Sublime To Insane

After our day yesterday of getting some of that sweet, sweet rain, the sky cleared and I noticed that the sunset was one of the fiery ones. It had already started to fade to a softer pastel by the time I was really aware of it but I wanted to catch what I could. I was drawn to the bit of the western sky framed by the church next door and the trees from our yard. The light that comes on in front of the church was already lit and that adds some different lighting which seemed pretty interesting. 
Anyway, I took the picture and there it is. 

And here's what I learned last night: Roasted cabbage is not for us. 
Thank you very much but no. Never again. 
It was a New York Times Cooking recipe and had such things in it as capers, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic. 
All the good stuff. 
But it simply didn't work together in my opinion and I may have done something wrong but the promise of the caramelized cabbage becoming sweet and tender was not fulfilled. It was recommended to roast at 450 degrees for twenty-five to thirty five minutes and after forty-five minutes, my cabbage was becoming charred on the outside leaves and still quite cabbagey in the inside leaves. And I like the taste of cabbage fine but somehow this didn't work at all for us. I ended up throwing the whole mess of leftovers into the compost which is something I almost never do. I should have saved it all and made some cabbage soup of some sort with the remaining wedges but at that point I didn't really want to think about cabbage. 

Mr. Moon worked his butt off today in the back yard planting fruit trees. I went about my business letting him take care of that business. I did check every so often to make sure his body was still in the upright position and it always was. I didn't even realize he'd taken out the last remaining bit of the play set he'd built for the kids years and years ago which was a tower sort of thing. A tree during a storm took out the swings and some other stuff. But he started telling me about how he'd planted some of the trees where the tower had been and I'm like, "Where'd it go?"
"I took it down," he said. 
"How?" I asked. As you know by now, Mr. Moon builds things to be sturdy and to last. 
"With the truck," he said. 
"Oh. Well, that's good," I said. All these years later I'm still thinking, who IS this guy?

I did my walk-about of the garden of course. 

I picked some snow peas. Those vines finally started producing. Not one of the sugar snap seeds germinated which is weird. Snow peas are fine but they can't compare to sugar snaps whose pods are sweet as candy and you can let the peas inside swell and grow to a decent size. They, too, are sweet. So obviously, a superior green pea. 
BUT, one must pick what one has grown and I often reach in one of my pockets to find it full of snow peas I'd forgotten were there. 
Bless cargo shorts. 

That's a few of them in one of my flower bowls. 

Everything else in the garden is looking good and then I gave a quick once-over to the bed beside the kitchen porch to check that out and holy Jesus. I found an amaryllis absolutely covered in the growing-ever-bigger-but-still-children Georgia Thumpers. 

That wasn't a tenth of all the ones on that plant. My god but they are eating machines. They're bigger than anything I want to grab and smush with my hands now so I knocked them all to the ground, thinking I could stomp on them but they ARE grasshoppers and they ARE young and spry and I couldn't stomp a one. They were hopping around like popcorn in a skillet. 
I wonder how their mother tells them apart. 

Mr. Moon is gone for the night. He's near the coast at his friend Alan's house and no, they're not going fishing tomorrow. In this instance, they're doing something sweet and important which is to take the ashes of Glen's sweet sister Dee Ann who died quite awhile ago to gently give to the Gulf, a place Dee Ann loved so much. Alan is kindly lending his boat and his piloting of it and Dee Ann's children are going to be there too. They've been planning on doing this for years and now it is coming to fruition. They're staying at Mexico Beach, which is farther along the coast than St. George and which is where Dee and her husband stayed whenever they got the chance. I believe that Dee Ann's husband's ashes were sprinkled in the Gulf too so it's a romantic notion to think that somehow they'll find each other in the ocean currents. 
Whatever comforts us. 

And now to move on, what do YOU think about last night's assassination attempt at the White House Correspondent's Dinner? When I first heard about it I was struck by how bizarrely it all happened from the fact that the Orange Poop Baby attended the dinner at all which he has never done before and that despite every bit of security it would be assumed possible was at the event and yet some guy with a gun got past security and managed to get off a few shots? And I have not read anything definitive about where the gun was allegedly discharged, whether in the same room where the dinner was going on or in another room or...what? Where?
And then throw in the fact that Secret Service and all those guys (and women) were issuing assurances within a short amount of time that the shooter had been found, subdued, and apprehended and the only injury was to one Secret Service member whose bullet-proof vest, according to Trump, saved his life. The man was treated at a local hospital and then released. Allegedly. 
I have so much to say but I really don't know shit. The things I DO know, like the fact that within two hours, the Orange Poop Baby was holding a press conference at the White House whose main message was that see? The ballroom needs to be built because...security, sounded then and sounds now to be as fake as the man's tan. 

