I Am Not Lonely Yet

You may notice that I changed my header picture. The photo of my house that has been up there was just too dark and made it look as if it was haunted which I'm pretty sure it's not. I think I'd know after all these years here.
Linda Sue of Lady Margaret's Curlers made that excellent and beautiful mermaid cherub ornament and sent it to me some years ago. The child reminds me so much of Magnolia June when she was younger and there is never a time when I look at it that I am not pleased and simply delighted all over again. It's been hanging in that window in the laundry room the whole time I've had it which is perfect for me because I walk by it many, many times a day. 

This little Mexican paper mache dancer or circus performer or perhaps something entirely different has now come to roost among the plants I have on that table in front of the window. This is the folding table Glen built me several years ago and it's one of my favorite spots in the house. The beautiful bark cloth the plants and lady are resting on was also sent to me by Linda Sue. 
That sweet lady artist is represented all over this house. 

Today? Well. Let's see. It was cold when I woke up. Maurice and I did not want to get out of bed. Of course what I call cold is barely even mild in the more northern climes. But it was in the low fifties and that, to us, is pretty darn chilly. So I just kept burrowing under my covers until finally Maurice came up to my head to see if I was still breathing and when she found I was, she jumped off the bed and went to attend to whatever it is she attends to when she gets up and in a few minutes, I got up too. It was a two cashmere sweater day and one of those sweaters came to me from...Linda Sue. 
I set the thermostat to 68 degrees to warm the place up a little and then forgot about it until later when I realized I had not heard the heat come on and when I went to check it I saw that it had not come on and it was 66 degrees in the hallway where the thermostat lives and so I did what I do which is to stare at the thermostat for awhile, hoping that my mere presence and force of mind will fix whatever's wrong with it and I fiddled with the temperature again and neither of those things worked. 
They never do but a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do. 
I knew I wasn't going to freeze and so dismissed the whole thing until later when I realized I'd been cold all morning. I plugged in a space heater and guess what? 
It isn't working. 
Of course.
Still, not to worry, right? 
I went out to the garden just to look around and be depressed about my greens and pick some more tabasco peppers because those and basil and one more Seminole squash are the only things I've got going. Well, except for arugula. That's still doing pretty well. 
And then I had a moment. 
Maurice came out to the garden too and she had a sip from the shallow dish I have out there to catch water for the bees and I saw the other orange cat by the compost pile, probably looking for anything new which I might have put out there which he would like to eat and he saw me looking at him and he froze and Maurice froze. I don't know whether she saw him or not. And I seemed to be caught in whatever space/time event they were in and we all just stood there in the sun for at least three or four minutes, simply being still and being surrounded by the intense color that fall somehow brings with it, as if a new filter had been added to everything. It was so quiet. I listened for birdsong and did not hear any. I held my basket with the few peppers in it I'd picked and was still.
It was odd and yet, it seemed to be exactly what we all needed to do. I swear I could feel the three points of energy the three of us were emitting coming together and I am not a casual user of language like that. 
And then I took my eyes off of the other orange cat and when I looked back a second later, he had disappeared and I realized Maurice had too. And so the spell was broken but for those moments, it had felt very natural and a little powerful too. Not that we had the power but that together, there was some sort of force. 
It wasn't what I would call a spiritual experience and I didn't gain any enlightenment from it but it was something. 

And interesting. And peaceful in a way but also, not exactly peaceful. 

Again. This is not really me but I know what I feel and that's what I felt. 

Perhaps this is what happens when you go for three straight days without seeing anyone or speaking to anyone, being alone and not unhappy about it. 

Later on this afternoon I did something I've been wanting to do for at least a week, which was to get out my clay and the few very, very simple tools I use to try and recreate my crow on magnolia leaves. 

I picked three smallish leaves and used those as templates. I have everything I need here for this stage of building something from clay. Parchment paper, a rolling pin, an old small kitchen knife, plastic wrap, small bowls for water and to make slip in. Slip being the sort of glue made from clay and water you use to attach pieces together, theoretically. And this is what I did.

I believe I was more mindful working here at home on the back porch. 
No time constraints, no worries about other people seeing and possibly judging what I'm doing although I will say I don't feel judged in pottery class. Still, if no one else is around, there is no chance whatsoever that any sort of criticism, silent though it may be, is possible. 
I fooled around with making my bird and I have not found my way with that at all. I was texting a friend about that and she said that the whole thing about crows is their personality. I agreed with her but added that the figure should at least resemble a bird. 
This is all entirely new to me. I have never, ever thought of myself as anyone who could make a ceramic bird or hibiscus or fish, for that matter. But I find so much pleasure in trying. 

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

Mr. Moon is leaving Canada probably as we speak and will start the 2,400 mile drive home tomorrow. 
Hoo-boy. 

I wasn't going to bother him with the whole heater situation but when I looked at the forecast for this coming week, I decided that it would be okay to mention it in hopes that he would either have some suggestions about how to rectify the situation or at least get in touch with whoever it is that does our heat and air care to see if he could schedule a visit from them. 

