We Were Wild And Crazy

Oh my goodness. Last night was such a gift. I really tried to just pull up my big girl panties and put on that make-up and the silver bracelets and act like going out on a Friday night was no big deal whatsoever but for me, it was a big deal. But I did it. The venue where they played is about four thousand miles from our house. Okay. Not really. But it did take us a while to get there. We got behind someone driving 24 miles an hour on the road to the highway and that road is so twisty and turny you don't dare pass anyone and I felt like I should text Lis that we were on our way and would be there in two hours.
Somehow though, we managed to get there before the opening act went onstage and were able to say hey to the band. I don't even have any idea how long ago I met Lis and Lon, much less Gabe (the other guitar player) and Jason (the violin player) but I will say that I asked Jason last night how old his little boy was and he said, "Fifteen."
I remember when the kid was born.
Lord but time does pass.
Gabe and his wife have two children just about the same age as Owen and Gibson and I met him way before they were born.
It was so good to see everyone. I miss Lon and Lis so much. They are Glen's and my heart-partners. I swear. Someone had brought in a picture last night of the two of them onstage at the first gig they ever did together which was over forty years ago. Gabe looked at it and he said, "Yep. There's Lis. She has Lon and she knows that this is what she's going to be doing for the rest of her life."
Absolutely.

Our table was front and center. We could touch the stage. And it was a night of pure enchantment. How many times have I heard these people sing and play? Probably close to being in the hundreds of times now. And still...I am moved to tears each and every time.
This is one of the songs that always does it to me. Lis wrote it and it is an incredibly beautiful song and it allows her to use her soaring angel voice. That last note just breaks my heart.




This wasn't from last night but from a concert they did at Flagler College in St. Augustine. But they did it last night and yes, I wept. Mr. Moon held me to him and it was as sweet an evening as I'd ever want to have.

I am shy to take pictures, much less video but here's a picture I took of the two people who mean so very much to me and to so many others. They truly are beloved.

I really like the place they played. I'd only been there once before and that was some time back. They've made it so cozy and there are now booths by the bar in a room separate from the stage and they offer good food. Glen and I split some crab cakes and slaw before the show and I loved every bite. We sipped martinis that were as good as any bar martinis I'd ever had. 

The best part is that the sound in the listening room is very fine. I claim absolutely NO musical talent or abilities but I do have a good ear for sound. This may be simply because I've been to so many shows. I was married to a musician at one point and if someone's vocals aren't loud enough or someone's instrument is too loud, it bothers the hell out of me. But last night, the sound man got it just right.  

The place is called The Junction At Monroe for any Tallahassee readers and I'm sure you already know about it. 

And so it was a beautiful night and after the show, Mr. Moon helped roll up cords and load up the instruments. They were doing a turn-and-burn, leaving right after the gig and Jason had to drive all the way home to Orlando and Lon and Lis and Gabe drove back to St. Augustine. 

It was so hard to kiss them goodbye but they'll be back for another gig on Valentines and are going to be spending the night with us and that made it easier. 

God, I love those people. 

And then the craziest thing of the night happened. We were on our way home and I said, "How late does Whataburger stay open?" 

"Twenty-four hours, I think," said my husband. "Does my sweetheart want to go there?"

His sweetheart did. 

Oh. My. God. 

We went to the Whataburger at midnight. Which is insane. 

First of all, we were still up at midnight. 

Secondly, I absolutely cannot remember the last Whataburger meal I've eaten with the exception of some of their delicious breakfast taquitos which we consumed in mass quantities after August was born. I think that Glen bought them out that morning. 

But we ate there last night. And I have to say- Whataburger at midnight is an interesting place. We felt sinful and wicked and wild as teenagers when we walked in to the florescent lit place. A man and his little boy, probably about six, were waiting on their food and that little boy who was wearing blue kid glasses, did not stop talking. His dad listened, barely saying a word, and I swear- that child was explaining the universe for the fifteen minutes they were there. I looked at the dad and smiled and he rolled his eyes and sort of smiled back. 