Let me give you this. And thank you, Jeff Tiedrich. 

Security? Give me a fucking break. I just want to say that if this was not a staged event, then the security under Donald Trump is a big fat fucking joke and the fact that we all so calmly received the news that there was another assassination attempt against the president is proof that we have truly jumped the shark, accepted unreality as reality, and all because we, the frogs, have been in this pot of boiling water for so long we can't tell the difference and accept the killing heat as life as usual. 

I remember when Trump decided to bomb Iran and we all knew it was to distract the world from the Epstein files that my biggest fear was that the war-not-a-war would not go well, that it would be hugely unpopular and that another distraction would be called for and that, of course, would not go well either, and then...
One distraction after another, each of them intended to not only distract from the Epstein files but from the latest distraction used to distract. 

Know what I mean? 

I'm going to go cook some tofu and snow peas. 

Love...Ms. Moon

More Pictures And So Forth

 I forgot to post this picture of the loveliest rose bower at the nursery yesterday. I need one of those. 
Badly.

The biggest news from Lloyd today is that we finally got some rain. I doubt it was a quarter of an inch but by golly, that was enough to hang our hats on hope. Of a sort. We even got some thunder rumbles and it was fantastic. The way the dirt smelled after the first little shower was almost enough to knock me out. The birds' songs seem to be more cheerful, the air is a little bit cooler, and already the small amount of grass we have in the back yard looks greener and less crunchy. There's not any more rain in the forecast for at least a week but at least we know the rain function is still capable of working. 

So the news on the floor of the cabin is not good. 
At all. 
The guy's definition of "great" was definitely not the same as Glen's definition of great. If anything, I think he believes it to look as bad or even worse than it did before. I finally saw picture and trust me when I say that it looks nothing like what Glen wanted or described or a tile sample he gave the guy to use as a color guide. 
But, there were no fisticuffs, Glen did pay him, although not as much as had originally been agreed on, and lawyers are not going to be involved.
Let it go...

Glen'll figure out some way to get the floor to a place he can live with but it's going to mean more money and more effort and more time. 
And that's that story. He's rather down but he'll figure things out. He always does. 

I did not do a whole lot today. On my garden stroll I took a few pictures. 

Cucumbers are blooming. So are the volunteer acorn squash. As I keep saying, I think they are acorn squash. 
Guess what else is blooming? 

The rattlesnake beans. Come on, baby! 

The vines are eager and energetic, trying already to reach up to outer space. 

While playing with my new camera I got this picture of a rose with an ant in it. 
And speaking of ants, fuck them very much, I got attacked twice today by fire ants but survived. Thank goodness I'm not allergic or I probably would have died, trying to dial 911 and not having the breath to report my emergency. This is not a joke. I have no idea how many bites I got. The first attack occurred when I was trying to remove some detritus from the compost pile that Mr. Moon had told me was not going to break down. He'd warned me there were many, many ants in the pile but I didn't remember. And I didn't realize I was being attacked until the fire in "fire ants" started flaming on my feet which is how it always happens. They're so tiny you can't feel them until they begin to inject their fiery poison into you at which point you're probably covered in them, which my feet and hands were, although the hands to a lesser degree. 
The second attack came when I was watering the porch plants and decided to rip a raggedy spider plant out of its pot so that I could use the pot for a different plant, only to discover the dirt in the pot was housing an entire colony of the little bastards. This attack may have been even worse. I finally gave up trying to dump the dirt out of the pot and just knocked it off the porch and onto the ground below. I really didn't want to break that particular pot because it's a good one, but at that point I could not have given a fuck. I just wanted Satan's emissaries off my porch. 
The pot did not break. 
And as far as I'm concerned, that spider plant can rot in hell. It's looked shitty for a long time and I guess I know why now. 
And as an update- that plant I put in a pot after digging it up in the kitchen porch bed? It's doing GREAT! 
Of course. 

