Just Another Day In The Life

Here's Sleeping Beauty herself this morning, still tucked up after I was out of bed. Is it just me or does she look a little scary even so obviously cozy and sleepy? Perhaps you have to know her. She slept on my legs all night long which is fine although when she does that, I wake up with sweaty legs every time. 
That's a great image, isn't it? 
Just call me Old Sweaty Legs. 
I just made myself laugh.

It was cold as hell again this morning but it did warm up considerably. I mean, I wasn't wearing a muumuu and flip flops but I didn't feel the need for a heavy coat, either. I've been wearing my mother's ancient camel-colored cashmere coat that she probably bought in the fifties when we still lived in Chattanooga because she sure didn't need one in Roseland which is where we lived after Tennessee. And I have to tell you- that coat has no rips, no holes and the satin lining is still glorious.

The hand-stitched label is still firmly attached. I do believe I've posted a picture of that label before but I do love a good label. The coat weighs about forty pounds but it's warm. 

They used to make 'em to last, didn't they? 

I went to town and got my Publix shopping done quick-quick which is quite unusual. My brain was working fairly well today and I had made sure to have my list and and was very careful about checking it frequently so as not to have to return to the produce section when I was already in the cleaning products section which is all the way across the store. This happens far more than I am comfortable admitting but it did not today. As I mentioned the other day, they are moving everything around in this Publix and perhaps that's why I'm paying better attention- I have to in order to find what I'm looking for. And that is not a bad thing. I'm not fond of change but change in the grocery store cannot be compared to changes which truly affect my life. Plus, and I may have said this before, I love the new style of handles on the refrigerator and freezer cases. I have thought about them frequently since I first encountered them. Is this an indication that I need to get a life? 
Well, maybe. 
They're just sleeker and more slender, more friendly to the hand. Great design, Publix! 

I met up with Jessie to go to Costco and of course that was an adventure. As always.
Okay, okay. I DO need to get a life. But until I do, here's something that makes me quite happy.

We've been needing a new kitchen rug/mat for a long time now. The old one was about the opposite of non-skid and neither Glen nor I need to risk falls. And who could be morose, looking at those red cherries? 
DO NOT BE AFRAID OF COLOR, I am telling you. 
For a second, when I was picking out which of the four patterns Costco was offering these rugs in, I thought, "I should get something that goes with my kitchen," and then I laughed and laughed. 
What WOULDN'T go with my kitchen? 

We got to see Brenda and she is feeling much better than the last time I saw her. She gives the best hugs you can imagine. An embrace that leaves you feeling 94% (or more) better than you did before the hug. The sort of hug you can still feel hours later. 
You know what? I think hugs are one of the best things that humans can do for each other. I know there are people who do not like to either hug or be hugged and that is fine and I respect it but I am so glad I am not one of them. I hug my kids, I hug my grandkids (even Levon and August are becoming more comfortable with them), I hug my friends, I hug people whom I am not really officially friends with but for whom I feel a great fondness and who appear to me to need a hug. 
And I hug my husband. I swear, we must hug at least ten times a day, especially when the weather is chilly. Sometimes I feel like there is nothing on earth I need more or would rather do than hug and be hugged by him. 
No husband hugs today, though. He called me a little while ago to check in and tell me he's going to be eating turkey soup from the freezer for his supper. I have no memory of making turkey soup but it might be from the Thanksgiving turkey seeing as how I think that's the last turkey I cooked. 

I wanted to clear up some questions some of you had about Harvey, his whereabouts, and his property. The post I wrote about that a week ago can be found HERE.

In it I wrote about his being in jail at the moment and how I really do not have details but it seems as if he's possibly lost the thread here. If I had to live in the same circumstances as Harvey has for at least the twenty-two years I've lived in Lloyd, I'd probably be in jail too, if not dead. That is not hyperbole. 
If I ever do get more details from a reliable source, I'll share them. In the meantime, please know that I really have no idea if he was the owner of the property he lived on or if someone else owned it and was allowing him to stay there. Fifty years ago I probably would have gone to the jail to see and talk to him but I am not that person now. I know there are situations in which I have nothing to add and this is one of them. And besides that, if I have anxiety just meeting someone for lunch, I am not sure I could even begin to handle a visit to the Jefferson County jail. 

