that's fishing.

For me, right now, it's Mr. Moon.

But I feel okay.

I have a pile of good library books, an embroidery project I'm working on, a short story I want to get back to writing and four dogs. I also have plants to trim and plants to root, friends and kids that might come out, and this blog. If, out of self-therapy, I write about four posts a day, please be understanding.

There's just so much going on in my life to write about- dust balls that hop, teen-aged cardinals fighting at the feeder, how I feel from one moment to the next, and of course there's always the weather.

No end to the topics I could discuss.

Stay tuned.
And send Mr. Moon some good fishing vibes. I hear the grouper and snapper are biting and it sure would make him happy to catch some.

Which in turn, will make me happy and all will be good. And all will be well. And all will be as it should- warm sun, cool breezes, sane woman, tiny frogs, and the prospect of saner, sweeter days ahead.

Speaking of Hope

So I watched that debate last night. I even paid attention.

Well, when I wasn't trying to gnaw my paw off to try and escape.

Guys- I'm tired of this shit. These men have nothing new to say.

Script:
Enter stage L and R. Come together in middle and shake hands. Go to separate corners. Open mouth when called upon and ......
blah, blah, blah, blah.

We have heard it all before.

Rhetoric and bullshit.

Let's face it- neither one of these guys is god. I have decided that we all take one candidate and endow him with whatever it is we want in a candidate.

Me? I want world peace and for every person on earth to have the opportunity to live without hunger, to get an education, and to be able to get the health care they need. I know that's not going to happen. No one is beating their swords into plowshares and no one is advocating that.

But to me, Obama looks like someone who might be more apt to go in that direction, so he's my guy.

You? You might think it's more important for the USA to shine strong and win every war we decide we need to get into for whatever batshit reason du jour.

If so, McCain's your guy.

Whatever.

I will say that every time McCain said, "My friends," I took a big ol' swig of tequila.

Nah, that's not true. If I had done that, I would not be capable of writing this because I'd be drunk for three days and hungover for four.

Every time he uttered that phrase I felt like a creepy old uncle had poked me in the ribs.

Obama, on the other hand, didn't creep me out.

Which is how I know he won the debate.

That and the fact that he's one good-looking man.

Yeah. It's come to this.

Prove me wrong, Obama. Show me you're not crazy because right now, I think anyone who wants to be president of the United States is certifiable. But please. Use those long legs to walk the walk. Use those soulful eyes to see what needs doing and that smart brain to figure out how to do it. How to help us evolve as a nation, as a people, as a species. How to save our planet, how to give our children (and when I say "our" I mean ALL the children of the world) lives they can live with. Use those big ears to listen to wise women and men who might have something to say that's important. Use that strong backbone to stand up and do what you know is right. Use those graceful hands to reach out to the people who need a hand and need some hope.

And I hope you can get past the rhetoric and the bullshit it takes to get elected and I hope you know it's rhetoric and bullshit and that you have some real plans in your back pocket. Do it for your babies. Do it for mine. Do it for all the babies of the world.

Use that youth and energy of yours to do the work that needs to be done. Because if you lead well, the people will follow and no man or woman can do it alone.

Isn't that what we want? A leader we can follow whole-heartedly?

It's what we need.

And I'm hoping we get it.

To Call Us Pigs Would Insult The Animal

Some days I come home from my walk with a bouquet of what is blooming in the woods and fields and a heart grateful for the purples, the yellows, the greens. I put the things in vases and set them where I will see them fifty times a day and smile every time.

Some days I come home with bags of candy wrappers, styrofoam plates and cups, glass bottles and aluminum cans. My hands reek of stale beer on those days and my heart is full of disgust. I wash my hands and think, My God. Aren't things bad enough? Why do we humans have to fuck up everything, leaving our hateful mark on every path we take? Are we so incredibly arrogant that we think we have the right to despoil any piece of woods, any place at all?

Some days I have no hope.
Some days I can not smile.

And This Is What Fall Looks Like

The beauty berries are in full berry and the dogwoods are turning orange and red. The pecans are still hanging on to their leaves, but are dropping their nuts, although we never really get enough pecans to bother gathering. The squirrels take care of that for us. They've been busy for over a month now, picking the nuts and taking one bite of them to determine their ripeness and then throwing them down, usually on a tin roof. You can't believe how loud that is, like a bomb going off. They have tiny arms, but they are strong. The squirrels get in our walls sometimes and I'm not sure what they're doing in there, but whatever it is, it's busy and noisy. Mr. Moon threatens to shoot them but I plead for their lives, crying, "Don't kill them! It would only be a senseless death!"

And I mean that. They amuse me. They chase each other up the roof of my office and through trees and I love the way they sit up on the fence, holding a nut in both hands and gnawing on it with quick, almost human determination.

When Lily lived out here, she sometimes complained that there's "too much nature," which struck me as funny and made me laugh, but then, I love it.