This is a picture of a pineapple guava flower. The flowers, along with the resulting fruit, are edible. I did not eat this one though, I just took its picture. 

Glen planted a few of the fruit trees when he got home from Lake Seminole or perhaps only one. I'm not sure. He was tired. He got up way early to get there on time and nothing can be as fatiguing as huge disappointment. And of course the way he's planting these trees is THE RIGHT WAY which involves all sorts of hard work. Now me? I'd probably just dig a hole and stick the plant in it and sprinkle it with some fertilizer but he's doing all sorts of things to amend the soil with the composted horse shit and a little bit of organic fertilizer and he makes sure the dirt is all broken up and nice and crumbly to make a welcoming home for the root ball. And then he covers the whole area with pine straw after he gets the tree in the ground and this involves a shovel and post hole diggers and other implements of importance in the process. 

Here's some roses I picked today. 

And finally, Mr. Moon trailered his boat home from the lake because...
A week from Monday we are heading back down to Roseland for a week to stay in the cabana by the pool with the spitting lions and he wants to bring the boat so we can do a little river exploration and he can go fishing at the place he hired a guide to take him on our last trip down. 
Am I excited? 
You bet. 
I ordered a new bathing suit today. I hope it gets here in time. It fucking better. I paid seventeen extra dollars for express delivery. It's a simple black Speedo with no frills or fanciness. 

And one more thing. Today is my Lis's birthday. I called her and she sounds tired. I wonder why?
Well, as she said, someone has been overbooking them. And they've been doing festivals, not only playing but also selling Lis's artwork and having to camp at the festivals and they've been doing a lot of recording in their studio which means that Lis has been making meals for the people being recorded and hostessing them with every bit of southern hospitality in her soul which is a whole lot. 

Here's a picture from ten years ago when Lis was here for her birthday. 

That was August loving his fairy great-godmother and Jessie loving her fairy godmother. 
That was one second ago. 

Happy birthday, my darling Lis!

And I must post this picture of Levon which Jessie just sent.

Vergil had to go shopping today for some business clothes as he is going to DC this week to his company's headquarters and Levon somehow managed to get some new outfits of his own. As Jessie said, he is feeling himself. 

August? Well, he spent the entire time reading the new books they just got at the library. Here he is, doing, as Jessie said, what he does. 

Our boys. Every child different. Every child adored for exactly who they are. 

Love...Ms. Moon

An Unexpected Adventure

I was in the midst of my Friday routine this morning, washing sheets and getting ready to hang them on the line and I thought I might shovel some horse shit and I did a little tour of the garden which I do every day. 
It must be done.
Not for the garden but for me. It's like going to the baby's room and kissing her good morning every day. And when you do this little garden tour every day you can see the progress made from the day before, whether it's seeds sprouting or sprouted seeds getting bigger or blossoms promising vegetables or new peppers appearing or new tomatoes appearing and/or the swelling of tomatoes.
I'm sure I've said this before (and hopefully not last week) that there have been times when I've gotten home after dark from being out of town for a few days when I've gone out to the garden with a flashlight because, well, as I said, it must be done. 
It is my joy. 

So anyway, I was just puttering along and Mr. Moon had fixed my clothesline so that the lines were tauter and the line that had come loose was refastened and he was talking about shoveling horse shit himself and then he said, "Hey. You want to go down to Just Fruits and get some fruit trees? We could stop and get lunch. I've been wanting some fried oysters."
Hmmm.
Did I? 
You know how strictly I try to stick to my routines and it was already past noon and of course I'd have to get the laundry off the line and make up the bed and then make supper. I mean. These things are important. 
To me. 
But after I mentioned all of this I said, "Okay. Let's do it."

So Glen cleared out the back of the 4-Runner so we could put plants in it since the truck has the composted horse manure in it, and I changed clothes. A little bit. A drive to Crawfordville with stops at a place for fried oysters and then a nursery does not require much in the way of wardrobe consideration. Men's cargo shorts were involved.

