What The HECK?!

It was the perfect night for the fair in that it wasn't cold but it wasn't hot and the sunset was beautiful as were coming in and then that full moon rose up over the midway.


Jessie had left earlier and I couldn't really seem to shake my sadness at seeing her go but what can you do? There's that boy and he needs a hip, a hand, and there are my beautiful daughter and her sweet husband and that man.

I took Magnum's advice and found the corn dogs with the buttermilk batter and shared it and a lemonade with Mr. Moon. Finest corn dog I ever ate.

We got right to the animals and Owen finally got on the pig's back (it's not real! we keep reassuring him) for a photo op.

He wasn't so sure.
He wasn't so sure about feeding the animals either but we all helped him.

I just wasn't that impressed with the chickens this year. Oh, sure, there were some fine ones but none more fine than mine. There was one called "naked neck" and whoever set out to breed that poor creature should be shot. I was as embarrassed for the chicken as the chicken was embarrassed to be alive and I did not take his picture.
I was, however, delighted to take pictures of all of the sideshow art. I love that shit. No, we didn't visit any of the sideshows. I'd rather just take the artwork's word for it and imagine it in my mind.
Less of a disappointment and not nearly as sad.

We all rode the Ferris Wheel. It was a beautiful thing.


As Owen said, "It went into the sky."

After the Ferris Wheel, Owen wanted to win a fish. Last year they won two and one of those fish is still alive in a tank in Owen's room and he's huge. HUGE!
This year no fish were won but there was a good time to be had, just trying.

Then we went back to the Merry-Go-Round. It was a newish one, but a pretty one and Owen loved that. His daddy stood by his side and I rode next to him.

Towboy Owen. Yeah. He wore that hat almost all night.



Except when his Bop was wearing it.

A good look for both.

And then we found the kid rides. Quite frankly, I thought the dinosaurs went too fast for Owen. And were too bumpy. That he would be scared. The video I put up last night proved THAT to be wrong. After that, he had to ride the stage-coach. Then the dragon roller coaster. All by himself. And he loved them all.

It was time to go. We had enough tickets for one more ride. He wanted to go back to the horses. And so, we did.

This time with Bop and Mama.
He wanted the same horse. He got it.

He fell into an eye-opened coma as soon as he hit the car seat. I tried to keep him awake by asking him questions about the fair and he would answer me but it was like talking to someone in a hypnotic trance. I hope he slept very well last night. I hope his mama did too. She'd gotten up at four-thirty in the morning to go to work.
I don't know how she does it.

So it was a good night at the North Florida Fair and today I have a dentist appointment at ten and Mr. Moon is leaving to go to Tennessee for a week to hunt and I am not sure how I'll make it here without him, despite vast experience that I have before. Of course it's supposed to get down to 34 degrees here tonight and I have done nothing in the way of protecting plants. I suppose it shall be up to the gods.

As will my fate. I am usually fine with the idea of him leaving. Less laundry, less cooking, less everything.
Including kisses and his arms around me. The peace of having him in bed next to me. The knowledge that he will be coming home as the light goes out of the sky every evening.

Well. I've promised to go wait tables at the Opera House on Friday and Saturday night. That'll get me out of the house. And I'll have Owen some and I'll...oh hell. I don't know. Eat salmon.

Be lonely. Drink gin and tease my hair and wear a white slip and sit on my front porch and scream at the children passing by.

Probably not that last part.

Maybe I'll clean house and plant pansies. Maybe I'll weed in the garden.
I'll probably stay up reading too late every night.

Whatever I do, I'll be here when he gets back. Life is so strange. One minute it's bursting at the seams and I can't keep up with it all and the next minute it's quiet and the old floors of this house seem to lead on forever in their emptiness and that's okay too.

My chickens want out. I need to eat something. This is the way of it. I cannot become un-anchored and fly off the planet, no matter how much it feels that way sometimes. I am not the Teeny-Tiny Woman and my hands are far bigger than two inches across and my feet are a size eight and they keep me pretty grounded, here on this ground.

As Owen is wont to say these days when he is amazed: WHAT?! WHAT?! and even twice now that I've heard him, "What the heck?"

I am constantly amazed at how it all works and spins and flies and settles and gets cold and warms up and that there are eggs of blue and brown in my hen house, warm and ready to tuck into my pocket to bring inside and place in a white bowl on my kitchen counter.

The fair will move on, but here we are. Over and over again.

Cowboy Owen Rides A Dinosaur At The Fair

Well, as you can see, we did go to the fair.

And it was fun and not very wild and here's a very short video of a two-year-old boy riding his first ride all by himself and having the very, very best time doing it.

We Eat Oatmeal On A Sunny Porch

It's Not Like In The Movies

Y'all forgive me if I am quiet or maybe be grateful.
I am just tired.
All is good but I am tired.
Demon fighting is not like it is in the movies. There is no holy water, there are no wooden stakes and you can eat all the garlic you want and it ain't going to help one bit.
Don't even talk to me about thrusting crucifixes into the red glare of demons' eyes.
There may be no gnashing of teeth, no hands-up-to-the-mouth screams.
There may just be silent sauteing of onions in a pan, steaming of broccoli, cooking of brown rice.
There may be nothing but taking-in and trying-to-figure out.

There will be words again, you know that.

Love and truly...Ms. Moon

And So It Goes, Again And Again

Unbeknown to me, Mr. Moon had been getting excited about going to play Trivia all day. To the point where when I pointed out that it didn't start until 10:30 PM he didn't flinch.
"So what?" he said. "Let's be wild!"

Jessie got in and we met Lily and Jason and Owen at a local barbecue joint and Jessie got reacquainted with her nephew and we ate fried okra and other delicacies of the Southern type and then Mr. Moon and Jessie and I went to a local coffee place where hipsters were all working on computers and I drank a huge cup of coffee which did nothing to alleviate my anxiety at being out AFTER DARK and then we went to the restaurant/bar where Trivia was being held and I had a shot of tequila and a beer and then Hank got there and Lily came in to play after she got Owen to bed and so it was Mr. Moon and Lily and Jessie and me and we did all right, considering.
We won our bar tab and thank god I had listened to NPR while putting on my make-up because I knew how many Americans live below the poverty line (16%) and also I knew the term "break-bone fever" and Lily and Jessie knew TV shows that we oldsters didn't and Mr. Moon knew Larry Flint and lumbago.