There was a lady sitting in a booth with an entire bag of what I think was embroidery thread. I did not want to stare. She had the remains of a meal on the table but was industriously doing some sort of needlework in her formica and plastic booth. At least she had good lighting. What was her story? 

There was a beautifully dressed and proper looking older woman who looked like she'd just gotten out of church eating very slowly and tidily. And other people came in who truthfully, looked as if they might eat at Whataburger quite frequently. 

And then there was us. 

I ordered a jalapeno cheeseburger (yes! Yes I did!) and it was amazing. 

You may well ask- how drunk were you guys? 

Barely tipsy is the answer. 

Mr. Moon got chicken strips and onion rings which he shared with me. It was a rather trippy experience. But very fun. 

When we were driving home we were, of course, expressing some regret. 

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," I said. And then I added, "Well, not really."

We laughed. 

We managed to be in bed by one a.m. and amazingly, survived our wild night out. 

No blood, no foul, as they say. 

And today has been pretty lazy for me although Mr. Moon had to go to town and pick up a customer at the airport and deliver her new car to her. All before noon. 

My chickens laid me seven eggs today and I am getting a new egg which I do not recognize and I have no idea who's laying it. I am quite certain that none of the young ones are laying yet. 

I've done some ironing and watched six episodes of the new season of Grace and Frankie which I have to admit I love. The best line I've heard so far came from Frankie (Lily Tomlin). Her son had hired a home health care aid and Frankie told him, "He failed his drug test. I asked him to smoke with me and he wouldn't. I had to fire him."

The weather is changing. It has rained on and off this afternoon and the wind is blowing and tomorrow we're going to have freezing temperatures even though I am barefoot on the porch right now. Mr. Moon is in a deer stand. The season is over as of tomorrow I think, and despite all of the many, many hours my husband has given to the passion and pursuit of venison, we really would like to have a bit more sausage for the freezer. He told me before he left, though, that the deer are shy and cautious in windy weather as they can't hear properly and the movement of the trees and bushes freaks them out. Deer are not stupid. 

Just got a text. No deer. 

Oh well. 

We certainly have eggs. 

And love. 

And that's more than enough. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Persevering

Well, it's Friday and we actually have plans to go out and therefore you KNOW that Lon and Lis are in town because it is highly doubtful that I'd be going anywhere except to go see them play.
Okay, maybe I'd leave Lloyd to go see the Rolling Stones but only if the venue didn't suck too much.

Mr. Moon and I are still rocking the virus although I do feel better than I did yesterday. I actually got quite a bit done this morning and felt cheerful and productive but as the afternoon wore on, I started feeling the fever returning. Levon's still running the fever, his stomach is messed up and he's coughing and snotty. And Maggie threw up last night and again this morning and had a little fever. She's going to get through it though, I think. Lily sent me this picture and even though a barf bag is involved, she doesn't look too miserable.

Lily said that she even threw up IN the barf bag, completely. None of my kids ever did anything like that but instead always seemed to time their puking bouts around me getting clean sheets back on the bed and clean jammies back on them. I am sure that every parent who has ever lived can relate to this. 

It would appear that it's the beginning of the end ONCE AGAIN for Trump. Every day it's like, "Oh yeah. He's going to jail!" And then nothing happens except more illegal activities are unearthed. 

Again, I know I'm not telling anyone here anything they don't already know. 

Anyway, I need to go see if I can find my make-up. Of course I haven't touched it since I got home from Mexico. 

Speaking of Mexico, I found this on FB today and immediately shared it and now I'm going to share it here because I think it's great on about fifty different levels.

Enjoy, y'all.

Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Once Again- Who Knows? Not Me

So what are we going for here? When I think of a mattress, I generally think of it hopefully providing the best sleep "experience" I can have.
But here you have a choice between the Reggae Firm and the Mambo Euro Top. 
Are you more of a Reggae type of mattress user or a Mambo type?
I think I'm too old to Mambo in bed but I can probably still manage a little Reggae swaying.