We didn't know where we wanted to eat. Mr. Moon had suggested one place but I could not bear the florescent light ambiance. So when we passed Ouzts Too on the Crawfordville Highway and saw folks eating outside I said, "I bet you could get some fried oysters at Ouzts." I didn't say Ouzts Too because I don't think of it like that. The original Ouzts was right on the St. Mark's river and flooded during a hurricane many years ago and so the rebuild a few hundred yards away was named Ouzts Too. 
Now Ouzts is a local landmark and has been in business for at least forty years and they cater to bikers and locals and whoever stops by. They have bands outside sometimes and I suppose it can get quite raucous but today it was low-key. There was one table of old gents who looked like they may well have been Viet Nam vets or at least have seen and done things that most of us probably can't imagine, and a table of folks who looked like they were slumming it, which of course we were too, in a way, and a huge table of what seemed to be an office celebration situation. 

I had to take a picture of two of the gents because they were just so emblematic of the sort of customers Ouzts gets. I didn't want to be obvious in taking this picture because that would be rude. So I told Glen that I was going to take his picture but mostly I wanted to get the old dudes behind him. 

They appeared to be drinking their lunch and I have a feeling this may be a daily custom. 

The smell of burning weed came and went during our time there. 
It's a laid-back sorta place. 

It took forever to get our food because of that large table of office mates. I mean- forever. I was ready to leave and go buy a bag of Cheetos at the nearest convenience store. But eventually lunch arrived and it looked so good.

Glen's fried shrimp and oyster basket with onion rings. 

My smoked mullet with potato salad. Which I feel sure came from the deli in the IGA down the road. 

I know that many of you have never had mullet, smoked or otherwise, but it is a delicacy and has sustained the lives of more people than any government ever has. 

This could be the official slogan of what used to be called "The Forgotten Coast" around here. 

Sadly, almost tragically, Glen's oysters and shrimp were way too salty and my mullet tasted of the freezer which is a sin comparable to...well. I can't think of anything that would deserve such disappointment and almost disgust. It didn't even taste smoked which is the very essence of the deliciousness of smoked mullet. There was not enough Tabasco or Crystal hot sauces in the whole restaurant to remedy the situation. 
I gave up and ate my IGA deli potato salad which was delicious and a pack of crackers and that was that. 

Still. We had a good time sitting out in the perfect weather, which it was. 

And then on we went to Just Fruits which is an extremely cool nursery that sells fruit trees suited to living in this area and also, a few exotic plants. 
Glen had a list of fruits he wanted to buy and we did buy some of them. He asked an employee to help us and she was quite helpful although I swear to god, she sounded like Minnie Mouse if Minnie Mouse was a kindergarten teacher. 
I managed to control myself and be kind. 
It was not easy. 
We ended up with a Satsuma tangerine, a Meyers lemon, two pineapple guavas, two different peaches whose names I cannot remember, and, oh, probably something else. Pears! We got pears too!  And fertilizer. For sure we got fertilizer. It was hard to stop there but I kept remembering what a responsibility it is to keep and nurture fruit trees and that's no joke. 
I loved the guys who helped us load the plants in the back of the 4-Runner. One of them was barefoot with long hair caught back with a hair tie, and the other had a few teeth missing and a tattoo of jigsaw pieces on his face and was wearing a Star of David necklace. And other things. 
We had a good chat with them about mulberry trees and cats and that was one of my favorite parts of our little adventure. 

We drove on home and Glen's unloaded our trees. 

He may or may not get started planting them tomorrow in the backyard where we took out the horrible Bradford pears. We are dreaming that it will be our little orchard, our little grove. He may not get that done because he is going up to the cabin tomorrow to look at the floor which the floor guy proclaims, "Looks great!" 

Ooh boy. 

I sure hope so. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

In Which I Speak Of Literal Horseshit

Heading south on Main Street, Lloyd, FL

I decided to take a little walk this morning which is something I have not done in forever. But for some reason, it was easy to put my shoes on and head out. I walked west on Old Lloyd Road, first, my old route that takes me past Harvey's, up to the county line. Everything felt fine but I turned around at about the half mile mark because I wanted to walk down Main Street too, but I didn't want to push my milage because I'm so out of walking-shape. 
Before I turned around though, I took these pictures of what is a fairly common roadside flowering plant here. 

I'm not sure I'd ever done on ID on it before but I did one today and it is called Rattlebox and upon looking it up, I see that it is considered a toxic weed which is...very invasive. 
One of the few invasive plants around here that I haven't seen in my yard. 
Yet. 
The flowers are a bit strange and a bit lovely, aren't they? I see them in other places on my usual route and they stand out with their deep orange color. 

