Yada-Yada-Yada

Dear god but it's been a boring day for me. There's not even any dross to spin dross with, much less gold.
It was another beautiful day and I had no real plans for it when I woke up. A neighbor called me pretty early. She and her husband had run out of gas for their stove (and heater and hot water heater) and she had to bake a dessert to take to a party tonight. Could she use my kitchen?
And take a shower.
So, yes, of course, of course. So I ate my breakfast and cleaned up the kitchen and she came over and started a lemon tart with an almond crust and something about the recipe was screwy or maybe many things about the recipe were screwy and after an attempt at baking the crust for that she decided to try something else and made a beautiful orange cake that smelled delicious and well, that took a lot of time.
I wanted to stay out of her way for the most part and so I took my trash and went to the post office and cleaned out the hen house and did a bit of weeding in the garden and watered the porch plants and I swear to all that is holy- THAT WAS IT!

Okay. I lied. I also took a nap late this afternoon because doing almost nothing is exhausting.

So. What do you want to talk about?

Here's something I've been wanting to discuss for awhile- the fact that the new, giant CMX movie theater by the Costco which has a full bar, a restaurant, totally relaxing reclining seats and the requirement that when you purchase your ticket you have to reserve a particular seat which supposedly you are then obligated to sit in, no matter what, even if someone with a head the size of a bull mastiff's perched on a body the size of the Hulk is sitting directly in front of you in the only other occupied seat in the entire theater, yes, that CMX Cinemas place which I have been to twice, once with Owen and Gibson to watch the terrible Winnie The Pooh movie about Christopher Robin, but that's not what I want to talk about- does not have a marquee in front of the theater telling you what movies are showing.
Now. I realize that I can simply look that shit up online. I'm sure there's an app for that. You can do anything online. You can buy your ticket, reserve your seat, probably order your damn popcorn, Jr. Mints and glass of Chardonnay if that's your pleasure. Okay. That's fine. That's modern. That's good.
However, there are people like me, I feel almost sure, who are not regular movie-goers but who may drive by a theater with a marquee, see a movie listed that they may have read or heard about which piqued their interest and think, yeah. I'd like to see that!
And then used the online function on their giant, handy Jitterbug phone to check out the times it's showing.
Right? Am I right?
Probably not. I'm sure they've done the research and have found that it's not cost effective to put up the marquee.
But damn.

Okay. Speaking of online stuff and smart phones, I took a little video today of Dearie and her chicks with cameo appearances of some of the grown chickens and tried to upload it to Youtube in order to share here but for some reason I am not being given that option since I switched over to my new iPhone. Any ideas? I mean, you NEED to see Dearie and the chicks eating some leftover tuna salad, right? And yes, I have activated my Youtube account on the phone.
Just...GEE DEE!

You know, every time I run across this sort of problem I think back to when I was probably about ten years old and a teenaged neighbor got a transistor radio which was the coolest, most high-tech thing available in the world at the moment. I remember what it looked like. It had a leather case with tiny holes punched in it so that the sound could escape and dance to our ears and a big white dial you could change the station on. If you could find a station.
Kind of like this.

Oh, how I lusted after a transistor radio of my own! They were made in Japan! They were exotic and cool and you could turn them on and the Beatles might sing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" or Herman's Hermits might play "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter." 

I don't think I ever got a transistor radio but now here I am with a beautiful iPhone and with it I have a far better camera than anything my mother ever had to take pictures with not to mention access to a great deal of all of the wisdom and knowledge and trivia and news and videos of not just the Beatles or Herman's Hermits but of the Rolling Stones! As well as everything else ever recorded in history. And goddam it, I want to put MY video of my little hen Dearie and her ten little chicks right there with all of the rest of the videos. And I can't figure it out and it makes me crazy. 

Oh well. 

Trust me, though. It's a cute little video. 

And if you've never heard of Herman's Hermits, check this out. 

And then compare and contrast to the Rolling Stones doing "Satisfaction" the same year.



Oh Lord. No wonder I'm so crazy. But it would appear to me that Ronald McDonald stole his costume from Brian Jones.

I'm going to go bake a small red snapper. 

That is something I am capable of doing, crazy or not.

Love...Ms. Moon

Lagniappe

More on Maggie. From a text exchange with Lily and Jessie just now.

She's such a woman baby. I have no idea why or how she came up with this need to bring her brothers snacks but she did.
And it was exhausting.

Heart-Warming

This is what Dearie and some of her babies looked like this morning, scratching in the bright sunlight and yes, there were blue skies again.
I hung the sheets on the line and found three eggs in a nest in the hen house and a fourth in the little coop where Dearie and her chicks sleep at night but I assure you that it was not Dearie's egg as it was green. She will not start laying again until she has fulfilled her chick-raising duties.

I texted Lily and Hank and Rachel to see if they wanted to go to lunch. Rachel was in a car accident this week, hit by a guy in a truck and she's all right and it wasn't her fault but I hadn't seen her since it happened and I knew she was sore and that this has been very stressful and I wanted to see her with my own eyes to make sure she was okay. So we met up at Pho Me!, a Vietnamese place that specializes in Pho which is such a perfect food for a chilly day. The noodles and the paper-thin beef, the sprouts and cilantro, the Thai basil, the jalapenos and delicious broth. We dined like royalty and Maggie experimented with different ways of getting noodles in her mouth and no one fussed at her and she was happy.

The sudden drop in humidity loosened her curls and I told her she looked like Marilyn Monroe. Rachel took that picture. I had been feeding her mung bean sprouts, one at a time until her soup got there. There is something just so familiar to the very bones of me about this little girl. She is the essence of soft and of sass. I love how she talks and how her vocabulary and conversational skills are growing by leaps and bounds. I love how she holds one little finger up and says, "I'll be right back," and goes off to follow her mother to wherever she has stepped away to. I love how she's as full of kisses as her brother Gibson is. I love how she has the curls of a cherub and the eyebrows of Frida Kahlo. I purely love her and could smush her with my love if I didn't restrain myself. 

