Announcing A Splendid New Development In Bloglandia

So. You know my friend Liz Sparks whom I talk about all the time? 
Well guess what?
She has started a blog! 
She wants to keep a sort of journal/record of her travels and I am so thrilled. Her photos are going to be great, and her writing is superior. She has titled her blog whereintheworldisLiz2. 
You can find her first post, Migrating North, HERE, whereupon you will be enlightened on the topic of the woman who cooked for the Allman Brothers, that time Liz had a baby in the back seat of a '67 Plymouth Convertible in the parking lot of a birth center, and other interesting things. 
As Liz is the most Say Yes To Life person I know, she has had some pretty wild and amazing adventures. There is no doubt in my mind that her stories are going to be entertaining. Possibly enthralling! And frequently enlightening. The list of careers and paths of education she's had and followed is long and varied. And she always takes in what the people she knows and meets can teach her.
Liz is also one of the kindest, most empathetic people I know. There is nothing she won't do for a friend and very little she won't do for a stranger if the spirit moves her. She's done more for me than I can even begin to relate. 
She is just good.
I love her to pieces as you already know, and I am so excited for her to put down in words where her travels and life take her, to look at the photos she takes along the way, and the healings I know she's going to put upon us because she's good at that too. 
I am even more pleased and honored to spread the Gospel of Liz than I am to spread the gospel of the rattlesnake bean. And that's saying a lot. So go visit her if the spirit takes you, give her a little love, and let's watch as the world takes her in, embraces her, and falls in love. The more encouragement we give her, the more stories she's apt to tell and I want her to tell them all. 
You will not be sorry. 

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

My new puzzle board was delivered first thing this morning and I am inordinately pleased with it. I even dreamed about it last night although in the dream it turned out to be made of shitty cardboard, like some sort of falling-apart box top. 

It is not. It seems like a very decent product and so far I don't have one complaint. 

I love the tilting feature and when it's flat, it can be turned 360 degrees with the lazy susan disc on the bottom, as I mentioned. It's got plenty of room, it's not too heavy to carry from one place to another, and well, I like it fine. 
The company that makes it is Playboda. I chose a plastic board because many of the wooden ones were made of pressboard and were probably heavier and less sturdy than the plastic ones. It was packaged extremely securely and was ready to use when it came out of the box. 
This sounds like a damn advertisement but since I'm not getting a cent for saying all of this, it's not. 
Sigh.
I haven't spent a whole lot of time playing with my puzzle today though. I knew I needed to pick green beans and I did. I probably have another three pounds of them. And I made Mr. Moon a Father's Day dessert. It's the same one I made for Jessie's birthday upon her request and it is decadent and delicious. 

That picture does it no justice and makes it look tacky rather than the divine wonder it truly is. I'm quite proud of myself because I made all four layers in short order and managed to chill the parts that needed chilling before the next layer was added. I should have used pecans as a topping instead of those chocolate chips but they are Ghirardelli chocolate chips so that's classy, right?

Here's a picture of a grasshopper which is a regular, normal grasshopper. With alien eyes.

Just thought I'd share that with you. I saw another Georgia Thumper on the vines again today but it didn't jump on me. 
So yeah, I did take its picture. 

These guys both horrify and fascinate me. 

And I must report that Maurice, who seems to have re-fallen in love with Mr. Moon, is spending a great deal of time on his lap when he's in his chair. She had not been doing this lately but somehow the man stole her heart again. And this morning, he found a complete and unmarred dead mouse in front of the door of the Glen Den and we know that absolutely means it was a gift for the Dad Human. 
Happy Father's Day! 
It sort of amazes me how this cat thinks and makes it so abundantly clear who she's gifting as her attentions shift from one of us to the other. Yeah, she's crazy. But she's also very interesting. There's a sort of intelligence there which is intriguing as hell. 

All right. Enough of this! Go read Liz's blog post! 

Love...Ms. Moon

This Is How It Is

That's the only picture I've taken since last night's post. But it's pretty sweet, isn't it? Before I got up this morning Mr. Moon found another unmarred gift on the back porch right where the little mousie had been the other morning. This wasn't a little mousie but one of those VERY LARGE MICE that aren't as cute as the little ones. We aren't sure at all where Maurice is coming up with these critters. I haven't seen mouse or rat sign anywhere in the house but I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I sort of think she's catching them outside in her midnight rambles though. As long as she doesn't bring them into the house, especially not in the deepest darkest hours of the night, we are fine with these gifts. Mr. Moon said he praised her profusely and they had a long talk about it when she came and sat with him in his chair this morning. 