Nothing on Main Street seems to have changed much since I last walked down it. The fally-down house is still in the process of falling down. Abraham's yard is still as tidy as a clean quilt on a freshly made bed. The same ancient oaks are still there, the old store that was restored with funds from some sort of historical society something-something still lies empty, the yard around it overgrown. 

Lloyd. 

The My Gypsy Soul Boutique has changed though, in that I am thinking it may never open again. The banner that was stuck in front of it advertising lottery ticket sales is gone and I think that might have been the last hurrah. The "local" art didn't work, the vaguely bohemian jewelry and clothing didn't work, the tarot reading didn't work, the selling of CBD and other smoke-related things didn't work. 
I am mostly shocked that it stayed open for so as long as it did.

The rest of my day after the little walk was mostly spent outside. Glen planted a few rows of white acre peas and zipper peas and offered me the opportunity to plant one more row of white acres. I took him up on that offer. He'd already laid out the row so it was mostly a matter of just poking little holes in the ground with my finger, dropping a pea in each one, covering them up and giving them a nice little pat. 

I gave my gardenia bush another once over. Look who I found lurking in the branches. 

One of our pretty little green anoles. I adore their eye shadow. I love the way this one's tiny front leg looks like an arm, casually draped over the back of a chair or someone's shoulders. This isn't a great picture but the little one knew I was there and I didn't dare get any closer for fear of it taking off for a safer hiding place. 

My first zinnia bloom.

Of course this one is on a volunteer plant, growing up from a plant reseeded from last year. The ones I did plant a few weeks ago are coming up nicely but it'll be awhile and I stupidly planted them in rows which is simply ridiculous and an insult to the entire zinnia empire which wants to be a scattered thing. I have no idea what I was thinking. 
Perhaps I was channeling Mr. Moon and his desire to see only straight lines in the garden. 

Now. Speaking of Mr. Moon and the garden, he's been talking for awhile about driving the truck down to a local horse farm and getting some free composted horse shit and today he did it. 
He asked me if I wanted to come help him shovel it into the truck and I said, "No. I do not." 
I have become quite blunt here in my later years. 
And that's fine. I don't have to shovel horse shit but there's a little story behind a time when I did which was that when Glen first came into my life, he immediately wanted to be my knight in shining armor and provide whatever it was I needed. 
Like, the first thing he did was to build a fence around my backyard which I do not think we need to delve too deeply in as to the symbolic meaning there. 
It was a beautiful fence. 
But I had a little garden in that back yard and he found out where he could get some horse shit and both of us, along with Hank and May who were quite young then, drove out to Jefferson County and filled the truck bed. At that time, I was pretty darn young and spry and I honestly believe that one of the main things Glen Moon first loved about me was the fact that I would shovel horse shit into the truck bed and would shovel it out of the truck bed and onto the garden. 
We always joke that it was that and my biscuits which charmed him so.
I will add that there were other attributes I had which he also admired but we have no need to discuss those. 

And so today, after I told Glen quite plainly that no, I did not want to shovel horse shit into the truck bed nor was I going to do it, I added that I could possibly help shovel it out of the truck bed and onto the garden. 

And here's what he came home with.

Do you see how helpfully he's got it all so close to the tailgate so that it will be easier to get from the truck to the garden? 
He's so thoughtful like that. 
It's not enough that I make biscuits every Sunday morning? 

Meanwhile, I did some more weeding in the hydrangea bed and did a few other outside-related things and then...

I mopped that kitchen. 
Twice. 
Mission accomplished! 

Here are a few more orchid bloom pictures. For some bizarre reason (I am thinking demonic possession) that little neglected orchid plant is blooming like it's getting paid. 

Will wonders never cease? 
Probably not.

Love...Ms. Moon

 

Well, Hell And So It Goes

If you are especially observant (and no one needs to be that observant), you may notice that this hibiscus-to-be is not the one I had drying from last week to hopefully go into the kiln this week. 
Sigh.
That hibiscus looked like this.

And THAT hibiscus which was the single most thing I've made in pottery ever that I felt truly, truly satisfied with and excited about. 

So of course I broke it this morning. 