Pottery tomorrow so I'll be getting a poor night's sleep tonight. I swear- last night I woke up in the very early hours and my first thought was, "It's okay. I don't have to get up early this morning but tomorrow I will. Oh no!"
There really is something wrong with me. 
As if we didn't know.

Love...Ms. Moon

Alone Again But Not Complaining

I took this picture when I had a walk today. That is Harvey's property and what it looks like when you approach it from the west. I've seldom, if ever, taken pictures of his home out of respect for his privacy but knowing he's not there, I figured I wasn't going to disturb him at home. As you can see, there isn't much privacy to be had there. I've seen him sleeping in that truck and of course there are the two trailers but I'm not sure he spent much time in either of them. In reality, they're nothing but metal boxes which do little to mitigate heat or cold. Although there is an electric line extended over the trailers, I feel certain it is not hooked up. 

I have seen him sitting in the doorway of that trailer. The men who cleaned up the property did a thorough job and it appears they didn't throw away or dispose of anything that is a possession of Harvey's. You can see his latest cross sign there. I'm not sure why "Christ" is upside down on it but it is. At one point it said "No Man Lord" which is what I called him for a long time before I knew his real name. Not to his face. And of course it has said "Jesus Saves" on it. Harvey seems to have a deep devotion to Jesus and I have seen him reading a huge Bible many times, usually sitting under the one tree on his property. 
Which is no longer his property. 
So that's what I've been talking about all these years when I've talked about Harvey's place. 

The walk was very good. It was whippier and colder than I'd thought it was and I was not dressed warmly enough. It wasn't cold enough to get chilblains, of course, but I never did warm up entirely. I will say that my speed increased nicely. I was quite spry out there today. 
Well, for a 71-year old woman. 
Which I still find hard to believe I am. 
I know a lot of people who, as they get older insist that they still feel the same way they did when they were sixteen or twenty-one or even ten years old. 
In some ways, I do understand that. After having and raising four children, I am quite convinced that we are all born with our personalities already in place. When it comes to nature vs. nurture, I think it's pretty obvious it's both. However, if you're born with a questioning nature, I don't think you can erase that characteristic by anything you experience or do. Some people are born responding to and loving music and may well find themselves seeking out ways to express themselves with it no matter what their upbringing is like. 
I don't think I need to belabor the point here. You know what I mean. So yes, I do love many of the same things I loved when I was six including books, and trees, and rivers, and oceans. I loved looking out at the Atlantic and wondering about the distant countries on the other side of it and what was under that water. Whales? Sea monsters? Trunks of golden coins and jeweled treasures? The bones of the pirates whose gold and jewels that had been?
And I still feel exactly the same way when I look out at an endless horizon of water now. 
Again, I believe you know what I'm talking about. 
However, when it comes to a lot of other things, I do not feel at all as if I was any of those much-younger ages. Not just in my joints or bones or muscles or memory. That all goes without saying. Some things that I thought I would lose with age though, I am surprised and delighted to find I have not and which would probably have disturbed and shocked me to contemplate when I was young and lithe and full of the juicy sweetness of youth. 
But when it comes to ways I think, the years I've stacked up behind me do influence me greatly and sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it is not. I am no less liberal than I was when I was nineteen so it's not things like that. It's more things like being up for travel and adventures, going to parties and out to bars to dance. Okay-let's face it- going anywhere that requires me to leave my house and my property. 
And put on a bra. 
But then again, my mother always called me her "worrier" because I worried about everything when I was young and guess what? I'm exactly the same now only far more so, to the point of severe anxiety so things in that area have gotten worse, not better. But the seed of this sort of thing was in me from the beginning. 

Ay-yi-yi. 

Mr. Moon left to go up to the cabin this afternoon after he'd gone to Tom's to help him with plumbing problems caused by the freezes we've had. It was not good. But you know Glen- he'll do what he can and he'll do it the best he can so he got a late start but that's okay. 