More rain and more rain and more rain. Started here around 10:30 and I don't think it's stopped since. I do not mind this in the least because it brings the temperature down, it is of great benefit to the flora and the fauna, and it gives me a valid excuse not to go outside to do yard or garden work and sweat like a beast. Of course you know I actually love doing outside work, even if it does involve beast-like sweating but it's nice to get a little break. I did a short tour of the garden this morning and the weeds are springing up like, well...weeds. 
The zipper peas and the white acre peas are forming their pods and peas as we speak and soon I'll be picking those. Glen wanted to plant even more than we did but I put my foot down. There's only so many of those things we need. Preparing and preserving them is time consuming. Green beans you can just snap but peas have to be shelled and that takes awhile, no matter how well-practiced you are in the art. And I freeze these peas because they just freeze so beautifully. I blanch them for a minute or so in boiling water, drain them, cool them in an ice water bath in order to stop the cooking process, and then freeze them. When it's time to eat them, weeks, months, even a year later, you can just pop those babies in boiling water with whatever you want to cook them with and they taste as fresh as the day they came out of the shell. 
Glory hallelujah! 
You can leave these peas on the vine until they dry at which point they're just like any other dried bean you'd cook. Black-eyed pea, pinto, black, garbanzo, you name it. But the ones picked green and preserved in that form have a completely different taste and texture and as much as I do love a pot of beans cooked from the dried versions, the green ones are mighty special and not a food that most people are familiar with or even aware of. I guess lima beans would be an exception. When you can find them, already shelled and in bags ready to cook or frozen, usually at farmer's markets, they cost an arm and a leg. 
Labor intensive and worth every bit of it. 

Hank had asked if I wanted to meet up for lunch today and yes, I did. Rachel joined us and so did Mr. Moon. We met at Kyoto, formerly Japanica! and had good meals. I got the teriyaki tofu bento box again and once again I thought the tofu was absolutely the best I'd ever eaten. I think they use silken tofu and the outside is perfectly and lightly fried until just crispy and the tofu within is nothing short of creamy. Nothing I've ever made with tofu even begins to compare. 

Mr. Moon is just about a newborn's fingernail clipping away from being completely overwhelmed by what he's doing for Tom. Today on top of meeting with social workers and assisted living managers, he bought Tom new clothes so he'd have something to wear in the rehab facility. Then he had the meetings and got more information that he needs. Rachel, who has worked in the elder care sphere as a social worker, had names of high-ups in the system who might be able to help Glen. That was so appreciated. 
As Lis Williamson and I agreed when we talked on the phone last week, you gotta know a guy to get anything done. 
Sad, but true. 
In this case it wasn't guys but women. Same thing. 
Glen is finding all of the rehab place's case managers and so forth are being incredibly helpful which is terrific. They're not going to kick Tom out of the facility where he is. They recognize his disabilities and his needs and seem to be on top of things. But it is a rehab facility and he's going to need an assisted living place to move into. He is going to fight this with every breath in his body and I understand that completely. I would too but going back home is absolutely not going to happen. 

I keep thinking though of how when people stand up and say their vows and declare that they will love and cherish each other in both sickness and in health, they generally have no idea of what the are promising. And when Tom asked Glen to be his power of attorney and health care surrogate years and years ago, Glen had no idea what that would entail. Yet here he is, learning and doing and fulfilling that promise. 

Oh god. This is rather depressing, isn't it? I'll try not to focus on this issue so much. It's just that it is a big part of our lives right now. 

Anne Rüsing sent me a link to an article The Guardian did on Keith Richards becoming a great grandfather and how he is living his life at the age of 82. You can find that article HERE. 
I was glad to get the article, so happy to read it. Mick has been here, there, and everywhere promoting their upcoming new album, "Foreign Tongues" whereas Keith has been rather quiet which I will admit has worried me. But in the article he sounds hale and hearty and happy and thrilled about being a grandfather, a great grandfather, and a musician releasing a new album. He also talks about AI and quitting all his vices and the time Chuck Berry punched him in the face. 