That has nothing to do with anything. It just made me scratch my head and say, "What?"

This damn virus that has found its way into my home is driving me insane. Mr. Moon still feels unwell and has a cough. I, too, have had a cough and not a whole lot of energy but suddenly last night I felt descended upon by another layer of the virus. Same symptoms- upper respiratory and cough (no worse than before) but now I appear to be running a fever.
When I woke up this morning I hugged my husband to me and said, "Stay home. Stay in bed all day with me." Trust me when I say I was mostly going for the cozy factor, not Mamboing.
He considered it but of course he put on his working clothes and I got up and made him oatmeal with raisins and we commiserated about our various symptoms and ills and then he went to work and I actually went to town to the store to get things to make Tom Kha Gai soup which I have a powerful hankering for. And then I went to Joanne's to get a pattern to make Maggie a new dress and the whole time I was in town I was thinking, "What in  hell am I doing?" and walked around like I weighed five thousand earth-tons and feeling spacey and weird.

So. Do I have a different virus or has the one I had morphed? Other people have reported that this thing has lingered for three weeks or more. We're on week two. Jessie has house guests and she thinks that between all of them, they are experiencing three different viruses at her house. Levon was a miserable boy yesterday, he threw up, he had fever. He just wanted to lay down next to his mommy. I hear he is better today. August had what Boppy had for sure but seems better. Jessie seemed to have what I seemed to have and actually, NONE OF US KNOW WHAT ANY OF US HAVE! Lily's family seems to have escaped the worst (knock wood) although Maggie has had a snotty nose and cough for quite awhile.
My own doctor told me that he has had three upper respiratory viruses this winter.
Good Lord.
I've been back from Mexico for two weeks. I felt better there than I've felt in years and ever since I've gotten back it's been one damn thing after another.

So it goes and so it is and there isn't a damn thing to do about it except to hydrate and take the occasional Ibuprofen and some cough syrup before bed. Treat the symptoms while waiting for the body to deal with it.

I'm going to make a (hopefully) delicious Tom Ka Gai soup tonight. I'm using a recipe (mostly) from a web site that Lily's sister-in-law (mother of the darling Lenore) runs. She is an amazing vegan cook. If you want to check out the recipe and her site, go HERE. 
I think I'm going to add some tofu for a little protein. Mr. Moon read an article about how the eating of meat and sugar is destroying our planet and our health and he's all onboard for more vegetarian options. And venison, of course. And fish. I told him that back in the sixties a woman named Frances Moore Lappe wrote a book called "Diet For A Small Planet" and that only the hippies paid attention but here we are. Of course, every good hippie has that book and quite possibly "Recipes For A Small Planet" on their cookbook shelf and I am one of those. I should dig it out for the nostalgia factor if nothing else.

What goes around comes around and in the case of this virus, it never seems to want to jump off the merry-go-round of torment.

Here I go to grate ginger and slice green onions, thus ensuring that I am doing the best I can to nourish our bodies along with our souls.

Love...Ms. Moon

Camellias

Well, my vast relief and feelings of rebirth faded rather more quickly than I would have liked.
Today has been a day of pondering what on earth I need to do with my life.

I have come up with no answers.

In lieu of any sort of real post tonight, I'll just give you camellias.

I keep trying to write something of value or interest but it's just not going to happen tonight. 

It's been that sort of day. 

Let's see what tomorrow brings. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Not Planning My Funeral Quite Yet