I've boiled and pressed my tofu so that is definitely on the menu tonight and I want to get to it. I believe that tomorrow I'll do my shopping which somehow always takes me all day. 
I hope Maurice sleeps with me tonight which she has not been doing. Instead, she's been sleeping on Mr. Moon's lap when he is in his chair and that BITCH actually purrs for him. 
Sigh.
I told Glen this morning that I want my own cat. But of course any other cat we brought into this house would immediately be sliced and diced by the Orange Warrior Goddess who rules here. 
Sigh again. 

Only going to get down to 31 tonight. Almost toasty!
No it's fucking not. But we're getting used to this. In a way. Sort of. 
Not really. We'll live.

Love...Ms. Moon

Trigger Warning: Childhood Sexual Abuse And I Mean It

 I changed my mind last night about the tofu and veered into the soup lane. I'd read a recipe in the New York Time's cooking app for an onion, cabbage soup and that just sounded so good. And I had an entire head of cabbage. 
Of course I used their recipe as a starting point and went from there. I added spinach and sun dried tomatoes and potatoes, too. And it was delicious. 
Thought you'd want to know that. 

An "Anonymous" asked in a comment what the head of the little boy was in the picture I'd posted of Hank as a bebe. 

That was easy enough to answer and so I did. Here's a picture of the whole carving the boy is in.

Many of you have literally seen this same image dozens of times. The Lady there is the Virgin of Guadalupe, aka Reina de Mexico, aka Our Lady of Guadalupe. The male figure is representative of a guy named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (don't ask me to pronounce that and don't ask me to spell it again) to whom the Holy Mother appeared four times in 1531. Supposedly she chose him to convince a bishop to build her a church on the spot of her appearance and in order to convince the bishop, she performed several miracles  which gave proof of her authenticity. Look it up if you're interested. And curiously- of all locations for this church, Our Lady chose the exact spot where an Aztec goddess, named Tonantzin, had a shrine. 
I doubt there's any image in all of Mexico as prolifically displayed as that of Ms. Guadalupe's. She is beloved. I cannot speak to the authenticity of her holiness and miracle-doing abilities and it has been several centuries since the whole thing supposedly occurred so I'll just say that, ummm...
Okay. 
And I sort of love that Queen too. This representation of her I have was bought at a little shop FILLED with all sorts of iconic wood carvings and I knew I had to have that one the second I saw it. 
And that's the story of that. 

It did indeed get cold last night and has been too cold for me all day. I took the compost out a little after noon, came in and said, "That's it for me." I may have also said, "It's too fucking cold."
Okay. You know I did. 
A lot of people did not have water this morning due to frozen and/or busted pipes. Hank and Rachel's entire neighborhood's water system was down. They report they're getting a little water now. And it will be cold tonight again. This is so hard on so many people. We simply are not prepared or set up for cold like this. 

I have a lot to say about the new Epstein files dump but I really do not have enough information to know what are accusations and what might be proven facts or truly anything and I do not want to assume that everyone and every deed mentioned in them is factual. I'm sure that sentence is grammatically incorrect but you know what I mean. 
However, having said that, there are now images I have in my mind which are so much worse than what I was originally led to believe happened although that was more than bad enough, and plenty to put a whole lot of men and a few women behind bars. For the life of me, I cannot understand why these people are walking around, free as birds, most of them profanely rich (there's the answer, of course) while the children they abused will never, ever be free of the trauma of what happened to them. 
Look- I am not easily triggered but some of the things coming out have triggered me. I am not going into details. That is not my purpose here. I'm just saying that as a victim of sexual abuse in my childhood, hearing what went on at that island, in mansions and private clubs, causes me to want to creep into a shell and bury myself deep under the sand where I am hidden and all is dark and quiet.
Or at least, the child in me does and the adult understands and is in agreement. And so what are the victims of these evil, debauched, predatory, mostly men, feeling? I don't think many of us can know. 
What kind of a justice system do we have when the worst among us go about unafraid and protected by their money, their power, their positions, their names? And you know what? Most abusers are protected by the power they may have over their victims and which they use to keep those victims silent. BUT, if the victims do manage to tell someone, and if the abuse is reported, there is at least a chance the perpetrator will be charged and have to stand trial and possibly imprisoned. With these men who are listed over and over again in the Epstein files, there seems to be not even the threat of justice being served. 