Family teamwork!

Hank is an amazing Trivia Master. I can't believe all the research he puts into it every week. He loves that sort of thing, though. He always has.

We figured out where Owen picked up his little bug- the pediatrician's office, of course, when we took him into get checked out after he put that tiny seed up his nose. Or whatever it was. He hasn't BEEN anywhere else to speak of.
Dammit.
He's still a cheerful fellow, despite a fever and being pale, and we all fall over laughing every time he raises his hands and yells, "Yoo-hoo!" when he is delighted by something. We yoo-hoo'ed quite a bit at Trivia last night.

Hank's street cred has probably sunk to an all-time low.

Jessie spent the night in town with her girlfriends and Mr. Moon and I came home and went to bed and I just got up a little while ago. Mr. Moon is at work, the chickens are cawing to be let out, I have laundry going, I am fighting my way out of a darkness which I can't even explain because I had such a good time last night. About halfway through Trivia I looked up at Mr. Moon and said, "Thank-you for making me come out. This is so much fun."
And it was.
We saw people I know through Hank whom I like and Jessie's girlfriends whom I have known and loved forever and I met a woman who just charmed me to pieces and it was fun and it was good and there was no wildness and I used my beautiful red pen and nice handwriting to record our answers and I wore my old, old beloved Frey red clogs that make clonky wooden sounds when I walk and one of the answers was Keith Richards (and Hank didn't even know we were coming!) and it was a beautiful evening outside with my husband and most of my children and so why, why, is it so hard for me to just accept such a simple sweet thing as going out on a weeknight and staying up past my bedtime?

Where is my wild gypsy spirit?

I do not think I have one and if I do, it is buried so far beneath gray woolen blankets that I can't even see the corner of a red-silk scarf, of a silver hoop earring.

But I had fun, dammit. I did. And by god, there is nothing wrong with that in this whole damn world.

Synchronistically, I am having an e-mail conversation with a dear friend who is going through some things herself and I just wrote her that we need to learn to love ourselves and be as gentle and accepting of ourselves as we are with others and that it sounds so corny and cliched to say that but it is true.

That probably at the core of it all is that we don't accept ourselves, we don't love ourselves the way we do others, not believing that we are deserving of it.

Well, enough of all of that. Here's a picture of the most darling rooster I think I've ever seen. He is a banty from next door and he and some of his family slip the fence easily and come to scratch in my yard and I love that.

I doubt he is half the size of Elvis but is a fine specimen of a man-chicken, proving that size is not all about physicality and I have much to ponder this morning as the day moves on, moves on, keeps moving on.

Late Afternoon Rant

It's dry. Dry like dust, like bone.
And I don't feel too well. I don't know if my body aches because I'm getting sick or if my body aches because I am sick in the head and it's so dry and it's gray but it won't rain and my datura are drying up and why do I care? Those fuckers never bloom anyway.

My boy threw a big ol' fit when his daddy left this morning and that was a first. No, he doesn't feel "himself." He got over it pretty quickly but when he left after his nap he was running a temp again. Poor little guy. He wanted his mama to stay here. He wanted to eat supper. Since it was only three o'clock, that didn't seem like a good idea and they went on home with Zeke sitting up there beside Owen looking like, "Thank God.Get me out of here."

So Jessie will be here pretty soon and I realized that Trivia doesn't start until ten-thirty. At night, y'all. WHAT?! Ten-thirty?
Maybe not.

We're all talking about going to the fair on Wednesday night and I guess that would be fun...
Actually, I am over the fair. I don't want to eat that crap, I don't want to ride those rides. I told Hank today that the fair is just so...tawdry. He said, "Yes! That's what I love about it!"
Yeah, well. I believe that much tawdriness in one place is just too much for me but if the entire family wants to go, I'll go.
I do like the chickens.

Could I be more negative?

Well yes, yes I could. I could start talking about Herman Cain again but that just makes me want to chew up a beer bottle and spit glass. And then that stupid Ann Coulter who REALLY NEEDS TO SHUT HER MOUTH said something the other day about how much better "their" blacks are than the "other" blacks, meaning Republican versus Democratic. I guess.
Look- I grew up hearing every damn old Southern woman proclaim that "their" nigras were never treated badly. Why "their" nigras didn't even want to leave the plantation after the war!
Of course "their" nigras were the ones owned by the great-grandfathers of these old women and they really didn't know much better although ignorance is no excuse, really, but shitfire! Ann Coulter? How does she get away with saying this crap?
It's bad enough that she should even think it but to open her red-lipped mouth and say it? Out loud? On TV?
Hand me a beer bottle. I'll just go directly to hitting her over the head with it.

All right. I better just shut my mouth. This is a crazy world and my problems don't amount to a hill of beans and what I think doesn't really matter anyway. My boss is a two-year old boy and he doesn't claim sexual harassment if I want to take a nap with him. That's a good thing. Jessie's coming. That's a great thing. I have running water and could water those datura if I wanted to.

Mr. Moon just got home. I wish I'd sprayed some Fabuloso around so that he'd think I'd been cleaning all day but it's too late now. Oh well.

If he loved me for my housecleaning abilities he'd have been gone a long time ago and that's a fact.

What's Up With The Nautical Metaphor?

Owen's on his way. I hear he's been running a little fever at night with no other symptoms. It is so unusual for that boy to be sick but I'm sure it's just some little virus that he's picked up and it'll work its way out of him soon.
We'll take it easy around here today. Jessie's coming in sometime and we may all go out tonight to play Trivia at the Mockingbird where Hank is the Trivia Master. We shall see.