I picked it up incorrectly by one of the petals and that was that. It fell apart totally and completely. I understand now that when clay gets to what they call bone dry, a stage of hardness before it goes into the kiln, it shatters like that. 
So I sure as shit learned a lesson and I shouldn't have picked it up like that anyway. 
But. What can one do? 
I started another one. I am not nearly as happy with it as I was with the first one. When I was making that one, I felt as if my hands had a mind of their own somehow. This time I felt awkward and incompetent. Everyone kept saying, "This one will be easier because you already made one," but it wasn't. 
I have finishing to do on it, including making the filament and related sexy parts. And then it will have to go into the kiln and if I'm lucky it'll only take a week to get it fired and then I'll glaze paint it and it will be fired again...
And so forth. 

Sigh. 

But you know- it was not the end of the world. It didn't even register in the "bad things that can happen" category. It was just a thing made out of clay and no one will go hungry or be injured because it broke. 
And I still enjoyed class a lot. It was another class where everyone concentrated on their projects but we chatted a lot, too. We laughed and we hugged. Lizzie was back from her journey and her gentleman caller stepped in to say hello. We all get a little tittery when he comes in. He's so handsome. 
Jessie is working on some amazing things and why I didn't get a picture of them is beyond me. I just sort of forget. Another class member is working on a beautiful vase and Lizzie is making the most precious little whippet dogs. And today there was an airedale, too. She has whippets and adores them although I'm not sure about who has the airedale. Gentleman caller? I know their first real meet-up was at the dog park. 
Our Shelly in the class went to a festival this weekend and we were all excited to hear about that. She is making exquisite bowls. And there is another woman in our class who also makes beautiful bowls. She is starting to struggle with memory but she has no problem remembering how to sit at the wheel and throw a bowl. 

After class, Jessie and I went to the Mediterranean restaurant which is always good and Lily, Lauren, and Gibson came in to sit with us and visit. They'd just had a big brunch so were not hungry. Gibson was out of school because he needed to get an ID today. The official kind that you get at the driver's license place. 

And the reason? Now that he is fourteen, he has gotten a job at Publix. He will start out as a bagger, as everyone seems to do. He is so excited. In his Gibson way, which is quiet but very smiley. He is one of those people who KNOW stuff. Like, facts. Like facts about presidents and scientific things and, oh hell, I don't know. But he does. He was explaining the presidency of John Quincy Adams to us today and all of us were rather astounded. He was so much more educated on how our government works than any of us adults that we were sort of ashamed. And then he told us about a duel that Andrew Jackson was in wherein he cheated and killed the other guy. 
We were not surprised about that.
As I said to my grandson, "He was a son of a bitch." 
I felt fairly sure of my facts in that statement. 

And so it went. I stopped by Costco on my way home for avocados and cherry tomatoes and a few other necessities including some face cream which is absolutely going to erase years from my skin. 
It will be a miracle! 
Of course I don't believe that but what the heck? You gotta put something on your face before you go to bed. A girl needs something fun like new face moisturizer now and then. 
Am I right? 

Glen's been having a time of it and I haven't even discussed the tooth that caused him pain all weekend and probably a lot longer than that. He does not bitch about pain so if he even mentions it, I know it must be pretty bad. He hasn't had a regular dentist in quite awhile so I sent him to my dentist, the young and lovely Dr. Jones who took over my old, longtime dentist's practice when he retired, and he liked her fine and today she pulled the tooth that hurt and so that was a relief. He is now on a journey to take better care of his teeth and I am very proud of him. He spent so much time in a dentist's chair as a child and in college that he has avoided dentists as much as possible but it's time to man-up and get this done. 
He decided that what he needed after the extraction was a little water therapy and so he is out on the St. Marks river, fishing for bass and loving his life. 
Here are two videos he sent me which absolutely belong in the OMGitswicks category of Only in Florida.

And this one has manatees in it. 

So I guess he's had about the perfect day. 
Well, except for having to get a tooth pulled. 

He just got home so I guess I'll go heat him up some soft food. 

And by the way- I did not get the kitchen mopped AGAIN! 
Tomorrow. I swear. Tomorrow. 

Love...Ms. Moon

And yet another P.S. 

The link to the video of the Oprah episode Hank was on can be found HERE. 

Oh my heart. 

Thank you, Anonymous. So much.

A P.S. Lagniappe To The Last Post

Man. Memories can definitely be off. Here's the text exchange Hank and I just had. 

Okay. That's a bit messy but there you have Hank's memory of the event and I am sure that is the correct one. 