“He punched me once, years ago, in the 60s, I think. We were in his dressing room, I was having a peek at his guitar and I was just about to stroke it, and he went: ‘Nobody touches it!’ And bam! Quite right, Chuck! I would have done the same. I’ve never had to, but then I’ve never caught someone doing that.”

I have to sigh and say that I will always be a bit obsessed with this man. Indulge me or don't indulge me. As Bruce Springsteen said about Keith in his memoir, "I've come across many spirit-filled folk in my travels but no one as spectrally beautiful as Keith Richards." 

And after I read Keith's memoir, I felt that to my bones. And although I have known many, many musicians, I'm not sure I've ever met one as absolutely certain of what music has meant to him or her in their life. 
Bless him. 

And here's a picture of my spirit totem animal and my daddy. 

TWO spectrally beautiful men. 

Mr. Moon and I just did a little tour of the garden which has never looked better. We agreed that I am the garden's mama, he is the garden's daddy. 
We are both so proud.

The mixture of the carefully in-line planted seeds and plants with the volunteers is especially striking this year. We've never had better peppers, and the tomatoes are pretty damn gorgeous. The eggplant would make a mother proud. 
And they do. 

The rain has ceased for now but the sound of water dripping off the leaves is still a lovely patter-song. The birds are saying, "Goodnight! Goodnight!" and the oaks are sighing with comfort and relief. 

Martini night, clean sheet night. It's good. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Summer Bounty

When I was picking beans this morning I came across this sight which is not unusual at all but I think it's sort of adorable. A vine has sent its little tendril out in search of support and found one of its own beans which it has embraced so delicately and so gracefully. 
This was a much prettier sight than all of the damn thumpers I saw today. I startled one, I suppose, who jumped off the fence and landed on my foot and I swear- I thought for a millisecond that an actual animal had landed on me. Well, I guess those things are animals but not the sort of animals which generally carry that much weight and heft. 

Mr. Moon had his annual today with Dr. Zorn. He came home singing his praises. He said, "He comes in and sits down and crosses his legs like he's not going to just jump up and run out in two minutes and he talks to you!"
Yep. 
Glen also has a touch of the white coat hypertension and as with me, Zorn waits a while and then retakes the blood pressure manually and it has always come down to normal in the time you've been talking to him. 
"He's magic, isn't he?" I asked Glen. 
"He really is," my husband said. 
This is not how people generally discuss their doctors, is it? 

So he was in a very good mood because everything looked good and he was told to just keep on doing whatever it was he was doing which pleased Glen to no end. He celebrated by going to Bass Pro Shop and buying fishing hooks. 

After I picked beans I needed some time to cool off and eat lunch. So I did those things and then went back out to the garden and staked peppers and eggplant. Glen told me where there were some stakes in the garage and I found them. They're old tobacco stakes which were originally used to hang tobacco on to dry and where he got those stakes is a mystery to me but there they were. Something in his garage that I would have described as something he really did not need to have hanging around and he would have defended as saying we might need them for something and here I was, pounding aged pieces of split saplings into the ground with a small hammer and tying vegetable plants to them. 

We really ought to start cutting pieces of green bamboo and drying them for our staking needs. God knows we have enough to spare. I remember when we first moved here I was going to build a privacy screen of some sort by lashing bamboo together but I've never gotten around to that somehow. 
The garden looks even tidier now, doesn't it? My house may be a complete wreck but by golly, my garden is tidy as hell this year. I did not need to stake all of the peppers and eggplants but most of them needed some help. 
The clown pepper is standing strong and is the tallest pepper I have. I noticed today that after what? a month? it is finally producing more peppers than the original two that showed up. There are little baby clown peppers all over that thing!

Now I didn't know a darn thing about clown peppers and indeed, had never even heard of them until this year when I bought one. All I knew about them came from a very brief and casual search of the internet. Mostly what I knew was that they are supposedly somewhat spicy but not too hot, and they turn red. I just looked them up again and found a woman's blog post about them and her experiences in growing them. And she lives right down the road in Quincy which is a little town I've written about. We pass through it on our way up to Lake Seminole. I need to spend a little time perusing her blog. It looks quite interesting. How could I not have known anything about this?
She says that she had a clown pepper "tree" that was five feet tall. At the time of her writing about the peppers, it was a year and a half old. How very, very cool! We shall see what happens with mine. 