I'm sorry for being a wimp but 47 degrees? 
That's cold. Real cold. For me. 
When Jessie and I were shopping at TJ Maxx last week we came across a pair of leggings lined with some sort of fleecy, furry substance that was so soft it could not possibly have come from nature. I swooned a little and Jessie said, "Buy them!"
"Oh, I don't need them," I said. 
Haha. 
I wish I'd listened to my child. 

Anyway, I'll be fine and the heater will be fixed at some point and Mr. Moon will be home soon enough. And now I'm going to go heat up my supper. Last night's crispy tofu along with the eggplant casserole made me incredibly happy. This tofu recipe is brilliant and if any of y'all are really interested, I'll pass it on. 
So tonight I'm having some of that along with the eggplant casserole warmed up and I've also cooked a small pot of pinto beans because I wanted them. 
I may or may not bake some blueberry corn muffins. Having the oven on might warm up this end of the house a little bit, at least. 

I just finished listening to this today.

Again, it was not great literature but I surely did enjoy it. Where it could have been precious and smarmy and cliched it wasn't. There was just enough perfectly placed profanity as well as some tragedies and realities of life and lessons hard learned to keep it from slipping into the space of wondering why in the world you're wasting your time reading this. 
Also there's an orange cat who is a death doula. 
I think I'll remember this one for awhile and that's saying something. 

So. There's that. 

I have gotten The Duck out of its summer storage, which is to say a plastic garbage bag, and put it on the bed. All will be well. And Maurice will be pleased. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Critters

Sometimes, as Lily once so famously said as a bat flew around her in the bathroom, "Too much nature!" I think there may have been a roach in underwear involved there too. 
But it's been a slightly nature-ish day. Well, okay. The gecko in the sink was from last night. Now I like to think of myself as an old, strong, country cracker granny who can handle most things on her own but that is a big fat lie. There are a lot of things I can't handle, most them having to do with any sort of mechanical breakdown. Those things are Mr. Moon's job. Sorry but that's just the way it is around here. I cook, he fixes stuff. 
He also handles the wildlife which may mean taking care of a dead mouse, killing a rat in the dining room, removing a snake from a bathroom, or catching a darling little frog in the house and gently placing it outside. I'm not bad, really, at dealing with the dead things as long as they're not too big. I don't like it but I gird my loins, shut my eyes, and do what it takes.  
Dealing with the live creatures though is above my pay grade. So last night, when I discovered a gecko trapped in my kitchen sink, I was not happy. First off, I've never seen a gecko in the house, secondly, he or she seemed quite freaked out and last but not least- excuse me? How can a lizard which can literally walk on ceilings not get out of a damn sink? 
Just use your little suction cup toes there, Sister, and walk yourself out. 
But no. Not happening. So I put a cutting board at a slant in the sink so that the unhappy reptile could simply climb the slight incline of it and scuttle off to wherever it came from. 
Gecko was obviously not that smart. I changed cutting boards, thinking perhaps another size would work. 
Nope. 
So I finally just took a dough scraper and gently urged it out of the sink and before I'd even blinked, it had disappeared. So that was relatively painless. 
And then this morning, I woke up and came out to the porch to find that there had obviously been a drunken peanut party sometime in the night. I keep the crows' peanuts in a plastic bag and either I had forgotten to slide the little slider or else whatever had been having the revelry had figured out how to unslide it. This does not sound likely but raccoons have incredibly clever little hands. And I did suspect raccoons because they'd been up on the table where I keep the nuts although, possums can climb too. So who knows? 
There were peanuts and peanut shells scattered everywhere but they were easy to clean up and I wasn't too disturbed. Then I found the hole in the giant bag of sunflower seeds that Mr. Moon buys to feed the songbirds with, of course, sunflower seeds spilling out. 
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. I can't exactly animal-proof the back porch because there's a largish screen rip under the dog/cat door and I don't know what I could use to block it all off. 
Why, we may ask, did Maurice not chase off these nut and seed loving critters? Probably because she was asleep with me. 
And oh yeah- that bag of sunflower seeds weighs fifty pounds so I can't exactly move it. 

Too much nature.

Nah. Not really. It's just sometimes really annoying nature. I am sure the animals feel the same way about us, the clumsy humans who seem to fuck everything up but then again- there would be no sunflower seeds or peanuts without us. 
Glen'll deal with it when he gets home. Until then, I'll just be sweeping up stray sunflower seeds every morning. 

All right. I have some words to live by. As you know, I frequently say that I don't know shit but I do know some shit and one of the things I know for sure is that if you just think you smell something not right in whatever area it is you keep your potatoes and onions and so forth, there really is something that's not right and by the time you smell it, it really ain't right. 
I seem to have to learn this lesson over and over and over again. 
Today was this year's continuing education on that issue. 
First off, I did something I've been putting off for at least, well, I don't even want to admit how long it's probably been but I finally got around to mopping the kitchen, bathroom, and pantry. I have no idea why I do this so rarely. The whole process doesn't take forty-five minutes and that includes moving everything out that can be moved, sweeping twice, mopping twice, and moving everything back in. 
And it's so rewarding! 