I can't write any more about his because at the moment I am feeling rather numb and powerless- another result of childhood trauma. So I'll just end it here, say I hope that if you were a victim of childhood sexual abuse and are being triggered on a daily, even minute-by-minute basis, you know you are not alone. Our names are legion for we are many or whatever the hell that saying is. Oh, I just looked it up. That's what the demons living in the possessed man in the New Testament told Jesus before He cast them out to be transferred to 2,000 pigs. 
Isn't religion great? Too bad Jesus doesn't cut to the chase and cast out the demons that live among us. Or the Old Testament God Dude doesn't smite them. 
I'll shut up. 

I am loving all of us tonight. 

Ms. Moon

It Almost Snowed!

Could a picture better illustrate a winter day in North Florida? I think not. Gibson and Maggie were outside, hoping to see some of the snow flurries being reported all over social media and also, via personal sightings by both Rachel and Lauren. Snow! Snow in Florida! Again! 
But look how Maggie's dressed- suitable for snow with mittens and a hooded jacket while Gibson is in shorts and a t-shirt. I'm not sure if they got to see any of the tiny flakes or not but I bet you anything Gibson went back in the house to add more clothing if he spent much more time out there. For us, it is bitterly cold. 

If it feels like 18° at 34°, what's it going to feel like tomorrow morning when it's 19° or 20°? 

I haven't even stepped out of the door today. The compost can begin its decomposition in the kitchen. There is nothing in the garden I want badly enough to go out and pick. Mr. Moon stayed inside today too, mostly doing online shopping for flooring for the downstairs of the cabin and a glass shower door. Also, quite possibly a truck because his has reached the point of not being worth repairing and the man has to have a truck. He is already calling this new one- the one he hasn't bought yet- his last truck. And it won't be a new, new one. Trust me. I'm not sure Glen's ever bought a new vehicle in his life. 
Oh wait! I remember he did once. He sold it almost immediately. 

But now, he's gone to town. There's a basketball game and he offered to take Levon and August but it was decided that only August would go so that he could have some one-on-one time with his Boppy. 
I love that. 
So I'm home alone which is fine. I think I'll make myself some tofu which I haven't done for awhile. I shall once again use the pre-boiling method of preparing it because I think that really does make a nice texture if I press it after it comes out of the water. It may be that I really only want some good dipping sauce with something crunchy to transport said sauce to my mouth and tofu is a fine answer to that. 

I've done very little today. Some laundry because of course I did laundry. And I watered all of my plants in the house. I patched a bit on a pair of corduroy overalls I've been working on for eons now. Before long, the entire garment will be made of patches but that's fine with me. 

It could actually be said that perhaps in my case, visible mending is not the best idea but, oh, whatever. Those patches are strong and they are colorful. My goal has been accomplished. 

While I sewed, I watched an Agatha Christie thing on Netflix, or at least a few episodes of it. "Seven Dials," I think is the name. My biggest take-away from it so far is the verification of my belief that Helena Bonham Carter is one of the most beautiful women in the world. She is older now, of course, 59 years old, but to my eyes, she is every bit as gorgeous as she was and truth be told, her face is even more interesting. I will say that she is a quite youthful 59 year old but not in a way that makes one thinks of fillers and procedures. If she has had work done, it's good work.

Speaking of good work on an entirely different level, the anti-ICE protests across the nation have been astounding today. I watched footage from one in Salt Lake City which looked to be huge and let me just say- Salt Lake is hardly a bastion of left-wing liberals. 
This is all heartening. 

I've been wanting to share this picture of Hank when he was a baby. I remember when it was taken quite vividly. We had just recently moved into the house I spoke of a few days ago, the one without running water and with gaps in the walls and floors. Our friend Chloe took it and gave me this copy. 

In so many ways he looks just the same. My first baby, my precious child. It was winter and cold then too, but he looks pretty happy. He was, in fact, a happy baby and a happy child, too. I love that picture and it lives on the hallway altar. 

That's a picture I took last night of the moon behind the twisted, bare branches of a pecan tree. I love the clouds and also the light from my back porch. We were outside, checking out the new camper Jessie and Vergil had just bought. 

Looks cold, doesn't it? 

It was. But not as cold as it is tonight. 