Look. I just love my doctor.
That is all.
He is so freaking kind I can't believe it.
"How've you been?" he asks as he swings into the room. And as always, I am taken aback at just how darn cute is. Look- cute doesn't hurt in a doctor, especially if it's the friendly kind of cute that simply makes your heart happy. He seems so entirely approachable.
And then he started going over my blood work, congratulating me for GETTING the blood work done because he knows me and knows how hard that is for me. And everything was pretty good except for my cholesterol which is a fucking mess. I told him that I'd like to try and do something dietarily to help that.
"I will admit," I told him, "I could eat less pork."
He laughed. And agreed that I could try that.
We discussed Mexico. We discussed his little boy. He showed me his picture. He's adorable, just like his dad. He told me that he did not have one thing to fuss at me about. I told him that I wished, in that case, that I HAD brought him the dozen eggs I'd thought about bringing him. He let me know that he would love fresh eggs. That he's a vegetarian and eggs are an important part of his diet. He got me talking about chickens. He excused himself, went out for a moment and came back with a picture of a chicken that said on it something like, "When I grow up I want to retire and raise chickens."
"I keep that in my cubby," he told me. And then he told me where he'd gotten it and some backstory there which concerned his wife and a special place that means a lot to him. And we talked about chickens some more and all of a sudden he says, "Let me check your blood pressure again," because it had not been that good when the nurse had taken it because my blood pressure always spikes when I go to the doctor.
"No," I said. "It'll just be awful again."
But I got up on the table and he took it while I was still talking about the problem of too many roosters and damn if it hadn't gone down to a level that is not only normal but also the lowest of any reading I've had in a doctor's office in years.

I am so grateful I found this kind doctor. He is not afraid to transcend that wall between himself and the patient which is so very rare but which, for a patient like me, is so very important.

So. That's done.

And then I met Lily and Jessie at Costco with Maggie and August. Levon was at home with his daddy and the two three-year old cousins had already been to the library story time and were in a merry mood.

First it was tickle time.

Then Magnolia decided to ride on the bottom of the cart. "Come on, August!" she said. So he joined her.

This made them happy for at least half an aisle.
When we left the store, Maggie ran to the wall outside and said, "Take our picture!"

And so we did. I suggested that they kiss which only inspired August to jump off the wall entirely.
Sigh...

I love those kids so much. I told them at one point that they cracked me up.
"We crackies," said August.
"Yes you are," I told him.

And so the rest of the day has gone by with me in the best of spirits. Getting a doctor's appointment over with is tantamount to the relief a junkie feels when he's scored.
At least I would imagine.
Of course the feeling won't last forever but for right now, it's a real good high.

I got to see August again later on when Vergil and his friend Sam came out to borrow Mr. Moon's Jon boat. Not only did they bring August but they brought Sam's ten month old little boy who is gorgeous and has huge blue eyes and indescribably thick, long eyelashes. I wanted to grab him up and start nomming his big, beautiful cheeks but I did not. I just flirted from afar. August and I went to the trash and recycle place- our so very special Mer-and-August thing to do. He just loves sitting in that booster seat like a big boy and we even stopped at the Post Office on the way back.

"Thank you for helping me," I told him. 

"I help lots of people," he said. 

He does. 

I got six nice eggs today from my sweet hens. I have determined that perhaps at least five of the young chicks are roosters. 

I am making venison chili. 

I feel somewhat reborn and renewed. 

And although there may be chicken shit on my porch I would never, EVER serve fast food hamberders to any guest in my house. 

I'm just classy like that. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Gray Matters

Anxiety ate me up this morning and spit me out and I drove to town to meet my kids and some of the grandkids at an Indian restaurant for lunch. I know that tomorrow's appointment is making me this kind of crazy which is ridiculous crazy and illogical crazy and stupid crazy and irrational crazy and I know all of that and yet, here we are. This time tomorrow it'll all be over except for the part where I'll be trying to figure out how to tell everyone I'm dying of some dread, horrible disease which is what I never fail to think is going to happen when I go to a doctor.
Even my sweet handsome doctor.

Enough of that. I may be too sick to go to the doctor tomorrow. Suddenly, after being hardly laid low at all by whatever this virus is, I feel terrible. Well, terrible-ish. My skin hurts. I am cold.
But before I succumbed to that and laid down on my bed and fell asleep, I did have that lunch with the children and it was sweet. August is feeling better but he didn't want to sit on a chair because he says he's been feeling dizzy and was afraid he'd fall off. So he sat on my lap which was lovely for me. He had a rough time of it in that May had brought Maggie her belated birthday presents and August was sorely jealous. Maggie grudgingly let him play with one of the two mermaids she'd gotten AND wear one of her new pink bracelets. So he brushed the mermaid's hair while I ate my lunch as he'd had a peanut butter sandwich before they got there. Levon sat on his mother's lap and shared her food. Maggie sat on her own chair, her birthday crown atop her head, mostly upside down but still regal.

