No. I Do Not Believe In Weird Stuff

I just watched a video and read an article about a completely distraught little boy who asked the Pope if his father, who had recently died and who was an atheist but who had had his four children baptized, would be in heaven. He said that his father was a good man, even if he was not a believer. And the Pope, that big Catholic Daddy, assured the little boy that God would be so pleased that the father, despite being an atheist, had had his children baptized that surely, he would not abandon him and that yes, he would be in heaven.
How compassionate of the Pope!
Bless his heart!
And what kind of a fucking church teaches children that people they love will not go to heaven but, in fact, will probably burn in eternal flames because they did not accept their particular beliefs? Not only teach children this but instill that belief into these sweet, innocent little children so that if one of their parents dies which has got to be one of the hardest things on earth to go through, they have to also fear for the very soul of their beloved mother or father.
Well, good for the Pope who seems to have at least a slight grip on reality and who has said some fairly shockingly humane things but it's not like he's actually changed any of the doctrine.
Nor will he.

Anyway, I just hope that no one gets ahold of my grandkids and tries to convince them that I'll be burning in hell when I die because I'm an atheist. Or at most a Possibilian.

I need to talk to them some more about energy and the impossibility of it being created or destroyed and reassure them that as long as they live they will not only carry me in their genes but also hopefully, in their hearts which will always know that I loved them even before I knew they were going to be born.

Okay. Enough of that.

Owen had a field trip to Panacea to visit the marine lab which we love so much and Lily had offered to chaperone and so Ms. Magnolia June came to the Mer and Bop house to hang out. We had a good time. She was quite amiable today and open to almost all suggestions. I made a little video and in it she says "Yeaaah!" in the way that only Maggie can do.



Those curls. Those cheeks. Those lips! Those pudgy little arms and that beautiful skin. She is a darling girl and she reminds me so much of her beautiful mama.
We walked to the post office where she charmed the post mistress completely.
"She's so cute!" she kept saying.
And then we took the requisite and traditional picture by the door of the former train station where the post office is quartered.

How much do you want a pair of purple velvet sneakers?
She walked the whole way there and back and I was very proud of her and I told her so.

She wanted to feed the goats and so we did that too. We also cleaned up the baby chicks' pen and fed some cornbread to the Jungle Fowl out in the coop. We read a book, we played with dollies and pretended to go to sleep and wake up, we hung clothes on the line, we talked to and played with Boppy. We also ate spaghetti. Which was delicious.

Lily came to collect her little Hummel Angel around two and she had Owen with her. He and I went out to the garden and picked some sugar snap peas and a carrot and the carrot appeared to have two legs and so Owen made him into a man.

I love that boy so much. Look at him with his unique Owen hair style, his bear claw necklace that his Boppy made him. His head comes up to my chin now. 

MY CHIN! 

And he still lets me hug him whenever I want to which is about all of the time. 

We kissed everyone good-bye when they left to go pick up Gibson at the bus stop and then I did a little yard work and Mr. Moon did some car-related work. It's been a sweet, easy day. 

Here's a picture I got of Baby Levon. 

Well. You know I'm his grandmother but the fact of the matter is, that is one darling adorable little boy. Jessie reports that August has been saying, "I miss Boppy's house. I missssssss Boppy's house."

I think he would be perfectly happy to sit next to his grandfather in that big leather Lazy Boy and watch fishing shows and read Outdoor Life for days. Perhaps he would condescend to occasionally let his Mer change his diaper or read him a kid book or make him some pancakes. 

Right this very second Mr. Moon is down the road and through the woods a bit, fishing from a pond to see if it would be a good place to take the grands to catch some perch or bream which is about a million times more exciting an activity than weeding a garden is. 

But that's okay. Boppy may have the fun machines and camper vans and fishing poles and power tools and deer heads on the wall and a truck, but Mer has...well? 

Control of the bacon? 

Yeah. That's it. 

Control of the bacon. 

Maybe I should start making more cookies. 

Ah, they know I love them. Now and forever. Or at least they will know it for as long as they remember me. 

Cookies couldn't hurt, though. 

Love...Ms. Moon

The Ms. Moon Litany

Busy, busy, busy all day long. Got up to find it chilly and gorgeous and took my walk which was once again a joy.
Well, you know- a joy for something involving walking fast for a fairly long way up and down hills. It's just so damn beautiful on that road. Yes, there are hills but they are gently rolling, and trees line my entire route, bending over me to offer shade and a feeling of grace. Today I saw two Florida cracker cows laying in a pasture, their horns so long and pointed that a matador would faint if he entered the ring with one of them staring him down. I accidentally flushed two quail who had probably nested on the side of the road and they flew up with great and dramatic wing fluttering which was as startling to me as I had been to them. I did walk past a house with two dogs sunning in the yard, one a rather large, fierce looking white German Shepherd mix and he barked a little at me but did not bother to come chase me and his companion did not even deign to make a sound.

I came home and got ready to go to town and picked up Lily and Maggie. Maggie was so happy to see me. She is in a very good mood right now, having her mama back home. She was carrying her dolly and wearing her purple glitter Mary Jane's and she reminds me so much of her mother when she was a little girl.
We met up with Jessie and Levon at Costco. August was with his daddy, having fun at the scrap metal place. So we ladies and Levon did our shopping.

Magnolia June in a hat. 

And then off to lunch where Vergil and August met us. We asked Lily lots of questions about her cruise. It really does sound like they had such a good time. Here is a good-bye kiss shot. 

August, as usual, is attempting with great success to ignore the whole process while Maggie is throwing her whole being into it. 

And then Lily and I were off to Publix for the things that Costco did not have or else which we did not want to buy great and huge amounts of and then to wait for Owen and Gibson's bus and then I drove them all home. 