 I always do this in the late afternoon so I can see how nice the clean floor looks with the late afternoon sun streaming in through the kitchen door. 

And let us not forget the wonderful smell of Fabuloso and vinegar that lingers after. 

Except today when there was another odor which seemed to be coming from the pantry and suddenly I knew exactly what was going on and yes, there were potatoes on my shelf in their basket that...well, look. Nature was involved. Nature's very own clean-up crew! So I immediately controlled my gag reflex, picked up the bag the offending, rotting, purifying, maggot-crawling potatoes were in and carried it directly to the compost and dumped the contents. Then I rinsed out the bag in the spigot because there was no way I was putting that bag in the trash in the state it was in. 
That is not all true. I didn't really have to control my gag reflex. I have a pretty strong stomach. 
But then I had to wash the potato basket and hang it outside and scrub the shelf it had been sitting on and somehow, still, the pantry retains a very slight odor of the horror which had occurred. 
I should be so embarrassed to tell you all this but somehow, I'm not. This is just life. Or at least my life. 
I tell you what- potatoes can turn on you in a heartbeat. Especially ones you buy at Aldi's. I am never buying any produce there whatsoever again. 

I have a lot more stories of my very exciting day but I think I'll go make my eggplant casserole and Crispy Masala Tofu that I am having for supper. These two things don't really sound like they go together, do they? 
Oh well. They are what I want. 

Here are two pictures I like. 

Cabbage palm transplanted from our property in Apalachicola to the old barn on our property. 

An extremely ancient oak on the back of our property which is so very sadly in the last decades of its life. I hope it's still decades. I could be fooling myself.
When we moved here twenty-two years ago, this tree was almost as big as the one next door. Majestically huge. Part of it split away in a storm, though, and this is what it looks like now. 

The moon is a beautiful waxing silver crescent hanging in a black velvet sky right outside my porch. A very tiny gecko is on the screen, patiently waiting for...what? A mosquito? A gnat? 

It's so young it's still almost transparent. 
Stay out of my sink, little guy! 
Thank you very much. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Weight. And Weighing

In the years before I started taking Zepbound and before I lost weight, I never, ever stepped on a scale unless it was in a doctor's office and I hated that experience with all of my being. The reason I did not weigh myself is no mystery. I knew I was gaining weight and I simply did not want to know how much. When I had to weigh at a doctor's office, there was no denying how many pounds I had, in fact, gained in the last several years. 
I've always had a fucked-up relationship with the scales. When I was in high school, I flirted with disordered eating as so many girls do. Luckily, I was simply not cut out to starve myself to the point where I did actual damage to my body. But for awhile I became obsessed with keeping track of every calorie I consumed and weighing myself. I honestly cannot remember how long this lasted but I know my anxiety about my weight started probably in the second grade. Kids will be happy to point out the fatty in the class. Well meaning adults were happy to step up and express their worry about my weight. This included my P.E. teacher in the fourth grade who, under the excuse of talking about what a healthy diet was, picked me out of the class in front of the class and asked me what I'd had for dinner the night before in order to show the other kids what an obviously unhealthy diet was. Since a lot of the kids in my class were skinny due to everything from intestinal worms to simply not having enough to eat, this was not only cruel, but ridiculous. 
In college I became a vegetarian, mostly in hopes that I could control my weight like that. I wasn't too stressed about it all, as far as I can remember but I do recall a psychiatrist I was seeing for clinical depression asking me if perhaps my weight was making me unhappy. 
Actually, it wasn't. And actually, I believe I was probably gorgeous. And actually, at that point in my mental un-wellness, that question was not only absurd but horribly unhelpful. 

And so on and so forth. I struggled with my weight and my feelings of inadequacy due to thinking I was overweight for years after that. And then, after my first two children were born, I determined that what I needed to do was to get skinny. Fucking skinny. 
And I did. I cut down my caloric intake to a dangerous level and I began running. 
And this is the method I used for years to lose weight. 

After I had Lily, I found Weight Watchers and I learned how to eat in a relatively healthful manner and still lose weight and then maintain it. I loved Weight Watchers. It was great. It wasn't easy. I never quit craving the foods I did not allow myself to eat or that I could only eat a little of. But I became far more educated about diet. It was a constant struggle though, keeping track, once again, of everything I ate. And I was pretty darn compliant. 
Eventually, I decided to work for Weight Watchers and I did. I can't remember at exactly what period of my life that was. Possibly after my fourth child. I was a good Weight Watchers leader. I really was. I was good at speaking to a roomful of people, I was funny, I was empathetic as hell, I was properly educated on the program, and I believed in it. There were times, though, when I felt like some evangelical minister preaching the Gospel of Weight Watchers. 
And yet, I still believe the program has helped many, many people and even now, I don't think it has the earmarks of a cult. 
Besides that, their cookbooks have some of my favorite recipe and I'm not kidding. 