Another garden-related thing I did this afternoon was to make a new batch of pepper vinegar. I've been collecting cayenne peppers for a few weeks now, just for this purpose. 

It looks a little cloudy because I used a mixture of white vinegar and "natural" apple cider vinegar which has that oh-so-important and highly nutritious "mother" sediment that is to be found in that vinegar. The bottle is the same one my old pepper vinegar was in although it was thoroughly washed. The peppers in it were practically melting gel when I removed them (not an easy thing to do) yesterday. A bottle of pepper vinegar can last in the refrigerator for in infinite amount of time. You just keep covering the peppers with more vinegar. Some people don't even refrigerate it but I do out of an abundance of caution as we used to say during Covid. 
Pepper vinegar is de rigueur for seasoning cooked greens of all kinds, especially collards, turnips, and mustard greens. We set it on the table so that everyone can anoint their greens to the degree which they prefer. 
You know you are in a real southern restaurant when there is a bottle of pepper vinegar on each table. The kind with a yellow flip-top lid and many extra bonus points if the peppers are bleached almost white from possibly years of use. 
I am not kidding you. Those are usually tabasco peppers and I have some of those planted too so I will be preparing various pepper vinegars this summer. I think they will make lovely Christmas presents, especially if I use both the green and the very ripe red ones. That bottle, however, will be ours. By the time our fall garden greens are ready to eat, that sauce should be just about perfect. 

I watered the porch plants today, which was long over-due. Bless those plants' hearts. They not only tolerate a lack of moisture, they also tolerate me. 
I did some sweeping, I've done some laundry, I've done a little mending and button moving. 
I have two pairs of the men's cargo shorts that I love but they are a little too big as in, they are simply too big. And I have another pair which is the size down from them that are just a little too snug for my comfort. Men's pants come in waist size and in a lot of cases they only have the even numbers of inches which is weird. So I moved the button on the smaller ones just a tiny bit and I think that will do the trick. I may be inspired to move the buttons on the other two pairs a tiny bit to the other side. We shall see.
The mending was done on one of the dresses May returned to me. It is so pretty and I want so much to wear it but when I went to iron it, I realized that some of the seams needed attention. I honestly think this is due to aging, mostly. The dress has to be at least thirty years old but it has pockets, I love it, and I am not giving up on it yet. I stitched up one place and will get to work on the other places that need some loving attention. 

All-in-all, it has been a very good day. Healthy husband, many beans, a tidier garden, a little needlework accomplished, and the possibility of a five foot tall clown pepper tree! 
A girl could hardly ask for more. 

Here's a picture of a giant swallowtail butterfly. The poor thing has tattered wings but is still beautiful. 

And another picture of it on a different zinnia. 

Off to go make a shrimp salad which Mr. Moon actually requested. He NEVER does that. But what a good choice although it never ceases to amaze me how many steps can be involved in the preparation of a salad.

I think most of you will absolutely understand this puzzlement. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Seriously?

 

Well, okay. Dammit. 

Got to pottery. Unwrapped my hibiscus, set it down on the work table and somehow in that very short transfer, I lost the anther and stamen. I didn't really lose them. They were right there. They just weren't attached to the rest of the flower. 
I don't think I cursed. I did, however say something like, "What more evidence do I need that the universe doesn't think I should be doing pottery?" 
But that's ridiculous. The universe isn't telling me shit. I am just not being careful enough. 
So. I rounded off the end of the stamen the best I could and instead of having darling little balls attached to represent the anthers, I had to just paint them on as you see above. 
This is what it had looked like yesterday. 

Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, DOES NOT MATTER.
As I said to Tammy, one of the women in our class, it's not like I was a woman in the dust bowl trying to walk to California with her four children, one of whom was an infant. 

So I finished up the glaze-painting and that took me the entire two and a half hours of class but I didn't mind that. At the end of class, I had done all I was going to do and now it's on the to-be-fired shelf. I really hope that I don't just hate and detest the colors. 
And if I do? 
Doesn't matter.

And now- back to fishes! 