I came back to my own home where I unloaded the groceries, put everything away and turned my attention to chicken tending. I cleaned up the Little's pen and boy, will I be glad when those chicks are big enough to take outside! My beautiful sanctuary of a bathroom with the Talavera sink has become a chick nursery with all of the attendant odors and mess and noise. It's all right and I really don't mind it but it will be nice when it returns to its true and beautiful purpose which is to delight me every time I walk into it. 

Also? I need a dust-buster. If you've ever tried to clean the chick feed out of the bottom of a Pack'n'Play, you will understand. 

Anyway, I gave them fresh bedding and food and water and greens and grapes and some crumbled up cornbread and then I took a bowl of the same out to the Jungle Fowl who survived the cold night just fine. They were excited to have the treats. 

And there was laundry to do and dishwasher unloading and bread making (I make the dough in the food processor so it's not really that hard) and spaghetti-sauce-starting. The bread is rising nicely, the sauce is simmering sweetly. It has zucchini, onion, red peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, cut-up leftover eggplant parmesan, grass-fed beef, and I'm about to go throw some spinach in it. Oh. And a cheater's jar of Paul Newman's Sockarooni! which was on sale at Publix. 

I don't think I'll bother with a salad. If that doesn't have enough nutrients in it, we'll just have to suffer. 

And I'm exhausted. 

i.e. Nothing new here.

Have you read this?

Adam Davidson's lips to god's ears. Or gods' ears. Or, oh fuck. Just let it be true. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Don't Know Shit, Part 1,407

What a strange day it's been for me. I woke up at 7:30 when Mr. Moon got up but immediately fell back to sleep. It was raining and I slept and dreamed and woke up three hours later to find that I'd slept right through a huge storm.
Eleven hours. I slept eleven hours last night.
And I mean solid.
It rained and drizzled on and off all day long and I just did little household things and started a sock monkey for Levon and my husband has (for once) heeded my instructions for him to spend all day relaxing with his foot up.
And now the clouds have cleared and the sun is shining so brightly that it's as if it's trying to make up for the entire day of hiding in the short time before sunset. It is getting chilly and is supposed to be down into the forties tonight.
I do not remember ever having weather this cool in April in North Florida.
Ever.
But hey- I'm not complaining about it. I am so damn grateful to have these cooler days and nights. In fact, I would almost consider this to be perfect weather.

And oh god. Here I am discussing the weather.
Again.
And sleep.
Again.
And sock monkey dolls.
Again.
And chickens.
Wait. I haven't discussed chickens yet.

Hello!

That's one of the babies. They are all so happy, these chicks. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a batch of chicks as healthy and problem free as this young flock has been. 

Knock wood. 

I've been debating about bringing the jungle fowl kids into the house again tonight but I think I'm just going to cover their little coop and trust them to cozy up in the hay. 

I don't know. 

I particularly feel as if I don't know anything today. 

I don't know shit, in other words. 

About gardens or chickens or children or babies or anything. 

Well, maybe about biscuits. I do know a few things about biscuits. I made some this morning that were excellent. 

And I know that I'm glad that Lily and Jason are home and safe, having had a wonderful time. Lily said that one of her favorite parts about the whole trip was going to the beach in the Bahamas and being so amazed at the color of the water. 

Yep. 

Well, since I don't know anything and since I don't particularly feel like making anything up, I guess I'll end this here.

Love...Ms. Moon

He Could Not Have Been A Better Boy

August's overnight went absolutely perfectly! He was such a good, big boy and I think he had a wonderful time. He did not want to go home this morning.
He ate a good bit of supper last night- fried grouper and steamed potatoes and corn on the cob and green beans and carrots. Of course, ketchup and ranch dressing were involved. That child will eat anything accompanied by what he calls dip. 
His Boppy watched him in the shower after supper and it was a very, very long shower. Boppy finally had to pry him out of there. And then I put him in his jammies and we laid down on my bed to read some books and then I told him it was time for him to go to sleep in his bed.
He really wasn't too interested in that. He didn't cry or fuss and we did put Big Bear and a dolly in there but no, thanks, not yet. 
And then the sweetest part of the whole visit happened for me. I said, "Do you want to listen to some music?"
"Yes," he said.
So we found my music app on my phone and I played him a few things but he wasn't too interested in any of them until I put on Joni Mitchell's Blue. 
That he liked and we listened to those songs I know so well, by heart and by bone, Joni's voice and the piano, the dulcimer. I held that little boy in my arms and thought about how I used to listen to that album over and over and over again in that alien dorm room in that alien state of Colorado, all that was familiar and loved by me left behind because of my need to escape from that which was familiar and horrendous. How I never in a million years would have thought that one day I would be listening to those same songs again, holding my beautiful little grandson in my arms and smelling his clean, damp hair, feeling his warmth as he relaxed into sleep.
Jack came and got up on the bed with us and August petted him as he listened to the music and within a few songs, he had fallen asleep and I laid there with him a little while, still listening, wondering at how it's all turned out.
And then I carefully put him into the little bed set up by our bed and covered him with two light blankets and he stretched and turned and held on to the doll and I swear to you- that little boy didn't make a peep all night long.
He didn't wake up until 8:30 this morning and when he did, he stood up and looked around as if trying to remember how he'd gotten there and I picked him up and put him beside me in the bed and we looked out of the window and he said, "The sky is up!"
"Yes it is," I said. "Should we go find Boppa?"
"We call him Boppy," he said.
"Okay. Let's go find your Boppy."
And we did and they played fishing games and read Outdoor Life together while I woke up and drank some coffee.

I asked him what he wanted for breakfast and he joyfully announced that he would like pancakes and so there were pancakes which he shoveled in like a machine. August can eat some breakfast. 