We all sat and sipped and slurped and talked and laughed for well over an hour until Lily and Jason had to go pick up the boys. There's a Goodwill across the road from the restaurant and I went there and looked at stuff and actually found a dress I can take to Mexico. One small treasure but it was good and I heard no one talking about guns at all. 

By the time I'd finished up all of the errands I needed to run, it was getting on after four. I came home and got the sheets off the line and made up the bed, and my house just seems so cozy. Warm and safe and beautiful to me in its age and its strength and the way it so gracefully holds the things I seem to need and love from books to cast iron skillets to my grandfather's old lamps to all of the toys my grandchildren play with. 

Tonight would be a good night to sit on the couch and begin a knitting project and watch something good on Netflix. Or perhaps just get in bed early to appreciate those clean, line-dried sheets and read, cuddled up to a cat. Whatever I decide to do, it will be fine. 

I've just texted my husband to see if he is safely out of the woods yet. It will be a sort of anniversary for us, a week from today. It was thirty-five years ago on the Friday after Thanksgiving that he asked me to dance in a bar where I was with my friend Lynn. I think about that and how he kept dropping very unsubtle hints about how much he'd enjoy a turkey sandwich after the bar closed but I pretended to ignore them and went home alone. 

He was persistent, though, and that persistence paid off far more quickly than a good southern girl would care to admit and although he did not get a turkey sandwich, he did get turkey flautas and well...here we are. 

This time of year I seem to fall in love with him all over again. I think of how young we really were, how unburdened and free his life was then. He was stepping into a situation which he really had no preparation for but he has proven himself over and over to be more than strong enough to accept the responsibilities and very real difficulties that came with loving me. 

That's what I'm thinking about tonight. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Camellia Season Has Begun

The camellias are blooming! I am so happy about that. Funny how such a small thing brings me such joy. A thing that happens every dang year. Camellias make this time of year bearable and beautiful too. They are a bright and gorgeous light in the too-dark days of late fall.
Close-ups:

Another shining example of color is Ringo. 

His feathers are iridescent, opalescent. They gleam with almost electric color. 

Here is one of the youngster chicks. 

A child of Liberace's, I assume. I swear that the yellow ones all look like clones of each other and so do the brown ones. I believe I'm going to have to do as Gibson suggested and name them all Dearie, Jr., just as George Foreman named all of his sons George Foreman. 

Of course, as they mature, they will change some but probably not too much. There will be roosters and there will be hens though. But it will be awhile before we can start to tell genders. 

I have pretty much been a domestic animal today. It's not raining any more but it was gray as a shroud all day and chilly and damp and I felt no desire to go outside at all so I stayed in and did things like make cookies for my husband to take hunting. 

Oatmeal, pecan, raisin, chocolate chip cookies to ensure that he does not starve. 

Good Lord but I'm a good wife sometimes. 

I was today, at least. I sent him off a happy man with not only a huge bag of cookies but also most of a frozen lasagna and a loaf of homemade bread, certain sure that his wife adores him. 

And then I took a wonderful nap, guilt-free and dreamless with Maurice cuddled up next to me. As the weather has turned cold, she's become so much more affectionate. Almost what we might call loving.

She even purred today as she stretched herself across my hip and kneaded the covers between us. Of course, if I dare to move or change position she growls her wild thing growl to let me know that this is unacceptable behavior. Still, it is so nice to be in her good graces again. When I went out a little while ago to shut the chickens up she followed me, keeping me company in the cold dark. 

When I got up from my nap I decided to do something about the horrible cabinet where I keep leftover containers and my boxes of various sized storage and freezer bags. When we put in the dishwasher, that cabinet got cut in half and I've had to learn to deal with it but sometimes things get out of hand and I decided to go through the damn thing and take out all of the plastic containers I wash and save which once held the Greek yogurt I put in smoothies or cottage cheese or Publix whipped butter. How can one just put these things in the recycle? They are sturdy and are perfect for keeping leftovers in. But things were out of control in that cabinet and I figured I could put them all in a bag and take them to Lily's house to be used for Thanksgiving leftover take-homes. 

I think that that cabinet must hold some sort of enchantment because I got a Trader Joe shopping bag and a Publix regular plastic grocery bag stuffed with containers. How could they and all of the glass containers I own possibly have fit in there? Well, I must admit that the cabinet goes all the way to the wall beside the sink and to reach everything that had tumbled from the front of the cabinet I had to use a pair of long tongs, a flashlight, and at one point a child-sized broom to knock an errant and ancient container close enough to grab with the tongs. 

But I feel so much better now. 

It's going to get into the thirties tonight and tomorrow and the forecast calls for clear skies. And more camellias may be blooming. We shall see what the day brings tomorrow. I am finally a bit more hopeful about life than I have been in awhile and I do not dare to ignore or take that for granted. 

Love...Ms. Moon

I Do Love A Good Broom And My Cat

I woke up this morning with even more of the melancholy. I had dreamed that I needed to cook collard greens and other assorted foods for a Thanksgiving dinner and was in some industrial kitchen where I could not find a pot that even had a flat bottom among the assortment of age-caked and warped iron cookware.
And the weather did not help. Raining still and chilly and gray as can be. It is so wet here that you can't believe it. Towels never dry and a little plaster casting of August's feet when he was a baby crumbled and fell from the wall where it hung like a sugar cookie that had been dunked too many times in a cup of milk. I haven't been able to take a walk in over a week and I'm sure that has something to do with my low spirits too.