I am trying to be open about whatever comes. Trying not to come up with excuses not to go and do.
It's so hard for me but I need to do it. Need to be more a part of the life of people, not just the life of whatever happens here in Lloyd.
Not that there's anything wrong with chickens...

Monday morning and another week ships sail from the dock. It is not ours to know the tides and currents, it is merely ours to make sure the ship is tight, the lines are ready, the sails are trimmed. We may have studied the charts but we do not control the wind.

Or some bullshit like that.

Have a good Monday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Trip To Lake Miccosukee

We napped and never did get around to eating lunch. When we got up, Mr. Moon started up the Cutlass and filled up a flat tire and washed it off. It's been sitting too long in the garage. It was time to take it out for a ride.


That old car just goes. Big stupid wonderful American engine. It eats up the road.

We drove down backroads where there are old plantations, double-wides, single-wides and block houses. And oak trees. And sky. And pines.

On our drive we remembered what a beautiful place in which we live. It was a drive of tires-down-roads-we-know-and-still-marvel at. Both literally and metaphorically as we held hands over the gears. I couldn't help but turn around, take a picture of where we'd been.

We drove down country roads and ended up down at a very under-used park on Lake Miccosukee. We parked the car and got out. I said, "Doesn't that just look like an advertisement for the Great American Vehicle?" It did.

On the path down to the lake we came upon a guy coming up out of the woods. He was young, wearing camo, skinny, with a knife on his belt. Tattooed. I saw a hawk feather tucked into his belt. I relaxed. We nodded heads and said, "Hey. How you doin'?"

We walked out onto the dock and it was water-mirrored, cypress-ringed.

The wind was blowing the beards of Spanish Moss.

There were coots on the water.

We held each other and talked. I told my husband that I was sorry for the way I've been lately. That demons have been haunting me. That I have no idea whether things come up that I remember now and have never remembered before or if I am creating them or what. That I don't know how it happens or why. He just held me and said, "I understand. Well, no I don't."
I love that man so much.

There was a great white bird, fishing.

The moon was up and starting to show its face.

We talked and we laughed and we listened to the wind and the cypress trees held their peace.

We were alone. We held our hands up together and compared our old skins. We agreed that our hands are still capable of a lot of strength and tenderness too. It was good.

We drove home and the sun was growing low.


We crossed Highway 90 and Mr. Moon had to, HAD TO gun it a little.




Ah-lah. Gotta live life a bit fast sometimes.

We came into Lloyd to where the truck stop is.

We took a right down our own road.

Home again.
I'm cooking chicken and pineapple. Owen will be here tomorrow. An owl is calling. Jessie is coming home tomorrow for a few days. Home.

That man. He loves me. Even though demons haunt me and threaten me into immobility sometimes. He holds me whole. He drives me fast down cool oak-lined roads. He takes me to the water. He heals me with his hands. He delivers me unto our home.

I would not be here if not for him.

There is no doubt about that.

What Time Is It, Really?

Hunting season is an odd time of year.

It's also football season and then there's basketball, too.
Mr. Moon isn't the sort of man who MUST watch every game on TV but there are some which appear to be more important than others. I have no idea. The only way I could possibly watch football is to have my ass superglued to a seat and my eyelids propped open with toothpicks and even then...
Even then.

Anyway, I went to bed last night after making Mr. Moon some brownies and read for as long as I could keep my eyes open and when I got up this morning, he was already gone to the woods. It's just...odd.

Sundays.

The banana leaves are tattering and turning brown. The wind rustles through the drying leaves of the pecan. I have given the jack-o-lantern to the chickens and they have done craniotomies on it, like mad med students on crack.

Well. Funny how it can be so bright and crisp and yet melancholy all at the same time.
But that, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and I am the one beholding this day.

Elvis beholds the withering, beak-beat pumpkin and sees nothing but food.


I wonder if chickens dream.
I doubt it.

Nor do they know Sundays from Tuesdays or Daylight Savings Time from any other time but only know that when the sun comes up it is time to go out and eat the corn I scatter and when the sun goes down, it is time to fly up to the roost to sleep.
When it is time to lay an egg, they do, when it is time to have sex, they do, when it is time to moult, they do, when it is time to go from this part of the yard to that, they do.

Funny how humans divide time which may or may not even be real. It is hunting season, it is football season, it is time to plant or reap or pile the leaves atop the garden and let it rest.

It is time for breakfast.

There are eggs.

I think I will cook one.

A Plain, Good Day

Okay, Elizabeth- here is your picture:


I only took one. I was shy.
But as you can see, for a branch library in Tallahassee, Florida, it is a fine building with a soaring ceiling and lots of huge windows. The shelves were nowhere near full, but I found treasures.

Books to read, books to listen to, two books with beautiful pictures to read and look at both.
I've read The Lacuna before but now I am going to listen to it. I am looking forward to that a great deal. I spent part of my growing-up years in Winter Haven where Cypress Gardens is which is why I got the book about C. Gardens, as we used to call it. It is a Lego Land now.
Sigh.
Not that there's anything wrong with Legos, it's just that it was SO old Florida with its beautiful gardens of amazing trees and plants brought from all over the world and that water ski show with its organ music and announcer and the gorgeous southern belles who stood around and posed for pictures in hoop-skirted dresses the colors of Melty Mints.
Sigh again.

Well, it is a fine library and everyone there was happy to be there and said so out-loud and praised the building and I saw a librarian from when the east-side branch had been the size and had the charm of a garage and she said, "Isn't it sweet?"
Uh-huh. It is sweet.

Then I went and spent money at Mike's Oriental And Seafood Store. I sure did. I bought one pound of stone crab claws and two pounds of rock shrimp. I haven't seen rock shrimp in years and I don't know why. They taste like tiny lobsters, sweet like that, and have exoskeletons that are hard like...rocks. You have to pull those little bodies from the shell after you split the leg-part in two. It is well worth the work.



Supper is going to be good tonight. I have bread rising in honor of the occasion. Rising TO the occasion, you might say.
I even bought real butter for Mr. Moon to dip his crab claws and shrimps in. I dip mine in hot sauce. Yeah. I know. But that's the way I like it and besides- arteries.