Here he is with his Boppy, about to go let the chickens out and play in the camper van while Mer makes breakfast. 

Pajamas and Mickey Mouse boots- the perfect Saturday morning outfit.
Exactly correct attire for pulling carrots.

When his mama got here I'd gotten the little coop in the big coop outside all set up for the four jungle fowl birds and we ceremoniously carried them out in a box and set them in their new home. 

I think they will be happy there until they get bigger and meanwhile, things are a bit more peaceful in the chick pen in my bathroom. This whole transition is going to be a process. All of the chicks are different ages and in different stages of having the feathers which make it possible for them to leave the inside nursery and go outside. 

And tonight it is only going to be me and Mr. Moon here. I called the other grandmother and she is insistent that she wants to do the entire weekend with Owen and Gibson and Maggie and I salute her and think she is very brave and probably far more adventuresome than I am. She says that all is going well and I am glad of that. She also said that she has next week off work which will give her time to recover. 

Mr. Moon has been boat cleaning all day since August left except for one of his famous power naps. I will admit that I took a nap too but it was probably a great deal more leisurely than his was. 

Jessie and Vergil reported that they had a wonderful time on their date last night and Lily reports that she and Jason are having a wonderful time on their cruise. I can't wait to hear all about it. 

I hope my little chickens sleep well outside tonight in their protected coop with the clean hay to cozy up in. I hope that August sleeps as well for his mama and daddy as he did for his Mer and Boppy last night. I hope that Lily and Jason sleep sweetly in their cabin as the great boat they are on steams towards home. And I hope you sleep well too. 

Love...Ms. Moon

My Sweet Boys Are Here

I think that Jessie and I got five (or was it seven?) more chicks and we have vowed and declared we are done for now. This makes a total of seventeen (nineteen?) living in the baby bed and we do indeed have a sampler pack of chicken varieties and at this point I can't even remember what we have but I do think we will be having lots of fun watching these different types of birds display their own inherent behaviors and laying their own unique eggs.

Mr. Moon got home and August was already here and he immediately switched every bit of his attention and allegiance from me to his grandfather and proclaimed again that he is Little Boppy. Right now he is sitting with Big Boppy in the Big Boppy chair. Mr. Moon's foot decided to get weird again and he got himself to his regular doctor's office this afternoon where they sent him for an ultrasound. It now appears that he has a small clot in a superficial vein and it's not going to kill him but he's on blood thinners. He remembered that before all of this stuff started he'd banged that shin into a car door and sometimes a vein can be traumatized into creating a clot and this is probably what happened.
Ah-yi. Standing on his feet and fishing for days on end, not to mention doing carpentry and plumbing work at the island hasn't helped.
It sure is good to have him home where I can take care of him and right now I am grateful for August's presence because if he wasn't here, I know that man would be out there cleaning his boat and fishing equipment and doing all sorts of crazy things that he just does not need to do right now.

So that's the story and August told me that he wants to sleep in our bed with the fans on (and here he demonstrated how a fan moves the air with his clever arms and hands) but I think I have convinced him that he can sleep right beside us in his bed (another pack'n'play) and that the fans will still blow on him and he will be comfortable.
We shall see how this works.

I better go get some supper made. That boy didn't get a nap today and I have a feeling that being all warm and cozy in Boppy's chair is making him sleepy.

And oh! Today is not only Lily and Jason's tenth anniversary, it is also Jessie and Vergil's fifth anniversary and I would go back and snatch pictures from their weddings but I am just too tired and I hope that they know how much they are loved, how much their unions mean to our family in all ways, and how much we wish them every good wish for the rest of their lives for continued happiness and fun and health and joy.
And teenagers who are not too sullen.

Happy Friday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon

Peace

I walked on the beautiful road again and although there are parts of walking through the woods and fields I miss, there are many compensations. However, the abundance of American flags flying is not one of them. It would seem that almost every house has one and the bigger the house, the bigger the flag. This is just the truth. And there are some Christ Almighty big houses! The largest one I walk by is on the highest hill, of course, and I swear it must be a quarter of a mile from the beginning of their regally fenced and landscaped yard to the end of it.
It's like walking past Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas only not really.
That flag above is not the flag which flies in front of that house. That flag looks like something that might be flying in front of the White House.
But, you know, the shade, the lack of traffic, the little side roads that I can take which lead me into more woodlands are all so lovely.

An ancient tree stump, its gnarled roots still firmly holding on to the clay bank of the road. 

I can only imagine that there's an entire community of different critters living in it unless the fairies or gnomes have chased them all out. 

And so I enjoyed my walk and the hills seemed easy and gravity did not suck the way it often does and when I got home, Jessie brought the boys out for a visit and to visit the chicks. 

The first thing August wanted was the marbles and the rat so that this game could be played. 

Ratty picks up a marble.

This causes great hilarity.

Ratty plonks the marble in a bowl and there is applause and cheering.
It just never gets old.

Here's Levon with the very last of his long baby hair twisted up in an Alfalfa.

That child is chewing on everything. 

We had some of last night's eggplant parmigiana which was quite delicious if I do say so myself and we checked out the eggs, the garden, and fed the goats next door some collard greens. We cuddled and kissed the baby chickens. We gave them greens and grapes. We read books. And we kicked bamboo. 

And we played with bamboo.

And we collected bamboo.

Bamboo is endlessly fascinating. 

"Can I munch it?" asked August, bending his head to a broken stalk. 

"Sure," we told him.

He said it was delicious. I am pretty sure it wasn't. Remember when Owen used to take the youngest stalks and cut them up for me with a butter knife and serve them on a plate? 

Oh. All my little boys. 

And that was most of my day and perhaps tomorrow we will be going to Crawfordville for more chicks. Maybe. And speaking of chicks, Birdie sent me this video on Facebook. 