There was a lot of chat in today's class. Quiet chat. We learned that Felisha is going to visit France for a week with her aunt and we are all so excited for her. Lizzie is heading to an island off the east coast with her entire family and she's looking forward to that. She travels a LOT. Shelly, who is not taking pottery this session came in for a visit and hugs and it was great to see her. The Gentleman Caller did not make an appearance today as he had some work-related situation going on that demanded all of his time and attention. He was missed.

I complained (of course) about how my jigsaw puzzles take up the entire dining room table and how I have company coming in July and oh dear, what shall I do? The pottery ladies did not fail me. They told me that there is a thing called a jigsaw puzzle board which can be moved and has drawers and is on a lazy-susan sort of thing so you can work on it from all different angles and how have I not known this? So when I came home I went online and found one to buy and I've ordered it but selecting one was incredibly anxiety-producing because there are about forty-nine thousand of them to choose from. But I finally did in sort of a oh, hell, whatever move, and it tilts, too, and I'm very much looking forward to getting that. 
So once again, I enjoyed the class. Just being there and sitting and doing something with color and a paintbrush and talking to sweet and smart and funny women is such a lovely, lovely thing to do.

More rain here today. We're supposed to get more all weekend. Tomorrow I really hope I can find enough time between the rains to prop up my pepper plants and perhaps pull a few weeds. And pick beans. 

Glen just got home from the cabin although he spent most of today aiding and helping three different people in three different situations. He ran in this afternoon around 3:30 between two of those situations to change and get some things he needed and I was just this close to furious when I found out he had not eaten lunch. And I doubt he had much breakfast. I tried to make him a sandwich but he didn't have the time so off he went, me fuming at how he does not take care of himself. 
Oh well. He's a grown man and as such, he can make his own decisions about whether or not to make eating lunch a priority. He's getting soup tonight made with the rest of the chicken I roasted along with celery and carrots and onions and green beans and spinach and garlic and lemon juice and rice and lentils. He shall be sustained. As shall I be. I'm not feeling great and I'm starting to think the symptoms I'm having might be due to the barometric pressure and humidity and so forth. Maurice seems to be affected by the weather as well. She is sleeping far more than she usually does and once again, spent almost the entire day on my bed. I think I will use her as a good example for self-care and go to bed early tonight. 
Now if I can just talk Mr. Moon into doing the same...

Love...Ms. Moon

Rain Blessings

This is where Maurice has spent most of this rainy day. And yes, the rain did finally show up and it has arrived in torrents and in sheets and in great toad-strangling downpours. The worst of it, I think, was when I was driving home from town after I picked up my HORMONES! 
It started just as I was leaving Tallahassee and I crawled all the way to Lloyd, slowly and carefully because I could barely see fifteen feet in front of me. Nobody was going very fast, not even the usual assholes who believe they have super powers of visual perception even in a blinding rain and who pass you, throwing up huge floods of water which temporarily and absolutely blind you for a few seconds.
And I made it, safe and sound. I did NOT take the interstate, believe me, but one of the back roads and that served me well.  

That was hours ago and it looks like it might rain all night and well into tomorrow. 
Drink up, you Ancient Oaks! The rain anoints your leaves and branches as your great spreading roots revel in the holy water soaking through the purifying leaf mulch and dirt so that you may drink it.
Okay. That was a bit overblown. 
I really do feel like that though.

Before it started to rain this morning I made my daily pass through the garden. That really is one of my favorite things to do. The field peas are blooming and soon we'll be picking and shelling those. The zinnias are really coming to full blooming life and the butterflies are noticing. The few tomato plants we have are looking pretty good and I'm not seeing any of the usual diseases that can take them over and so far we haven't seen any of the usual pests that bother them either. This could possibly be due to the recent drier conditions and if so, we can expect this good fortune to come to an end. 
I did see this pest on the bean vines though.

Yep. The Georgia Thumpers have reached full maturity and that's what they look like. See the green bean in the picture? Those bugs don't even look real, do they? 

Same critter. He's probably about two and a half inches long and I thought about swatting him to the ground and stomping him but I swear- I just could not. It's too big for me to murder. As you can see, they eat the leaves, not necessarily the beans which I suppose is good but if they eat all the leaves, there will be no beans so there is that too. 
It's a rather fascinating creature, isn't it? Actually beautiful in its way. 

Of course while I was in the garden I had to pick some beans and although I'd just picked yesterday, I got another good half basket full and that was just a casual picking. 

My white eggplant is coming along.

