Further Proof Of Spring

I noticed that there was actually purple on the wisteria trellis this morning and so I went out and took a snap.

The sky, as you can see, is a bit bruised this morning. Like maybe Lily's tailbone but that's another story and it involves bamboo, as does this picture.

Wisteria in the bamboo, growing wild, untamed by trellis or snips. Just growing there like the wild thing it really is. Invasive as hell, gorgeous when it blooms. It can pull down a house if you let it.
Go ahead. Make a metaphor. I'll wait.

The dogwoods are coming out white finally but they sure are taking their time. In town I see them full like clouds but here in shaded Lloyd, they are slow to fill in the spaces against the sky.

But they are beautiful whether in massive clusters or tiny tree-tied bouquets.

So back to Lily's tailbone.
Yesterday Owen wanted to play in the bamboo and so Lily went over there with him and she tried to pull down a very, very large stalk and it popped and split and she sat hard on the ground and no, labor did not start but now her tailbone hurts like crazy and she's been consulting Dr. Google and has discovered that she may have actually broken it and since they can't do an X-ray and couldn't do anything about it if she HAS broken it, she's just going to have to suffer.

Now really. Life is NOT fair. She is forty weeks pregnant today- this is her due date, and now she has a very, very painful butt bone and that's really not going to help during labor. She's resting. She is icing it. She is not complaining. She is just facing this uncomfortable new reality and she did call in to work, thank GOD. I may go to town soon to go with her to a chiropractor, to go buy Arnica. You do what you can do within the limitations of pregnancy and I would do anything to help her. I am so grateful to be able to be this close to her, both geographically and emotionally, so that I can be the mother to her I want to be. Or to try, at least. And to be the grandmother to Owen and this coming baby that I would wish for all grandchildren.

Yesterday Owen was in a dreamy-dream land of goodness, being out here but with his mama and daddy too. If Lily went out to talk to the fellas in the garage and Owen decided he wanted her, he could say, "Mama! Where you? Need you!" and we could go and find her. If he needed help he had so many arms to choose from. When it was nap time he threw a little hissy. "Owen go home, sleep Owen's bed!" he told us but we settled him down between us and I told, not the Mr. Peep story, which he did not want to hear, but a story about going to the beach and his eyes got starey and then heavy and finally his lids dropped and I kissed his perfect little mouth and Lily opened her eyes and saw that he was asleep and then we too, slept. What is it that is so perfect about sharing sleep with babies and with those you love? To be huddled up together under the covers like puppies? I don't know but it is. I pity people who don't sleep with their babies. I don't understand how they can not do that.

It's just amazing to me that I am here at this point in my life. I think about my own mother and how it was just impossible for us to have had this sort of relationship. How I fled from her house when I was eighteen and never looked back. I think of how horribly unhappy she must have been and how that unhappiness affected her life so profoundly. It still does. I wonder, over and over again what it was about her childhood that made her so perfectly able to tolerate such unhappiness for so long. I heard a woman the other day talking about a 24-year marriage she had been in with an alcoholic. A marriage that even her priest told her to get out of.
A Catholic priest!
And yet, she stayed with the man for 24 years.
What is it inside of certain people that disallow them to walk out of a door into another life?
Oh it is so easy to stay stuck. I know. There are so many different things that bind us to unhappiness that are almost impossible to slip away from.

Well, anyway. Here I am and I'll be going to town in a while to go with Lily so that I can watch Owen when the chiropractor adjusts her and we'll go buy Arnica and these last days of her being pregnant are so special in a way. She is living in that portal-time, that time when the world holds its breath, waiting for a new life.
I get to share that with her.

Here- one more picture.


The peas Mr. Moon planted over a week ago are finally coming up. They have decided to stretch forth from the dirt and reach up for the light. Their little green powerhouses of energy are clicking and whirring, taking the light and the water and making energy which we humans will eat. Sweet pods of crunch and goodness and Owen will eat them right from the fence where they grow.

Life. It just keeps on popping up and popping out and some of it is green and some of it is purple and all of it is noted here and appreciated.
We wait.
We tend.
We attend life.

Good morning, y'all. Good morning.

Save Time And Energy, Ladies, With That One Dish Meal!

Okay. Maybe I don't do it right but this is what it took to create a smoked-turkey pot pie.

Which, I must admit, looks mighty tidy in its bright white Corning Ware baking dish in the oven.
And hey- I'll just whip through those dishes and then there will be nothing left to do but enjoy the rich, yummy goodness of a down-home casserole made with smoked turkey, potatoes, carrots, celery, green beans, pimentos, onions and a hearty (okay- ironic warning) biscuit topping!

I just did it again- took leftovers and made a huge mess and more potential left-overs.

Sigh.

At least I got the quilt done, the pintos planted. And the thing I'm most excited about- zinnias! I hoed up that ground and went through it with my fingers, raking out the weeds. Then I planted those tiny seeds.

If the guy who cuts the grass mows down my zinnias this year, I am not going to be so goddammed nice about it. I am going to raise hell and call down the wrath of god upon him. I WANT MY PURPLE ZINNIAS!

Look- I got to take a nap with my daughter and my grandson today. What in the world have I got to bitch about? Not much. We also walked down the railroad track to the post office, saw a donkey up close and picked azaleas.

Shitfire. What's a counter-full of dishes compared to all of that?

Not much.

Love...Ms. Moon

Time Travel

It's Sunday and the time has changed and I have nothing to report. Nothing at all except that I wish I could go back in time and kill my stepfather but I can't and so I guess I'll put on my overalls and go plant things.

There's a yellow honeysuckle which is blooming its little head off.
That's nice, right?

For Susan

If you haven't watched this movie in awhile, you need to just fucking do it.
I swear.
Best movie ever that Bill Murray wasn't in.
Amen.

Soft and Quiet

I'm not feeling especially writey today. Which is odd. I always feel writey. Okay, I do sort of feel writey but almost everything I have to write about just sounds mean even though it's not really mean, just sort of observatory and sometimes that comes out sounding mean.

And it's too soft here right now to write mean. It would not be right, somehow.

Okay, I will tell you that the heirloom tomato sale turned out to be about the shortest amount of time I've ever spent with the craziest number of encounters in my entire life. I am not sure whether the growing of heirloom tomatoes is something that the, uh, strange-among-us is just attracted to or whether it was just my good fortune but there was some ADD activity going on there today.
Uh-huh.
Ten minutes and I'd encountered at least three women who were not right (as we say around here) and Mr. Moon had encountered one.
But we got our tomatoes and and then we went to breakfast and then we went to a nursery and then we came home and I planted the tomatoes and also some peppers and eggplants and more cucumbers and some beans.
That was lovely. Just absolutely lovely and I am not kidding you. This weather is perfect. Like I said, soft, and cool and yet warm, too. I slipped plants in the dirt and seeds into their little dirt-homes and I hoped for the best. Vegetables for the summer, growth and vitamins and tasty goodness. All of that.

Then I went to a little gathering of a cast party for that play whose name I have already forgotten and that was nice.

But now I'm home and that is really nice. I hugged Mr. Moon so hard and said, "Thank you for being the sort of man you are and letting me be the sort of woman I am." He said, "You're welcome," and I looked around at my funky house with all its funky stuff, the seeds and the baby quilt on the kitchen counter and magazines and just...stuff...and it is all somehow comforting to me. I'll finish the quilt tomorrow and plant the rest of my seeds. I got pinto beans to plant which is something I've never planted before and also lots of zinnias, including purple ones. Purple zinnias! I can't wait.

So Mr. Moon has gone out to turn off the sprinklers and I'm going to figure out what to make for our supper. Tomorrow at this time it will be seven o'clock, instead of six o'clock and that will be confusing but it'll be nice to have the extra daylight in the evening. Jason and Lily and Owen are coming out tomorrow and the men are going to wax the boat. The chickens are getting their last sips of water before they go to bed for the night.

