Sunday, September 18, 2011

Done And Dirty

I am done. I weeded all fucking day. It was a chore. Not fun, but a chore. I got nothing spiritually rewarding from it AT ALL. All I got was dirty. And I didn't even finish it. And I haven't planted one damn thing.
So what?
Who cares?
Not me.

My knees hurt and so does my right-hand index finger from poking it into the dirt, even with gloves on. My hips hurt too. Right now, I feel that the garden does not love me and I am not completely in love with it either. I wish I had a garden with gnomes hiding behind rocks and a small pond in it for the toads. One time I made a tiny pond from a buried half-whiskey barrel in a garden. It was awesome. I had like one water lily in it. My neighbor caught a crawfish and came over and put it in my whiskey-barrel pond. Maybe I need another one of those. And some gnomes. And some Buddha heads and a bath-tub madonna and enough stuff so that no weeds would grow. Okay, no plants would grow either, besides the one water lily but so what? I could drag a lounge chair out there and put up an umbrella beside the pond with the water lily in it and the toads and I could hang with the Buddha and the gnomes and the madonna.

Fuck weeding.

And yes. I fucking mulch.

Okay. I'll feel differently later.

It's been an odd Sunday all the way around. I did not make pancakes this morning. Mr. Moon said something like, "I think I'll get out in the garden before it gets hot," and looked at me rather expectantly.
"Well," I said, "I do not feel like either making a big breakfast or eating one." And so I did not. Mr. Moon had to eat Cheerios. He does not like any cereal that doesn't have an "o" in it. I had yogurt and a peach and some almonds. That was fine. I did make him a nice chicken sandwich later though so I guess I won't go to hell.

Lily called me. She was crying. "Baby, what's wrong?"
Turns out that she and Jason and Owen were about a mile from their house and a Florida Highway Patrol Officer of an age approximately old enough to buy a legal beer pulled them over. They were mystified. Jason had broken no rules of the road at all. The officer proceed to give Jason a citation for not having his seat belt on. The crazy thing was- he did have it on. Not only when the FHP dude got to the car but the entire time he'd been driving. And the officer wouldn't even discuss the possibility that he could have been wrong and he didn't give Jason a warning, no, he gave Jason a ticket for $115 and said that his job was not to argue with them on the side of the road and if they didn't agree with the ticket, he would explain it in court.
Like Lily and Jason have either the money to pay the ticket or the time to go to court to fight something which was a blatant misuse of stupid-cop power. They drive a minivan for god's sake! Dark green!
Oh for christ's sake. Don't upset or piss off my pregnant daughter! Do not do it! She called her daddy too and he was in the woods and it was a bad connection and all he could hear was her crying and he thought...well, you know where the mind can go when you have a pregnant daughter and a grandson and the daughter is wailing.

So when he got home from the woods I was in the kitchen, and I told him that I was DONE gardening for the day and that was that and that I'd just come in and he looked at me and said, "Well, what did you DO?" because I was doing that tiny picky weeding and it takes forever and it doesn't look like I did shit even though it took me hours and hours to do that which does not look like I did shit and he said, "So you didn't mulch as you weeded?"
And I just looked at him with that look and he said, "Do you love me?"
And I said, "Yes."

That's how it goes when you're old. You don't get into fights, you just go straight for the forgiveness because by the time you're our age you know it ain't worth it and the other one knows that when you say you've done all you can do, it's the truth, plus, she might be washing a knife there, standing at the sink and who knows? Women are odd creatures. They cry and they wail and they give you that look and they are good with knives and they keep them sharp.
So he asked me if he could kiss me and I said yes and he did and then he went off to work in the garden.

Sometimes this is how it is on a Sunday. It is neither sunny nor particularly cloudy, it is not hot and yet not really cool either. Sometimes there are neither pancakes nor bacon. Sometimes you're driving along with your sleeping son in the back seat of your mommy-van and a man with a gun on his hip gives you a ticket for something you did not do. Or gives you a ticket for not-doing something which you DID do.

I have leftover fish in the refrigerator and I have to come up with an idea for our supper which incorporates that. I do not have a lot of hope for grand success. I should have made Anne-Helene teach me to make Norwegian Fish Dish but I did not and I have a feeling it contained more cream and cheese than I would feel comfortable using.
But damn, it was good.
I mean really, really good.

Oh well.

None of this is earth-shattering in the least and I have enjoyed watching Elvis today as he ran to the hen house every time one of the sister-wives laid an egg and I could almost imagine him thinking as he ran, "Damn! Can't I get ONE MOMENT'S PEACE AROUND HERE?" I also saw him get some off Ms. Mabel, that poor old favorite. At least he doesn't ignore the old wives in favor of the new, although Mabel probably wishes he would.

But that's what's happened today on a Sunday at the Church of the Batshit Crazy and I expect the death gases to start arising from under the floor again at any moment. I think the Emmy's are on tonight. Do I care? I'm not sure. Probably not. But it's better than football.

If you just started reading this blog, please forgive me because you're probably clueless. If you have been reading for awhile, forgive me because you've surely heard all of this before.

Either way, I'm just glad you're here and lucky you, I am done.

24 comments:

  1. You always make me smile and laugh when you talk about Elvis!

    That's really WEIRD about that cop. He must have to reach some ticket goal, or something, but it's yucky to think a young one is already starting out his career dishonestly.