I decided to go to town, maybe hit a thrift store and go to Joanne's to look for a pattern and material to make something for Maggie but I texted Jessie to see if I could help her. I knew was getting packed up to go to Orlando where Vergil's working to stay with him for a few days with the boys because he's in an awesome hotel suite and why pass up an opportunity like that? A visit to Lego Land is being planned and I do believe that Vergil's more excited about that than August is. Anyway, she texted back that it would be great if I came over to help and I knew it would be good to see those boys before they left.
Levon is really starting to feel extremely comfortable with me and when he sees me, he crawls to me and asks to be picked up and he seems very happy in my arms. August was glad to see me too and he told me they were going to go see Daddy and I told him that I was very excited about that. He showed me his stitches and he said that it did not hurt when he got them and we played some while Jessie tried to make some sense of packing for two little boys and herself which basically required putting everything they own into bags including a lot of food because...kids.
We ate up some of the leftovers from the party on Sunday for our lunch and that was fun and August was being a little bit of a typical three-year old and did not want to go to the potty and did not want to do almost anything his mother asked him to do and he told me that I was a stinker and laughed and laughed.
We read books and played while Jessie finished up and then I told them goodbye and Levon stood on the couch and waved and waved and he laughed too.

I did go to the thrift store but the only thing I found was a linen dress and as I was standing in line to buy it the guy behind the cash register was having a very profound conversation with another customer about guns. He was describing the Glock something-something that his wife is getting for Christmas and how they went shopping the other day for a certain kind of holster that she can wear when she runs in the park and I went and put the dress back and left.
Fuck that shit.
The music was terrible there too. A mix of Christmas songs and some other trashy stuff and I decided that if I could go back in time I would try to find whoever it was who first decided that it was vocally cool to make her voice go all Mariah Carey with fifty trilling, warbling notes where one would do the trick nicely and if I found that person I would just say NO! and slap her hard and then come back to my own time and see if that had worked. I might also try and find whoever started the whole potpourri thing and try the same trick with them. Man, I was so wrong about that trend. When it started I said, "Well, this won't last."
Bowls of perfumed flower petals and wood shavings are still to be found everywhere and I hate each and every one of them I come across.

So you can see what sort of mood I was in and to tell you the truth, I still am. In that sort of mood.
I went to Publix AGAIN because not only was I out of sweet pickle relish but I just realized last night that Thanksgiving is actually next week and I needed to get a turkey to put in the refrigerator so that it will thaw by the time I need to roast it. Also, the cranberries and an orange to make cranberry orange relish.
I do love a good relish.
Frankly, I wish that all Thanksgiving involved was turkey, dressing, and cranberries. That is plenty.
Okay, okay. Maybe some collard greens.
And gravy.
And that is ALL!

Gibson informed me yesterday that he's never eaten apple pie. How is this possible? Perhaps I will make one of those for Thanksgiving too.

One of the things the boys did that made me laugh yesterday was to tell me jokes.
"What do call a witch at Christmas?"
"A Chris-witch." Yeah, I don't really get that.
"What do you call a witch at the beach?"
"A sand-witch."
"What do you call a witch at Halloween?"
"A witch."

So I made up a joke.
"What do you call a witch on a bad day at home?"
"Mom."
And then I reassured them that I was only saying that because I was a mom and that it had nothing to do with their mom. I'm not sure they even got the joke.

All right. I'll take my bad mood and go put the lasagna together and stick in the oven.
And I know I've posted this video at least twice before. If you don't like it, complain to the management. What are they gonna do? Fire me?
I think not.
Sometimes you just need some nasty music. This would be one of those times for me.



Love...Ms. Moon

Oh, Children! Get Yourselves Together!

Last Friday Lily took Magnolia to an Urgent Care place because she had developed a very nasty looking infection on the tip of one of her precious little fingers. I mean, it looked gnarly. They gave her two different antibiotics, one for strep because Gibson had had it and one for MRSA because, well- here we are.
And by today, the poor little finger did not look much better so, erring on the side of caution as we must do when it comes to our children (although not ourselves, obviously, when we tattoo our arm with chicken wire), she took her back to her regular pediatrician. The only appointment she could get interfered with Owen's and Gibson's pick-up from the bus so I volunteered to do that. And I was just getting ready to leave the house when the phone rang.
It was Jessie. I could hear August crying in the background.
"What happened?" I asked.
"August cut his head on his toolbox," she said, and with those words I could hear August's cries winding up further.
"Oh no! Does he need stitches?"
"I think so."
Vergil is out of town and as anyone who has ever taken a child and a baby to the ER knows, it is preferable to have someone else with you. Jessie knew that I was going to be picking up the boys but fortunately, Boppy, who had offered to go to the doctor with Lily and Maggie because she is so upset about her finger, had just been relieved of that duty because Jason got off work and was going to meet them there.
So. I called Boppy while Jessie tried to figure out the best place to take August and he headed over to her house and they took August to a new children's section of one of the local hospital's emergency room facility. Jessie had said that the cut was not very big but quite deep, and clean. Mr. Moon sent me a picture and I was relieved to see that Jessie's description had been correct. It looked far less menacing than Maggie's finger, truthfully, but deep enough that you'd want to get stitches.

Kids.

While I was waiting on the boys, Lily called. The NP at the pediatrician's office said that the finger was not as bad as it might appear and to continue with the antibiotics and they also prescribed some heavy duty antibiotic ointment.
In other words, stop freaking out.

When the boys got off the bus they were surprised to see me and I told them why I was there and then I told them that August was at the Emergency Room because he'd cut his head.  Gibson, in his own inimitable voice yelled, "Did he cut it off?"
"No!" I said. And then I laughed and laughed and laughed.
In fact, I probably laughed more on our ride back to their house than I've laughed in days.
Gibson told me that he was going to change his name to Brock.
"Why are you going to change your name to Brock?" I asked.
And then he said something about Brock being the name of a Mighty Morphin or something.
"You can't change your name!" I said. "You have my name." Gibson is my middle name.
"Oh yeah," he said. "That's right. Okay."
Brock. Seriously. Brock. 
Not that there's anything wrong with the name of Brock. But still...

So the boys and I hung out until Lily and Maggie got home and I got this picture from Jessie.

I have to tell you, I think that's my favorite picture of my husband, ever. 

How that boy loves his Boppy and how Boppy loves his boy. 

He's all sewed up now and the people at the kid ER were wonderful and he didn't cry a bit getting his stitches in. 

And when Maggie got home she was asleep but then she woke up and I got to cuddle her for a minute before she wanted to go back to her mama. 