After that I went to Publix and almost all of the cold-section things were not in place due to an unexplained cooler breakdown throughout the store. Luckily I needed neither yogurt nor lettuce and got the things I needed and came home.

It's been gray today, and wet-cold. Just miserable.
I'm going to make our supper and then take a hot shower and get in bed, wake up, get that appointment over with, come home and plan my funeral.

Sounds about right.

I'll check in tomorrow night and let you know how it went.

Love...Ms. Moon

Chickens And Poop And Dirt, As Usual

Mr. Moon is home and Owen has been delivered safely to his baseball practice and they did not bring home a deer but they did get stuck in the red Georgia clay-muck and I hear that Owen loved the mud-bogging which was done not exactly on purpose but happened anyway.
I am glad to have my fella home and I'm sure that Owen's mom and dad and sister and brother are glad to have him home too. When Maggie was here she would occasionally ask, "Where Owen?" and when I woke Gibson up on Saturday morning he said, "I can't go to soccer! Owen is one of the coaches!"
He seemed genuinely distressed about this.
I assured him that the other coach could handle the situation but I'm not sure he believed me.
Owen is definitely the beloved big brother.

Okay. See that picture up there? That's three of the not-so-babies who were on the back porch today along with a bunch of other chickens. After I got them all off of the porch and back into the yard where they belong I blocked up the hole in the screen where they come in and made a pronouncement which was NO MORE CHICKENS ON THE BACK PORCH!
Look. It would be far more fun to have them keeping me company if they didn't just poop so randomly. I will never own another dog because of the poop factor and goddammit, chickens just poop everywhere and I don't need to be spending my time cleaning it up. Their poop should be outside where it can fertilize the yard.
So. What this means is, we probably need to fix the hole in the screen and also, no more feeding of chickens on the porch.
Ever.
Dearie is going to be pissed. The other day she actually pecked my leg so hard it made a bruise, trying to alert me to the fact that she was indeed right there and needed food.
Good lord. Chickens are domesticated but not THAT domesticated.

So anyway, I had a pleasant morning and afternoon. Temperatures were warm and the sky was blue. I cleaned the nests in the hen house (speaking of chicken shit) and pulled up some more of the invasive Glory Flower and weeded a few rows of greens in the garden and also replanted beets.
Maurice helped me.

I finally have enough greens to make salads and I am thrilled beyond all appropriateness about this. 

I realized today that the chickens have been eating the collard greens. Collards are their favorite greens and my plants all look as if someone with a pair of manicure scissors has gone crazy with them. They can fly over the fence and they do and well, also, I need a new gate on the garden fence. The one there now is falling apart and hard to close all the way. 

What I really need is a system of raised beds to grow my vegetables in but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Mr. Moon already has about fifty projects ahead of that foolishness on the to-do list. 

Or possibly one-hundred and fifty. 

So that's what my day was all about. Chickens and poop and weeds and greens. After all of my bitching about my hens and roosters, you may wonder why I keep them in the first place. 

And that would be one answer. 

Of course the fact is, is that I just love them. They entertain and amuse me. They soothe and delight me. They sing and croon to me. And now, thanks to the lovely Jennifer at Sparrow Tree Journal, they have helped me to define myself. She sent me a link on Facebook which you can find HERE

By god, I am a Hen Wife!

And now I know. 

Thank you, Jennifer. I feel so honored that you thought of me when you read that piece. 

All right! That's enough. Gotta go cook some supper. Spicy mustard shrimp tonight with rice and of course, a nice green salad. A really, really fresh nice green salad. 

Love...Ms. Moon