While I was at the Oriental And Seafood Market, I ran into Jessie's old fourth or fifth grade teacher. Mr. White. Instead of pretending I did not know him, I introduced myself and he remembered Jessie and he may have remembered me. I know I have changed since then but I swear to you- Mr. White has not. I think he was even wearing the same sweater he used to wear. He is still teaching elementary school and he looked GOOD!

Jessie- if you are reading this, Mr. White says, "Hello!" and he is glad to hear that you are doing so well. He asked me if you were president yet. I said, "Yes. Didn't you hear?"
He said you were special. I am pretty certain he meant that in a very, very good way.


So it was a good trip to town. I kept forgetting items at the Publix when I went there and had to keep crossing the store back and forth to get the horseradish and then the limes and bananas and then back for this and back for that but I think I got almost everything I needed. I hear that Tallahassee is getting a Whole Foods which means that we are going to be really cool and shit. Since it is much farther away than Publix I will probably hardly ever go there. I might just stand by my with-the-new-library-rule of never traveling farther into Tallahassee than what we used to call the Truck Route and which we now call Capital Circle and never ever go there once.
Hell, I'll go there at least once to see Cool People. You know I will. And then I'll write about it and probably say bitchy things.
(Sixty Minutes- are you paying attention?)

And so it's been a fine day. Mr. Moon has gone out to the woods to sit and wait for that twelve-point buck to show up. When he comes home we'll have a seafood feast and the house will be warm and cozy and smell of bread and shrimp and then we'll turn the heat way down low and sleep under the piles of duck feathers that humans so cleverly contain in fabric, or at least I will. Mr. Moon, as I have said before, doesn't care for the amount of coverage I do at night but we make it work. A few nights ago my duck, as I call the big comforter, fell off the bed and when I woke up with a semi-hot flash, I reached for it and it was cold from being on the floor and that sensation of the cold and the warmth at the same time was a high-point of my entire life.
I am not kidding you.

It's about to be time for Prairie Home Companion and I do not know how they will manage because their Foley Artist, Tom Keith died this past week. I can't even imagine that show without the sound effects he made. Kathleen and I discussed the fact that we could step in and take his place but then I said, "I don't have time for that," and it's true. But maybe I could. Just like maybe I could take Andy Rooney's place. I thought I was going to take Erma Bombeck's place but that didn't work out too well.

Still, I get to sit here and write my heart out every day and even though I don't get paid it's the joy of my life. Well, that and sleep.

And tonight we get an extra hour of sleep! I hate the changes between Daylight Savings Time and "real" time but it is nice to pretend that on this one night of the year, we get an hour for free, even if it's going to screw up our body-clocks.

A very good day, indeed, with more time to spend under the duck with less guilt.

Yeah. I'll take that. An extra hour, free books, riches from the ocean, fresh bread.

Grits will be involved.

There will probably be tears on Prairie Home Companion. I wonder how those folks will manage without their sound effects guy. The show must go on, so they say, and so it will, but I am sorry that it so often has to go on in sorrow and loss.

That, like libraries and crab claws and good teachers, is a part of life.

Enjoy your extra hour, y'all, however you may choose to use it.

Love...Ms. Moon

He Was More Than Just Eyebrows And Bitchiness

My brother just sent me the following in an e-mail and he is probably right and I'm sorry I criticized such an honorable old dude.
Sort of.
Mostly he was just damn cranky.
But obviously there was far more to Andy than I truly realized.
So. Correction noted.

Wow Mary, you were too tough on Rooney in my opinion. Why so hard on a guy who also quit his CBS job 41 years ago because they wouldn't let him give his anti Vietnam commentary on air......or reported on Allied atrocities against German civilians......or was arrested for refusing to take a Black's place on a bus ......anyway, more important than any of that was his steadiness in an unsteady world ....and he was occasionally very funny

I Am Laughing With Them AND At Them

Oh my dear Jesus God. I have just spent an hour laughing until I have cried, quite literally.
If you need a little of that, go here, although you probably already have but if you haven't, just go ahead.
I swear- I have a headache from all the laughing/crying.

I am so easily amused.

Unpaid Product Placement AGAIN!

Andy Rooney is dead.
I'm sorry. That just doesn't affect my life at all. Old garrulous man. Old curmudgeon. Old bitchy dude. I'm sorry for his family. I'm sure he had a charming side which he didn't share with most of us. Wonder how much money he made being an old bitchy dude?

I've reinstated the verification word. Sorry but that's it. It's done. I'm done going through e-mails notifying me of spam. Fuck it. I do not want to see any more shit about fake Uggs or how to get more readers to my blog. I have the readers I have. They make me happy. We do not want fake Uggs and if we do, we can go find them ourselves.

So, Ms. Moon, have you heard about Keith Richards' autobiography winning the Norman Mailer Center Prize for biography?
Yes. Yes I have.
Ms. Moon, are you still obsessed with Keith Richards?
Yes. Yes I am.

You see this picture?

It makes me fucking happy. You hear that? FUCKING HAPPY!

Would reading Andy Rooney's biography make me happy? I doubt it. What would it say? "I was a bitchy old young dude and it worked so well that I became a bitchy old OLD dude."

Maybe I just don't know the half of it. I would not be surprised.

So Bill Clinton is going to give Keith and his co-writer, James Fox, the award. I love Bill Clinton. And anyone who is trying to compare Herman Cain's sexual harassment issues to Bill Clinton's affair issues needs to be educated. Bill's sexual adventures were between himself and consenting women, as far as has ever been reported. They were his business and the business of the women and of his wife.
But Herman Cain sexually harassed women. Reportedly. To the point where they were paid off and signed agreements not to talk about it. Ever been sexually harassed? It ain't nothing like having a consenting sexual experience with someone you desire, even if it's someone you should NOT be having a sexual experience with. It's scary and it's wicked and it's having your back up against a wall and your whole nervous system screaming Danger! Danger! Get me out of here! and it's your mind reminding you that this man could fire you and how will you pay the damn rent? It's about power and it's about control and it's awful and the men who do it or who have done it are fucking evil.
I may be old but I remember.