Mama's arms are always best but it felt like a little piece of heaven to have her in mine even for such a short time. 

It's raining. It's going to get chilly again, down into the thirties later on this week. 

This is life. The unexpected, the worries, the rain, the goodness of family, the hilarity of small boys, the sweetness when the day is at an end and all is relatively well. 

Who could ask for more? 

Not me. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Life In Lloyd, Part Ten Thousand

Man, it's been a day.
Well, you know- for me.
I got my tail into town at 9:30 to go with Jessie to the doctor for Levon's one-year check-up. There's a play house in the waiting room that the kids love. I personally think of it as Casa Virus or perhaps Chateau Bacteria but there it is and it's going to get played in.

Levon was awesome and let the doctor listen to his heart and his lungs and he is fine, of course. 

The nurse told us a funny story about her experiences with her own pediatrician when she was a child. She went to the same doctor I took my kids to so that allowed me to envision all of this even better. Her parents were both deaf and she was an only child and, according to her, spoiled rotten and when the doctor told her what to tell her parents she would sign things like, "I can eat all of the candy I want and I don't have to come back for a long, long time."

The doctor would observe all of this and then say, "I don't think you're telling them what I'm telling you."

Haha! 

Anyway, after we left the pediatrician we went to a place called Southern Velvet Cafe and it's just the sweetest place. The most thoughtful place. They have coffee and a few egg dishes and pastries and hand pies. Things like that. They have an entire corner with a small table for children and toys and a pretend kitchen and costumes and hats and books. 

The boys were enchanted. 

There's a beautiful little room for baby-changing and both restrooms are non-gendered. There's also a tiny lending library. 

It's pretty perfect. 

And then we went back to Jessie's and I said good-bye to everyone and took two dresses that I bought off eBay to be altered because unbelievably they were too big. Just a brand-sizing thing. So I crossed that off my list and thank goodness. 

And then to Costco for gas and then to Publix where I ran into every person I've ever known throughout my entire life. 

Okay, okay. Not really. But just about. I saw two people I knew before I even got into the store! 

One of the women I saw in the store burst into tears when she saw me and I hugged her and she, "Oh my god! I so need a Mary Moon hug right now!" and I hugged her harder. We talked and talked and talked, standing right there in front of the BOGO bins. 

She never did tell me why she was upset but reassured me that it wasn't life or death. 

Bless all of us humans and how we try so hard to put things in perspective which are obviously extremely important to us, even if they aren't life or death, as if that were the only criteria for deserving to be upset. 

But the craziest thing that happened today was that the damn, damn dog from two doors down got out of his yard again and if Mr. Moon had not been home, there would have been a slaughter. 

For those of you who do not know, there's a neighbor family who owns a dog who, if he gets the chance to escape, runs straight to our house to kill as many chickens as he can. 

And he can kill a lot of chickens in a very, very short time. 

I won't go into all of the details but I will say that by the time my husband got out to the yard and yelled the dog away, he'd been right at the entrance to the hen house where Dearie and her chicks were cowering in a corner. 

Miraculously, there were no chickens killed today but the problem has not been solved. The owner refuses to take responsibility. It's his wife's dog. His wife let the dog out. Our neighbor between us has chickens which drive the dog into a murderous frenzy.

None of this, obviously, is HIS fault. 

He claims he's bought $300 worth of electric fencing to put up and he'll just throw the dog up against the wire a few times and that will teach him not to try and cross it. 

Yep. He said that. 

He also said that he'd pay for any chickens his dog killed and when Mr. Moon pointed out that these chickens are just as much our pets as his dogs are his (or his wife's, I guess), the man laughed. 

I haven't even mentioned the Rottweiler who also got out because she's in heat. I've never seen her. 

I'm not just concerned about my chickens in this situation. If that dog got out and one of the babies was in the yard, I have no guarantees that he wouldn't go for them. 

It's a bad situation and I am not sure what to do. 

Call the law? 

It's going to be our word against his. And this is an extremely rural county. However, if there is an ordinance about keeping dogs contained or leashed, we have a complaint. 

Despite what he said about throwing the dog up against the wire, I don't think that the animals are usually mistreated or neglected, especially in the context of this county. 

But at the end of the day (which it is), I'm just so very, very grateful that my husband was home and that all the chickens are well and alive. 

Things could have turned out so very, very differently. 

Love...Ms. Moon

It Was Lovely

Levon's birthday party was sweet as can be. I have some pictures, some taken by me, some by Rachel, some by Lily. And I think I'll mostly just post them in lieu of saying much. I seem to have a case of the melancholy for no apparent reason but even as I admit that, I will say that I love my family so much and that they are everything.

Big and Little Boppies.

August adores Owen. Levon too. He gladly let Owen carry him around although I have no pictures of that. 

Rachel and Vergil and Birthday Boy.

Aunt May with Levon. 

Vergil's awesome fire.

Cooking. Everyone has their own technique. Can you see Hank rubbing my shoulders for me? 

Lily trading cuddles for a book. 

Illumination.

And a boy blew out his candle. 

May all his wishes come true. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Put An Extra Quilt On The Bed Tonight, Babies. It's Going To Get Chilly

The moon is hanging pure silver, a crescent, a hooky grin hanging in the night above the pecan trees and the tea olive is blooming again which I only discovered when I smelled it this afternoon. Its molecules must be so very, very strong for such a tiny bloom to be capable of filling so much airy space with its apricot perfume.

It was a beautiful day outside, as blue as can be, and cool, too. I cleaned the hen house's poopy nests and weeded around two more roses and laid the hay I'd taken from the nests around them. I got a surprise visit from August when his daddy came by with him to get a dolly (handcart?) from the garage. They were on their way to go fill the feeder at a friend's house with deer corn but August decided to stay here with me and I was very glad to have his company for a short visit. We found an egg and looked at the baby chicks with Dearie. Not SO baby anymore. More like young chicks. And then we mostly sat on the love couch (as Owen named it) in the library and read books and I was so happy that I knew I was having one of those moments that I needed to remember forever.