Anyway at that time, I weighed once a week and that was at work. All the employees had to chart their weight because we were all active members of Weight Watchers and weighing once a week was far better than stepping on a scale daily or, okay, more often than that. 
And to tell you the truth- I got a hell of a lot of positive reinforcement for being fit and thin. Not skinny. But slender, shall we say? And the reinforcement came not only from my fellow employees and class members, but from the people I knew and saw regularly. 
And I felt pretty darn good-lookin'. 

After I'm not sure how many years, though, I decided I'd quit working for Weight Watchers. The pay was shit, we'd just moved here to Lloyd where I was deeply and purely in love with my new house, and I had an agent for a book I'd written and wanted more time to spend on that. 
Fine. Good. 
But over the years, I quit keeping track of all my "points". The vast relief of not having to measure every fucking bite of peanut butter I ate was unbelievable. I still kept up a lot of my good habits and made meals that were healthy and I still walked regularly. 
And yet, with just that tiny lapse of discipline, I began to gain weight again. 
Which leads us to where I was when I started taking Zepbound which I have been doing for about seventeen months now. I was very overweight. Unhealthfully overweight. I had aches and pains that I knew were associated with what I was carrying around. As I so often mention, it was difficult for me to get up off the floor or ground. I felt...well, I felt old and unattractive, to say the least. I groaned every time I got up from the couch or a chair. I did not look into mirrors unless I had no choice about that matter. 
I was not only uncomfortable in my body, I was miserable in it. I did not want to be fat phobic. I did not want to judge my own body in ways that I would never judge another person's. 
And yet I did. 

Finally, at an appointment with Dr. Zorn who had NEVER ONCE commented on my weight, I asked him about the possibility of getting on a glp-1. And he helped me do that. 
From the first day I injected myself with it, my relationship with food changed utterly to such a degree that it was miraculous. 
And it was nothing like taking drugs that promised to "suppress the appetite". And who among us women who have struggled with their weight have not tried a few of those, both OTC and well, a bit more sketchy?
The Zepbound simply made it so that eating was not an overwhelming force in my life but something that was pleasant enough but not a major force in my life, always on my mind. 
And I mean always.
It's gotten a little less powerful after all these months but it's still a miracle and I still can eat just enough and that's all I need. 
Will I be on it for the rest of my life? 
As things stand right now, I believe I will. And that's fine with me. 

But ALL of this is to say that I ordered a new scale today. Since I began taking this drug, which I give myself every Friday, I have weighed once a week. 
Once a week. I am not tempted to weigh more than that and the only reason I do weigh myself is to keep an eye on things. I can tell you though, that I still have some of the same feelings about stepping on a scale as I always have. It's just far more manageable and far less toxic. 

That picture you see at the top? That is the scale Mr. Moon and I have been using to weigh on for the last twenty-something years. Or at least, he has. I've only being using it for the last seventeen months. I got that scale for cheap when Weight Watchers decided to get rid of all of those scales and replace them with scales probably made in the twentieth century. And it's been a good scale. It's hefty. It feels like something you can trust, like it's a professional scale. It's not a lightweight itself. It makes squeaking noises and clunking noises. It has been a trusty and trusted item that lives in my laundry room. 
However. In the last few weeks it has become less and less able to be balanced properly which one does with a screwdriver and that black rectangle looking thing on the left side. I believe it may have finally sprung a spring or...whatever these scales do to indicate an end-of-life situation. 
So today I sat down and did a little research on reliable scales which do not have to be paired with an app, do not attempt to analyze your bone density, do not calculate your body mass index. 
A scale that simply tells you what you weigh when you step on it. 
And I fucking ordered one. 
And I will use it once a week. 
I have no idea what we'll do with the old clunker. Perhaps Mr. Moon will want to keep it. Fine with me. But I'm done with it. 
I think. 

It's been a good Friday. Not a GOOD Friday, you understand, but a good one. I hung laundry on the line and have made up the bed with those nice, clean sheets. 

I turned on the garden sprinklers to give all of those plants a little drink of water. I took pictures of marigolds shining in the late afternoon sun. 

I did more weeding in the area by the gate. 

I still have this (the stuff you see in the back of that photo) to attack. 

I'm sort of excited. 

Maurice has been my girl. She slept with me last night and she followed me around today, making sure I knew that she was only in those places by accident. 

Oh wait. 

This is not Maurice but her sort-of doppelgänger who lives in the yard and under cars and I don't even know where. 
He's sort of really handsome, isn't he? 

And Steve! 
Here are the sea grapes. 

This is the largest one, the one I started from the seed of a sea grape seed I picked up off the ground in the parking area of a little museum situated between Sebastian Inlet and Wabasso Beach. 

These are the ones I've grown from tiny seedlings I got in Roseland. 

I doubt anyone but you, Steve, can appreciate the thrill I feel, having grown these myself in North Florida.