"Hugs From Random Queers" would be a great name for novel, a memoir, or even a poem, don't you think? 

Oprah Story

This is not the Oprah mug that I had and/or have. I thought I still had one but can't find it. I've had two of them. They're what Oprah used to give you when you appeared on her show as a guest.

Classy, eh? 

One of the mugs I had came courtesy of Hank after he'd been on the show and the other, its twin, came with this house. 

So. Why was Hank on Oprah?
Well. Because he's so damn cool, of course. 

Many years ago, back when Hank was but a high school senior, I think, he was the first openly queer kid in the history of his high school. This was Tallahassee, Florida back around 1993 or 1994. 
Again- I think. 
Hank has always been exactly who Hank is and oh, honey, some of the stories I could tell you...
Like the one about what happened with the sister of the groom at a family wedding in Connecticut...
We don't need to go into that now. We shall stick with Oprah.
So. There was Hank, in high school, and every day these specific boys who were also students, would harangue him. Insult him. Call him vile names and so forth. Even threaten him. In other words, they were not raised right and were flaming haters of all things homosexual. 
(More on that later but you can guess where this goes.)

So somehow, some way, someone who worked for Oprah knew someone who had Tallahassee connections and had heard about Hank. Oprah wanted to put together a show about how openly out queer kids got treated at their schools by other students. 
And so, Hank was invited to be one of the participants, as were the flaming homosexual haters. 
When he told me about this, it was like, "So Mom, they're going to fly me to Chicago and send a limo to pick me up and put me in a room at a great hotel and everything's taken care of. Can I go?" And all of this was going to happen tomorrow. As in, the next day. 

Now I probably would have insisted on going with him but it just so happened that this was the exact same time May had been hit by a car on her way to school and was in the hospital recovering from multiple surgeries and it was a miracle she was alive. 
I can't talk about this without crying so we'll just move on from here.
So of course I was spending every waking hour with her at the hospital and none of her other parents could go so...despite my better judgement, I gave my permission and off Hank went to Chicago. I feel sure that I talked to someone who convinced me of the legitimacy of the situation. 
God, I hope so. As one can imagine, I was not really in my right mind at the time. And how could I have been?
I can't remember the exact timing but somehow I think the show with Hank aired before he got home although he well have been there with us and a bunch of us gathered in May's hospital room to watch it. Family. His friends. Our friends. The nurses...
May's nurse that day was a gay man and he popped into the room as much as possible, letting himself be as camp as all get-out and there in that room we all felt so proud of Hank for all the reasons and as his mother, I was overcome with what an amazing person my child was. 
Tearing up again. 
Of course.
The thing about those mean, ignorant boys was that their threats to Hank really had been serious and they threatened May, too, who although she did not go to the same high school, walked past it on the way to her own school. They knew she was Hank's sister and made her another target of their hate.
I had no idea how far this taunting and name-calling had gotten and as a mother, I was ashamed of not knowing that. 
Well. What's done is done and this is not about me. 

And Hank became something of a celebrity in the overall gay community of this part of the south and I was even recognized as being his mother! You're Hank's mother? Oh my god! 
And I was proud as I could be to say, Yes. Yes I am. 
And as these things go, one or more of those boys eventually crawled out of the closet themselves. And in a way, I feel so sorry for them because they were so afraid of being recognized for who they were that they had to hate someone else to hide their true nature, not only to others but to themselves. 

So that's the story of how Hank was on Oprah.
It was an experience and I'm so glad he got to have it although it is sad and tragic beyond belief that that show had to be made at all. 
But hey! Thanks, Oprah. 

All right. I believe I will go make our supper. Today was fine and once again, I did not mop the kitchen. I went to town and got some groceries and also stopped in at Oak Tree Treasures where everything in the store was half off and I bought two overblouses, one of them yet another white linen button up, a boatneck long-sleeved pink shirt and a bowl I'd had my eye on for quite awhile. 

What the heck is that flat part for? 

So you can rest it on its side while whisking or scraping something out of it. I may never use that feature but I like the bowl on its own merits. I think it will be a good bread-rising bowl. 

And look at what Mr. Moon has spent the last three days doing.

He's replaced the back porch steps with brand new ones. I think he's going to paint them with some sort of gritted coating to prevent slipping. 
Or something. 

That man. 
I have the best men in my life. And I know it. 