Then his daddy came back and offered him a string cheese but I'd already told him I'd make him a peanut butter sandwich and that's what he wanted. So I made him his sandwich and he ate it. And then it was time for him to go home and I decided to mop the kitchen and little bathroom which hadn't been done in forever and I did that and no one in this world would ever be able to tell except for the lingering smell of Fabuloso and vinegar which, as we all know, is the smell of a clean soul as well as the smell of a clean floor.

Have you read Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City books?
I have read them all and reread some of them and saw the PBS series made from one of them when it came out starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney among others. I've loved those stories which gave me a window onto a world that otherwise I never would have known existed and have read Maupin's other books too and last night as I ate my supper, I scrolled through the Netflix documentaries to find one called The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin and I watched some of it and then some more this afternoon. It's pretty dang cool. Neil Gaiman is in it along with Dukakis and Linney, Sir Ian McKellen, and Amy Tan. It is, as one online description called it, disarmingly frank as it follows Maupin's life from his Southern raising to fighting in Viet Nam, to arriving in San Francisco and reveling in his gayness for the first time in his life to the AIDS crisis which changed absolutely everything.
Anyway, I was delighted to find it and it has been delightful to watch.

I am almost finished with Levon's monkey doll. I am now at the decorating point, doing a little embroidery and sewing on buttons. His party is tomorrow and I am looking forward to seeing everyone. As May said the other day, first birthday parties are the best and honestly, they are. They are so innocent. The babe has no concept of presents or years attained but is simply curious and entertained by all of the people giving him so much attention. Jessie has been working with him, teaching him to blow out a candle and say "Cheers!" which he can actually do. It will be sweet, for sure.

The chickens are shut up safely in the hen house and Dearie and her young'uns are cuddled up in the little coop in the big coop. She has her wings stretched out to enfold all of them on this night that promises to get chilly. They are at the stage now where they are getting their pinfeathers which stick out everywhere from their soft down. I wonder how long Dearie will continue to take such good care of them. Until it is time to stop, I guess, and that is a decision that she will make based on mysterious and intuitive knowledge.
I love watching this process. It is so real and so pure, somehow.

Well, that's enough nattering.

I hope that the silver moon manages to catch up all of your bad dreams with its sharp hook and leaves the good ones to find their way to you, sweet as the scent of the tea olive which blooms in my side yard, even as we speak.

Love...Ms. Moon

Taking A Breath To Ponder

Here he is. The man of the hour. The brother. The babiest of my grandbabies. The one-year old.
The Levon. And if you want to go back and relive his beautiful birth (as I certainly did), you can go HERE. 
Can you believe that one year ago he looked like this?

I got to have lunch with him and his mama and his brother and Lily and Magnolia and Hank and Rachel and our friend Lauren today. We went to the Indian buffet, Persis Grill, and it was one of the most fun lunches I've had in forever. We talked about some silly things. We talked about some profound things. I got feedback on an issue that I've been thinking about a great deal. We ate wonderful foods and the babies were well-behaved.

One of the reasons the babies were well-behaved is that Lily let August and Maggie use her phone to watch some kid program and they were instantly quiet and focused which is a little scary but it also gave us time to talk. Levon happily ate his lunch and had nursies (he is still very much a nursey baby) and it was just so pleasant. After lunch we all went down to Big Lots. Here are Maggie and August, and no one prompted them to hold hands.

One could actually mistake them for twins. It's so funny to me how very different they both look compared to everyone else in the family and yet at the same time, they look so much like each other in some ways. 

And they are beautiful. 

As of course all of my grandchildren are. 

I came home and have done a bit of this and a bit of that. Mr. Moon has gone to Georgia again and it is raining a little- a quiet, lovely drumming. It is getting cooler. It is hard for me to imagine a world out there where fires rage and eat up entire communities and forests, where people are grieving for their loved ones who were shot by another madman with a gun. It is hard to imagine anything right now but this peaceful, sweet evening. 

But because I am a human, I am aware that my experience at this moment is not at all what others are experiencing. I am quite aware that my perspective on things is entirely based on not just who I am but also the color of my skin, where I am sitting as I write this, my health, my bank account, my age, my gender, my stage in life, my sexuality, my history, my education, the books I've read, my marital status, the people I've known, the things I have experienced throughout my life and what the outcomes were. 

All of these things and thousands more are absolutely pertinent to what I am experiencing this very second and they are interwoven and tangled and tied in such a way that there is absolutely no way to tease this or that out of the mix. 

And all of this is part of what the issue was that I wanted to talk about today. 

A Facebook friend whom is not really a person whom I would call a friend although if I ran into her we would greet each other and probably share a hug, posted a link to an article yesterday with the headline, "Most White Women Are Very Happy With White Supremacy" and it struck a chord of anger in me. Not at the "white women" cited in the article (which I have not read) but at the poster. She is a woman of color and posts probably dozens of article links a week and generally, I agree with her politics, her outlook. But this just pissed me off. 

And why?

Because for once, I was possibly part of a hateful majority. 

That's why. 

And I recognized that immediately- that my anger came from being grouped in that way. 

I am most certainly NOT happy with white supremacy. I have spent my entire life making that as clear as possible. And I was being STEREOTYPED! BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF MY SKIN AND MY GENDER!

We all discussed this and it was pointed out that whenever something makes us angry, we need to stop, take a breath, and consider it from all angles. 

Which I agreed with, of course, because that's just the truth. 

And then we started talking about shows we've seen on Netflix lately and the comedy special Nanette came up. 

"You need to watch it," said Hank and Rachel. "You'd really like it."

"Yeah," said Jessie. 

"It's not really comedy," said Hank and the others who'd seen it agreed. 

And then they told me a bit about it. The comedian is an Australian lesbian and in the show she gets very, very real about prejudice, mental illness, misogyny, homophobia, self-hatred, self-shame, and straight, white males. 

Whom she does not hold in great regard. 

Jessie said that while she and Vergil were watching it she asked him if it was making him, a straight, white, male, uncomfortable. 

"No," he said. "Because it doesn't pertain to me."