I know I wrote too much tonight. I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not. I am not asking anyone to read it all. 
I have a feeling though, that I am not the only woman to have experienced the same things, thoughts, feelings, and actions as I have in their lives as pertains to body weight and body image. 
And there may be some men, too, who can relate. Body dysmorphia and disordered eating is not entirely a female thing. At all. And I think it's becoming more and more of an issue. Social media makes it all so much worse. 

Well. Happy Friday. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Correction Time! Credit Where Credit Is Due

 

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. 

Do NOT believe everything you read online. 
You'd think I would know that by now. 
Despite what I posted last night, the Aunt Sue of Meme Fame who got escorted out of a Trump rally in Syracuse a few days ago is NOT the Aunt Sue who is the founder and CEO of Biatch Tequila brand. That is Sue Hrib who, from what I have read (true?) is indeed a bad bitch in and of herself.

The Aunt Sue who was in the video making its way across the internet in huge numbers is a woman named Sue Secaur, a seventy-three year old retired school employee and animal rescue volunteer. Here's an excellent article about her from Syracuse.com.
Which is supposedly a reliable source. 

This woman deserves to be identified correctly, respected, admired, adored, and given a Nobel Peace Prize. 

That's all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Liz Is Back In Town!

(This post has been edited and corrected as to facts about Aunt Sue Hero HERE.)

Well, dang. Liz Sparks, who is back from her world travels, asked me if I'd like to meet up and go up to Metcalfe in Georgia to eat lunch at Mary's. 
Well of course I would. It was way past time for us to get together and catch up on each other's lives although her life in the past three months has contained more adventures and roads and mountains and rivers and hiking trails and cool people and miles than my entire life probably has so her stories are far better than mine which really does not matter in the least. When she got here, I noticed the big black brace she was wearing on one of her legs and that she was definitely favoring the leg. I remembered from her blog that she'd badly twisted her ankle on a hike and I assumed that was what was going on but she said that no, she'd healed up from that but this injury was in the same ankle and all she'd done was to roll her foot off her flipflop and BOOM! Start back at the beginning. She even managed to tear off a tiny bit of bone in this accident. 
They didn't cast her but she has to wear the leg brace all the time that she's on her feet. ALL the time. As in, if she gets up to pee in the night she has to put it on to get to the bathroom which is about eight feet away. 
She's handling it well but Liz is not a lady who is good at sitting, and too much walking around is simply too much. She knows she has to let it heal but she is not loving that. At all. She is not a complainer though.

So anyway, we drove up to Metcalfe, looking forward to some of Mary's soul food. If you want to read about another trip she and I took up there you can go HERE that I wrote six years ago. I have no idea how many trips we've made to Mary's kitchen and no idea how many times I've written about it but I'm sure the answer to both is many. 
Unfortunately, when we pulled into the parking lot which is a bit of space under some trees, we realized there was no one else there and there was a sign on the door. I got out of the car and read it and yes, they were closed today. No reason given. Just that they were. 
Sigh. 
So we got back on the road to drive to Monticello which is a very cool drive through miles of woods and a very few houses and/or driveways. At one point, the road turns from asphalt to dirt, nice red Georgia clay dirt, bordered on both sides by trees and I was happy just to drive slowly and take it all in while we talked. It's sort of crazy to me that we can drive from Lloyd to Metcalfe to Monticello on a fairly direct route. As I have often mentioned, I have no sense of direction whatsoever but Liz does and thank goodness or I'd probably still be out there on some cow path, weeping and trying to get Google Maps to work which they wouldn't because we were on the back end of nowhere. 
We saw one other car on that whole part of the drive. 
We ate lunch at the Mexican restaurant and as always, it was quite decent. We did not visit any of the refillerys or cute and clever shops but we did go to Wag the Dog because that's a must. Liz found a nice skirt and I didn't find anything I wanted but my thrifting luck has been so good lately that I can't complain. 
And besides that, there was something on the counter up by the cash register that made the whole effort worthwhile. 

What is this, you may ask? 
Well, my loves, this is a Joy for All Companion Pet Cat in the Silver with White Mitts color style, according to Google Lens. 
It is an interactive robotic and therapeutic companion pet. The lady behind the counter showed me how it worked. You simply touch and pet and stroke the cat and it will do things like licking its paw or purring or meowing or rolling on its back or doing other things that cats do. 
I will be honest. It was a little freaky. But you know what? It was also extremely cool. These were created for people with Alzheimers or people who need a companion and are not able to keep a pet. I have no idea about the effectiveness of the robotic pets but I have a feeling they could be a comfort. How many of the older ladies in nursing homes hold a baby doll in their arms for hours every day? 
As I always say, I will be one of those women. I mean, I already have the dolls...

And it was a very soft cat and had no claws. I checked. 

And so that's what I did today. I got out of the house and into the world with Liz Sparks and it was good. Liz and I definitely have that sort of relationship where there is no lag time when it comes to getting back together. 
As we all know, those relationships are real and they are rare and as I grow older and evermore apt to, well, isolate myself, they are very important. With Liz I feel completely comfortable. I don't think there is anything either one of us could say that would shock the other. We've been through it all together. 
Well. Not really. Not yet. But I don't want to dwell on that. 