It cracks me up so much and I believe that everyone who has ever been in a classroom or tried to get educational with their own kids can relate.
A Lexington principal named Gerry Brooks made the video and it would appear that he's made a bunch of videos and I think I might need to watch them.

Lily and Jason made it onboard their ship and here's a picture.

Glamorous? Oh yeah. 

Some people are cruise people and some people are not. 

I have a feeling that Lily and Jason are. I am waiting for reports. 

All right. One more evening of solitude and then it's all going to get crazy. Mr. Moon will be coming home, towing his boat and carrying his fishing poles and his ice chests full of random foods and his duffle bag full of laundry and hopefully a fish or two. He sent me this picture last night from the island. 

I know he hates the thought of leaving that sort of serenity and beauty. But I bet he'll be happy to sleep in his own bed again. 

And August is coming to spend the night and then on Saturday I believe that all three of the Hartmann grands are coming over to spend the night and await their parents' return. 

It is so quiet here and I have collards and kale cooking and brown rice simmering and tofu being squished to make barbecue tofu with. Jessie inspired me with that idea. 

The chickens are singing their evening going-to-bed song, a crooning tune which is peaceful and pretty, soothing and sweet. 

I'm a happy lady. 

Love...Ms. Moon

It Was A Beautiful Day

I have been enjoying walking down this road so much that I decided that I would start driving to it, parking, and then going from there. Walking down the highway to get there is absolutely not fun and there's so much traffic, no shade and all it's going to take is one driver of a log truck glancing down at his phone or reaching for his coffee and I'm going to be road shoulder paste.
Ooh! I'm gross.
But you know what I mean.
So I implemented my plan today and drove to a sort of turn-around spot and parked my car and stuck a note under the windshield that said, "Car Not Abandoned. Owner Taking A Walk," and then I took a walk.
Not a very, very long one but I'm still sussing out the territory there and again, I needed to get to town to meet up with Jessie for our drive to Crawfordville to get more baby chicks.
Which didn't happen because Jessie had the forethought to call the ACE hardware down there to make sure the new shipment came in and no, it had not. We were all loaded up in the car so we went to lunch instead where we saw May and got to visit with her and we ate pizza and salad and August got to watch the TV on the wall which he couldn't take his eyes off of. You couldn't hear any of it due to the music playing in the restaurant and it was only an old rerun of Friends but he was fascinated. I told him that Phoebe and Joey were the only ones worth watching but he didn't pay attention to a thing I said.
Both he and Levon have the the stuffy noses and neither have been sleeping well which means of course that Jessie and Vergil haven't been sleeping well but they're hanging in there. Also, one of Levon's teeth finally broke through the gum and so the one next to it is about to as well and so the poor little guy is surely not only being frustrated with not being able to breathe through his nose but must be in pain, too.
Still, he is trying like crazy to remain cheerful and he's doing a pretty darn good job of it.

August appears to be as happy and curious and funny as ever. Here he is with his Easter unicorn.

After lunch we went to Trader Joe's and of course I spent most of my time there talking to him while he was in the cart and biting his fingers and calling him a monkey and looking for his tail and making him laugh and he told me, "You, funny, Mer."

Which was about the best compliment I've ever gotten. 

And we ran into Rachel which was such a treat! August shivered with the joy of seeing someone he knew in a different place and Levon grinned his darling baby grin at his friend. 

When we got back to their house, I read August a few books and then I stopped by Lily and Jason's to give them a little gift for their anniversary cruise. I want them to have the very best time ever. 

And so that's the news from Lloyd, Florida today and I've cleaned up the chicks' pen and god, are those things the messiest creatures in the world! WHY do they spread their food all over the floor of their home, wasting at least 75% of it? Oh well. I just roll it all up in their bedding and shake it out for the big chickens outside and they eat it so it doesn't entirely go to waste. I am not sure that one of the supposed jungle fowls isn't in all actuality a baby vulture. Wouldn't that be hysterical? 

That bird already has wings that are a good six inches long when she (hopefully) stretches them out. That's crazy!

I've got eggplant panko'ed and baking in the oven for eggplant parmesan and I swear- I still do have a husband and I think he'll be home on Friday. I feel like he's been gone for a year but I bet I'll still recognize him and I'll have so much to show him. The baby chicks, the beans and cucumbers, the peas and corn. It'll be good to have him home. I wake up and check for him every night and it still takes me a second or two to remember that he's not here. 

Be well, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

I Never Left The Yard Today

I swear to god, I have been the most useless human being on the face of the planet today.
No walk because it was raining and no yard work for the same reason. I did go out and check the garden's progress because that's a big part of my day every day.

Those are the just-up cucumbers.

The very first sugar snap pea I've found. Look at that perfect little envelope of goodness. The hull is as sweet as the pea. No waste in this particular vegetable. In fact, the vines themselves are so delicious that it's hard not to eat them up before they can bloom and make peas. 

The green beans. They are standing as straight and sturdy as little green soldiers lined up for inspection. Do you see their tendrils? Soon they will find the fence in their miraculous way and grab on tight so that the plants can climb up. I am trying a new variety of green beans this year. They are a type of pole beans called Roma which Vergil's mama told me about. They are the flat kind of bean and supposedly they stay as tender as can be, even when they get big. 

Looking forward to that. 

So. See? This gives the illusion that I did something today. 

She gardens!

Not today, people. Not today. 

I dusted one surface. I cleaned the TV screen. 

That was my entire housekeeping effort. 