See- nothing much to write about. Just...stuff. Funky, life stuff.
God, I'm grateful for it all, every funky drop of it, this dirt/blood/stuff life of mine.

I wish you could hear the bird I can hear, whistling a sliding tune of nightfall. I would give it to you if I could.

Ah-lah. Good night.

Say What?

We're up and about to be off to go to town to search for heirloom tomatoes for the garden.
Maybe breakfast too.

I'm pretty sure someone needs to call Ripley's.

I'm Going Through A Phase. Owen Is Going Through Phrases

Well, the Old Housewife had an okay day. It was especially fine once I picked up Owen and brought him home. All of a sudden the boy's language usage has exploded. He's gone from hardly putting two words together to speaking in endless sentences.
It's so cool.
Mostly I love it because we know what he's thinking. He chatters like a monkey and if you don't understand him and repeat back what we think he's said but it's wrong, he says, "No, no, no," as if he's disgusted with our ability to communicate in the English language.

He and I took a nap and the we got up and waited for Bop to come. Once Bop got here, Mer was no longer needed. He actually told me to leave the guest room so he could play Hai-Ya! with Bop and also, to close the door behind me. I told him I would if he gave me a hug. He gave me a hug. I left and closed the door.

Hai-Ya!-larity ensued, I am sure.

I have always said that I belong to the bribe-and-distract school of motherhood. I find it works fairly well as a grandmother too.

So it was a pretty simple day and I didn't begin a career and I can't say I cleaned anything either. Hell, I didn't even cook anything. We're going to eat leftovers for supper.
Oh well.
I have been craving plain old vanilla cake. You know- white cake. Maybe the kind the bakery makes. I looked for some at the Publix but the closest thing they had was St. Patrick's Day cupcakes with green icing. The woman putting them out said, "It's that time of year again!"
"To eat green unnaturally green food?" I asked her.
She laughed. I did not buy any cupcakes or anything else from the bakery department either but I sure did think about it. I could make a cake but I don't want to. Then we'd eat it. It is not a good habit to get into- that dessert thing. Maybe I should start making Jello. Jello is always fun. Especially with canned mandarin oranges in it and whipped cream on top. Especially that whipped cream that comes spraying out of the can.

Damn! What is wrong with me? I am craving junky junk food. Jello? Really? I don't know. It just sounds so good. I'm not too worried. Sometimes it sounds like a really good idea to shoot the dogs too but I refrain. It's not the thoughts that are evil, it is the doing.
Or at least in my religion. Like Jimmy Carter, I too have lust in my heart at times. At my age it's more like lust for white cake than for a man but I'm not dead yet, either. I figure that's just human and not a sin. If it is a sin, we'll all be going to hell and that's just the damn plain truth.

Which brings us back to white cake. I could EAT a piece of Publix plain white cake with Publix plain white icing on it. A really big piece. But I won't. I would if had it but I don't. Instead I'll eat some leftover pizza I made the other night that has about fifteen different sorts of vegetables on it and some venison sausage and not a lot of cheese. The crust has flax seed in it.
Oh yeah. I'm wild.

You know what else would taste good? A big ol' bowl of instant chocolate pudding. With spray whipped cream all over it.

Wow. There has got to be something wrong with me.

Shit. Now I really want chocolate pudding.

And I swear- I have not been smoking dope. Maybe I'm having dope-smoking flashbacks. Or I'm entering my second childhood.

Whatever. Friday night in Lloyd where the only place you can buy any sort of anything is the truck stop or the Subway. They probably sell Twinkies down at the truck stop. Let me think.....
No. I am not craving Twinkies.

Okay. I better go heat up that pizza.

I sure hope y'all are having as much fun as I am!

Love...Ms. Moon

The Housewife's Lament

The birds are ripping notes right out of the music of the spheres playlist and Elvis is crowing and the new ferns are new-fern green and the sky is somewhat gray.

So yeah. Okay.

Another day in Lloyd and it's Friday, this day is. I guess today I won't be sitting around waiting for Dr. X to call, huh? Nope. I'll just get on with life, meaning I can take the trash.

I feel so stuck. I feel so stuck that I'm thinking that I could use a fucking career. Hell- it's not too late, right?
Career, career...let's see...career.

That's one of those words that if you look at it long enough begins to look like a word that isn't a word.

What in hell would I do? I'm still hoping for that great gig waiting tables. I could be that mean old waitress who creates eyebrows with Maybelline, who snatches the ketchup away from your hands and says, "You've had enough!" The one whose swollen feet rise up and over her white shoes like cupcakes, overpoured into their little baking cups.

On the other hand, I could maybe have a career in a laundromat, folding laundry. I could see that. I love those basket-things with wheels that you can move your vast amounts of laundry in from washing machine to dryer. I love that they have folding tables. I love the little vending machines with the tiny boxes of Tide.
Yeah. I could do that.

I tell you what- I will NOT be at Cannes this year, not even as Wes Anderson's valet. I found out yesterday that his newest movie, the one I PLEADED with him right here on this blog to have a role in won't be out until May 25. But it's going to open Cannes.

So forget that career making movies with Wes Anderson. Or Bill Murray. Freddy is wrapping up his first feature film and he didn't ask me to be in it but since it's a Christian movie with a Christian theme, that's probably best for both of us. Some Christians offered him some big bucks for distribution and advertising if he'd make that movie and so he did and I am proud of him. Plus, he's a Christian himself, that Freddy, although not a judgy-preachy one and I guess he got that gene. I sure as hell didn't. We love each other anyway.

Anyway, no Cannes-related career for me although I would be proud to be the official Red Carpet Sweeping Woman. Do you suppose they have one of those? Even movie stars must track dirt. Don't you think? And a broom- so much classier than a vacuum cleaner. Also, quieter.

Ah. Hell.

I have a career. I'm the last remaining housewife. And also a grandmother.

I suppose I should clean something. Isn't that what housewives do? Clean? And cook?

Wait a minute- isn't there a bon-bon clause in the housewife contract?

No. There is not. That's just an old housewive's tale.

Lily just called. She found a doctor. He's a family doctor. He'll COME TO THE HOUSE AND DO THE NEWBORN CHECK THERE!

Bless. Bless. Bless.
(His name is Ness.)

I remember when Hank was born and although I'd wanted a home birth and spent something like 28 hours laboring at home, I ended up in the hospital and they did not want to let me come home that same day but I did anyway and the guy who was the pediatric resident at the time was a young hippie-ish doctor and he came to our house the next day and did a follow-up exam on Hank and I'll never forget that. Never, never, never. Thirty-six years ago and I can still remember how grateful I was for his attention and me not having to go anywhere with my bleedy uterus, my starting-to-fill breasts, watching him check my baby's hips, listen to his tiny heart, smiling as he sat on my bed and pronounced my baby perfect.
He went into sports medicine or he'd be my doctor to this day.

I feel all weepy and inadequate today. I suppose that will pass. The birds have taken their choir to another part of Lloyd. Elvis is still crowing. I better put my hair up in curlers, put on my house-dress with some Kleenex in the pocket and go do housewife things such as letting the chickens out and cleaning their nests and taking the trash and doing the laundry and eating bon-bons. And later I'll be taking care of my grandson.

Do they still have soap operas on TV?

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

More

Well of course The Doctor never called back. I have come to find out that yet another practice in Tallahassee will not take home birth babies as patients and I am just feeling so...
Sad about it all.

Okay, maybe I'm still angry too. And you know what? I'll probably still be angry tomorrow.

Of course this is all about money. Probably pressure from the hospital, I'd imagine although who knows? Who knows? Not me.

I've been thinking a lot today about the concept of choice. How we use that word to represent the right for women to get abortions safely and legally. How that right is being chipped away at so steadily. And how choice is not just about abortion. Choice is also about choosing to educate ourselves about our bodies and how we want our health care managed. How we want to have our babies. How we want to live our lives.