And if I know any straight, white males to whom it does not pertain to, Vergil would be right there with them. 

But still, we all laughed because there are some things which just seem indigenous to straight, white males in our society because of our culture and even the best of men are probably unaware of some of those things which may, in fact, pertain to them as well. 

So. Is there some part of me which is guilty of being unaware of my own part in the continuation of white supremacy in this country? 

Good Lord but I'd like to think ABSOLUTELY NOT!

But hell. I don't know.
But I probably am. 

Maybe I think too much. 

But one of the things I did when I got home today was to sit down and do a little work on Levon's monkey doll and I decided to watch Nanette.

Which I did. 

And which blew me the fuck away. 

Hannah Gadsby

Look. I'm not going to try and review this performance. I'm not going to try and explain or justify or defend or tell you why you should watch this. I'm just going to tell you that you should. 

And that it most likely will make you laugh and most definitely will make you cry and it will make you think about things you might not want to think about and it will make you think about things in a different way and it may, in fact, change the way you think about yourself and, yes, others. 

In other words, it may change your perspective. 

And I guarantee that you'll never think about Picasso or his work in the same way. 

Boy. Was THAT a relief. 

Here's the trailer.

I'm not sure what my entire point is here. I guess it's that we all need to examine our souls as deeply as we possibly can. To watch it with our own, beloved "straight, white males" too. Not to make them uncomfortable, but to make them think, as we all should.
And to know that my story is your story and that your story is my story.
And that there are some brave, honest motherfucking women on this planet.
People. On this planet.

Levon turned one. My grandchildren are all being raised by parents who believe that all of us are here to be respected in our differences. That we may be born into bodies which do not represent our true genders and that we are allowed to make that determination. That love is love. That no gender, no race, no nationality is superior to all others and that none are inferior to any other.

Well. That's all I have for you tonight.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love you truly...Ms. Moon

And So It Goes, Once Again

Gosh. What a boring day for me. I had my teeth cleaned. And they're fine. Perfectly fine.

So. Okay.

Love...Ms. Moon

*********************************************************************************









Haha! Fooled you.

Not really. It was about that boring but I didn't care. I went by an appliance place. Mr. Moon keeps telling me to pick out a refrigerator but I don't know where to begin. I think they're all crap these days. The appliance place was getting ready for some event tonight. An event at an appliance place? Yes. I also noted as I drove into town that there was an event happening at the waste management facility.
I am not kidding.
There were big flashing signs directing people where to enter and where the buses should go.
I have NO idea what that was about.
But they were expecting buses. 

So I let the chicks and Dearie out of the coop today. The littles just kept escaping and then they couldn't get back in and I couldn't figure out where they were getting out. As fast as I find places they've dug under the wire to squeeze their little bodies through and patched them up, they do it somewhere else. Dearie was frantic as they peeped and scratched their way around the coop. I mean, they've actually worn a little path around the coop. And Dearie couldn't protect the ones outside because she couldn't get out through the little spaces that the babies could escape through so I finally just opened the doors and said, "Y'all be careful."
And when I just went to shut them up, there were ten little chicks nestled up and under and around Mama.
Now I know I'm going to lose some. That's all there is to it. I haven't seen any of the feral cats lately but that doesn't mean they aren't around. And hawks are always around. And owls.
I'm between a rock and a hard place here. Mr. Moon could, I suppose, dig down and sink wire farther into the ground because the chicks just keep digging it out but he doesn't have time to do that.
But knock wood, they all survived today and whenever I'd go out to check on them they'd run like little cartoon chicks with their stretched-out dinosaur legs for the hen house, peeping as loud as they could. They have smarts but they sure don't have much in the way of of self-protection.

So guess what tomorrow is?
LEVON'S FIRST BIRTHDAY!
How can this be? That child was born twenty-five minutes ago. The midwife is still in the driveway!
His party is on Sunday but I hope to see him tomorrow. He's such a precious little guy and he's starting to know how much I love him, I think. I haven't finished his monkey but I will.

I can't talk about the California shooting right now. What is there to say? Nothing's going to change unless gun laws change and then it's going to take some time after that. I did engage with some NRA supporter on FB and I don't even know why although I have to say that she was incredibly polite, even if she has drunk the Kool Aid.
We are a nation drunk on guns and violence.
What are we so damn afraid of?

Personally, I'm afraid of young white men with guns. And of course, our so-called president.
And about ten thousand other things including doctors, dentists, lab tests, telephone calls, people wearing faux lab coats behind cosmetic counters, crowds, parties, and disappointing anyone I love.
But guns would not help me with any of those.

Guess what? I think there IS going to be a recount of the ballots for our governor's race.
Inshallah.

I need to go make supper.

Let's talk tomorrow, okay?

Love (for real)...Ms. Moon

And Now The Rest Of The Story

Katydid exploring my MacBook. 

I'm feeling a little better this evening. For one thing, there's a possibility that they'll have to do a recount in our governor's race as supposedly there are many uncounted provisional and absentee ballots uncounted as of now. It's tricky and of course I remember the damn Bush/Gore debacle and how that played out.
Let's just say I ain't getting my hopes up but the fat lady hasn't sung just quite yet.
Same thing is going on with the Florida senate race between Bill Nelson (Democrat) and (P)rick Scott (Republican) and you can only imagine how I feel about that. Scott has screwed Florida every which way he could already and now he's hoping to continue, playing with the big boys in Washington.

Did you see or hear Trump at that press conference today?
Think maybe he's scared?
He should be.
And that made me feel a little better too.
Not that I especially like seeing the president of my country act like a petulant bully in need of a good time-out and a nap, but I sure do enjoy hearing desperation in his voice.
He told Jim Acosta, "You are a rude, terrible person!"
Projection much?

I met Jessie and Levon and August at the library today and that was good. I walked around holding Levon and showing him books and telling him how wonderful libraries are, pointing out how delicious they smell.
"Libraries are the best places," I told him.
I do not think he disagreed.

And then of course we went to Costco.

