Another Post About The Weather, But Not Really

You know what? I have posted 1053 posts since May of 2007.
One thousand and fifty three. Fifty-four, counting this one.
And I am frankly amazed. Whether I am amazed that it's so many or whether I am amazed that it's not even more, I am not sure.

When I started out with my very first post, I timidly discussed the weather.
And how many times have I discussed the weather since then?
Oh. Countless times.

I thought, when I began to blog, that I would quickly run out of things to say. Haha! I post more often now than I did a year ago and a lot more than I did two years ago. An entire day never passes that I don't post. A morning, maybe, but not an entire day. It's addictive behavior on my part, I am sure, not to mention my grand sense of needing to be heard, needing to be wanted, needing to communicate, needing to WRITE.

I write because I am selfish. Until I get a post up, I feel itchy and twitchy and mean, an addict needing her fix. The computer is the needle. The words are the drug. Weekends are hard for me because Mr. Moon is here and he quite reasonably expects some conversation out of his wife, his partner, if not an actual breakfast. This morning I made him bacon and pancakes. I learned something, too- buttermilk can go bad. But you can still cook with it. Unless we get sick later on- in which case I will acknowledge the fact that you can cook with it but you shouldn't.

After breakfast I told him I was going to go out to tend the chickens and asked if he wanted to go. Yes, he did, but hold on because he had other things to do outside and so he wanted to dress for those activities, to make the cup of coffee he was going to take with him. The microwaving of it (because it's never hot enough right out of the pot) and the stirring in of the sugar and then the putting of it in the thermal cup with a lid. I thought I might silently go mad, waiting for him. I had already made the breakfast while putting away last night's clean dishes, read a few blogs, read part of the newspaper, had a phone conversation with Jessie who wanted to know if she could wash a down comforter after a cat had peed on it, washed the dishes I had used to make the breakfast, etc. Talk about multi-tasking. Honey, I can DO that.

But I can't do more than one thing when I write. I have to sit down with no one around and do it. By myself. And although Mr. Moon never complains about the time I spend doing that- sitting by myself with my own words- and sometimes even delights in what I've written or the pictures I've posted, he doesn't get my need to do it.
Just as I don't get his need to hunt.
And hunting season is over, babies. Well, there are a few places he could still hunt and he'll suddenly say something like, "I could go up to Blah-Blah's, I suppose. Still two more weeks there," as if we'd been discussing hunting all along, as if hunting was something that I, too, think about approximately twenty-three and a half hours a day. But I know what he means. And I nod and say, "Uh-huh."

I'm used to it. Just as he's used to me whipping out the camera and taking pictures of everything from him ("Wait, wait, my hair is all fucked up") to whatever it is we're having for supper. He isn't thinking about the blog twenty-three and a half hours a day but he just finger-combs his hair or waits for me to take a picture of the egg pie before I cut it and give him some.

I'm thinking a lot about relationships lately. How different everyone's is and how no one knows what goes on in a home when the doors are closed to the world. Part of the story I have been talking about the last few days involves two people who, having been in love for a long time, finally made the decision to go public, to leave their spouses, to join together in the light of public scrutiny. And there is plenty of public scrutiny, believe you me.
There is judgement galore. I'm looking at it like this, though- before there were four people who were very unhappy. Now there are two people who are very happy and two people who can now try to find their own happiness in the light of the truth. Is that cold? Isn't that, too, judging in a way?

Of course. But I have been that other person. I have been in a relationship where I knew that my spouse was not only not faithful to me but that he was, indeed, probably in love with someone else. It is not a good way to live. But there were so many reasons not to face the truth. So many reasons to pretend that all was well. Until, finally, the reasons weren't good enough and the inevitable break-up was devastating and so hard that I never want to go through anything like that again but it led to me being where I am now and so, for that reason alone, was worth it.

But it's all a reminder that relationships cannot be ignored. Compromises have to be made. There is no perfect partner who understands every whim of the other's heart. Every need of the other's soul. But just being there and loving and saying, "I don't understand but here I am and thank-you for these pancakes and you have all day to write if you need to," is more important than anything I can imagine.

When I was having such a hard time the other day, Mr. Moon called me and asked if I needed him to come home and hold me. I told him no, I'd be okay, and I was. But I will never forget his offer. Never. He would have done it, too. And that was enough. And he has never once looked at me at this computer and said, "God damn! Do you know how much time you are wasting?" And I try very hard to encourage him to hunt and to fish and to do whatever it is that feeds his soul.

I just always want to be a part of that. To be a part of the feeding of his soul, just as I enjoy feeding him his supper. His breakfast. His lunch.

No one can take care of any other person's every needs but in taking care of some of them, we take care of ourselves, do we not? And when two people have found that- the person whom they want to take care of, whom they support when they do whatever it is that takes care of themselves (within reason, of course, and my reason may not be yours), they are lucky. They are so very lucky.

Well. There you have it. Post number 1,054 or something like that. Another rambling discussion that went from here to there. And the weather? Cold and gray.

But warm inside the doors that are closed because of the cold. The doors that keep out the world but that open to the world, as well, usually depending on the weather.

And this blog is a doorway, isn't it? Or at least a window. Peek in if you want, walk by, if you want. Nothing going on here that isn't happening in every house everywhere.
Perfect imperfection and generally, we are sweet to each other.

I am tap, tap, tapping away here on this keyboard, he is tap, tap, tapping away on a car he is fixing for one of our children. We will come back together again soon enough.

It's cold and gray but there is color if we have love in our hearts. Thankfully, we do and truthfully, I would wish that for everyone.