But I keep coming back to the same thing- until we, as women, EDUCATE ourselves and define what it is that we need and we want not only for our own bodies and lives but for the lives of our children, nothing is going to change. The religious ranters and the insurance companies and the sellers of the technology are going to tell us what to do and that is not just wrong, it's sad.
Those people are not going to suddenly see the light and give us anything, whether it is our right to have insurance which covers contraception or a midwife-assisted birth in our homes.

Well. While I was internally ranting all day, I was finishing up the new baby's quilt. It is soft. It is fairly straight in all regards. It is cheerful. It is a symbol of love and warmth that I have made for this baby. A strange contrast to my thoughts.
It has been a strange day for me overall. I have been tired all day because I didn't sleep well last night and got up before dawn. I have moved slowly and deliberately and I don't feel as if I have accomplished a thing except for making this symbolic token. The baby doesn't really need another blanket. What this baby and all of our babies are going to need are education and information. Will they be able to receive THESE things in the world in which they grow up? Will someone else take on the battles that my generation thought we had either won or made headway on?

I don't know. And perhaps my job was to do what I did, which was to break with the status quo and have my babies at home and help other women to do the same when we had to hide our carefully kept prenatal, birth, and postnatal records hidden for fear of arrest. To order my own fetascope and midwifery textbooks from Britain because those were the only midwifery textbooks available at the time. To pour over Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin so many times that I could still probably recite it in my sleep. To believe that my body was exquisitely developed through eons and ages to create and deliver life, but to also be aware of the signs which might indicate problems which needed to be attended to by medical doctors.
To have faith in my body, in women's bodies in general. To believe in the innate wisdom of women's bodies.
We were not given choice, we TOOK it.

Oh hell. I don't know. I'm just an aging woman who is probably too tired to write, who has had a day of disappointment in someone she believed in.
Who has once again been shown that as cynical as she thinks she is, there is even more out there to be cynical about.

I need to go make supper and put this day to rest. Tomorrow my thoughts will be more organized, perhaps my spirits will be better.

But I think that despite my inability to express myself as well as I would want, there is absolute truth in what I said about education and how we must take it upon ourselves, not just as women! but as human beings, so that we can make the proper choices in all ways for ourselves and our children.

And to not just trust "the man" as we used to say, to make our choices for us.

Amen.

The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

I am absolutely shaky with rage at this moment. A very quiet rage, but rage nonetheless.

Lily just called me, crying. "What's wrong?" I asked her, my mind racing to every sort of horrible reason for her to be so upset.
And then she told me, haltingly through tears, that the pediatric practice which she takes Owen to just informed her that they are no longer taking home-birth or birth center babies.

She had called them to ask what she needed to do to make sure that this coming-baby could be examined for a newborn check as soon after birth as possible. And that's when they told her. So here she is, about to give birth, without a pediatrician. And of course I'm sure she can find a doctor who will take her but the main doctor she has taken Owen to in that practice was HER pediatrician! And now she has to scramble and change and it's just one more thing and she's upset and I'm upset.

I called the office manager myself. She informed me that yes, this is a new policy and reflects the doctors' beliefs that babies should be born in the hospital where "everything is covered."
"What exactly does that mean?" I asked the woman.
"I am not sure," she said. She was defensive and I do understand that she did not make the policy although as the office manager, I think she should know the answers to these questions. I told her that I did not understand such a policy- that there is no scientific or medical evidence to support it.

I asked her to have the doctor in the practice with whom I have mainly had a relationship with for almost thirty years to call me. This is a man for whom I have had the greatest respect as a doctor and as a human. He has always treated me with respect as a mother and as a nurse and I have always felt that he gave my children excellent and sensitive care. When I was pregnant with Lily, I went to him and explained my situation- that I was having a home birth- and he said then that although he did not approve, he respected my choice and that was that.

So I am interested to hear this doctor's explanation. The office manager told Lily that they had had some problems with some babies from the local birth center and this may be true. However, I am QUITE certain that they have had to deal with problems caused by things which have happened at the hospital, too, no matter how well things are "covered" there.

This whole thing just completely enrages me. It has been proven over and over and over again that the way we deliver babies here in the US is not the safest or best way to deliver babies. Our infant and maternal mortality rates are abysmal for an industrialized nation and yet, we just keep throwing more and more unproven technology at the problem and haven't yet seemed to figure out that this may BE the problem.

I've been fighting this battle for thirty-six years now. When I had my first baby, a planned home birth was considered next thing to infanticide. And yet, the hospitals were still at the stage where only the most lenient doctors allowed even husbands in the delivery room. Where babies were separated from mothers for up to 24 hours after birth. Where women were routinely shaved, given enemas and tied down for delivery. And if you dared to question THAT status quo, you were looked upon as a complete and utter nutcase.

And here we are now and oh yes, you can have people with you when the baby is born. You are not shaved or given an enema or tied down. Your baby can stay with you after delivery. BUT, Caesarian rates are so high that as a mother delivering today, your chances of dying during a delivery are higher than they were in the 1950's! Babies are regularly induced at 38 weeks for reasons I don't even begin to understand and if you DARE go past your due date by a week, you WILL be induced. And inductions lead to more interventions and more interventions lead to C-sections and why IS it that babies are being induced? Do we not think that humans can give birth to normal sized babies any more?

Oh. I am just so angry. And I am angry for Lily and I am angry for women in general who are once again being told by THE MALE DOMINATED ESTABLISHMENT that they don't know what's best for them or their children. And it also enrages me that women have NOT taken control of this situation. That we have allowed the doctors and (and this may be the bottom line cause of all the problems) the insurance companies to tell us how we should give birth to our babies. WE are the ones who have allowed childbirth to be taken away from US and given a medical procedure in its place.
Yes. God. We NEED hospitals and doctors if something goes wrong. But if nothing DOES go wrong, if birth is managed with skill and patience and respect for the process, if an educated and trained midwife is the person doing that, mothers and babies will all be better off and the doctors and the hospitals can do what they do best which is to take care of people who have actual medical problems.

I could go on for days here, seething and simmering until I explode.

I won't. I am waiting for that call but I have also told Lily that she needs to find a different pediatrician. One who respects women who choose to have their babies in the way they deem to be safest and best. As much as I respect that doctor, as long as our relationship goes back, I do want Lily to have to suffer the indignity of going to a practice where her choices are not respected. Where the science is not sound, the medical practice not sensitive to the realities of life. Even if they made an exception for her because of her long history there, I don't think she would be comfortable with them any more and if there is not trust and respect between doctor and patient, then another doctor must be found.

Which makes me so sad. I have loved going to Owen's check-ups with him and his mama. It has been a joy to have the same doctor who examined Lily after her birth and did all of her well-baby check-ups and who took care of her when she had her childhood illnesses, do the same for my grandson. To chitter and chat with that doctor, to talk about his children and grandchildren, to laugh about how quickly the time goes, about what complete fools we grandparents are. To have that relationship with him. That trusting, confident, easy relationship. To feel that my grandson's health care was in good hands. To know that Lily felt the same way.

Well, la-di-dah and let it go.

But I want to talk to him first. I want to ask him how a practice can make such a blanket policy and I want to know why it was made. To hear his explanation. And to let him know as a mother, as a parent, as a home-birth advocate, my point of view on the subject. He deserves to hear that, just as I deserve to hear what he has to say.

My Heart

Thinking about things on the porch.

Eating an apple.

The garage.

Breakfast.

Walking back from the post office.


A day in Lloyd. It was all of this. It was so much more.
It was glorious.

Although I'd Love To See Him With A Ball Gag...