Looks like the Thumpers have visited them, too. 

I really need to give some support to the peppers. I doubt I'll do that tomorrow as I have pottery and as we all know, I can only really handle one activity a day. 

The Seminole pumpkins I planted are absolutely thriving. 

And I didn't plant that many of them. A few vines have escaped the garden fence and are snaking along the ground outside. I do love a good native heirloom. They seem so very happy to be given the chance at life. Glen asked the other day what we're going to do with these Seminole pumpkins. I said, "I have no idea. Pumpkin stuff, I guess." 
I'm thinking soups and pies. Possibly casseroles. So of course I just looked it up and there are many recipes featuring them including crumbles, pumpkin bread and other baked goods. 
And they'll last a year if stored in a cool dark place so...
I'm excited. 

My whole plan for today was to get to town to get the hormones and then zoom back home and get right to work on the hibiscus. 
Well. That didn't exactly happen. I got the hormones, and then I went by the Credit Union for a little bit of banking and then I ran into Publix because I forget to get eggs yesterday and also, I was starving so I wanted something to eat and somehow this all took forever, not to mention the fact that I didn't get out of Lloyd until much later than I'd planned (gotta pick those beans, y'all!) but I did finally sit down and slow down and had a very good time mixing glazes and using them to paint this thing that I've been working on since Jesus was a titty baby. 

And it's still not done. 

The glaze is still drying in some places there. I am SO curious to see how the colors turn out. 

Hopefully, and with any luck, I'll get it ready for the kiln tomorrow. Whatever happens, I'll be happy to see my pottery ladies. 

Mr. Moon has an annual with Dr. Zorn on Thursday morning so he'll be back tomorrow. I've enjoyed my quiet time although I don't feel as if I've done nearly as many things as I had hoped I would. This is how it always turns out though. I never have time to be lonely and I'm never bored. And Maurice has done a good job of taking care of me. She slept cuddled up and quiet all night last night and this morning, when I came out onto the porch I found a perfectly intact and absolutely dead little mousie. I know she left it right there on purpose, knowing that's exactly where I'd walk and would find it. I feel that when she brings me an entire critter that she has not even nibbled on, that it's definitely a gift. Now how she manages to kill a mouse without leaving a mark on it is beyond me. Mr. Moon and I have discussed this before. I suggested that she simply scares them to death. 
Whatever and however, it's somehow touching. And as Glen said, "She's like no other cat we've ever had." 
He is right. 

Suddenly I am inspired to post a Springsteen video. The song is "Mary's Place" and I know I've posted a video (or two) of this song before but I don't think I've even ever seen this video of him and the E-Street Band doing it in Barcelona. 
As always, I have no expectations of anyone actually watching this video but if you'd like to have just the tiniest, most molecular idea of what seeing Springsteen live is like, this is not a bad video to watch. Also, The Big Man, Clarence Clemons was still alive and still bringing his presence to the stage and I feel so fortunate that I got to see him play the two times I saw the E Street Band live. I've written a lot about him and what he's meant to me before but here's a post I always return to.  

Oh, Bruce. As I said in that post, music can put a healin' on ya. 

We need that now more than ever and Bruce has stepped up to do just that, powerfully expressing his feelings about Donald Trump and what he has done and is doing to our country. 

This video, however, is Bruce doing yet another song he's written about me, or at least someone named Mary and yes, he was raised Catholic so there you go but if I want to believe they are my songs, what's the harm? 

Mary's Place

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain. 

Love...Ms. Moon

So I Bought Two Tee Shirts At Walmart

Random picture of Maurice under a zinnia. 

I called my compounding pharmacy this morning to see if by any miracle my hormones were ready to pick up. 
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
They had not received a renewal of my prescription from the doctor's office. 
Exactly what I was expecting. 
They said they'd send another request and I said I'd call their office too. Which I did. The woman who answered the phone, after researching the situation, insisted that they had not gotten a request. 
I made her repeat this statement. 
And then, my lack of hormones kicked in and I said, and not in a pleasant tone of voice, "Well. That would be a first."
And I only said that because I didn't feel I could call the woman a fucking liar. That really might hold things up on their end. 