Be warm. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Just When You Think Things Can't Get Worse

Today has not been anything like I thought it was going to be. We did not go to the coast because it was spitting cold rain that felt more like sleet and was gray and nasty and after our appointment with Jalisa, we said fuck it, and came home. Also, we were not in the best mood as I had jumped all over Mr. Moon for pointing out where he thought the card should be tapped when I was self-checking out with my limes and avocados at Costco and although it does sort of look like the place he pointed to would be the logical tap target, I knew in fact that it was not because I go through that line once or twice every week of my life and for some reason this just pissed me off. 
I tried to explain it to him (womansplain?) but he didn't get it and I don't think he will. Such a stupid little thing but boy, did it light me up. I really don't know why that triggered me so much but it surely did so today hasn't been the best day but it's much better now because, as you can see, we have two fine young men here who are now watching some science show on Netflix Kids but who also asked me to read to them before that and so I did. We are already in the nostalgia phase of reading books wherein they love for me to read them their old favorites and of course I love that too. 
The reason the little guys are here is because Jessie and Vergil went to Apalachicola today where they bought a travel trailer in which to live their soon-to-be-realized dream of taking off for six months to journey across the country and see what can be seen and do what can be done and have adventures. The plans are not all in place but their little home has now been bought. 
So Glen picked the boys up from after-school and brought them here and Jessie and Vergil will soon be here to pick them up and show us their camper thing. RV? Whatever. I am so excited for them and at the same time I'm devastated that they'll be gone for six months. We'll have to make plans to meet them somewhere which means I'll have to leave the North Florida/South Georgia area which is pretty huge for me. 

This is all just stream of consciousness because I'm hurrying. I need to get something in those boys' tummies. When they got here I made them their usual snacks which is a cheese toast for August and the gourmet peanut butter, honey, and raisin sandwich for Levon. 
"You did that so fast!" August said when I made Levon's sandwich.
"She's a grandma pro," said Levon. 

Yes. Yes I am. 

I'm reeling at the news that Don Lemon was arrested and spent the night in jail. Here we go. Get rid of the journalists who criticize the big orange blob, deny them their first amendment rights. This just gets worse and worse and fucking worse. It's all a huge clusterfuck mess of shredding the Constitution and Rule of Law with a Supreme Court in the Pedophile's pocket (well, some of them, enough to make a majority), and Republican lawmakers who don't have a pair of balls between the lot of them. 
Again. Some of them are stepping forward, stepping up. But so far, not enough. And even if they were, why should we think Trump would give a shit? So far he's ignoring everything he wants to ignore. There is no authority he seems to respect in the least. 

There is not enough Ativan, Xanax, and antidepressants in the known universe to calm the terror of so many of us. 
But oh yes, if we would just meditate and exercise and promote peace and love in our own communities, everything would be better. 
Would we have told that to the Jews in Europe who were seeing the path Hitler was bound and determined to take? 

And on top of it all, we've lost Catherine O'Hara, one of the greatest actors and performers and collaborators of our time. 
It's all too much. 

Sorry. Nothing very positive here today. I just don't have it in me. Even the prospect of clean sheets and martinis isn't helping. 

I need to go make those boys something to eat. 

Hey y'all- it's Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Sink To Soup To Song

 