I realized that when I was talking about rules the other day, it was more a question of thinking for myself than it was of being a "rebel" of any sort. Believe me. I ain't no rebel.
It's just that I am not genetically inclined to follow along down any path that has loud-mouthed cheerleader banging a drum and waving a flag in front of me. I don't know why. That's just not me.
Which is probably why when I go over to the Facebook I feel approximately the same way as I do if I happen to land on a radio station spouting Rush or Glenn or one of those loudmouth cheerleaders banging a big drum and waving a flag.
I am just perverse, I guess.
But godDAMN, there are a lot of cheerleaders banging drums and waving big flags on Facebook. They may not be AMERICAN flags, but they are still flags. Everyone has their own little agenda, you know? And I may agree with many of them but I just get so annoyed. Some people post so many links to liberal articles on Facebook that I can't imagine they have time to do anything in the world except read liberal articles and post the links on Facebook. Some people link articles about organic eating and gardening. Some people post links to articles about women's rights or gay rights or kids' rights or, hell, I don't know. These are all things I believe in deeply but somehow, all of that posturing just annoys the shit out of me and really makes me wonder if any of these things influence anybody in any way. Since we're dealing with our "friends" aren't we sort of singing to the choir here?
Then there are the people who post those cute quotes or those self-affirming quotes or whatever quotes and they sort of make me want to throw up.
Really? Are we adults here?
What I like about Facebook are pictures of people's kids (I'm not kidding you) and information about where bands will be playing and how your surgery went. That pretty much sums it up for me. I like the conversational aspect of it, not the preachy aspect.

And here's another thing. Yesterday I got (because somehow I am on Moveon.org's mailing list) an invitation to sign a petition to send to Clear Channel to get Rush Limbaugh off the air. And now it's all over Facebook.
Okay. No.
Isn't Clear Channel a privately owned corporation? Now, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think my tax dollars pay for it. Having said that, if I don't want to listen to the spewers of hate and filth and misinformation, I don't have to and therefore, it ain't my business what they host on their stations, right?
Again, correct me if I am wrong.
So how in hell do I have a right to tell a private business they need to get rid of one of their radio programs? I think that in the Rush case, the thing that's going to ultimately get him off the air is his own fat mouth and the rush of his advertisers to abandon him. And the court system if someone successfully sues him for slander or whatever and if I were Sandra Fluke, I would sue the motherfucking shit out of him.

But it is not my right to try and shut his fat mouth up. This is America, dammit, and we have freedom of speech here, even if the speech is that of a humongous toad-like creature with a brain the size of a low-dose drop of LSD. (And I personally think that Rush should DO some LSD but that's another topic and not what I came here to discuss.)
Let's face it- there are people who not only agree with Rush but who worship him because he manages to get away with spewing his invective ON THE AIR and if we make a martyr out of this toad, it's not going to be pretty.
In this case, I say let the market place decide.
The man went over the edge and said something so foul and so blatantly misogynistic and just plain nasty that only the most ignorant and hateful of people could possibly agree with him. This led to many of his advertisers pulling off of his show and two radio stations (so far) dropping him from their line-up so I would say the system is working pretty well.

Look- I'm not defending Rush Limbaugh. I just know that as a thinking human being I have the choice to listen to his shit or not and I have chosen not to and that's good enough for me. I am not the woman he slandered, although I realize that as a woman and as a mother of women, I do have some dog in this hunt but he's so obviously being ridiculous and intentionally inflammatory that it just doesn't make sense to get all worked up about it.
He's a shithead. Yeah. We knew that. Shitheads say shithead things.
This is America. You can be a shithead and you can say shithead things.

Hey! I'm not in jail yet!

So no. I will not be signing that petition unless one of y'all straighten me out here on the subject and give me some information I'm missing.

And yes, dammit, I will continue to check out the Facebook now and then because sometimes in the middle of all the dreck there will always be a nugget of goodness that I laugh about or cherish. Maybe. But don't lecture me, okay? And don't PREACH to me. If I wanted to be preached to, I would go to church.
I'd rather just think for myself.
Which is why I listen to NPR and not the Rush or Glenn show. I mean- Jesus. It's so easy.
And let's not make a martyr out of a gasbag. Those people already want us to believe in their paranoid fantasies. Let's not make them real for god's sake.

All right. That's what I have to say today. Agree with me if you want, click away if you don't. I ain't got no advertisers and I ain't got no flag. Unless maybe it's a freak flag. I'm not a cheerleader and I don't have a drum. Owen does. He beats the hell out of it and then he says, "Too loud," and he covers his ears and then he beats on it again, just as loud as before.
But he's two-and-a-half.
He'll grow out of that.
Rush obviously never did but thankfully, I don't have to let him into my living room. If some people want to, that's their right. And we all have to remember that, I think. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech and if I believe in anything, it's that.
Well, and a lot of other stuff, too if you get right down to it, but that's a big one.

Rush isn't a politician and he's not making any rules. Well, none that I have to follow. He's an entertainer and he doesn't entertain me so I don't listen to him.
I think that about sums it up for me.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon

Just One Really Good Day

It was a beautiful day and it was more than a joy to spend it with Lily and May and Owen. We went to Costco and Owen was not especially well-behaved but a boy, just a boy, two-and-a-half now almost, about to get a new sibling, and he was showing off for his Auntie May and he was shot out of a cannon into the air and came down scrambling and running and yelling and that is what he does now, what he is- a boy. He made his Aunt hide with him in a garden shed, right there between the freezers and the garden stuff and his face in the window was full of merry evil that his plot had worked! He had her all to himself! He did!
For a few minutes, at least, and then he and his mama had to go back out to the car in order to calm him down and May and I finished up and joined them.

We went back to Lily's house and ate falafel and grape leaves, stuffed with rice and vegetables and rosemary olive oil bread and other Greek things and fruit salad, too. Then we cleaned and rearranged and by the time the midwife came at three, we were happy with what we had done. The midwife's assistant has an eight-week old baby of her own and she was just a jewel with long dark hair and a dimple in her perfect chin. The mother asked me if I'd hold her for a moment and my heart's desire was fulfilled. I complimented the mother on the baby's ear which was everything an ear should be and she had two, the clever child! Two of those incredible ears and oh, yes. Babies.

Lily checked out fine and tip-top, ready to go. Her midwife is a woman you can trust. While she was there, Owen sprayed his mouth with very diluted Fabuloso and May made him rinse his mouth in the sink but no one freaked out and we talked about things our children have eaten, swallowed, sucked into their lungs. It's a miracle any of them are alive. I feel certain that Owen will never spray Fabuloso in his mouth again.
We learn. We live. We live long enough to learn again. Or something like that.

After I left Lily's I went to Publix and now I have a king's ransom of good food in my house. Everything from a piece of salmon and fresh spinach to artichokes and red and yellow and orange peppers, two kinds of tomatoes, lemons, and that bread. I left the Greek delights for Lily. She is pregnant. She needs treats. I also have twelve beautiful eggs, gathered in the last two days, brown, green, one blue. I have left-over collard/mustard/turnip greens. I have fake-fried chicken (which, Deirdre, is boneless, skinless chicken breasts, soaked in buttermilk and then coated and baked with Shake'n'bake Spicy mix- I am not kidding you, it is good) and I am so tired.

Mr. Moon is still out of town and so I'll be here tonight all alone with that Rat, that Beast, that inhuman scraper of a door, that gnawer, that disturber of my sleep. I have opened the door between the dining room and the guest room and also the door to the side porch so that if the Beast wants out, he or she can scurry out there. I am not thinking it will. Not really. But I am giving it every chance. I wish I could figure out how to catch Ballsy, the almost-feral cat and make him stay in there tonight. I am not sure who would win if there were a show-down.
It would be bloody. That I know.

Ah well. I think I will go and cook that piece of salmon with lemon and dill and some baby spinach. I just went out to shut up the chickens for the night and I saw that moon. She is not quite full, but working up to it, flat and round and white-gold here from my vantage point.
There is an early frog croaking close by. He's getting his hopes up. He's getting something up, at least.

I am tired. But it was a good day. I am grateful for the round moon, the round belly of my daughter, the round merry face of my grandson. I m grateful for the time I got to spend with my daughter, May. She is beauty in and of herself. Owen would be a fool not be in love with her and he is no fool, that one. I am grateful for all of my babies and for my husband who is the other half of my sky. I am grateful for all of this good food, that which I can afford to buy and that which we grow and which my husband brings home from the woods.