Okay. I'm rambling again. It's a beautiful morning in Lloyd. God, it's beautiful. Mr. Moon and I walked around the yard and looked at the garden and I showed him where Owen likes to explore in the "jungle" which is a piece of overgrown property. That boy is obsessed with the jungle. When he woke up from his nap yesterday he sat up straight, lifted both hands in the air, pumped his arms up and down and said, "Yoo-hoo!" as if he was aware that he had indeed successfully napped and woken up and now it was time to play again.

I think I am going to go visit the new library today. I hear that the grand opening was so grand that they had to get police to direct traffic. That's so encouraging to me- that over a thousand people would show up at four-o'clock on a weekday afternoon to go visit a new library. Maybe there is hope for us after all. Maybe. I mean, that many people wouldn't show up just for the free snacks, would they? I don't think so.
So yes, I want to go to the new library. And I will. And to the grocery store to get something (WHAT?) to cook for our supper tonight. I sure wish I could make Madame Radish King's recipe for macaroni and cheese but my arteries can't take it. Just reading the recipe got me in trouble and I had to go heat up some of last Sunday's pancakes and put maple syrup on them for my breakfast. They were damn good for week-old pancakes reheated in the microwave.
I am trying to be sweet with myself today, having slept through another night of dreams that put me in another world of busyness for hours last night. Nothing terrible, just way too busy. It was odd though, every time I got to a place in my dreams where disaster was about to occur, it was averted. I find this strangely cheerful, as if my mind is telling me that the sky is NOT falling, look, here is your wallet, here is your purse, and there are kindly people who will help you.

I guess.

When I got up this morning I found the dining room table tipped over on its side. One of the legs is in serious need of repair and I suppose the dog jumped on it. No big deal except that every night before I go to bed I lovingly set my MacBook in the center of that table to protect it from harm and there it was, lying on its face, having slid off the tipped table.
I panicked a little, but as you can see, it is fine.

Everything is fine. Andy Rooney is dead but he was very old. I wonder if Sixty Minutes needs a new curmudgeon. I sort of fit that bill, don't I? But I am not negative about everything. I promise you. Didn't I just tell you that the picture of Keith Richards makes me fucking happy? Lots of things make me happy including the fact that although I just washed a load of clothes that held a pen stashed somewhere in its bosom, they were white clothes means that with the POWER OF OXY-CLEAN AND CLOROX BLEACH they are almost as good as new. I am washing them once more with that magical formula and am hoping for a complete white-recovery.
That is not racist. That is just laundry-talk. The sooner that everyone in the world is at least a shade darker than I am, the better in my opinion.

The well-built MacBook I write on makes me happy. This day with its bleach-pure light makes me happy.
Elvis crowing in the yard makes me happy. The thought of going to a brand-new library makes me happy. Green things growing in my laundry room window make me happy.

My babies make me happy. The fact that Keith Richards is alive makes me happy.

I wonder what made Andy Rooney happy? All that money he made from being a bitchy boy?

Who knows? Not me. But how ironic it would be to be made happy by the fact of being chronically unhappy.

But I'll tell you this- if left untended my eyebrows could look just like Andy Rooney's eyebrows looked.

And if paid enough, I could become as curmudgeonly as he was.

But I'd rather just be me. Happy and unhappy, bitchy and tender. Profane and holy.

Just like most of us.

Amen. Rock and Roll. Etc.

I Do Not Know

The sun is low in the sky and that yogurt-faced boy just left with a basket of toys and that is good because less for me to pick up although I am not sure his mama will be so happy about it.
It's so quiet when he goes home and these days, blessedly, Zeke goes home with him and so there is even more quiet.

When Owen was in his car seat and he and his daddy were about to leave, I said, "You know, I've had him for two days and here I am, about to cry to see him go. NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG!" I added, "I am glad he's going home. It's just that...I love him so much." And then I forced another kiss from him.

But yes, the quiet is good.

Mr. Moon will be home soon and I have no idea what we're having for supper.
Something. Food.
Do olives in martinis count as supper?

I doubt it.

I should get my ass out there in that garden and snip some tiny greens. Yes. I will do that. Soon. If we went out and got a salad of the very same greens it would cost seven dollars and if we lived in a big city, probably twelve. Or fifteen. Or a thousand. I have no idea.

I hardly ever eat salads in Cozumel. To tell you the truth, the vegetable category gets mostly satisfied with the ixchnepeche (I think that's how you spell it) which is the Mayan version of Pico de Gallo. Ixchnepeche means "dog snout" and Pico de Gallo means "rooster beak."
Hmmmmm.
But both have tomatoes, hot peppers, onions, garlic and lime juice.
That's salad enough for me and I eat it on everything including eggs.
I never, ever, even after ten days, think to myself, "Boy, I sure would like some vegetables."
Nope. I do not.

But of course we eat a lot of fruit there. Mangoes, bananas, papaya, pineapple. Etc. Also beans. Fish. Chicken. Some pork. Yogurt. Rice. Corn tortillas. It's a diet that suits me fine.

I think I am a peasant at heart. I have peasant wants and peasant needs. Art to me is the glowing zinnia in the twilight, it is the way the feathers gleam on my chickens. Of course I love human-made art. I often think that if humans have a purpose at all, it is to make art but I am not the one who decides what does and does not fit into that category. If it is the result of a creative overwhelming need-to-do, then I think it probably is art, even if it does not please my eye or my ear or even my tastebuds, or if my brain can't comprehend it.

Oh Lord, I must be tired. I have wandered from Owen to Cozumel to supper to art.
Including the possible purpose of humans.
Of course, elephants can paint pictures. Of course birds can weave bowers. Of course whales can sing songs. Of course glaciers can create sculptured landscape and so can wind and so can water and they do.

Maybe the purpose of LIFE is to create art and the purpose of humans is to see and register and appreciate it and imitate it.