This is my view of the sink when I'm using it. That's my compost bucket which has rusted through several times but Mr. Moon somehow patches it and don't ask me how. Mr. Moon Magic, perhaps. 
He's a magic man? 
But I just think that is the prettiest sink ever and I love the color so much. It honestly brings me pleasure to just stand at it. How lucky I am! I remember back around 1977 when my first husband and I lived in a shack (there is no other word to describe it) which had no running water although we had an iron hand-pump out back. I had several metal wash pans that came with the house and I'd pump water into them and wash dishes in one, rinse them in the other, and then lay the clean, wet dishes on a towel on a bench someone had built there. There was room for the washing pans too. We did not HAVE to live in a house with no plumbing but we were the back-to-the-land sort of hippies, or at least as back-to-the-land as we understood it to be. We had an outhouse, too. And Lord, was the shack house cold. Insulation had not been invented when it was built. It was made of pine and you could see the ground beneath the floors between a few boards and light from outside between cracks in the walls. We did have electricity but we got our heat from a wood stove. 
It's a wonder we didn't die in a fire in that place. It did eventually burn down when a person renting it decided to plug in a window unit AC which was way too much to ask of the wiring. Rather unbelievably, neither of the two people living there died but, being drug dealers, they had all their money in cash which burned up along with all their other possessions. 
I know I've told this story already but it's a great story and explains a lot about why I am so damn grateful for things like running water and ecstatically grateful for hot running water and central heat and air. 
Oh- I forgot to say that Hank was about seven months old when we moved in. 
Boy oh boy. But we survived! And no one got chilblains! In fact, it wasn't such a horrible experience and I still have vivid memories of the way the front and back doors sounded and felt when I closed them. They were built of the same heart pine as the rest of the house, sturdy and thick as castle walls. The band my husband was in at that time often rehearsed there and I cannot for the life of me remember why. Perhaps we had the largest house of anyone in the band. This is possible although there were only two very small bedrooms, a kitchen, a living area, and a hallway. No bathroom! Or perhaps we were far enough out in the country that no one would complain about the noise. 
Who knows? Not me.

It's been a stay-at-home day but not a particularly lazy one. Glen asked me this morning if I'd like to drive over to the coast area to get stone crab claws and oysters to bring home, and stop at the amazing plant nursery Just Fruits, to see if they have any other fruit trees we want. I did want to go but just not today. I had been looking forward to a day spent at home and suggested we go tomorrow after an appointment with Ms. Jalisa which will probably be the last scheduled one. And so that is now the plan. 
Also, I've really been wanting to make the NYT's app's Best Black Bean soup and that takes all day long because black beans are loathe to give up their structural integrity and go all soft. The recipe, which is a very, very good one, fucks up in one regard- it claims the beans will soften in 1-2 hours and that's just a lie. It even says not to presoak the beans and not doing so adds hours to the time it takes to cook them. But I am aware of this now and include that in my estimate of how long it's going to take to make the soup. I generally end up transferring the beans to my pressure cooker at some point and today was no different. After four hours of cooking, they were not even in the same neighborhood as soft but I pressure cooked them for half an hour and that did the trick. The soup is still on the stove, simmering at a very low temperature. 

Two very meaningful things happened today, one to Glen, one to me. 
One of the daughters of Anne-Helene, the beautiful and wonderful Norwegian woman who lived with our family for awhile in the late eighties and who died back in June of last year, sent me a Facebook request a few days ago which I instantly accepted. I woke up this morning to a message from her that was so beautiful and loving that I could not even begin to take it in. This daughter and her sister had heard stories about me and my family their entire lives and after Anne's death, they found my blog and I'm sure did a search on it for their mother's name and were able to read the things I wrote about their mother. Or, as the daughter wrote in her message this morning, "The best mum in the world." 
Sometimes I love the internet so damn much. I will be in touch with this daughter and her sister too, if she wants, and tell them stories of what I remember about Anne-Helene, which is a lot. And all of them are filled with love. 

And the thing that happened to Glen was that a woman he'd known years before he ever met me called him to tell him that her father had died (at the age of 97!) and she wanted to tell Glen that her dad wanted Glen to have his woodworking tools. 
What an honor! 
The father had helped Glen build the cradle he made for Lily back in 1985 and let him use his wood shop and tools then. Glen hasn't talked to him in decades but he somehow made such an impression that he made sure Glen would get these tools. 
I just went to take a picture of the cradle and this is what I found. 

Yes, that's Maurice employing her ET method of camouflage. 
That cradle could easily last another two-hundred years. 

Pretty crazy that both of those things happened today. And yet, they did. Voices from the past. Loving voices of the past. 
Both of us graced and gifted by them.

Bruce Springsteen has written a new anthem, as only Bruce Springsteen can do. Years ago I realized that that is what he does and he does it like no one else because his soul and his heart are deeply embedded in each one. 
Look. There is no one like Bruce Springsteen. Ask anyone who's been to at least one of his concerts and they'll tell you that those concerts are life-altering, mind-blowing, expectation-shattering experiences. 
I've been to two. The first one I went to, which I believe was in 1979, left me realizing that there are people among us who are truly of a different realm. Later on, I began to think of him as a rock and roll Bodhisattva. 
Look. I don't have the words. He's Bruce Springsteen and no one else ever was or is or ever will be. 