Samples were eaten, the coldy-room was survived, the two-hundred dollar box of huge crab legs was exclaimed about once again, and fun was had. 

I bought the things I usually buy at Costco. Cheese and cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and pecans. Tito's vodka. 

I also bought this. 

I'm not even sure why except that possibly I'm tired of saying I don't know shit and for $13.99 I will have the opportunity to learn at least a little of the shit. Even the Big Shit!

Plus, it's short and the print is big and I am a typical American and want to know the secrets of the universe in the quickest, easiest way possible. 

So. I'll let you know if I learn anything and if I don't, there's something very wrong with me. I mean, I didn't even know that time travel was an option. It may actually not be but it was nice of Hawking to clear that up. I've already received the spoiler alert that no, there is no god, but I can't wait to read his take on it. 

Mr. Moon is home from work and he told me about his day which involved so much Real Stuff that it would have taken me months to accomplish what he did and that would imply that I could, in this lifetime, do what he does. I suppose theoretically this is a possibility but in reality, not so much. I went to Costco and called to make an appointment with my gynecologist in order to get my hormone prescription filled and that just wore me the fuck out. I had to take a nap. 

It's November the 7th, 2018 and I have my air conditioner on and the toenail that I partially ripped when I almost fell out of my bathtub because my overall strap hardware had gotten caught on my toe a few months ago finally fell off today when August stepped on it while we were in Costco and I made Levon laugh a lot. 

I'm still here. 

I'm glad you are too. 

Love...Ms. Moon

What To Do

And so it goes and so it went and although I am vastly aware that strides were made yesterday and am most grateful for Democrats taking control of the House, it is still quite a blow to see my state fall once again to a Republican who has no one's interests at heart unless they are wealthy and white and have connections to other powerful Republicans. Who is in the pocket of god-knows-who and who is, as Gillum said, a man whom even racists call a racist.

Well.

Last night I was texting with a friend and I told her that I was so tired. So, so tired.
And I am.
And what is there to do with these feelings of such disappointment and frustration and anger and bewilderment?

I guess that all I can do is to continue to live my life in the best way I can. With love and with kindness, with awareness and with the aim to address whatever is in front of me in the most caring way possible.
I am not a demonstrator or a marcher. I simply am not. I never have been. I would no more run for an office than I would run a marathon. Given the choice between those two, I would start training for the marathon.
But I am so grateful for those whose hearts are in the right place who do run for office and this election has proven, if nothing else, that women can win elections, that out gay people can win elections, that people of color can win elections, that people who look different, sound different, dress differently can win elections.

I said last night that my hope was crammed deep in my pocket. I said a few days ago that if Gillum lost, I would lose all hope.
And last night I felt as if I had.
Today I am fighting that feeling because that's no way to live. It is the bedrock and hallmark of depression and although I do very much feel as if I am experiencing some sort of PTSD from 2016, I am going to try not to let myself fall into that deep and rocky and hard abyss again because goddammit! No one has the right to steal the joy I have in the love of my family, in the life that I am so fortunate to have.

So today I'm crying. I am. And that's okay. That's appropriate.
But I'm going to try and find that small nugget of hope I hid and unwrap it from its tiny tinfoil hat where I placed it for protection and I am going to wear it next to my heart.

I'm going to try.

You too? Okay?

Let's keep loving at the very least and keeping hope as best we can.

Here's to another day.

Love...Ms. Moon

This Matters So Much

And so we wait, don't we?

Since I voted a few weeks ago I simply scrolled past all of the VOTE! notices on Facebook and put my hopes in my pocket and got on with life.
Which today, did not entail a great deal.

I did go for a walk this morning and I just don't know what I'm going to do about walking. It simply hurts so much when I'm done. Muscles, joints, nerves- probably even corpuscles. I don't know. It's not so bad when I'm doing it but afterwards, I am, quite frankly, lame.
I also got rain-caught about a mile from my car but it wasn't so bad. It was more of a good shower than a downpour and the water was as warm as the air which was already so warm and muggy that the rain barely made any discernible difference.
While I was walking I noticed a guy in a rented flatbed truck pulling into various driveways and then out of them and after awhile, I'd see him driving back down the road or back up the road. I figured he was looking for something and sure enough, he stopped to talk to me and said he was looking for a road off to the right (and he gestured to the left, which was confusing) with "an Indian name." For the life of me I couldn't remember one. He said that three black cows had found their way to his yard in Capitola which is a few miles away and he was trying to figure out where they'd come from. I told him where I'd seen black cows before and he thanked me and drove off in search of the owners and I continued my plod up the hill.

Mr. Moon is back already. The weather in Georgia where he hunts has become abysmal, rainy and muggy like here which makes for poor conditions. I think his plan is to stay home until it gets cooler and the weather clears. I will admit that I am a bit disconcerted. Last night I made a vat of curried squash and sweet potato soup which he is not especially fond of but that's what we'll be eating tonight although he's going to a basketball game in Tallahassee later and the pita bread I'm making to try and round out the meal may or may not be done before he leaves.
Confused?
Me too, baby. Me too.

It's raining again and thunder is rolling across the sky to the west. I just stole this picture off of Facebook.

The photo was taken by Mark Peterson, if Facebook isn't lying and I think it's beautiful. That's Andrew Gillum, voting with his children. 

Like I said, I've put my hope in my pocket but if you could dig deep enough to find it, it would look like that. Just like that. 

Let's hold tight. Whether you wear your hope right on your bosom like a big ol' red, white, and blue sticker or keep it hidden away to try and protect yourself, just hold tight and don't let go of it entirely. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Trying So Hard To Believe

Levon shoe-shopping.

I woke up this morning convinced that I was going to have to send my new phone back and get another one but when I talked to the very last tech person before getting sent to the Warranty Department, she figured it out for me. I was not manipulating my headset properly for the bluetooth on the phone to find it and all the while I was doing what she said I was being all uppity and shit saying, "Look, I KNOW how to use this headset. I've been using it for months." 

And then...TADA! 

Headset recognized and paired. 

All is well. 

I thanked that young woman over and over again. "You solved my problem!" I told her. "Thank you so much!"