And soon, so very soon, we shall behold the new face of a new child and we will hold him or her in our arms and we will swoon with the miracle of that.

Unbelievable. Just...unbelievable.

I will rest well tonight, separated by two doors from The Beast. I hope you rest well too and that no beasts or Beasts disturb you as you rest in moon-drenched slumber.

Here's Your Southerness, Y'all

It was a Southern Gothic Night around here. Sort of.

Mr. Moon went to bed early, knowing he was getting up around four-thirty a.m. to drive to Orlando so I went to sleep in the guest room so that he could get his deserved rest without me throwing the covers about as I may or may not do. (Okay, I do. I admit this.) And I went to bed in the guest room, the Panther Room, which I really do love. That room. Yes. I do. It's cozy. Mostly. Plus the bed is comfortable. So is my real bed but for some reason, the bed in the guest room is just nice for a change.

I took the new edition of the Oxford American to bed with me to read before I went to sleep and I started with the editorial because that's the way I like to read a magazine. Start at the beginning, go from there. The editorial was...bitter. I gotta say it. It was mostly about how fake-southern another magazine is as compared to the Oxford. And I've read that other magazine and it is definitely a different take on Southern-ness and it's pretty and very stylish and has ads for things like gazillion-dollar watches and jewelry and oh, you know, all the stuff we real Southern people like to buy with all of our Plantation money.
So, okay, I totally got where the editor of Oxford was coming from but it just seemed sort of tacky to be so bitter on the pages of one magazine about another magazine.

But anyway, I read for awhile about Southern Things in the Oxford American (and I do love this magazine- I mean, I did a GIVE AWAY a long time ago and gave away a year's subscription to it- and that is hardly the only subscription that I've gifted folks with over the years) and then I turned out the light and snuggled down in the covers and went to sleep and didn't wake up until about two hours later at which point SOMETHING BIG was making a noise.
At first I told myself it was my dog, Buster, trying to get into the room. The noise sounded like it was coming from the door-area of the room. Okay, one of the doors. The room has three doors in it. I shouted, "Buster, stop that!" and the noise stopped and I went back to sleep but then it happened again and woke me up and I realized that no, this did not sound like a dog scratching at the door but I was still open to the hope that it was and so I got up and opened the door and no, Buster was not there. Neither was a chupacabra (google that shit), which is what I was sort of envisioning at that point. So I got up and made some noise and then went back to bed and then GOT WOKEN UP AGAIN and at that point I gave up and high-tailed it to my real bed where I woke up my man by accident and I told him there was a "critter" in that room and then I went to sleep in the relative safety of my own bed.

I got up this morning to find that yes, something had been trying to gnaw its way through the door to the guest room from the dining room last night FOR SURE because I had to sweep up the paint chips and wood and babies, it was NOT a mouse.

Anyway, one of the things the Oxford editor was talking about (bitterly) was that his magazine would not be doing and never had done articles about porches (so, so Southern and picturesque and...trite) and I am thinking about how even THEY could do an article about any of my porches with their spider webs and mildew and they could even spend the night in my house and get scared of the ghosts and the giant rats or chupacabras or whatever the bloody hell that thing was and write about it and it would be so fucking Southern and so fucking Charming but you know, with that gothic sort of gritty real-life, warm-blooded tooth and fang and claw slant but would it sell magazines?

Oh. I doubt it.

I think I'll be sleeping in my own bed tonight. And Mr. Moon better set some traps and I won't even tell you about the time he killed (with a baseball bat) a Giant Rat in that dining room (don't you really just want to come and visit me now?) and he was horrified by the violence and terror (it looked just like a toy rat! he said) and how he had to Fabuloso the blood off the walls.

I believe that rat's mate was trying to get to me last night to get revenge. I really do. And I will NOT HAVE IT! I didn't kill that rat! I don't have the balls to kill a rat with a baseball bat. I'd use a shotgun.

Okay, Oxford American- take THAT and print it because there's your Real South right there.
We even had collard greens for dinner! And fake fried chicken! We did not have sweet tea or pecan pie, though. Really. We didn't. Those are another two things that the Oxford editor said they'd never be writing about. Which I think is bullshit because southerners do drink sweet tea (some of them, not me) and we damn well eat pecan pie, too. At least at Thanksgiving.

Sorry this is so messy and convoluted. I have to go to town today and I want to go to town today because May and I are meeting up at Lily's house to clean in preparation for the birth and we're all going to lunch and to the Costco and it's getting time to go and I have to put on a bra and stuff. So I'm in a rush.

But all I have written is the truth and it is the Truth of the South As I Know It And Have Experienced and it's a beautiful day.

Love...Ms. Moon

Rules

So I've been sewing little flannel squares together and I realize how woefully inaccurate I am at such work. My squares are not really squares. They are square-ish.

Sigh. My quilts always come out lopsided and they are not even anywhere near intricate. I don't do intricate. I remember a woman I knew who was an amazing quilter. Well, she probably still is. Her quilts were perfect. Not just the squares or whatever shapes she used, but the stitches, too, which she mostly did by hand. They were, in fact, works of art, but the sort of works of art that amaze but do not fascinate. They were just too perfect, if you ask me. Her whole life was like that, it seemed. Perfect from the outside, at least.

But of course no one's life is perfect. Not one person on this earth has a perfect life. But this woman- oh, she tried. And when something came along to upset her notion of the perfection of her life, it threw her into a tizzy of anxiety and fear. She followed the rules, believe me. The rules of quilting and cooking and rose-gardening and being a wife and a mother and of her religion, too. If any of these rules proved inadequate, she would find a reason to believe that it wasn't the fault of the rules- she had obviously done something wrong herself. Not followed them correctly.
This is a lot of pressure for one mortal woman if you ask me.

And I am not that sort of person. Show me a rule and I'll show you why it shouldn't be followed. Why it's absurd. And of course, that kind of thinking is just as wrong-thinking as the opposite. Some rules are good and should be followed. I think that I have always had a belief that I am beyond the rules which even I don't really believe. Not for real and true. But I do think that a lot of rules are ridiculous and no, I won't follow them, even if that means my quilts are messy.

Well, my quilts are warm. And soft. And that's good enough for me.

They have recently tried to legislate prayer back in school here in Florida. They are calling it "inspirational messages." One legislator even said that it was when prayer in school was disallowed that everything began to fall apart.
I laughed when I read that. When I was in school, every morning began with someone coming on the intercom and praying a prayer. The Lord's Prayer mostly. It annoyed me, even as a child. Even then, at that young age, I knew that a prayer said in such a formulaic way was ridiculous. What sort of a god would want to hear those same words over and over and over again every day? And what good did it do?
Not much in my mind.
And thus, that prayer in school was the beginning of my deep suspicion of organized religion and all of its rules and regulations and rote prayers. It was, in fact, the beginning of my questioning of any sort of authority. Yep. Quite frankly, I think it was.
Or part of it, anyway. Which may be why I took so naturally to being a hippie which was mostly about questioning authority which in the days of Nixon was just too easy. I mean- Richard Nixon? The Viet Nam War? And oh, don't you know that there was such a huge backlash against all of this authority-questioning? If it wasn't that damn devil music, Rock and Roll, that was ruining this country, it was those damn Commies. Well, Commies got blamed for almost everything, including influencing our fine young people and turning them into dirty pot-smokin' hippies but truth be told, the Commies had nothing to do with it. It was more like Nixon and George Wallace and okay, yes, the Beatles. (Thank you, Beatles.)
The problem was, too many young people suddenly took note of a whole lot of stuff and the people in charge of that stuff and the rules they made about that stuff and said, "Whoa now. Wait a minute. Why CAN'T black folks eat in restaurants with white folks? Why SHOULDN'T women make the same wage as a man if they do the same job? Why DO women get drugged and shaved and tied down to have a baby? Why DO men have to cut their hair down to their scalps? Who SAYS that if we don't fight the Communists in Southeast Asia we'll have to fight them here?" And of course, "What the FUCK does it mean that Wonder Bread builds bodies twelve ways?"