Mr. Moon just sent me this picture.

He has a very good eye.

One more thing I want to discuss. This.

This is Aunt Sue, aka Sue Hrib who showed up at a Trump rally in Syracuse and showed the world what a woman with absolutely no fucks left to give can and will do. 
She immediately became a media hero. I've looked her up and she is a major business woman in Atlanta who is the owner and founder of BIATCH Tequila which was launched under her company, Boss Babes Brands, Inc. 
Completely woman owned, woman run. The tequila itself is made in El Arenal, Jalisco, Mexico by a woman-run, family owned distillery and the master distiller is a woman along with her daughters. 

I cannot possibly express how I feel about this woman and the action she took. Let's put her face on Mt. Rushmore. 
She is an inspiration and she is a hero. 
Finally, someone raised her middle fingers and shouted FUCK YOU! to all of the attendees at a Trump rally. 
And of course it was a woman. Women keep more anger and frustration and rage inside of us than even we ourselves often recognize. The power of even one woman who unleashes all of that is earth-shattering. 
And history-making. 

That's all I have to say.

Love...Ms. Moon
 

P.S. 
Steve Reed- I'll post sea grape pictures tomorrow. I know you're just dying to see them. And honestly, I am proud to show them. 

Rambling

Since I swept the porch yesterday I decided I should take a picture of it. I haven't been the best plant mama in the past few years, mostly just trying to keep all the plants alive. Some of them are flourishing, despite my benevolent neglect, but not all. As I noted yesterday, the correct light has so much to do with the growth and wellbeing of plants. 

The porch faces north and runs east and west so that end is the west end and it gets the most light. I try to cram as many light-loving plants there as possible. Of course, some of my plants aren't especially thrilled to be in sunny spots for long periods of time. And some just do not seem to care. They all get watered once a week, no exceptions for actual water requirements. And perhaps once a year they get a pretty good shake or two of fertilizer. 
The hard part is bringing them in for winter which you know if you've been reading here for a year, at least. I've reached the point where I just want to cover them up as best I can and that seems to work pretty well. The smaller, more tender plants which Glen and I can easily handle overwinter inside though. Glen can definitely still move even the biggest plants with his dolly but I just hate that whole process. 
And I've discovered over the years, that even a plant that looks to be as dead as your great aunt Agnes lying in her coffin with her white-gloved hands crossed over her bosom, may indeed come back if I'm just patient enough to give it the chance. I cut off all the dead parts, keep watering it, and hope for the best. 

I met Ms. Jessie today at the TJ Maxx. She wanted to look at picture frames in which to put a family photo in for her new office. 
She has an office! Okay, she has to share it with four other lactation consultants but there are only two on shift at a time. This is pretty darn huge. 
A space of her own. 
I have to tell you that I'm really proud of her for taking this leap into a whole new realm of nursing. That's one of the very cool things about nursing, I think. You can spend years on the cardiac floor and then decide, eh, I think I'll check out the ER for awhile. Or pediatrics, neurology, oncology, surgical, L&D, or psychiatric/mental health nursing. Of course you have to receive training for each different position you move into but every move is an opportunity to learn new things, to do new things and in doing so, you may find a niche where you truly feel you fit. My friend Terry from nursing school went into hospice nursing, which is what our blog community's beloved John Gray does. I can't imagine having a better nurse to help me through to the end of my life than either of those people. 
And there's always the possibility of going back to school and becoming a Certified Nurse Practitioner and as we all know, these people are now firmly a part of the health care system. 

I have no idea why I wrote all of that. My entire nursing career mostly consisted of assisting midwives at a birth center. I'm not saying this isn't an important role to take on but I am saying that beyond that- well, let's just say I went to nursing school to begin with to either become a certified nurse midwife or to simply be able to support myself and my two children. I hate hospitals, almost all things medical send my blood pressure into the mesosphere, and one more reason I view Mr. Moon as my knight in shining armor is that he immediately took over the whole support thing and also was my partner in creating Lily Rose Moon and then Jessie Gibson Moon, and that was that. 
I did work at the Birth Center for many of those years. 

But all-in-all, I'm glad I went to nursing school. I learned a hell of a lot, some of it about nursing, some of it about other things. I was able to use the knowledge and skills I had acquired when I took care of various people with problems ranging from cancer to a gunshot wound to domestic violence, to my own daughter who was in a terrible accident involving a vehicle as she was walking. 
I don't want to talk about that. 
I can't believe I did all of that. I really can't. 
You can bet it wouldn't happen now. 

So yes. Jessie and I met at T.J. Maxx where she did not find a picture frame but we perused the many aisles of clothes and shoes and kitchen wares and bed linens and make-up and fancy soaps and hair accessories and oh hell. I don't know. 
We looked at the jewelry and I looked at the purses. 
Let me just say that this is a HORRIBLE year for purses. There was not one purse among the hundred or so they had that I had even the slightest interest in. I do not want a purse that has Mickey Mouse on it. I do not want a purse that has anyone's name on it, I do not want a purse made of whatever that shit is that makes stuffed animals and throw blankets incredibly and unnaturally soft. Fluffy purses that scream, "I need to bring my emotional support and comfort toy with me wherever I go!" 
So that was very disappointing. 