I ironed. You want to know why I ironed? Because I wanted to watch the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and ironing was the only way I could rationalize doing that. I should be ashamed to admit this but I am not. While ironing I realized that my husband's shirts are in need of replacement. They might still look good from a distance (all ironed and shit) but up close you can see the wear. So I ordered him three new shirts. It's not easy finding Mr. Moon new clothes. I ordered these shirts from the Eddie Bauer Tall Man department because he's gotten shirts from there before but their Tall Man department is for men up to 6'3" and Mr. Moon is at least 6'8". So I got short sleeved shirts and am hoping for the best. Most of his height is in his legs but his arms are proportionate to his legs and that's always a problem. 

When we were young and I was sassy and we'd first started "dating" I realized that everywhere we went, people asked him how tall he was. 

Mostly women. 

So I got him a T-shirt and on it I had these words printed:

Six Ten and Well Proportioned. 

For some reason, he never would wear that shirt. 

Maybe it wasn't big enough. 

So. What else did I do today? 

Mmmmm...

Changed the chick bedding and gave them collard greens and grapes and clean water. 

Would you look at that cute little wing? 

And did I do anything else? 

No. No I did not. 

Well, okay. I ate breakfast and lunch. 

And thought about making a curtain and considered the fact that I'd have to like, measure and cut and shit and thought, "Nah. Too much work."

So we will just call this a resting day and try to do better tomorrow. 

Here's one more picture. 

Jack. He's my big, fat cat who likes to sit behind me on the chair I perch on and keep my butt warm. He is truly getting huge-ish. He got on the piano today and made so much noise walking down the keyboard that I had to go and check to make sure that some unauthorized adult human wasn't making that sound. Each foot that he put down made a note that resonated through the hallway, up the stairs, and into the Glen Den, dining room, library and kitchen. Even Maurice was startled. Jack himself appeared to be a bit disconcerted. 

He's a good boy except when he tries to beat up my darling Maurice. 

All right. Now I'm going to go cook something. In three days my husband will be home and August is going to spend the night on Friday and all three of Lily's kids are possibly spending the night on Saturday. April 13th is the anniversary of Lily and Jason and Jessie and Vergil and the Weatherfords are going to a concert and the Hartmanns are going on a little CRUISE!

Ten years for them. 

Can you believe it? 

They deserve it. 

But. Things are going to get busy around here again and I guess I need to just let my guilt go and realize that having a day where I did nothing was probably good for me in many ways. 

Or so I tell myself. 

Love...Ms. Moon

An Extremely Typical Ms. Moon Post

I am not feeling so great this evening.
It may have been my walk this morning. I did not walk an entire five miles but I walked fast. Faster than usual, actually, because I wanted to get home and take a shower and go pick up Lily and Maggie which I did. We had lunch and grocery shopping planned and had to be at the boys' bus stop in time to pick them up. So. Shorter, faster walk.
And it felt fine when I was doing it but fuckin' A. I'm not going to lie to you- I hurt now.
Also, it's probably going to rain tonight and that can often make my poor old joints ache more than usual.
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Here's something beautiful.

That's my orange-blossomed native azalea, finally blooming. It does not get enough sun there but it persists in living and I guess that's what matters most. It's a big deal to me every year when it blooms and when the aged water oak which shades it finally falls over, it will get plenty of sun. 

Here's another picture of something beautiful. 

Or actually, someone. 

She'd let her mama do up her hair in little pig tails today and she was simply adorable. She is really starting to talk a lot in actual English. She must have asked to go see August at least a dozen times but August and Levon and Jessie all seem to have a little bit of a cold and so they stayed home today. This is Levon's first illness of any sort and that's got to be hard on a baby. And on a baby's mama.

I try so hard to tell Maggie how smart she is, how funny, what a good singer she is but I can't help telling her that she's beautiful and cute and adorable and precious and pretty. 

I just can't help it. And I know that's not what I'm supposed to do. We shouldn't put so much emphasis on looks but the words just fly out of my mouth. Those eyes, those lips, that curly hair! That darling little nose. Those pudgy little fingers. That Frida Kahlo eyebrow! 

UGH! Magnolia June! Stop being so damn gorgeous! And loving. And kissy and huggy and stop doing things like putting your dollies to sleep in the cradle your Boppy made for your mama when she was born!

No. Not really. I want her to be exactly who she is and she is mighty sassy too. 

When she tucked those dolls in yesterday, Gibson started to get into the cradle with them and she yelled at him. 

"No Gibson! Not YOURS!"

And he backed off. 

He's a smart boy. And Lily corrected me today on what he said yesterday when he got off the bed to go do something. He did not say, "Sorry, Ladies." He said, "Excuse me, my ladies!"
Which is even so much better. 

The baby chickens are all doing well. I bought grapes for them at Publix today and a few minutes ago I chopped up some beet greens and four grapes and put them in their little pen. 

They love greens and grapes. 

I am going to clean out the tractor coop in the big coop tomorrow and perhaps put the jungle fowl in there. Those birds are insane. I cannot wait to see who they turn out to be. If they really are any of the breeds that they were advertised as, they could really be interesting. To get an idea of how energetic and chaotic twelve young chickens in a Pack'n'Play can be, watch this video that I made for August who asked if I would do that. 

And that's about it. Mr. Moon reports that he and our partner in the Dog Island house have fixed and repaired and cleaned a whole bunch of stuff down there including pipes and showers, did some maintenance work on the vehicle which gets us from dock to house, and scrubbed out the refrigerator. Good work, men!

And of course I MUST mention that the FBI raided the office and Park Avenue hotel room today of Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen. You've heard that, right? And so of course we'll be bombing Syria within forty-eight hours because there's nothing like a good war to distract the citizenry from presidential investigations.
Except for maybe when the investigation includes allegations from a real and true certified porn star who not only has huge breasts but appears to have an even bigger brain and absolutely no fear of the power of the presidency.
I mean- what could be sexier than that?

Oh god. The world is in a damn mess.

I'm going to bed early tonight.