Lord, we had a long list of things we could question.

And a lot of things changed.

But it seems to me that things are getting turned around again. Women are in danger of losing control of their rights at a confusing and blinding speed. Religion is being re-instituted in places where it shouldn't be. People who come to this country to find work and a place to live in peace are being hounded and prosecuted, arrested and deported. And of course, fabulously rich white men are large and in charge with the miraculous exception of President Obama.

I don't know. Rules. I'm just thinking about rules and the ones that are made by the people in power and the ones we just accept as true even if there is no basis for it.

Now- in quilting, I will freely admit that rules AND rulers can come in handy. Rules can come in handy when baking or when designing roads or even when planting a garden. Yes. They can. But, there are quilts and then there are quilts. Crazy quilts, for instance. There are baked goods and then there are baked goods. The making of a good angel food cake will require some following of the rules but the making of a good apple cake is a lot more tolerant of ignoring them.

I think it's just common sense. You can't legislate human behavior. You can't tell one entire sex that their bodies aren't as much THEIRS to control as the other sex. You can't keep on using fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow and expect them to last forever. You can't keep raping the planet and keep on expecting it to forgive you. And dammit, you can't tell kids that if they pray they'll end up better people. It's just simply not the truth.

I follow the speed limit. I pay my taxes. I don't plant my tomatoes until the pecans have started to leaf.
I know (or at least think) that in the end, the love I make will be equal to the love I take.

Now if I could just learn to cut out squares.

All right. That's all. For now.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon The Old Hippie

Jesus. Could I Be Any More Random?

Another purely perfect day here in the 'hood and blue skies are smilin' at me and I sort of want to upchuck at the perfection of it all because I am not in the world's best mood but am sort of wishing I was on my way somewhere. The destination would not even matter but it sure would be nice if it involved really, really blue water and people who speak a language I don't understand.

So last night I finished reading The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson and I pretty much ripped through that book. A page-turner for sure in that it was not unlike a car wreck in its ability to capture and keep my attention and damn, it was different and it was well-written and I have to say that the Fang parents were perhaps the worst parents I have ever met in a book. Maybe. I don't know. Here. Let me sum up my critique: That was some crazy shit, there, y'all.
And we wonder why I have never gotten a job reviewing books.
Huh.
Elizabeth, I know you were reading it. Did you finish it? Did you like it?
I thought it was going to be a bit Wes Andersonish and yes, it was. Which is a good thing. Speaking of Wes Anderson- when in hell is Moonrise Kingdom going to be released? I am seriously jonesin' for some Bill Murray.

Okay, on to my next random observation. Let me think. What would that be?
Uh...it's a beautiful day.
No, no, I already said that.
Okay, here's one: When you boil shrimp and crab legs, don't put too much salt in the water. Mr. Moon and I practically floated to bed. We both drank about forty-two glasses of water and/or juice after dinner. The seafood was delicious. It didn't TASTE that salty but I guess it was.
(This problem may have been compounded in that we both ate more than enough to satisfy an entire shipload of starving ancient mariners.)

So Mr. Moon noted, while cleaning up dog poop the other day, that one of the dogs at least, had worms. Great, right? First tenacious, untreatable fleas, now worms. We both wondered if perhaps that would be reason to get them put down but decided that no, probably not. So Mr. Moon bought worm pills when he was out buying an egg incubator. We gave the dogs the worm pills. Now we are waiting for the resulting vomiting and bloody stools.
The fun never ends around here.

It seems to me that back when I was a child, my best friend's mother, Mrs. Ferger, incubated chicken eggs with a cardboard box, a lightbulb, and some straw. Things are different now. (Mrs. Ferger may have used dog wormer on her kids. I would not be surprised. It was simpler times back then and god knows we all got worms every spring.) Mr. Moon bought an incubator and an egg turner yesterday and spent hours on the internet trying to figure out how to incubate eggs.
Good Lord. Way too complicated for me. There are humidity and temperature to consider. Also, of course, the turning of the eggs. You have to turn the eggs for eighteen days and then stop. But is that eighteen days after the hen has laid the egg or eighteen days after you have begun the incubation process?
Who knows? Not us.
Also- I just took a picture of the eggs being incubated in the device and then went to put the cord on the camera to transfer the picture to here and dammit, the little cord won't connect and I looked in there to the connection place and it looks fucked up! What happened? I successfully transferred about fifty pictures yesterday via the cord.
Okay. I just used the card to transfer. This sucks. This is going to mess my life up bad.
Anyway, here's the picture:


Looks like a prop in a bad old science fiction movie, doesn't it?
Poor little orphan eggs in there. Why won't my hens set? I don't know. They are terrible mothers. They lay eggs and then just abandon them to go out drinking with the girls and have wild sex with the rooster.
I keep thinking that if any of these eggs do, by some miracle hatch, the resulting chicks are going to be wandering around like that poor little bird in Are You My Mother looking endlessly for a mother-figure. The dog is not my mother. The cow is not my mother. The plane and the boat and the Snort are not my mother. Etc.
My luck they'll think I'm their mother.
Well, that wouldn't be so bad.

I suppose I have wasted enough time here. I have to take a walk and then make that baby quilt. When a baby is coming due, you feel like there must be some magic required to bring it on. Like we have these powerful powers to get the labor started. At the moment, I feel like the baby is waiting for the quilt to be finished. This of course is ridiculous but still- one must do all one can. Lily says she's been bouncing on the giant yoga ball. Owen enjoys watching that. I remember once, when my mother was overdue with a baby, she literally jumped off the kitchen table. Women become desperate at such times. (Note- do not try that at home. It is not recommended to jump off a table to induce labor. Plus, it didn't really work. No. You should let the medical people induce your labor with the special drugs they have including one that is put up your vagina which was originally designed to prevent the formation of nonsteroidal anti-inflamatory drug ulcers, which has been known to cause uterine rupture and amniotic fluid embolism. Yes. Really.) I myself once drank an inappropriate amount of black and blue cohosh tea and then went jogging to get a labor started. This did not really work too well either. Anyway, I want to get that quilt finished and that's all there is to it.

So I will stop here even though I am sure I could just ramble on all day long, talking about diverse and interesting things up to and including Rush Limbaugh but I refuse to talk about him and am hoping that he will just disappear off the face of the earth. I doubt that will work and I doubt that finishing the baby's quilt will work in essence of it making Lily go into labor if I do but one must do what one must do, logic be damned.

Happy Monday, y'all!

Love...Ms. Moon

It has been a day of: planting a few things, working with fabric and scissors, cooking.
It has been a day of hearing about the visit to Dog Island via the internet and the iPhone and the magic thereof.
It has been a day of hugging people whom I love without reservation.
It has been a day of holding my Lis to me tightly and sharing...everything.
It has been a day of feeding people with venison and vegetables and now I am about to feed Mr. Moon and me with crab legs, shrimp, cornbread with corn and onions, and cole slaw.

It has been a day of bright sunlight and cool temperatures.

A day as beautiful as any I've ever seen in my entire life.

I just accidentally snorted some curry powder.

I sort of like the results, even if I have sneezed more than once.

My brain is set afire with India and North Florida and I like it.

Amen.

It rained all night long but when I got up this morning the sky looked like the thought of a cloud had never crossed its mind.

Just unbelievable. And cool. And lovely.

Here are some pictures.

Wisteria making fuzzy buds.


Dogwood's blossoms, just coming green. They will open and grow bigger and turn as pure white as an angel's soul.


A fig leaf. That's for you, Rebecca.


Just because glass and light and color combine so magically.

I can't remember a prettier day and it's all because of the rain which overnight turned everything green. Our grass would be green if we had grass. As it is, the weeds which pretend to be grass are green which is good enough for me. I remember when we first moved in here and the old man from down the road stopped to chat with me and pointed out that if I did something about all the leaves in our front yard, the grass might grow. It had never occurred to me to want grass out there. I like the leaves fine. There's not enough sun to grow grass anyway and I am not one to try and force any sort of a plant to grow where it can't manage on its own without much help from me.
Let us just say that Weed'n'Feed is not part of MY vocabulary.