The point here is- he wrote a song about ICE in Minneapolis on Saturday, recorded it on Sunday and released it yesterday. He names names and there is no pussyfooting about. Bruce Springsteen doesn't mess with that shit.

Go ahead, Trump. Spew your tainted, sour, bile. 

You can lie but artists will never not call you out. 

Woody Guthrie

Enough.

Love...Ms. Moon

I'm Not Really Bitching, I'm Just Saying

My god but it was cold this morning. I did not want to get out of bed so early to get to pottery but I was going to do it, come hell or high water or frozen birdbaths or frost on the lawn or whatever. And I did. I always have a terrible night's sleep on Tuesdays, waking up over and over, wondering how much more time I have to sleep, worrying that I'll oversleep, frustrated that I can't get back to sleep...

That's just the way it is. 

When I got in my car to drive to town, it was 28° and I swear it took at least fifteen minutes for the car to warm up enough for me to stop feeling like I was getting chilblains. I am not entirely sure what chilblains are but I AM certain I was this close to getting them. 
Okay. I just looked them up and no, I didn't get them and I've never had them as far as I know but I just love that word. 
Chilblains. 
Doesn't it sound like something they got in that little house on the prairie?
Despite all of that, it was damn cold although eventually the car did warm up and I went to Jessie's house to get a snuggle with Sophie and pick up my motivator, the boss of me, my youngest daughter. 
Here. I took a picture of a picture of August's that was taped up in their hallway. 

I really like it. 

Sophie greeted me with her stuffed chicken toy in her mouth, waggling her tail and wiggling her body, and just being her sweet, funny self. Although I do not want any more dogs of my own, ever, ever, ever in this lifetime, I am glad that my kids have dogs that I can visit and pet and talk to in the way that people only talk to dogs and which dogs seem to love. 

Pottery was slightly different today. One of our class has gotten a job as a kindergarten teacher and so today was her last day. Added to that, another member had made empanadas to share with us all and they were so very, very good. I also did more talking with our new member and was glad to learn more about her. It's hard for anyone to walk into a class where everyone already knows everyone else. It can be lonely. It can be hard. There are only seven of us in the class and that's including the woman whose last day was today and over time, we have found our lives, our stories, becoming braided together, as so often happens. And our teacher is part of that too. We all know when one of us has a trip coming up or a difficult situation going on or a new interest and I think we all have an idea about how we all think about certain things. We laugh easily, we are self-deprecatory, we praise each others' work, we ask for suggestions, we give suggestions, we share tools and ideas, and in short, do what groups of women do. 
And that is really the best thing about pottery class for me. 

It took me a very long time to get going on my bowl this morning, but eventually, I did. I gave it all of my attention for two hours and came away feeling less positive about it than ever. It needs to dry another week before it can be fired and I have no real belief that it's going to hang together in the kiln. We shall have to see. I didn't even take a picture of it. 

Lily came to lunch with Jessie and me after class and that was a beautiful thing too. All of my kids have great senses of humor and I think we love to laugh more than anything but Lily? That girl will make you laugh. She is naughty and she is smart and she is not afraid of shocking her mama which makes me feel so very honored. 
And sometimes... I even shock them. They know I'm no saint nor ever have been. 
Here's a picture of what the effects of laughter can look like. 

And that was the important part of my day. The core of it. 
I came straight home after dropping off Jessie and I drove a different route than I usually do, down a skinny country road through pines and oaks and palms and pastures with cows, kneeling in the afternoon sun with eyes closed, the better to bask.

Glen's not home yet from a little jaunt up to the cabin to do...something? 
I have a vague idea and it may involve the boat but I'm not going to pretend I really know when I don't. 

Going to be cold again tonight. Hell, it already is cold tonight. Although I come (at least on the maternal side) from sturdy Yankee blood, it surely has not been passed on down to me. Or, more likely, it has been thinned to nothing more than salty red water by my years here in the semi-tropics. 
We have discussed this before. 
We will probably discuss it again. 

Stay warm and don't get chilblains. They look miserable. 

Love...Ms. Moon