Love...Ms. Moon

Pancakes And Smitty's Club And A Lot Of Stuff Inbetween

Well, I did not get around to the Smitty's post this morning due to the fact that I decided to invite Lily and her kids over for brunch this morning. But hey! I got to hang out with that darling little doll.

She has the most wonderful expressions. And her face changes from one second to the next so quickly that I just can't keep up with what she's thinking.
Isn't she just a peach and a plum of a little girl? Yes. Yes she is.

Here's Gibson, that handsome lad, holding one of the baby chicks. He has picked out the newest Dearie. He's a pro by now, not only at naming chicks but at holding them too. As the chick protested at little bit, he looked up and said, "He's dancing! It tickles!" 

He's so funny, that kid. Later on we were all lying on my bed reading a book and suddenly Gibson remembered something he had to do somewhere else. 

"Sorry, Ladies!" he said to me and his mama. "I have to go!"

Ladies? Only Gibson. I hear that he also told Jason's doctor the other day that he couldn't believe that his dad was getting ROCK HARD ABS! 

Jason has been working out a lot. 

And so we had a good time except that we missed Owen who is now gainfully employed by his other grandmother on weekends doing chores for her. 

Man. I should have thought of that. 

When they left I had so much to do, it seemed. Getting the kitchen cleaned up and the house tidied and laundry done. I'd already changed the chicks' bedding and given them fresh food and water. I am so proud of the fact that I can do all of this without removing the chicks from the Pack'n'Play. My four years of nursing school training has come in handy for something after all. I remember how to change a bed with someone in it! Well, at least with baby birds in it. 

And I watered the porch plants and I got out in the garden and did a little weeding and mulching and planted some more cucumbers and some squash. Golly but the garden looks pretty right now. 

And there went my entire day. But it was worth it. Of course. 

I keep checking on the babies, as one does, and although I had not forgotten how incredibly messy they are, spreading their food around everywhere and getting it in the water and pooping and pooping and pooping, I had forgotten just how fast they grow. It's frankly bizarre. I mean, there are chicks that have tiny little pinfeather wings who did not have them this morning. 

No. Really. Tail feathers appear as if by magic. 

So all of this has kept me busy but what I wanted to write about is that I got some pictures yesterday in my e-mail from a man who had commented on a post I wrote ten years ago. And you can find that post HERE.  

It was about a place that was a big part of hippie Tallahassee life and lore back in the seventies and eighties. A juke joint out in what used to be the boonies but is now completely developed with a fucking Target down the road. 

It was called Smitty's Club and I'm not going to go through all of the history of it again- I did that in my original post and in it, I said that I did not have any pictures of Smitty's or of Smitty from that time. 

Well, now I do. 

The man who sent me pictures, Terry Van Brunt, was one of the founding members of the band called Smitty's Band who rehearsed in Smitty's basement and who played at the club. 

And this is one of the pictures. 

And I was slayed. That's Smitty's band and some of Smitty's family with Smitty right in the middle. Seeing this picture hurled me back a million years and looking at those faces, so young and beautiful, absolutely blew me away. Terry Van Brunt is the guy in the back row, farthest right. 

I have side stories with some of these folks. The woman holding the little boy gave me thermal underwear before I moved to the house not far from here that we rented for $75 dollars a year which had no running water and walls that you could see the outside through and god did I need those thermals. That little boy grew up to be an amazing drummer and his daddy is in the back row to the right of Smitty. The first weekend I lived in Tallahassee I went to a local music festival and he was running a booth that sold egg rolls. His business was called "One Hung Low" which yes, is horribly racist but I'll never forget it and he certainly meant nothing evil at all. 

The guy on the extreme left is a man I still know and run into occasionally. He's a drummer. I showed this picture to Jessie and she knows him too. That's Smitty's son, Mac, on the back row to the left of Smitty and his son and his wife next to him. 

And that guy in the front? The kid? The pretty one. 

That's Floyd. 

I think I've written about Floyd before. He was a guitar prodigy. A child genius when it came to music. And he was so lost. 

His mama died when he was quite young and she was beloved and I don't think he ever got over that. When I met him, he was a little bit older than he was in that picture and he was stumbling drunk and probably tripping at a different club in Tallahassee where my ex, Jerry, had been playing with Bill Wharton whom I know I have talked about. Floyd almost stepped on Bill's guitar or maybe he did and instead of cursing him out, Bill said, "Floyd, you got your guitar out of the pawn shop yet?"

"Not yet," said Floyd. 

"Well, how about we go down there tomorrow and get it out and you start playing with us?"

That's the kind of man Bill Wharton was. 

Is. 

And so Floyd became a member of the band family and we tried so hard to take care of him. So hard. He was such a beautiful, lost soul. One of my favorite memories of him was from one night when the band was playing down in a bar in Panacea, Florida (and that's a whole book in itself) and a drunk shrimper was trying like hell to get all of the band wives and girlfriends to dance with him to a juke box tune and none of us would. Finally, he turned to Floyd who was on break. 

"Hey man," the shrimper said. "Would you dance with me? I just really wanna dance."

"Sure," said Floyd, and he did. 

The night Floyd hung himself Jerry and I were expecting him over for supper and for them to work up some tunes. He never showed up. 

Oh, god. How we mourned him. We just couldn't keep him here. 

But for awhile he was a glory with a light almost strong enough to defeat the darkness. And he played in Smitty's Band. 

Here's a great article that Terry sent which was published a few months before I got to Tallahassee. It was in the Florida Flambeau, which used to be the name of the paper at FSU. 

He sent me this, too. 

That's the way it was. A chicken dinner for one dollar and forty cents which was probably half a chicken, fried, with baked beans and cole slaw that Mac's wife made. 