I did end up buying a citrus juice squeezer, a clever-looking device called a "pocket vac" which both sucks and blows (I'm sorry, I had to and besides, it does) and a thirteen dollar bottle filled with the promise of the miraculous effect its Vitamin C 13, Super Vitamin E, along with Hyaluronic Acid will have on my old, age-spotted, wrinkled face.
It came with an eyedropper. You know it's bona fide. 
Look. Girls just wanna have fun. 

Here's a card I got today from Lorie, the very nicest person in the world.

You can trust me on this- that is true. 

Love...Ms. Moon



 

It's One Of Those Mostly Plant Days

Here's how you can tell fall is coming along here in North Florida- the pecan trees have lost most of their leaves and the sky is so very blue. 

Those trees are oaks and they hold on to their leaves until spring when the new leaves push off the old ones. I love this. These trees can make acorns, sustain the old leaves, and create new ones, all at the same time. They've dropped a good number of the acorns but we'll be getting more until December, probably. It seems to be a good mast this year but as I recall, we got an usually large crop of acorns last year too. I hope this is a good thing. I just looked this topic up and learned something new. A mast year occurs to create "predator satiation," which is basically when there is a synchronized event among the trees to produce a huge number of acorns in order to satisfy the animals which eat the nuts and leave enough for new trees to emerge from the acorns the predators can't manage to eat. 
Like- the number of acorns one mature tree drops can go from around 2,200 to 10,000! 
I had no idea. I've been living around, under, and among these trees for at least sixty-five years and really never wondered why some years were just so good for acorn production. 

I know that many wild birds and different mammals are happy when this happens. I just read that acorns make up to 75% of white-tailed deer's diet in late fall and early winter. 

I swept a good many of those acorns off the front porch steps this afternoon. One of my goals for the day was to get the front porch and swing porches swept and then to water the plants. 
This I did. 

Some happy, happy begonias. I have some of the same variety in a pot just a few feet away but further from the edge of the porch, thereby getting less light and they do not have that beautiful red color to their undersides. 
The older I get, the more I believe that the proper light has more to do with plant health than anything else. 

I spent a lot of time outside today, just slowly doing a little of this, a little of that. I cleared more of the pumpkin vines from the garden and did a little weeding in there. I have to say that I am vastly disappointed at how all of the greens I planted a few weeks ago are doing. 
Which is to say, they are not doing well. 
I have no idea what's going on. I know we've had some very dry conditions but I've carefully considered that and watered the garden when it got dry. And then of course we had inches and inches of rain before and during Isaias's journey to the west of us. Perhaps it's simply time for us to give the garden a break, till in a massive amount of mushroom compost, mulch it good and let it sit until spring. I'll discuss this with the man when he returns. 

I also did a little invasive-plant weed pulling in the front yard in the area inside and to the right of the gate which is my ongoing, never ending, always interesting project. That's where I pull crocosmia, briars, pyracantha, and another plant that I can't remember the name of but which grows quite large and all of the sprouts are connected by roots so tough I often just end up cutting them which does no good whatsoever. Today I discovered that a new thing has sprung up there. Deer tongue grass. Supposedly it's a native, but mostly in Canada, and although it is not invasive in that area, guess what? 
Yeah. 
Well, we all need a hobby. 

But I like being on my knees in that area. I find bricks in the dirt and once I found what I think may have been part of an arrowhead or spearhead. I still have no real idea what I'd plant there if I ever did get it cleared out but at this point, it's a moot point. 

Inside the house I did two loads of clothes which will probably be the last laundry I need to do for at least several days. I also gave our bedroom a good sweeping which produced an oddly satisfying amount of dust and cat hair. At least enough to form a kitten out of. 

Mostly, I've just enjoyed being alone and being quiet. The only person I've spoken to is Maurice and please don't try to tell me that doesn't count. She and I have quite extensive conversations, mostly about why she doesn't need any more treats. She insists she does. I tell her she doesn't. 
And so forth. We are both quite certain of our positions in this discussion and we are both quite verbal. 

Mr. Moon has made it to Minot, North Dakota where the entire group has met up, both the flyers and the Gun Dog Express drivers. They will be traveling to Saskatchewan tomorrow, good Lord willing and they aren't turned back at the border. 

I'm going to heat up some of the soup I made last week, thinking I'd be taking it to St. George. I thawed it out two nights ago and added the coconut milk to it and we enjoyed it immensely. Well, Mr. Moon mostly enjoyed the naan I made with it immensely but he managed to eat quite a large bowl of the soup. 
I have to tell you that using the Seminole pumpkins made the soup so much sweeter and oranger and just all-around more wonderful than either butternut or acorn squash ever did. When I pick one of those squash, the liquid that comes out of the stem area is sweet enough to put on pancakes. It's so sticky I have to wash the pumpkin off and let it dry before I put it with its mates. 