Okay. I could go on and on and on but I won't. I'll just relate the fact that it's a fine Sunday and we had our pancakes outside and the only sound you could hear was the chewing of bacon and the occasional bird call and the breeze having its way with the leaves of the magnolia beside us.
Mr. Moon said, "I prefer thin-cut bacon. It's crispier."
I said, "I know. But I like thick-cut."
He said, "I know you do."
I said, "And I brought home the bacon."

This is what passes for great humor around here. We are easily entertained.

To wit:

Mr. Moon found five banty eggs laid by the chickens from next door (who roam freely and do not recognize boundaries such as fences and property lines) in the garage and he is going to buy an incubator today. We have no idea if they are fertilized and we have no idea what we are doing but damn, the rooster who would most likely be the daddy sure is one pretty bird and wouldn't it be fun to raise tiny chicks?

Well, we shall see.

There are so many things I could and should do today and I better get started here. I still haven't made that baby a quilt and I just talked to Lily and she's getting a bit crampy and Braxton-Hicky and it's just TIME. Or almost time at least.

I can't imagine a better time to have a baby than right now when the very earth itself is giving birth and rebirth over and over again. It is the correct and proper season for every sort of new life beginning and I look out from my back porch and I know this is true and every day we get closer to fruition of proof of life, of the complete and utter proof of love.

Mystery

When I was in the garden today I uncovered the strangest looking little toad or frog I have ever seen. It had a face almost human-like. I swear. And it's little feetlings were...oh, I can't describe it. And I am SO mad at myself for being so lazy and not getting the camera to take its picture. I stared at it for a long time and then I covered it back up in the loose, humus-y soil.

There is so much, even in this tiny world of mine which I do not know.

Can't Fight The Weather

Oh my, y'all. You're so sweet. I'm not especially sad today at all although I suppose it is a logical assumption to make from my talk of tears.
I think I just have the willy-nillys, the shiver-shakeys, the loony-toonies, the bozo-ramas.

Or something. Medical terms can be tricky and diagnosis even more so.

It's actually been a good day so far. We got a lot done here at La Casa Luna (do you sort of hate it when I call it that? I do but sometimes I just have to, so sorry- I do promise never to use the word "hearty" unless in an ironic fashion, okay?)

I planted potatoes and onions and cucumber seeds and Mr. Moon planted peppers and tomatoes and squash and peas which is all sort of mixed up. The potatoes and peas should have been in last month, the tomatoes and peppers, etc. mostly don't go in until late March, if then. But here we are with spring making its presence known not just by the the leaves and blossoms but by the fact that the ants are making their summer homes up above the surface of the ground and every fucking time I stand still long enough to slap a mosquito (which we also have already) the ants swarm up my feet and bite their way along as if their mouths were some sort of mountain climbing equipment like Jaw Crampons. Isn't crampon just the silliest word?

But we got all of that in the garden before the rains came and then the rains sort of slacked and Mr. Moon put out all of the potted plants which had been spending the winter in Chez Mud Room and I put all the front porch plants back in their proper positions and am washing the sheets I used to cover them for frosts this year. I swept the porch and it looks so nice, although the plants are somewhat the worse for winter's wear.

I also planted a few things I'd had rooting all winter. A split-leaf philodendron, some firespike. Then I transplanted some baby phlox shootlings to various places and as soon as I was done with all of that, the rain came pouring down as if in response to a call for watering and it is still raining nicely, such a beautiful sound, sleepy-making and slap-happy as it hits the ground.

There is more to do but it's good to have the rain tell me to come in and wash off and take a rest, not that I've really been busting my ass or anything. It's been real gentle work. Maybe we'll find some old movie on the TV and watch it, me and Mr. Moon. If there's not some sporting event already on in which case I'll just go read and probably fall asleep even though I slept for about ten hours last night. I did get up in the middle of the night and went to the guest room and read for about an hour, telling myself that no, I did not have insomnia, it was just the pause between my first and second sleeps and it was very lovely.

Ah. It is a beautiful afternoon and this rain is everything we need. It smells good, it is making a coolness which we already appreciate. It is a sustaining rain and a nurturing rain. The chickens don't even seem to notice it. I think if anything, they like it.

But then again, I just looked at the weather and we may be about to get a storm with fifty or sixty mph winds.

What?

That would not be so slap happy. That would pick up a chicken and sling her into tomorrow.

I'll let you know if I see any chickens being slung. I surely will.

Stay tuned.

Crazy-Making

There's storms coming and the wind is making little tiny dirt devils with the dried oak leaves and the sky is so heavy with unshed rain and Mr. Moon and I are planting things in the garden and I begged him, "Please don't say anything about how crooked my potato rows are," and I was almost crying.

Then Lis called and all I did was talk about myself, myself, my own selfish, stupid self and then I cried.

I guess it's this weather.
Either that or I'm just nuts.

Another Friday Night

So Hank and his friends are on Dog Island which is SO primitive that when a sea fog rolls in (which it has) you can't see shit and he can't find the house and no, we are not surprised because we've been there. We've done that.

A tiny island with about forty-something houses and two roads and yet, given the right circumstances, or the WRONG circumstances, you can't find your own damn house.

I swear to god.

Meanwhile, back here at the ranch. it's Friday-night martinis and I've cried over the fact that one day we will be leaving this house but not in a bad way. In a life-is-full-of-changes-and-I-am-with-you-on-that-one way.

Mr. Moon is on the phone with Hank, the green beans are being sauteed with garlic and sliced almonds and the deer meat and vegetables are simmering in the pot.

You know what I think? I think that by midnight Hank will have found the house and they will all have unloaded and started drinking rum or whatever their beverage of choice is.

Life is so funny. I really hope that I can remember that no matter what happens.

Watch out for the sea-fog, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

No Marijuana Required

I think I baked my first cake when I was in about the third grade. I am quite certain that by the time I was in the fifth grade, I had taken over all of the birthday-cake baking duties. And these were not from box mixes, no, they were from "scratch," as we said then.

I took to cooking and baking like nobody's business which was a good thing as (a) I loved to eat, and (b) my mother wasn't always very interested in cooking although she did it because back in those olden days, there really wasn't much of a choice for the woman of the house.
But me? I loved to cook and bake. It felt so real. Unlike the rest of my life which was mainly about secrets and pain and, okay, terror, the making of food was so prosaic and so dependable. You followed a recipe and the resulting product was something reliably delicious and wholesome (in a sense of the word) and it was like something that would happen in a real family.
You know?

My mother came to her first marriage, I suppose, with a cookbook just like this one:

That's what I started cooking from and to this day, I still consult it. The best gift my mother ever gave me was a copy of it that she found and it is my pride and joy.

1938 it was printed and there are terrific pictures in it of world long-gone but if you need to know how to make a white sauce or a baked potato or scrambled eggs or fudge or a rabbit casserole or salmon bisque, it's all there. Plus, instructions on how to can and preserve. Need to carve a ham?

"You cannot learn too soon. Carving by the host- old or young- is a gracious, hospitable gesture. There are rules for carving. (page 108). With ham or leg of lamb, have the fleshy side up, plant the fork firmly. Begin at the center, slice toward the bone. Sit or stand. Be comfortable."

Now hell yeah!

So it was from the pages of this book that I learned the basics. It wasn't until I was at a primitive encampment on a mountain-side in North Carolina though when I was probably about fifteen, that I had the epiphany that I really do love to cook. I was boiling vegetables in a pot over a fire for a stew and it just hit me like a bolt from the blue that this was one of the things I was put on earth to do. To cook. And cooking has always served me well. People like to eat and you can quote me on that.