Smitty's gone from us now and has been for a long time. Floyd's been gone even longer. Others in that picture are gone as well and so many of the friends and the lovers. The ones of us who are left are what you might call old. 

Or at least older. 

I'm sure we're far older than Smitty was in that picture. Instead of long hair, a lot of us don't have much hair at all. Our bodies, now thicker and slower, were all so lithe and beautiful then that nudity was nothing special. Nothing special at all. And where if once we danced with wild abandon, now we dance carefully if at all. 

Maybe we dance like Smitty did. I can see it all still- his closed-eyed shuffle, beer bottle in hand, ladies dancing with each other, couples dancing close and then away from each other and coming back to touch again. Little kids standing in front of the stage, wide-eyed at the music and the folks making it, doing their own hippie-kid dances. Everyone sweating because there was no air conditioning. The neon beer signs, the Christmas lights. The people outside, smoking a little weed with the stars and moon above. Laughter. Always laughter. 

These are a few of the things that picture brought back to me. And here I am, the grandmother of five, a garden-tender, a chicken mama, a wife. I am a woman who fiercely loves the ones who are here and the ones who are here no longer but who will always be in my heart. 

You better believe it. 

And also, I am just so glad that I got to grow up and be a hippie and dance in long skirts and be a part of something that was just amazing. 

And that I got to know Smitty who not only tolerated us hippies but was probably amused enough by us to let us hang out with him, let some of us live in outbuildings on his property, have band practice in his basement, and use his club as a place to gather the tribe. 

Terry Van Brunt- thanks for the memories. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Chickens And Grandbabies And Memories, Too

I am simply not breaking any new ground here lately. Not in my life, not on the blog. And you know, that's okay. A large part of the reason I write here and post pictures is so that my children and my grandchildren will have a record of some of the things that we and they have done and how everyone looked, month-by-month and year-by-year and as such, I do recognize great value in blessourhearts, even if what I do here is not exactly literary.
Or, at all.
And there is also satisfaction in knowing that some of the things I write about do touch other people in some ways, whether I am writing about depression or anxiety or childhood sexual abuse or politics or religion or chickens or the garden or cats who bite that we love anyway or cooking or eating or...
You know.
From the ethereal to the mundane and a lot of the stuff in between.
Today was fairly mundane but it had charm, as well. I was planting a rose that Ellen Abbott sent me just as it was beginning to sprinkle, tucking it into dirt with a little bit of chicken shit buried deep beneath the roots so as not to burn them and placing hay around it as mulch when I heard a car pull up and then saw August running towards the house, his little arms still as he ran, the way he does and my heart did burst a little.
I called to him and he changed course and as always was full of questions about what I was doing and why I was doing it and on and on and when I'd finished we went to look for eggs and found three and carried them into the house where I showed Jessie and August the four new chicks.
"Do you want to go get more chicks?" I asked him.
"Yes!" he said and so I changed clothes and we and his mama and his brother all drove to Monticello in the now-falling rain where we had lunch and then went and bought chicks at the Tractor Supply. Vergil has agreed that building a coop and a run would be a splendid thing to do and so I am going to raise a few babies for them while they get things ready.

I love the Tractor Supply. They have EVERYTHING and they are so nice. We looked at all of the different varieties and it's so hard to pick out a reasonable number of the peeps. They did have one breed that I refused to even consider which is the Turken. I have NEVER heard of this bird but yes, they are a real breed of chickens and feel free to google them. Somehow, a naked necked chicken (which is basically what they are) is just WRONG to me but I am sure that's merely a prejudiced judgement and they are probably lovely birds.
Anyway, we decided on two Plymouth barred rocks, two Buff Orpingtons, two Rhode Island reds, and two Dixie Rainbows, which I had also never heard of. And they shall always be called Dixie Chicks, of course.

Here is August, concentrating so hard on holding the two Buff Orpingtons safely that he had to stick his tongue out. We also bought some chicken probiotics (helps to prevent paste-butt and yes, that's a real thing) and chicken electrolytes and another little feeder and we brought everything home to Mer's and took the babies out of their boxes and set them into the old Pack'n'Play with the other chicks. 

I was a little concerned about putting the new babies in with the older chicks I got yesterday because they are so much bigger but everyone seemed cool with the arrangement and August wanted me to pick up each one so that he could pet them on their heads. He did not, however, want to hold any of them. His mama did though.

There are few things as light and as soft as a young chick. Holding one is like holding condensed air. Soft, condensed air which often has a loud cheep. 

After we were certain that all was well and I had covered the sides of the baby bed with old tablecloths because the little ones need to keep warm and it is going to get chilly tonight, we let Levon show off his crawling skills. 

He's gettin' there, folks. And also? He is sitting up by himself. Still not five months old yet. When you hold him, he tries to climb you. "You need to get this kid a baby rock gym," I told Jessie. He is such a merry little lad, so quick to smile and laugh. 

And I do believe that on Wednesday, Jessie and I are going to drive back to Crawfordville to see if we can buy some Americaunas as that is when I was told they were getting a new shipment of them. 

Good Lord, but what a crazy assortment of chickens we are going to have. From the possible Jungle Fowl birds I bought yesterday to the very decorous and domestic Barred Rocks, it's going to be a United Nations of Poultry. 

I hope. 

As I said to Jessie today, "It's not just 'don't count your chickens until they've hatched.' It's 'don't count your chickens until they've hatched, grown up to be hens, started laying eggs and survived for a few years.'" 

As we all know by now. 

And all of this has added up to a very fine day but something else happened that has amazed me. 

I really want to write about it now but I want it to have its own post, although most of it will be pictures and a link to a ten year's past post I wrote. 

Let me just say that it has me time tripping and remembering things I had maybe not entirely forgotten but it's definitely sharpened the lens of my memory. 