Love...Ms. Moon

History Of A Bathroom. Also A Possible Reason To Possibly Believe In The Simulation Theory

There. That picture is for Ms. Debby at Life's Funny Like That  who asked to see it. She said I'd probably posted it before and I have but a good Talavera sink is always worth another look. We got that in Mexico a long time ago and Glen put it in the...what IS that thing I have in my bathroom that's neither a counter nor a cabinet nor a vanity? I don't know. Some old piece of furniture that was repurposed. You can clearly see it in yesterday's post. 

I know I've posted about this too, but I call my beautiful bathroom "the bathroom that Oprah built." 
There is a reason for this. The man we bought this house from had been married to a writer named Connie May Fowler and they lived here together for quite some time but according to my across-the-street neighbors, one day she showed up when he was gone with a moving van and hauled everything out that she wanted and took off, never to be seen in Lloyd again. They divorced and we bought the house. 
The funny thing is, I had read and truly enjoyed several of Ms. Fowler's books. The first one I read was "River of Hidden Dreams." I thought it was a beautiful book. To this day I think it is my favorite although she wrote a nonfiction book called, "When Katie Wakes" which literally kept me up and reading until about four o'clock in the morning. I'll never forget that. We were on Dog Island and not too long after that, she actually wrote a book which mostly took place on a barrier island with a different name but which was, in fact, Dog Island. "Remember Blue." 
There were lots of mentions of places in Tallahassee and down on the coast which was interesting but I had to say that the novel did not light my fire. 
She even wrote one about living in this house. "How Clarissa Burden Learned To Fly." It is...well, interesting. I was SO excited to read it but it was just a little too odd for me. She mentions the Hilltop which is cool and her philandering husband, which she really did have, (I found proof of that when we moved in), and okay, a dwarf circus. In Lloyd. 
But Ms. Moon- how does Oprah come into this story?
Well. Connie May Fowler wrote another book which was published in 1996 titled, "Before Women Had Wings." Oprah read this book and decided she not only wanted to make a movie of it, she wanted to be in it. And she did and she was. 
I have no idea how much Ms. Fowler made from this whole thing but I have a strong feeling that some of the money, at least, went to building that bathroom. 
Both the book and the movie were gritty and filled with domestic abuse, alcoholism, child abuse, poverty, and suicide. 
Not a beach read, y'all! 
But I can definitely see why Oprah wanted to be involved with the making of a movie from it. 

WHAT IN HELL WAS I TALKING ABOUT?

Oh yeah. My bathroom. 

Here's another photo from my annual series of what the shadows and the light look like in the morning through the east-facing window of my bathroom. Those shadows are mostly made by the sun shining through bamboo and although I curse and revile it constantly, I look forward every year to this particular time when that curtain becomes a screen behind which the bamboo creates shadows which dance and sway and bring animation and life to what is usually one of the most pragmatic and utilitarian rooms in a house. 

Not my house, though. 

I am grateful to Connie May Fowler and Oprah Winfrey too for this room which I consider to be the best room in this house. 

So what else? I didn't get the kitchen mopped. 
Oh well. 
I did get the garden more thoroughly weeded and the last of the lettuce picked, washed, bagged, and put in the refrigerator. I also mulched using not only bags of leaves that Mr. Moon's friend gave him but also leaves that I raked in my front yard and toted to the garden. It's really so easy. I just lay down an old sheet and rake the leaves onto it and dump them in the garden cart. 

Here are a few pictures from the garden today. 

Here are the rattlesnake beans, snaking their way up the fence and trellis. I see buds on them. Soon I will be picking them and the canning jars will be put back into use. 

Garden roses. 

Big Boy tomatoes coming along nicely. 

Black cherry tomatoes. I can't wait to taste these. 

Snow peas illuminated like stained glass, only you can eat them. 

And I guess that's all. 

Tomorrow I shall surely mop the kitchen. Right? 

Oh, and by the way- guess where Connie May Fowler moved some years ago?
Cozumel. Where Mr. Moon and I bought that sink. A place I love with all my heart. 
WTF? 
I have no idea if she's still there or not. 
And to add just one more little tiny detail- Hank was once on Oprah too. Unfortunately, she did not make a movie about his life. 

Life is funny sometimes. Life is odd. And weird. 

So what else is new? 

Love...Ms. Moon