When I was a young hippie those skills really paid off. We smoked a lot of dope in those days. And the smoking of marijuana will, without a doubt, lead to the munchies. And so inevitably there would be a roomful of people, stoned out of their gourds, wishing that they had something to eat and pizza delivery was still mighty iffy and a drive down to the Krispy Kreme was about as imaginable as a trek up Mount Everest. I, however, could slip unnoticed into the kitchen and in what seemed like no time at all to the assembled stoners (but to me, in the kitchen, seemed like oh, maybe a few eons) I could come back out with something for everyone to eat.
I could make something good out of almost nothing. And I did, over and over again.
One of the things I liked to make was an apple cake because the ingredients for it were in almost everyone's kitchen, and especially mine. I was probably basing this recipe on the one in that cookbook for applesauce cake which I had made a lot as a young girl.


I found that instead of shortening, though, I could use a little vegetable oil and instead of the applesauce, I could use chopped apples. Easy to mix up, fast to bake, delicious. Measuring the ingredients wasn't really necessary. I could (and do) "eye" things and use my palm as a measuring device for salt and soda and spices, etc.
This cake satisfied a lot of the hippie-cooking requirements in that I could use whole wheat flour and add wheat germ if I wanted, substitute honey for sugar, and it still came out lovely. Especially if I put some powdered-sugar on the top when it came out of the oven and no one was complaining about refined sugar by that point in the evening.

And this is basically the cake I made the other night and I baked it in one of my iron skillets, which is how I like to do it, and it was as good and moist and satisfying as I remembered it.

Mr. Moon always wishes for whipped cream for the top or better yet- ice cream- but I didn't have either and in my opinion, the cake doesn't need it. It keeps well, too, if you are not feeding a pack of hungry stoned people who in five minutes time will inhale (haha!) every last molecule of carbohydrate goodness.


That's what's left of mine this morning. It makes a good breakfast food, too, by the way.

So that's my Southern Hippie Grandma Cake is. It's southern because I cook it in the skillet and because I am southern. It's hippie because I made it so often when I was a young hippie. It's grandma because I am a grandmother. Oh hell, let's face it- I am a Southern Hippie Grandma. And now you can make it too, using that recipe. You can use the applesauce AND a chopped apple. Chop the apple pretty fine. You can use shortening or butter or do what I do and use Canola oil. You can use brown sugar or you can fool around with that too. When I made my cake the other night, I used a bit of brown sugar, a bit of honey, and a bit of cane syrup. I like to use molasses in it but I didn't have any. I also added some fresh-grated nutmeg and lemon peel and ginger and vanilla. I put a little milk in there too. Hell, you can even add smushed-up banana in it if you want.

Are you confused yet? As long as you have the bones of the recipe- the shortening, the flour, the baking soda, the egg, you can flesh it out however you want. I promise you. I mean, I used to make this cake so stoned I barely knew my name. Which didn't matter because when I would come out of the kitchen with that cake I was frequently called, "Goddess."

Which is another reason to cook.

I will never be a fancy baker or a chef and my presentation generally sucks but that is not the sort of cooking I was put here on earth to do and I know it. And personally, given the choice between a cake that looks like it was spun from sugar in heaven and which is served on fine china with a silver fork and a linen napkin, or that cake right there in that old black skillet, cut and served on a paper towel to eat with fingers (or toothpick- your choice), I'll take the damn apple cake any time.

But that's just me and I have to admit that I adore grocery-store bakery cakes with that Crisco (or is it lard?) and powdered-sugar icing too so maybe I'm not really the person to judge.

I'm just a southern hippie grandma who learned to cook and bake out of a cookbook printed in 1938.

Okay. Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

This Is Something I Recently Learned

I have never known whether the moon was in wax or wane and I have always felt inferior as a human resident of this planet not to know that.
I finally learned how to tell in a way which I remember and I think it may have come from Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna. Maybe.
Anyway, it is thus:

If the moon's belly makes a D shape, it is waxing. D stands for Dios or God.

If the moon's belly makes a C shape, the curve to the left, it is waning. The C stands for Christo, Christ, who is always and perpetually dying.

Pobre Christo.

And so you can see that right now we are in a waxing moon which may explain a lot. Or may explain nothing but there it is, whichever.

A Confusion

I think it's the weather but I'm not sure but then again, neither is the weather. One minute it is gun-metal gray, flat and ominous overhead, every bird call an Alfred Hitchcockian/Poe shrill raven cry of forewarning and foreboding. An hour later, the sun is flat-blasting the earth and the earth steams from all the rain and wet and it's so humid the walls of the house cry sacred tears of moisture like some Mary in a church- oh! it's a miracle, no it's not, it means nothing but more mold, that's the only meaning in that and the birds gather and cackle and chip and chirp but still they sound concerned- a snake in a nest?

Every cliche is coming to mind and spring cleaning and spring fever, foremost among them at this second. I open a window, long winter-shut, and the space between screen and sill is black with Lloyd dirt, I could (should) spend days with bucket and rags, mops and brooms. I should (do) throw open windows and doors, I should (do not) pick out paint colors, scrub mildew off walls.

My brain is as addled as the weather. I swear- I cannot focus it on one thing but feel a desperate need to rush and hurry and do and yet, do not want to do any of it, not one damn thing. Oh. I do not know.

When Owen is here I can't keep my hands off that head, I want to stroke his hair, I want to touch his cheeks, I want to run my finger over the rim of a perfect ear and when he says, "MerMer no wash dishes. Play chess with Owen!" I want to die and yet, I stand at the sink like some mean old scrinch-faced harridan, and I say, "No, Owen, I have to wash these dishes!" and I don't even know why. No one HAS to wash the dishes. And when he leaves he says, "MerMer come Owen's house?" and part of me wants to just jump in the car and go with him because I can't bear to let him go and part of me can't wait for a moment to myself, oh, please...a moment. To myself. For myself.
I am so selfish with these moments. They seem to be so few and far between that I cannot decide on what it is I want or need to do with them and they leak out of my hands like sand, like puffs of air, spring air that tinkles the windchimes, that lifts the yellow pollen and carries it away.

And then- I see my mother and where she is and how she is and I think, oh god, she is only twenty-seven years older than I am, and do you know how quickly twenty-seven years can go by? Like that, like that puff of air, take in a breath, let it out, there you go. Gone. And then, if I am still alive, my moments will stretch like eternity and my mind, my body won't let me do a damn thing with those moments and that makes me feel crazier, more frantic to use whatever time I have in the best way possible and in what way? How?

Shhh, shhh, shhh.

I am doing it, I am spring-fever time-tripping, I am back when it smelled and felt this way thirty years ago, ten years ago, last year. This is what change-of-season does. It wipes away everything but pure visceral remembering. These bird calls, this air-feel, this light-slant, this dirt-smell, this exact temperature and humidity, this sound of tiller, windchime song, this sight of sky from gray to blue, these blossoms, this yearning, longing, reaching, waiting.

Wondering.

And yet, this is now, or, is it? I do not understand time nor how it works and I don't think anyone does except perhaps those few with brains that fire completely and correctly who can hold concepts of vibrating strands of connectivity throughout the universe while the rest of us are stuck here with air-on-skin, with eyes-to-sky, with body filled with this season's red blood, pulsed through by this one life-to-death beating heart and I almost feel the need of some old remedy, a bleeding, perhaps, by leaches or barber's sharp razor, but this is not a treatment we espouse any more and so we are left with all of this blood, frothed to high volume with spring, perhaps, until we don't know whether to dance or collapse, to sing or to sob, to cradle to us or to push away from us.

It is a confusing time of year, of life, of everything. For me, at least.

I am just being honest and should go plant something or clean something or perhaps just sit silently and weep at either the beauty of life happening again and again or of the certain dark inevitability of death, I do not know and am not sure it matters, call it what you will.

And you? Do you feel this way?

Here we are, we puny humans, we tiny unknowable, entirely predictable creatures and the birds are either singing of hunger or life or danger or all of it. I think we can call it love and leave it at that.

What We're Doing Today

Owen eats Southern Hippie Grandma Cake. With apples and raisins.
Using a toothpick.
Which charms his old southern hippie grandma to pieces.