I'll sit down tomorrow morning and write about it. It won't be as earthshaking to anyone as it is to me but it is definitely part of my history, as well as Tallahassee history. 

Here's a teaser. 

The rain has cleared. My gift rose has been planted and I like to think that it is stretching its Texas roots out into the Florida dirt to see what that might taste like. The corn and cucumbers are coming up. There are twelve baby chickens in my bathroom. They eat, they poop, they sleep. The birds are singing the world to sleep with their end-of-day songs. And despite all of this goodness, I am filled with a sort of melancholy but it is a melancholy which will not kill me nor has it robbed me of all feeling or color or sense of light. 

I could never say it better than this. 

Much love...Ms. Moon

Evil, Goodness, And Chickens

I actually took down last night's post.
For those of you who saw it and commented, I thank you. It was a completely innocuous post, mostly pictures from Apalachicola and I posted it from my phone because I didn't take my laptop.
And then I got a comment from some horrible, nasty, vile person filled with hateful lies about Jewish people and I couldn't figure out how to remove the comment with the blogger app on my phone and so I deleted the whole damn post.
I absolutely could not tolerate the idea of such putrid vomit anywhere near blessourhearts.
The same comment appeared a few days before but I just marked it as spam and disappeared it. I suppose, since the commenter wrote as "anonymous" it's a bit tricky to block him or her.
If it happens again, I'll look for answers on how to do that.
I've been so very lucky in my years as a blogger. I've had almost zero trolls. Oh sure, I get the occasional spam comments with links to porn or interweb viagra but those are easily removed and do not bother me overmuch.
But. This was intolerable.

I am home in Lloyd now. I had such a very sweet visit with Mr. Moon and his sister. We went out to supper last night at the Owl restaurant in Apalachicola which will cook your catch for you and so Mr. Moon took them a piece of the grouper that his sister had caught and gave it to the chef who gourmeted it to the stars. It came back to us with a sort of caper, red pepper cream sauce and all three of us ate every last molecule.
And here's a picture of the brother and sister who love to fish and who love each other.

This morning when we woke up, we discovered that Mr. Moon's foot and ankle looked 99% better. The final diagnosis of inflammatory arthritis must have been correct because he responded so well to the prednisone. Hurray! And then in an early morning call he discovered that a Tallahassee credit union would be absolutely delighted to have him come and join their team. The bank he had worked out of for so long started off as a credit union and he enjoys that atmosphere of real caring about the members. He stayed with the bank for a long time after they became a bank but recently, another bank bought that one out and so changes were made and he was one of them. For awhile he looked for an office space of his own to continue his car locator service but he did send his resume to this one credit union and they seem very excited to snap him up. 

So hurray again! 

Change happens and sometimes it can be very good. 

We all went to a late breakfast at a place that's just recently opened for breakfast and lunch. The business itself- Delores' Sweet Shop- has been in one location or another since I've been going to Apalachicola, serving ice cream and, well, sweet things I guess. But now it's in an old house in which several businesses have come and gone. 

Would you look at this?

The bones of the place are still there and what beautiful bones they are. 

So we ate our eggs and grits and biscuits and then Mr. Moon and his sister got ready to go out on the boat for more fishing and I packed up and came home, meandering through the tiny towns and across the pretty rivers until I got to Crawfordville, Florida, where I stopped at the ACE hardware to see if they had any fancy chicks. 

When I got in the door I asked an employee if they had any baby chicks. 

"Yes we do!" he said. "We have four and they are just waiting for you to take them home!"

Four. Four chicks. 

I looked at them in the cage they were in. They were not exactly baby-babies, having already started to get their feathers. 

"Do you know what kind they are?" I asked him. 

He gestured to a sign beside the cage. 

"Do you think that's what they really are?" I asked him. I mean, those are some rather exotic breeds.
"Mmmm...well. Maybe," he said. 

Shit. They're probably just the last four chicks they had of all of the varieties and stuck them in the same cage. 

But of course you know what I did. 

I bought those last four baby chickens having been assured that not only have they been sexed and are all female (right) but that they seem smarter than the other chicks. 

Uh-huh. I assume they've been doing Sudoku, waiting for some human to come and buy them. 

They boxed all four of them up for me and I bought a bag of chick starter and brought those babies home. They peeped and talked during the entire journey and did not appear to be very happy about being trapped in a cardboard box after a lifetime of excitement in a cage in the center of the Crawfordville Ace Hardware. 

I brought them home and set up an old Pack'n-Play in my bathroom which is not ideal in any way but that's where they are. They have a light for heat and they have food and water and tonight I'll start giving them chopped up greens because they are certainly old enough. 

Baby dinosaurs are living in my bathroom. 

For having had chickens as long as I have, I really know absolutely nothing about them. I don't know the names of varieties, I don't know the different attributes of different breeds. Well, except for the Americaunas which lay the different colored eggs. And oh yeah- banties which are like miniature chickens who are sort of wild. People REALLY get into different breeds just as dog and cat-lovers do but since Kathleen brought me that first batch of peeps, I've simply taken the birds which have come my way and have learned to love them all. Except for some of the roosters, of course. 

But if I'm going to do this, deal with the mess and the worry and the fuss of raising these babies, I'm going to get some more and so tomorrow I'm going to go to the Tractor Supply in Monticello and see what they have for offer. Jessie's got chicken fever but no coop but I've told her that I'll raise a few that she can have if she can convince Vergil to build her chicken housing. 

And I know he will. Eventually. He grew up with a chicken-raising mama and he knows the value of good, fresh eggs and friendly hens. 

I swear to god, I never in my life thought I'd grow up to be an old woman who tended chickens but it would seem that I have become exactly that. 

Well. There could be worse fates. 

Lord but I'm lucky. 

Love...Ms. Moon