I have a fine, fat green lizard who lives on the screen door to the kitchen. I am deathly afraid I'm going to open the door and smush him in it by accident but so far, he's managed to avoid that. For a few months I had a toad who lived under the steps by the kitchen. He would come out at night and we'd warn people coming in or going out, not to step on him.

A few weeks ago I was over in the side yard, dumping some branches on the burn pile when I noticed over by the neighbor's animal yard that the guinea hens were doing their frantic search beside the fence for their way in. Alongside them a possum trundled, nosing along looking for whatever it is that possums look for. Grubs, I suppose, whatever grubs are. I said to him, "Hey! What you doin'?" but he didn't even look up at me. We expect possums in the night time but we rarely see them in the light of day.

I have seen plenty of snakes in my yard and today I saw a tiny black and white one on the road when I went to take my walk. I have no idea what he was but he had the wide head of the venomous viper and his red tongue flicked back and forth as I leaned over him to get a better look. He was far braver than his size should have dictated and there was no backing down for him as I loomed above him which he rightly perceived as a threat. He made a valiant effort to strike me. I let him be and walked on.

There's a spot in my back yard where there is always a burst of feathers on the ground and I have often seen an owl, just as the sun is setting, swooping down and hitting prey there. I believe they mostly take the pearly doves that roost in the Bradford pear. We have hawks that wheel around the sky over our yard and they, too, swoop in now and then and Saturday morning they woke me up with their sharp, insistent cries. I do not know what they were talking about, but it was a matter of great discussion.

A pair of Mississippi Kites nests across the street and it is always special to see them from my front yard as they float so high above the trees we can barely see them with their split tails and their aerodynamic bodies.

We have spiders on every porch and I did something today which I am loathe to do, which is to take down a web. It was strung between my office and the house and right at my head's level. I do not mind spiders at all, but it was inevitable that I would forget it was there and run into it and the idea of having a large spider dance on my person is not one I like. I took it down with a broom and apologized to the lady, explaining she just could not build her web in that particular place. I feel bad, thinking of all the work she went to to make the web, but still. There is a time and a place for everything and that web was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she needs to go scout out some new real estate.

The passion flower vine has been almost entirely decimated by hundreds of bright orange caterpillars which I am told will become the striking orange Gulf Fritillary butterfly. I have been watching them for days as they make their cocoons on the chain link fence which the vine has grown on and it's a gentle sort of excitement for me to see their progress from worm-like critter to lovely flying things. I do not begrudge them the passion flower vine. I think it will grow back next spring.

Between the birds and the bugs and the mammals and the reptiles which all make their home right here in and around my home, I never feel really alone. Throw in the dogs and it's a constant circus. It's a circus I love and even the plants and trees have their own personalities and throw their grace my way. I look out of the window right now to see the pine cone lilies growing fat and red and the little Japanese maple turning color.

I am more than grateful to have all of this company. I am no Buddhist and have less than a Zen outlook on life, but it is obvious even to me that I am surrounded by sentient beings, large and small. It is a sort of comfort as the world goes crazy and my mind tries to follow down that path. I'm not sure why, but I think it's a constant reminder that what we humans perceive as important and earth-shattering is only so on certain levels, and certainly not on all. Things will go on. The lizards and frogs will eat the mosquitoes and the owls will hunt and the snakes will make their way through the grass and the ants will gather and the squirrels will too and it's all tied in together.

There is a lot of nature here and I suppose my place in it is to observe it all. I think my worst nightmare would be to live in a place where nature is removed from me. Where instead of dirt beneath my feet and trees above my head there would be only concrete and tall buildings. Where instead of falling asleep to the sounds of the crickets and the rustlings under my window of the coons and possums, I would hear the sounds of taxis and garbage trucks and rushing ambulances and police cars with blaring sirens. But I suppose that I would soon learn to tune those things out, just as I have learned not to even wake when the train passes in the middle of the night, so closely it rattles the windows of my house.

I hope I never have to know. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world as I cross the porch and smell the tea olive which is the scent we'll be greeted with in heaven. Or perhaps this is heaven, right here and now, this place I live with the blue-tailed skink and the sweet tea olive and the cardinal flower and the live oaks and the owls.

It is to me. Today it certainly is to me.

Who Does Depression Hurt?

Miss Maybelle and I were laughing the other day about one of those ubiquitous anti-depressant commercials on TV. The tag line is, "Who does depression hurt?" And it showed a depressed man and his dog who was obviously not getting the happy walk he deserved because his human was depressed.

It would appear that depression even hurts DOGS!

Then this morning when my dog, Dolly, was singing her good morning song to me which is a joyful chorus of soprano happiness, I looked at her and said, "Shut-up, Dolly!" I didn't even think about what I was saying. The words just spilled out of my mouth.

She looked me with a hurt expression and did indeed shut up.