I think it is time for a martini. My husband is home.

I shall ponder these things as I come up with a supper for us to eat.

Happy Friday night, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

I'm A Junkie

Oh my god. It has been a very, very stressful day.

I got up this morning and did my morning routine of feed-cats-chickens-dogs and read the paper and then opened up the ol' Mac and launched Firefox and...nothing. Nada. Bupkis.
Don't panic, Mary. DO NOT PANIC!
I went and checked the router. All lights on. I unplugged it, replugged it. I checked the phone line. Nothing.
My Airport icon showed all strength on my little icon thingee.
Restarted the Mac. Still nope.
Whoa. Starting to panic.
Called my next door neighbor. She had internet.
Starting to shake.
Called tech support.
Recording said that Tallahassee and surrounding areas not able to access high speed internet.
Felt a little better. But WHY COULD MY NEIGHBOR GET ONLINE AND NOT ME?

Owen came. Sort of in a pissy mood himself. He didn't get enough sleep last night.
Or something.
Didn't want to wear a jacket outside.
Cried because he didn't want to wear a jacket outside.
SCREAMED because he didn't want to wear a jacket outside.
Etc.

The morning went on, slightly askew. Like...my movie-making attempt yesterday.

Ms. Sarcastic Bastard called me to make sure I was alive. I assured her I was. We had a little chat.

I went and checked my internet again.

It worked! Here I am!

Phew. That's all.

I am feeling better now.

That's all. I am alive.

Dog Door Afternoon

Sorry about the side-ways photography. I am not a videographer. I do not even know how to spell that.

We visited goats and fed chickens and collected eggs and went on wheelbarrow rides and watered plants and dumped out all the toys and did puzzles and read books and made supper and pretended to be airplanes and monkeys and talked about the tiger in the woods.

We saw trains, we pretended to be scared, we hid from Mer-Mer, we hung out in the garden, we visited the goats again and saw the mule and the donkey too. We drummed. We built. We took a short nap and we were AWAKE and I don't know about Owen but I am going to sleep like the dead.

The child is filthy.
The house is a complete wreck.

He will be back in thirteen and a half hours. I may sleep for at least twelve of those.

Mr. Moon is out of town and I am thinking about leaving all of the dumped-out toys dumped-out. Why not?

Here are my words of wisdom for tonight:

1. Have your babies at as young an age as possible. Like, when you are twelve. Because twelve-year-olds have almost as much energy as two-year-olds and also, the grandmother will be like twenty-four. This will work out well for all concerned.

2. If you have never had or raised a child, do not ever, ever, ever open your mouth to offer parenting advice. EVER. I mean it. You can think whatever you want but keep your damn mouth shut because you do not know shit.

3. If there is anything sweeter than a spontaneous tackle and kiss from a grandchild, I can't even imagine what it is.

It's been a good day.

Now let's go to bed. As Owen would say, "Do it!" And he would mean it. And I do too.

News You Can't Use And Other Random Stuff

I just feel so boring here lately. So whiny. So over-and-over-again-you've heard-it-all.

I should talk about politics. Let's see...
Herman Cain.
Are you kidding me?
Every other Republican supposedly running for president.
Are you kidding me?

I could discuss popular culture.
But I am still unsure of who the Kardashians are although I am fairly sure that one of them just demonstrated quite vividly why marriage between a man and a woman is sacred.
For a few weeks.

I could discuss (going back to Herman Cain) how every freaking manager I ever had while working in restaurants sexually harassed me except for the gay guy who only harassed the guy servers.

I could discuss my agoraphobia but we've certainly all heard about that before.

I could discuss how completely unsexy/unpretty/unattractive I feel lately but we've heard that before too. Really though, I've reached a new low.

I could discuss the thing I was thinking about last night which is the family-famous story of how when I was a little girl I stole something from a grocery store (I was so young I don't even remember what OR the incident) and my mother made me take it back in, whatever it was, and apologize to the manager and I wonder now if if that has anything to do with my agoraphobia but it probably doesn't. It's probably just why I've never shoplifted anything in my life.

I could talk about how relieved/guilty I feel when I see Christmas commercials on the TV or see Christmas decorations in the stores because I am NOT DOING CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR. Okay. A little guilty, mostly relieved, and then I feel guilty because I don't feel guilty as much as I feel relieved.

I could point out that the furniture polish and a rag have been sitting on the piano for two days now. Gathering dust.

I would like to point out that two years ago today this boy was born:


Waylon Grady Lunsford. And that on that day he and Owen were this tiny:

And that now they are BIG boys and I am wishing the happiest of happy birthdays to Waylon and to his mama and daddy who are my beloved Shayla and Billy.
Two years, y'all.
Can you believe it? Can you especially believe, Shayla, that Waylon ever had trouble nursing? HahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHA!

I could tell you that the new library is opening today but NOT UNTIL FOUR O'CLOCK THIS AFTERNOON AND WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?

I could tell you that the train has gone by about fourteen times while I've been writing this.

I could tell you that Mr. Moon is going to be out of town for a few days to go pick up a car in South Florida and that I am going to be a wild, wild woman while he is gone. Wild as in Owen will be here most of today and tomorrow and so yes, I will be wildly trying to keep things out of his nose.

Oh, I could tell you all of these things and discuss every one of them but with the exception of it being Waylon's birthday, who would care?

Oh wait- here's some news: Ms. Mabel has feathers appearing again on her back. Moulting season is coming to an end and growing-in season is happening. Now if Elvis will just leave her alone she might look like a real chicken again.

And I do have other news but I am not at liberty to discuss it yet. Stayed tuned to his channel.
This news has nothing to do with Herman Cain OR sexual harassment. I promise you.