"You're welcome," she said. "I'm glad I could help." She said this with such sincerity and humbleness that it made me feel sort of like the shit I was but then again, I'm human. 

And then I did something I haven't done in a very long time. Yonks, as the Brits might say. 

I went to the mall. 

August was being a pill according to his mother, a normal, naughty three-year old although I know that's hard to believe.

August? Naughty?

Yes. He can be. Especially for his mother because he knows she will not kill him. This is why children are always the most ill-behaved around their mamas. Everyone else, they're not so sure about but when it comes to mothers, they can be pretty certain that she won't murder them and make another just like them. 

That sounds terrible. 

But it's sort of true. 

Anyway, Jessie wanted to look for some running shoes and she figured that August could get some ya-ya's out walking the mall and I thought, well, why not? I'll go too. And actually, it was pretty fun, mostly because August was having such a good time, taking in all of the sights and sounds and so I got to see it through his eyes and that made it not so bad. 

No one had the shoes we were looking for and all Jessie ended up buying were some clothes for the kids. Isn't that the way of it? We even ate lunch in the food court and I can't remember the last time I did that. But you know, it didn't kill me and it was interesting, watching all of the different people in real life, mothers and daddies and grandparents and babies and just regular people with no children involved and people with locs and people with cowboy hats and people with swagger and people with style and people with time on their hands and people walking with great determination. 

And so forth. 

August wanted to ride the escalator and so we did. I mean- how can you not enjoy something that makes a child so happy? 

Levon took it all in with his wise little baby eyes and ate from his mother's lap with a plastic fork and flung bourbon chicken in all of the cardinal directions and wanted more. 

I bought a phone case which I had promised Mr. Moon that I would do. I've just been a jerk about that although he most sweetly did not point that out when I showed him what I'd done to the glass on my phone. So. My phone is protected front, back, and sides and I've done my job. 

And right now Andrew Gillum is doing his job. He's giving his last speech before the election right down the road in Monticello at my beloved Opera House where I've been in so many plays with so many people I love. It fills my heart to see him in that room which is absolutely packed with Blue Dog Democrats of every race and age who are cheering for him. If If I hadn't loved him before, I'd love him right now for choosing that rural, tiny venue for his last event. 

Oh, how I want to believe he'll be our next governor! 

"It's gonna start. Tomorrow," he just said. 

"Let's bring it home, y'all," he's saying. "Let's bring it home."

Amen. 

Amen. 

Meanwhile, here I am in Lloyd with my chickens and my cats. It's gotten warm again and it smells funky out there, like living dirt and fallen leaves. 

Dearie is in her little coop for the night with her babies. 

I love how some of them climb all over her while others tuck under her wings. 

They're growing up and before we know it, she'll sense somehow in her bones that her job is done and she'll walk away from them and act as if she's never seen them before. 

But the mothering she is doing now will have prepared them for that moment. 

I find this incredibly comforting and a sort of brilliance on the part of evolution and what we call Mother Nature, I guess.

Anyway, she makes them feel safe and wherever she is, is home for now. 

Let's bring it home. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Alone But Most Certainly Not Lonely

Oh my, oh my, oh my.
It's been a rather lovely day for me even though almost all I've done is to try and get my new phone filled with all of the information from my old phone and although at times the process has gone swimmingly, I think I'm going to have to send this one back and get another. I know they use refurbished phones and that's fine.
If they work.
But this one would not connect to my headphones and I'm now trying to download all of my stuff from the old phone to the new one again and there seems to be a glitch in that process too.
I will say though, that the insurance company who provides the new phones (Asurion) has been wonderful with tech help both via phone and via an app that they sent me a link to where I can communicate with a tech person.
You know, it's funny. I'm 64 years old and yes, there are so many tech-related things that I'm absolutely in the dark about and yes, Gibson does give me instructions for using the remote when I'm navigating Netflix as if he has already internalized  the myth that old people just can't do things like that, but I am not completely ignorant and things are so much simpler now than they used to be when home computers first became a thing.
But when things go wrong, it's so helpful to be able to reach out for assistance.

Mr. Moon has gone to Georgia to hunt again and up until today things had been a tiny bit bumpy with us for a few days. Nothing big, just a little bruising of delicate feelings and slight misunderstandings and the sorts of things which beset all relationships no matter how long or short they may be. But this morning things were tenderly made smooth again and I sent him off with a truly loving heart and some frozen soup and a small meatloaf for him to eat this week and he knew that I loved him and I knew that he loved me and so all is very, very well.

Jessie and Lily and I had planned an outing today to a local farm where they have a corn maze and animals but then it started raining and we found out that the farm had closed because of it and although I was really looking forward to going, mostly because we had such a good time when we went there last, I was not upset to stay home and tend to things here. You can read the post that I wrote about our visit there two years ago HERE  and it's slightly interesting, not just for the report and pictures of the babies but also because I wrote it just a few days after the 2016 election which gives it a bit of historical context, I guess. Plus, a few miracles were noted and described.
The Pope still hasn't gotten back to me on those though.
I'm sure he's busy.

Have I told you that the baby chicks and Dearie have had the run of the coop for the last few days? They have and they are so damn cute, running around and scratching up bugs and whatever they can find. Dearie is still in Alpha Mommy Mode, protecting her babies and calling them back if they get too far away from her. And I am still in awe of how dedicated she is to her babies. When I go to shut the big chickens up in their roost I check on the growing family too and she invariably has them tucked up in her wings in the back, most protected part of the little coop and I shut the lid and wish them a good night.
I am so thrilled that all ten are still alive.

It has rained for most of the day and I have been grateful for that. It has given me reason to stay inside and not feel guilty. I've read some while waiting for downloads. I got cold and took a very long and hot shower. I worked a little on Levon's monkey. I chatted with very polite and knowledgeable tech people. I've done some laundry.
I've been content in my house, in my life.
I've been at ease and in contentment in my love.

Well. There. That's been my life today. And we shall see what tomorrow brings us.

Love...Ms. Moon