I have one more close to ripening and then that will be that for this year. 
Do I plan to grow them again next year? 
Oh yes. Yes I do. 

I took my valiant effort of a bird on magnolia leaves out back to the little bit of woods beside the railroad track. I did not bury them. I laid the leaves, broken and breaking as they were, on the ground but I placed my first effort at a bird on a stalk of cut bamboo. 
I like it. Not the bird, specifically, but where it has come to perch. 

And so it goes. 

Love...Ms. Moon

 

And Somehow, A Miracle Occurs

Last night Levon butt-dialed his grandfather and somehow, that small accident led to every one of the immediate family getting together for lunch less than twelve hours later. Do you have any idea what a miracle this is? Despite the fact that it seems as if we all get together for every birthday and all the holidays, there's always someone who can't make it for one reason or another. 
We plan, we scheme, we schedule and reschedule but somehow, someone is always missing. Visits to North Carolina, illness, having to work, etc., etc. 
But it all came together today and there we are, the whole group of us at Pepper's Mexican restaurant where they always manage to take such good care of us, have a nice patio where we're usually the only ones, and also...they allow dogs to hang out. 

Remember Xena, Princess Warrior, aka Large Marge? She's a year old now and topping the scales at a hundred pounds and she has calmed down a lot in the last few months. She was a very, very good girl today. 

The kids were out of school due to a teacher planning day which I believe is probably how the county dealt with the delicate problem of the celebration of Columbus Day versus the celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day. 
You know where our family falls on this controversy. 
Lily was working but was able to take her break just at the right time and even Jason made it, as did Vergil, along with Michael and May who are almost always working when these things happen. 
I was quite late getting to the restaurant and when I walked in and saw all those people sitting there I thought as I always do, "And this is what unprotected sex can lead to."
A whole lotta joy. That's what it can lead to. 
We were almost giddy today, feeling as if we'd gotten away with something somehow. 
But obviously, it was just meant to be. 

More pictures. 

Dang it! I did not get a picture of me with Owen. Trust me. We hugged several times. 
Those are some good-looking kids. I had to tell Gibson how handsome he is. Isn't he though? He is looking more and more like his dad's Italian side of the family. WITH the Moon gene for height. And Maggie looks a great deal like her other grandmother but also with the height. 

So that was a whole lot of fun and the food was fine although of course, that's hardly relevant. 
After lunch some of the group had to scoot but Hank and Rachel and Jessie and May and Michael and I stood in the parking lot and probably talked for forty-five minutes. August and Levon were in the car waiting with the AC on but after about half an hour, they came out and joined us. They were very sweet about it though. 
I'm so glad we got to do that. So glad we were all able to be together before Mr. Moon left to go up to the frozen North. Well, not frozen yet. He's hoping for some really cold weather. It's so disappointing to him when he travels all the way to Canada and it ends up being warmer there than it is here due to some glitch in the universal weather system. 

Before I leave I must share something which on the surface is absolutely no big deal at all but for here in the rural county in which we live, it's pretty damn awesome. 
We don't get the local Monticello paper but Tom did and Glen goes over to his house to collect his mail regularly and we do enjoy looking over what is considered news in this county. Lots of church news and lots of Christian (heavy on the Baptist variety) columns and lots of news of various crimes which generally involve speeding or drugs although there always seems to be some official who is being fired, tried and found guilty for crimes generally involving misappropriation of funds or, sometimes, something far more horrific.
Recently a huge legal marijuana growing facility was found to be guilty of illegal handling of their run-off water and was ordered to come up with a better plan and fined $80,000. 
There is news of kids' sports teams, beauty queens and there are obituaries as well as pictures and reports from various clubs. 
Monticello is big on clubs. 
But just a little while ago, Glen came out to the porch and said, "I'm so glad we live in such a liberal county!"
Excuse me. What?
He was holding the most recent paper he'd retrieved from Tom's and showed me a picture. Here it is. 

I gave it a quick glance and said, "Yeah?" 
He then pointed out the description printed under the picture. In case you can't read it, here's what it says.

"The Brock family was honored as the 2026 Jefferson County Farm Bureau Farm Family of the Year during the organization's annual banquet, recognizing the family's generations of farming, commitment to conservation and continued involvement in Jefferson County agriculture. Pictured from left are Kirk Brock; his daughter, Emily Brock; son, Jamen Brock; and Jamen's husband, Alex."  

As I said, this should be no big thing but here, it is. There is an entire special section of the paper devoted to this award and the celebration banquet. There are ads from agriculturally oriented companies honoring the Brock family. 
I am somewhat amazed. And so very, very pleased. 
Rock on, Jefferson County! I am proud of you. 

It's been a good day and tomorrow, my sweetheart will be flying out of Tallahassee at 8:30 in the morning. Will I be getting up at five to get him to the airport by 6:30?
No. I will not. 
But I will kiss him goodbye, tell him I love him, to have a wonderful time, and to please come home safely to me. 

Love...Ms. Moon