Okay. This wild woman needs to go get something done before she picks up Owen including going to the Costco where she hopes they are sampling salmon but probably will not be but will probably be sampling those nasty little frozen smoothie things instead. Or some sort of food-substitute nutritional bars. She needs to take a walk. She needs to wash her hair. She needs to shave her legs but she probably won't. Wild women don't need to shave their legs.
If their husbands are out of town.
Costco is like the Honey Badger. It don't give a shit. If you have a card.
Remember Honey Badger? Of course you do. He's nasty-ass. And if you haven't seen him, here he is. Yes, I've posted this before. So what? It's my blog?
I do not give a shit.




Better Honey Badger than Herman Cain.
In fact, that may be my new motto, my slogan.

BETTER HONEY BADGER THAN HERMAN CAIN!!!

Love...Ms. Moon

One Of Our Neighbors

Hawk in the twilight, standing under the sprinkler on the garden fence.

A Very Short Short

And if I'm not mistaken, that voice on the phone is none other than that of FC Rabbath's.

What If Tears Were Honey?

Lily is so beautiful right now that it's hard to believe- I mean, she's always been beautiful but this baby is making her shine brighter than these fall days or spring days or both together and I think it's all the love, love, love. You should see the way she loves that Owen boy. You should see it. She has never been more beautiful. She IS spring and she IS life and she IS Beauty and I remember those days of being pregnant and sometimes I did feel full-to-bursting with beauty and life and sometimes I just felt so tired.

That is life.

I tell Lily, "You are so beautiful." I tell Owen, "You are so beautiful."
I tell this day, "You are so beautiful."

Last night Mr. Moon was late getting in from playing poker (well, late for him, not really so late) and I woke up and where was he? and my stomach clenched and I curled around myself with a book and read, read, read, one tiny molecule of brain on the book, the rest all wrapped in worry and he came in and I said, "I was worried!" and he said, "Don't worry about your man!" and I said, "I can't help it."

He held me and we slept and maybe, maybe the older you get the more you can see the beauty, the more you can truly know how love makes beauty and the more you know how slick this road of life is and the more you fear the loss as the golden coins of all that love pile up.
The more there is of love, the more there is to lose.
The more you know of light, the more the darkness penetrates.

Or something. I do not know.
I only know it is so bright today, there is so much goodness and it scares me and I think of all the gold I have spent, unknowingly, already slipped through my fingers and that's all right- that is the way it should be- grasping at love is no good, it is, in fact, impossible, but how to let it flow like a sparkling river without wanting to haul buckets of it up to a safe place, knowing all the while that if it was not flowing, the water would be as gray as the bucket, as still as lead?

It is a day that I want to gather all of my babies to me and hold them so tightly. I want to touch their faces, their beautiful faces, I want to let my love for them spill off my fingers and into their heart-pockets. I want them to know how much I have always loved them, will always love them, how much love there is in this world for them, I only channel some of it, not all, but certainly all I have which is not inconsiderable.

I think love has made me crazy today. I think it has made me insane. I think the light is driving me out of my mind. I wasn't made to hold all of this and even as I have lived it, this life has not prepared me for itself.

Soup And Other Kindly Things

Owen grounded me today firmly in this world. "Hey there!" he said and he took my hand when I walked into his house and then he said, "Come on!" and I did and he showed me many things and he hid under a basket and we did a puzzle book and I am amazed at how quickly he is learning.

He is putting words together now and can make himself well understood. Lily asked him the other day what he did with his Bop in the woods and Owen told her about the four-wheeler and the tractor and the deer and he said that Bop put butter on the trees.
Lily was mystified by that last bit and asked her daddy about it.
"Peanut butter," he said. "I put peanut butter on the trees. The deer love to lick it."
(According to Mr. Moon's trail camera, the foxes love to lick it even more, but that's another story.)

I asked Owen today about Halloween and he told me that he'd had a good time and that he'd gotten candy. CANDY! He did indeed. I also asked him if he had put anything else up his nose. He said no. I asked, "Did it hurt when you put something up your nose yesterday?"
"NO!" he insisted.
That boy will NOT admit to being hurt. But he will let you kiss his bug bites if he gets them.

He did the puzzle animals so nicely. I was surprised. I didn't know he was able to do that. And I see him at least three times a week! Ah- lah. I can't keep up.

On the way home I stopped at a thrift store which used to be the best place in the world for treasure. They had no idea what they had, ever, and sold everything for pennies. They've gotten a little more educated. The store's profits go to the support of a very, very Christian home for young-ladies-gone-bad. I get their newsletter and it is full of how-I-got-saved-and-now-I-am-so-happy stories. The girls also sing gospel and sell CD's for money which goes to the school.
This of course is always a bit disconcerting to me but what the hell?
I know a woman who volunteers there. I went to nursing school with one of her daughters and I had heard that this woman's husband had died this year. When I went in today, she was there and we talked and I cried and we hugged. Fifty-two years they'd been married and they were up at their house in the mountains in North Georgia and had had a beautiful day and eaten supper on the porch and he sat down to watch a golf game on TV and she went upstairs and she heard a noise and she came downstairs and he was gone.
Like that.
She looks as if she has aged twenty years since I've seen her last. But she says she is okay, although she thinks about moving to some place like China because everything here reminds her of him. I understand. A little bit, at least.
I hope with everything in me that I go before Mr. Moon. I could not live in this world were he not by my side.
"Well," this woman said, "As my husband always said, 'We shall abide.'"
I suppose one could abide. I do not know if that would be living.

I looked at all of the stuff in the store and I didn't buy anything but some tiny fabric roses that I can use for my Virgin cards and boxes. I spent $1.61 and that's not going to buy very much toilet paper for the girls-gone-bad-who-are-being-saved but I didn't need or want another thing. Aunt Bob, the woman who runs the store and who appears to be immortal, thanked me "kindly" as she always does. I am glad I stopped by there, even if there were no amazing treasures for me to buy today.

And then I came home and I am making soup of as many colors as Joseph's coat.