And then later, Mr. Moon told me that he had a meeting this afternoon with a guy about a situation which Glen has briefly informed me of, a situation that would be the start of ANOTHER PROJECT and I lost my shit entirely. I did not even pause to take a breath. It was like I opened my mouth and a flaming gorgon burst forth. A gorgon that I had no idea resided within me. 
And she was not using her inside voice. I'm not sure the gorgon was even using MY voice.
I believe that I was as shocked as Mr. Moon. 

It was a real good example of, "Tell us how you really feel, Mary."

Ooh boy.

Now whether that had anything to do with my depleted hormones, I cannot say. But when the pharmacy called me a few hours later to tell me that they had gotten the refill order and the prescription would be ready by tomorrow, I was vastly relieved. 
And I have to say that if I was living in Victorian times and had no access to hormone therapy after menopause, I probably would have been put into an insane asylum with all of the rest of the women who were neither being sweet nor calm nor silent. In short, the women who also had gorgons living inside of them. 

So that was that story but the part of my day which was truly important involved this woman.

The one and only Liz Sparks. 
That woman will not let me disappear completely into the ether, mouldering away here at home in Lloyd. She texts me and says, "Can you go to lunch on..." and lists a day as if she was making an appointment and if you can't make it on that day, another one will be found and that is that. 

And I always go because there is nothing better than spending a few hours with that woman. She's about to leave for her annual get-out-of-Tallahassee-for-the-unbearable-summer and head north to gentler climes and excellent adventures. She's going to be a camp nurse for a week somewhere in the Smokey Mountains, (yes, she's an RN) and then she has people to meet and things to do in Maine and Connecticut and who knows where all? 
She is that sort of woman. So it was even more necessary for me to see her before she begins her journey and I am so grateful she does not forget me, she does not let me disappear into the mist and might of anxiety. She calls me forth and I answer. 

She brought me a birthday present because she always brings something. Her mother was British and Liz got good home training from her. She claims the birthday present was meant for last year and I received it as gracefully as I could, knowing that all I'd brought her was a bag of rattlesnake beans. 
Sigh.

On her last summer's trip, she had driven some of the Blues Trail in Mississippi because of course she did. And also, because of course she did, she stopped off in Indianola, the town where my daddy, B.B. King was born. 
I call him my daddy because not having had a daddy, I figured I got to pick whoever I wanted to represent that person in my life and I picked B.B. King. It didn't hurt that at the end of all his concerts (and I think I saw at least three), he would ask, "Who's your daddy?" and honey, you know damn well that I would say, "You are! You are, B.B.!" 

I do believe I chose wisely. 

So Liz got me a few souvenirs at the museum, including that fan, because indeed it is a fan, the same kind you could find and still can find at churches and funerals and gatherings of many kinds in the south, both in the Black and white communities. Many of those fans have advertisements for funeral homes or pictures of Jesus on them.
This, however, is the best one I've ever seen and the best one ever made, I am sure. I have written about Mr. King before and how his autobiography, "Blues All Around Me," is a book that should be taught in all American schools. It holds a proud place of honor in my library, same shelf as Keith Richards' and Bruce Springsteen's memoirs. 
I think one of the best things I ever did as a mother was to take Hank and May to see B.B. play in Tallahassee and somehow we got second or third row seats and all of us, including Mr. Moon, ended up dancing in the aisle while the people who had scored front row seats sat motionless which I did not know was even possible for a person to do when at a B.B. King concert, and need I say they were white?

No. No I do not. 

I remember I was wearing a red dress and I like to think that Mr. King may have noticed me and that when he said, "Who's your daddy?" and I said, "You are, B.B.!" he saw and he agreed to my one-sided contract. 
And best of all, we got to shake his hand. We got to shake B.B. King's hand. 

Well, so Liz who obviously knows me so well, brought me that fan and a little Christmas ornament of B.B.'s guitar, Lucille, and also a key ring which doubles as a bottle opener which also says Lucille. 
Lucille was his guitar. 
Whichever guitar he was playing, that was Lucille.

Lord. I did not mean to go off on that. I doubt Liz would mind. She knows me. She and I talked about so many things today. We sort of caught up and told each other some of our woes and we laughed and we laughed and when it was time to leave, I hugged her so hard. 
"Have a wonderful summer," I said. "And be safe."
She reassured me she would. 