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  2. I think I just fell in love with your blog. I love the way you write!

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  3. In Canada we have the opposite legal system. You can rape, murder, steal, own child porn, molest a child and only get a a few months in prison. Sometimes you can get off with probation.

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  4. Oh, you do make me laugh ! The same thing happened to me - I accidentally ran a stop sign because there was a malevolent looking nazified-up cop sitting there scaring the crap out of me. When I told him he scared me, he actually laughed and gave me a ticket for $257 !!! Some cops are just born mean, so sad.
    But thanks for the Sunday laugh, and thanks for just being here. You are the best part of my day.

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  5. I love your posts Mary Moon! You make me smile!

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  6. Oh god, it sounds like a terribly annoying day. I read aloud your description of your non-fight to my husband and we appreciated it.

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  7. Nicol- Quota? Oh no. We do not do that. Right....

    Joyful Sparrow- Well hell. That makes me really happy. Thanks!

    Birdie- Same here. But if they want to give you a ticket for something you didn't do, it's your word against theirs.

    liv- Well in this case, NO crime was committed at all. Except by the cop. And I'm the best part of your day? Oh Lord. That's serious pressure.
    But thank-you.
    Really.

    Dianne- I like making people smile.

    Lora- We do work these things out eventually, don't we?

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  8. Okay. I wept over this post. Downright bawled. The part about going straight to forgiveness and Mr. Moon asking--ASKING--if he could kiss you.
    I think I might have figured out a tiny bit of all this in my "post-divorce" years.
    Keep teaching, please. I fell asleep in class a couple of decades ago, and I got to catch up now.

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  9. Denise- I am just reporting in from what my teacher tells me. Or asks me. He was taught by his parents who loved each other truly.

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  10. It's so difficult to love and respect the Po-LICE. Did the guy have on mirrored sunglasses and thigh-high black boots like the LAPD?

    As for gardening, I stared out the window today at my little one, but that was it.

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  11. Elizabeth- Having grown up in the days of, okay, when the police were called "the pigs," I was not surprised when Lily cried and said, "I just hate not being able to trust the law enforcers."
    Some things never change.
    And yet, when and if I need to call 911, I want someone to respond whom I respect and who will do his or her job.

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  12. Jason needs to go to court and discuss this. If he had the seat belt on how can he can a ticket? I don't understand how the police can tell whether someone is wearing one or not. Too bad Lily didn't get a photo with her phone.

    Screw weeding. Mulch is just fine. Thank goodness for the raised beds here. Much easier for all concerned.

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  13. Stupid cop. Out here, we get busted by CAMERAS! I hope they contest the ticket.

    And weeds are evil...and I have the blisters to prove it.

    XXX Beth

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  14. Poor Lily. It's that kind of exhaustion of modern life that brings a person down.

    I loved this post.

    I read it twice, just to hear you talk.

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  15. You are one of two people I know who can make a write up of a normal calm day with lots of weeding and relation therapeutics into a novel. And it reads so easy. I can see the images in my head. That darn cop needs something. He needs to get a life! Outside his cop life.

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  16. He can go to court; it's irritating but with a witness in the car the ticket will get tossed I imagine.
    More than likely, he just didn't want to admit he was wrong, being young.
    Being older, I'm happy to admit being wrong all the time. This trick of asking, "do you love me?" sounds useful.

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  17. That cop was one ASSHOLE PIG POWER-TRIPPING MOTHERFUCKER.

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  18. Syd- I know. And he probably will. But there's some bullshit about how if you go to court and are still found guilty, your fee goes up to $500. That's insane!
    Screw weeding, indeed!

    Beth- Oh, we have the cameras too, baby. Yeah. We do.

    Maggie May- Did you hear me say that I love you?

    Photocat- I told Lily that the guy probably had a fight with his wife that morning and she said, "He wasn't old enough to be married!" and I said, "Well, he probably needs to get laid."

    Magnum- I swear, there is SUCH relief in being completely open to the possibility of being wrong. In fact, I'm surprised these days when I'm right!
    Yes. That is an excellent way to cut a disagreement off at the pass. "Do you love me? Can I kiss you?" Then kiss her on the back of the neck and she'll forgive anything. Almost.

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  19. Lily and Jason must not pay that ticket! That's so horrible. Can they go sit down in the police station and bring their complaint? That's just not ok, the ticket or how much it will disrupt their lives to deal with it.

    The bastard.

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  20. Jo- Jason is going to court. He's going to fight it. What horseshit!

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  21. Ms. Bastard-Beloved- I could not have said it better myself. Such a way with words you have. You know that's one of the reasons I love you so.

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  22. Oh you made me laugh. The other day I had a pair of scissors in my hand and asked my husband for a hug. He said, "What? So you can stab me?" as I laughed and we hugged.

    My daughter and I used to make up stories about what the hens were saying to each other as they ate the kitchen scraps. One of them we named Mabel, too.

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  23. Reading this was absolutely the best way to start my day. Thank you!

    And yes, fuck weeding. How I hate it. My right arm still feels funky from last year's weeding.

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  24. Andrea- Thanks for making me reread this. It was sort of funny! Sometimes I love weeding, depending on the weather and what book I am listening to. And sometimes, it is just a pain.

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