Poor Dolly. I have hurt her with my depression.

I have hurt my dog with my depression.

This is ridiculous.

The VP Debate

What she said.

Looking Up

When I was on my way to the doctor's office yesterday morning, I saw a sign in front of a small church that said, "When you need peace, look up."
Well, I did and saw plenty of blue sky and light and I thought that was fine advice no matter what level you choose to take it on. Of course I had to turn my eyes quickly back to the road to drive, but that second of sky and trees and light was calming.
I had forgotten that sign until I I downloaded this picture I took yesterday afternoon. This banana spider has made her web not on the porch, which is where most of them seem to, but way up in the sky between a young magnolia and a post we used to put the pea-climbing fence up for the garden last spring.
This web is high in the air. I mean like maybe oh, fifteen feet up. That spider- she is looking for high-flying, juicy traffic and I'm not sure why I glanced up to see her there when I was outside, turning the sprinkler on the garden but I did and I was amazed. Her web stretches at least ten feet from tree to post and she is poised on it like she was dancing on thick, strong air.


The doctor visit went fine. I saw a different nurse practitioner whom I'd never met and to make a long story short, she actually touched me as one human to another and we both teared up, discussing the empty nest. Her son moved out twelve years ago and she is still missing him and didn't find it ridiculous that the recent changes I've found myself going through would be enough to send me into this mysterious and tentative place I seem to be inhabiting. She encouraged me to find "someone" to talk to and I swear, I will. It's time.
I came home and Miss Maybelle came over and we watched an old movie called Crimes of the Heart with the dogs all over us and we wondered why they don't make movies like that anymore. Movies where people act like people really do, pulling up panty hose and laughing inappropriately and wearing the lime green gardening gloves of a dead person to work in the garden and having really, really bad days.
Both of us are trying to find the light again, Miss Maybelle and I, and it was lovely to be able to laugh together at three sisters, trying to do the same in an old house somewhere in the south.
I sent her home with a plant that I'd rooted and a quart jar of soup and a bunch of old magazines and Lord knows I'd do anything for any of my kids, but that was all I could do today.
She did more for me than she knows.
I know she'll be okay, Miss Maybelle, because she's wise and she's endured more pain than most people I know and can still dance.
I can't tell you how proud I am of my kids and the way they've moved into the world, each of them with more bravery and bravado than I can ever imagine having.
They look up. My kids look up. And whether any of us will ever find peace, I have no idea. I don't know if that's really what's on the agenda for us humans. But it's a good thing to do, looking up.
When there is darkness in the soul, it's good to be reminded that there is light in the sky and that no matter what is going on in our hearts, there are spiders building webs that will probably last longer than they themselves do, stretching from tree to post. Spiders have short lives, and so do we, relatively.
We can pass all of our physical exams with flying colors and die suddenly of something no one could have detected.
Or, we can live long, long lives. There is no way to know.
But continuously looking down is no way to live. That church sign had it right. We need to remember to look up. Not necessarily for a god in the sky, but just for the sky itself. To be aware that although we may not be here forever, there is a sort of eternity and that we are part of it. At the very heart of it all, our being here has some sort of meaning, even if it is only that we are one tiny, minuscule strand in the brilliant web of it all.
That each strand of us has some purpose in all of this.
That's what I try to remember.
That's what I try to believe as I walk through this life, my feet so often literally in the dirt. That it is good to look up and be reminded.

When Comets Don't Hit The Earth

Dammit, dammit, dammit, as Lillian Rose Moon said on her first day of preschool. (I was so proud.)

Anyway, what I'm damning is the fact that although I had entire month between when I thought my doctor's appointment was and when it actually is, no comet hit the earth destroying all life forms, which means that today's the day I have to go.

And despite the 20 mg. of antidepressant coursing through my blood stream, I am as jumpy as a cat in a rocking chair factory.

(Hold on. I have to go eat some Tums.)

All right. I'm back. Fruit flavored Tums for breakfast. Yum!

Why am I so freaked out about going to the doctor? I do not know. But I wish I wasn't.

I suppose I should go get ready. Bathe, dress, etc.

Take an Ativan. Slam some vodka.

Just kidding!

I'll report in later.

What's Your Definition Of Monster?

And today- I am SORE. Well, more like stiff. I went to yoga and I'm certain it helped but I think I'll pop a few Ibuprofen just to prolong the improvement.
I am a wuss.
But I feel relatively fine in the mood department and am about to go to town to meet Billy, which is always a spirit-lifter and a joy. We're going to a book store and Goodwill. Billy needs costumage for his upcoming birthday celebration which will have a monster theme.
I am threatening, if I attend, to go as a Momster, wearing jeans that come up to around my bosoms and sag off the ass.
I was also considering going as Sarah Palin but that's such a cheap, cheap shot.
Plus, I'd have to cut bangs and that will not be happening.