After we parted I went to the dreaded Walmart where I got so stressed out that my right foot and my left hand both fell asleep while I was up and walking around. I went to buy a canning kettle and an umbrella and the only canning kettle they had was not like any canning kettle I've ever seen and I did not want it. 
And I forgot the umbrella.
It has been raining in Tallahassee off and on all day. We got a small amount here in Lloyd. Barely enough to register in the garden-cart rain gauge. But oh my! It's just started raining again and the weather widget on my phone says we're going to get heavy precipitation for the next hour. 
Promises, promises. Thunderstorms are also predicted but no sign of those yet. 

Mr. Moon has finally made an escape from the care-taking, power of attorneying, health care surrogating meetings and also, crazed gorgon wife, up to the cabin. I know he'll be so glad to be there. 
And I'm good here. Because I wanted something homey and comforting and nurturing, I am roasting a little chicken stuffed with lemon and (our) sage and (our) garlic. It is sitting in a skillet atop (our) carrots and surrounded by (our) potatoes.
Did you know that if you roast carrots with garlic they become incredibly sweet? 
Well, they do. 

It is thundering a little bit. It is still raining although not what I would call heavily. I just found two green beans in my pocket. 

Here's a video of Mr. B. B. King, King of the Blues, giving a master class on how to change a string on a guitar mid-concert while wringing his heart out asking the eternal question, "How Blue Can You Get?"

You want to know a secret? 
I wish he really was my daddy. So, so much. 

Love...Ms. Moon

No Rain Here, Sad To Say

This is what the sky looked like about half an hour ago and Glen and I and the frogs too were all chanting, "Rain, rain, come on, RAIN!" and the thunder was rumbling and it surely did seem as if the skies would open up and release some of that precious sky water but no. It did not. 

Sigh.

The storm skirted us, once again. 

Hell, I even watered the garden in the superstitious hope that it would increase the odds of it raining but if it did, the odds were still stacked against us. 

I'm going to make this short. I don't really have the desire to bitch the way I did yesterday and I am, in fact, a little calmer. I managed to get some canning done- eight quarts and three pints of beans. 

And yes you DO have to see every damn jar of whatever I can this summer, just as you've had to see every damn jar of everything I've canned in the last however many years I've been writing this blog. 
A bunch of years. A bunch of jars. 
Also, yes, some of the liquid from the jars did leak out due to what I have read is rapid fluctuation of the temperature in the canner. These things happen. And the jars have all sealed so they're good. I need to regulate the dang temperature which is funny because Mr. Moon is always complaining about not being able to regulate HIS temperature, especially while in bed. He gets cold and covers up and then he's too hot and throws off the covers and then he gets cold again and...
Well. Proper temperature regulation is obviously important for both canners and people. 

So it's been a pretty good day, mostly because I got something done. It would very much seem that I have to feel as if I've been a least a little bit productive in order to feel okay about myself and how my day has gone. I started my puzzle in that I'm sorting out the edges which is how I always begin. Do you? If you do puzzles, that is. I feel like it's a good way to begin knowing the picture as well as forming the borders. I am a very non-visual person in some ways and jig-saw puzzles are especially difficult for me because I can't just look at the picture on the box and get an idea of the image in my head. It takes a whole lotta studying. 

And a whole lotta time. 
But it was a good thing to do while I had different steps of the canning going on, timing this and timing that and waiting for pressure to rise and waiting for pressure to go down. The actual filling of the jars when I'm doing plain old green beans is easy once they're snapped. But I suppose I need to work on my temperature fluctuations, don't I?

Mr. Moon dealt with more of Tom's situation today. This is not easy, people. It involves legality and rationality and reality. And a lot more. Some of it you do not even want to know and I don't even need to tell you. And yet the man, the Mr. Moon man, takes it all on with calmness and gentleness and kindness and the determination to do the right thing. 
Right things. 
It's all a lot. 

Are you going to watch grown men beat each other to bloody pulps on the White House lawn on your Tee Vee tonight? What kind of a person celebrates his eightieth birthday cheering for such base and cruel entertainers? 
You know. 
I could puke just thinking about it. No need for me to see the bloody bashing. Simply knowing it's going on is once again proof to me that there is no depth to which this man will sink. 

I could go into a whole other string of curses and cusses and profane observations but I won't. You already know what I think and what I'd say and how I'd say it. 

That's all. 

Love...Ms. Moon