Leftovers and some collards and cut-up yard-long beans from the garden all went into the pot and it is simmering now. Just what we need- leftover leftover soup. But you know me- nothing makes me as content as making soup. I wish I had some sweet potatoes to put in it or some sort of hard squash but I don't and it will be fine as it is. There is even some of the leftover chili in it and no, Mr. Moon did not win but yes, a person who brought in chili which tasted most like "chili" won. I fear that McCormick's chili seasoning and canned-everything-else was involved there. He did win a fifty-dollar gas card, though. And his chili was delicious. People just wouldn't know fucking gourmet if it bit them in the fucking ass.

I sure do swear a lot for a grandmother. I don't swear around my grandson. I promise. Although yesterday when I stepped in dog shit I did almost say shit. It came out like, "Shhhii..."
I refuse to feel guilty for that. No way, no how.

I still find it unbelievable that I am a grandmother and yet, here I am. And I keep thinking about how when you fall in love with someone you tell each other that you want to be with them when you are old and gray-haired and sitting on the porch and watching your grandchildren and well, here we are.

There are worse fates, believe me.

Especially when the one you love grows up to be as darling as Mr. Moon has. Especially when your grandson says, "Here there! Come on!"

The sun is setting. The soup is simmering. It smells real good here tonight.

If I learned anything today it is this- don't take joy for granted. It is also that fifty-two years is not enough. It is that we shall abide.

Isn't that amazing?

We shall abide.

Hovering Between Worlds

Chilly morning and quiet. My back aches as if I curled up into a ball last night and never uncurled. I know this not to be true.
This is a day to take a good walk. This is a day to walk it all off.

We had three trick-or-treaters. Three. Sigh. Children from across the street. There was a storm trouper, a Minerva, a Persephone. I think. I told Persephone I should have given her a pomegranate. She laughed.

I feel like a jelly fish, all blob and no way to reach out and control anything. Usually, that is okay in my book. Today it makes me feel helpless.
Is it the day to wash the sheets? I don't know. Is it the day to sweep the petals of the sasangua off the hallway altar? To dust it? To carefully wipe the face of the Queen of Mexico free of the black dust of Lloyd?
I don't know.

Here is something:
Jessie and Vergil are going to meet us in Cozumel.
This is...well, unbelievable.

It was Vergil's idea and Jessie joyfully jumped on the idea. They have flights booked and are looking at hotels. Do you know that I have been going to Cozumel longer than Jessie has been alive?
It's true. I have.

When she was a little girl, she would wrap a cloth around her head and talk about her "ancient land." Finally one day I asked her where her ancient land was.
"Meximo City!" she announced gleefully.

Jessie is coming to her ancient land. I have a strong feeling she's never going to want to leave. I never did either, but had babies at home to return to and so I always did but there have been, to be quite honest, tears at the departure gate far more than once.

The only thing that makes me sad about this plan is that Jessie's siblings have never been to Cozumel. When I had that Yankee agent and she was sending me flowers and swearing she was going to sell my book, the only think I wanted to do with any money I might make was to take all of my babies to Cozumel and rent some fine house on the beach and all be together in the place I have come to love so very, very much.
Well, la-di-dah on that one.

But the idea of showing the island to Jessie and Vergil makes me very, very happy. Of sharing it with them. I can't even begin to tell you.
They are probably not going to stay in the same hotel as we do and last night I talked to Jessie on the phone about different cheap places to stay and I kept saying, "It doesn't matter. Wherever you stay will be clean and you'll love it and if you don't, you can just move."
Her daddy and I moved hotels many times. It is the way of it.
They're going to fly into Cancun and then take a bus to Playa del Carmen and take the ferry over to Cozumel. We'll pick them up.
I just can't even imagine how that will be. We'll have been there for a few days by then and hopefully, we'll be our Cozumel-selves which means we'll be far younger and more beautiful, that Mr. Moon and I.
I wonder if Jessie and Vergil will even recognize us.
We shall take them to Casa Denis for sopa de lima, perhaps, for their first meal. And Jessie will finally know what the hell I've been trying to do with chicken and spices and lime juice all these years.



We shall take them to Plaza Leza where, no matter how long we've been gone, the waiter says, "Welcome home." We shall advise them to only order the pequeno margarita. A large one would kill a horse.

Okay. Stop.

I am so immersed in memory right now that when I just went out to feed the chickens, I woke up in the middle of throwing corn and thought, "Where am I?" and I looked around me and for a second, I was shocked to be in Lloyd.

This is how strong Cozumel is in my blood. This is how much I long to be there and can't believe I am going back. I wonder- will it become this way for my daughter and Vergil too?
What will happen if they go there? Because you know, the island is sacred to Ixchel, the Mayan Goddess of fertility and of childbirth and of creativity and of...the moon.

It could happen that they are merely embarrassed by the antics of the old people, kissing, kissing, kissing.


It could be a good thing that we shall be in separate hotels. I have a feeling there will be a lot of kissing going on between the young people too.

I can see Jessie walking through the zocalo at night, taller than the Mayan men, I can see the men falling down and swooning as she walks. I can see her father and I, holding hands and saying, "Do you see, do you see? Smell? Hear? Do you feel the soft air of this island?"

Oh, the free shots of tequila and Kahlua that child is going to receive.

I don't want to walk in Lloyd today, I don't want to leave this dream. It is the Day of the Dead and the curtain between here and there is thin. Perhaps Cozumel is nothing but a dream. Is it possible to have witnesses to a dream?

We shall see, won't we? We shall see if Jessie and Vergil's feet learn the sidewalks of Cozumel the way mine do. We shall see if they step into a dream, swim into a dream, swallow whole a dream, eat the sunset with dreaming eyes.

I wish all of my children could be there with their own loves.

Well, maybe some day.

Shake my head. Wake up to this good day in Florida. Dry my eyes which have filled and overfilled with memory and tears. God, that sounds so corny. Well, fuck it. It's true.

Buenos dias, ninas y ninos. Buenos dias and hello and let us all walk carefully today, choosing our steps well. The curtain is thin. Do not get lost somewhere unless it is where you really want to be. There is more magic than we know and I, I am lost in it.

Persephone would understand.

I have eaten the seeds of the pomegranate. I am swimming in waters of blue with my lover, mi esposo, mi hombre.