Saturday, November 5, 2011

A Plain, Good Day


Okay, Elizabeth- here is your picture:


I only took one. I was shy.
But as you can see, for a branch library in Tallahassee, Florida, it is a fine building with a soaring ceiling and lots of huge windows. The shelves were nowhere near full, but I found treasures.

Books to read, books to listen to, two books with beautiful pictures to read and look at both.
I've read The Lacuna before but now I am going to listen to it. I am looking forward to that a great deal. I spent part of my growing-up years in Winter Haven where Cypress Gardens is which is why I got the book about C. Gardens, as we used to call it. It is a Lego Land now.
Sigh.
Not that there's anything wrong with Legos, it's just that it was SO old Florida with its beautiful gardens of amazing trees and plants brought from all over the world and that water ski show with its organ music and announcer and the gorgeous southern belles who stood around and posed for pictures in hoop-skirted dresses the colors of Melty Mints.
Sigh again.

Well, it is a fine library and everyone there was happy to be there and said so out-loud and praised the building and I saw a librarian from when the east-side branch had been the size and had the charm of a garage and she said, "Isn't it sweet?"
Uh-huh. It is sweet.

Then I went and spent money at Mike's Oriental And Seafood Store. I sure did. I bought one pound of stone crab claws and two pounds of rock shrimp. I haven't seen rock shrimp in years and I don't know why. They taste like tiny lobsters, sweet like that, and have exoskeletons that are hard like...rocks. You have to pull those little bodies from the shell after you split the leg-part in two. It is well worth the work.



Supper is going to be good tonight. I have bread rising in honor of the occasion. Rising TO the occasion, you might say.
I even bought real butter for Mr. Moon to dip his crab claws and shrimps in. I dip mine in hot sauce. Yeah. I know. But that's the way I like it and besides- arteries.

While I was at the Oriental And Seafood Market, I ran into Jessie's old fourth or fifth grade teacher. Mr. White. Instead of pretending I did not know him, I introduced myself and he remembered Jessie and he may have remembered me. I know I have changed since then but I swear to you- Mr. White has not. I think he was even wearing the same sweater he used to wear. He is still teaching elementary school and he looked GOOD!

Jessie- if you are reading this, Mr. White says, "Hello!" and he is glad to hear that you are doing so well. He asked me if you were president yet. I said, "Yes. Didn't you hear?"
He said you were special. I am pretty certain he meant that in a very, very good way.


So it was a good trip to town. I kept forgetting items at the Publix when I went there and had to keep crossing the store back and forth to get the horseradish and then the limes and bananas and then back for this and back for that but I think I got almost everything I needed. I hear that Tallahassee is getting a Whole Foods which means that we are going to be really cool and shit. Since it is much farther away than Publix I will probably hardly ever go there. I might just stand by my with-the-new-library-rule of never traveling farther into Tallahassee than what we used to call the Truck Route and which we now call Capital Circle and never ever go there once.
Hell, I'll go there at least once to see Cool People. You know I will. And then I'll write about it and probably say bitchy things.
(Sixty Minutes- are you paying attention?)

And so it's been a fine day. Mr. Moon has gone out to the woods to sit and wait for that twelve-point buck to show up. When he comes home we'll have a seafood feast and the house will be warm and cozy and smell of bread and shrimp and then we'll turn the heat way down low and sleep under the piles of duck feathers that humans so cleverly contain in fabric, or at least I will. Mr. Moon, as I have said before, doesn't care for the amount of coverage I do at night but we make it work. A few nights ago my duck, as I call the big comforter, fell off the bed and when I woke up with a semi-hot flash, I reached for it and it was cold from being on the floor and that sensation of the cold and the warmth at the same time was a high-point of my entire life.
I am not kidding you.

It's about to be time for Prairie Home Companion and I do not know how they will manage because their Foley Artist, Tom Keith died this past week. I can't even imagine that show without the sound effects he made. Kathleen and I discussed the fact that we could step in and take his place but then I said, "I don't have time for that," and it's true. But maybe I could. Just like maybe I could take Andy Rooney's place. I thought I was going to take Erma Bombeck's place but that didn't work out too well.

Still, I get to sit here and write my heart out every day and even though I don't get paid it's the joy of my life. Well, that and sleep.

And tonight we get an extra hour of sleep! I hate the changes between Daylight Savings Time and "real" time but it is nice to pretend that on this one night of the year, we get an hour for free, even if it's going to screw up our body-clocks.

A very good day, indeed, with more time to spend under the duck with less guilt.

Yeah. I'll take that. An extra hour, free books, riches from the ocean, fresh bread.

Grits will be involved.

There will probably be tears on Prairie Home Companion. I wonder how those folks will manage without their sound effects guy. The show must go on, so they say, and so it will, but I am sorry that it so often has to go on in sorrow and loss.

That, like libraries and crab claws and good teachers, is a part of life.

Enjoy your extra hour, y'all, however you may choose to use it.

Love...Ms. Moon

15 comments:

  1. Rock shrimp: further proof that effort leads to reward.

    ReplyDelete
  2. God! I love reading you!! You just make me want to clap my hands with joy when spread your day out like that in technicolor...it is so beautiful and ordinary and scary (the picture takin' and the sayin' hello to the teacher guy!) and sweet and so, so very loving.

    And then there's all the cookin' and the laughin' and the cryin'....well I don't think there was any cryin' today, but even if there was, you would make it sound beautiful.

    You are so beautiful and wonderful,and - well it's Saturday night and that's the best night of the week for me - and you make it even better. xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  3. The first part of this post made me aroused for some reason. I cannot read further.
    Good Clean Christian Love,
    Rebecca

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh yeah, the cryin' for the Prairie Home Companion guy...I'm with ya there. Two very unique people gone. See, once again you covered the gamet of human expression in one blog post... And I for one think that you are the p e r f e c t replacement for Andy!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. DTG- Those rock shrimp were sweeter than the stone crabs. I swear.

    Liv- Again, I wrote "Live". Honey, I'm just so glad you're here.

    Madame King- Don't even talk to me about arousal. I can't even park straight these days.
    Bad Clean Something Love...Mary

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry to hear about Mr. Keith. Sad.

    I missed tonight's show. Also sad. I have had residual tummy rumblings since the fair and I napped through it.

    Happy for your good day, and library looks great!

    Hey, are rock shrimp the head suckers? I never did get into that part, but I hear it's tasty.
    xo

    ReplyDelete
  7. A new library is worth celebrating. I do sort of miss our old library. It smelled like how a library should smell and had floors that creaked. It had a delightful basement where the kids books were held. It was better than a church. Really it was.
    Our new library is 3 floors and huge. It has those green library lights on the tables and is full of cubbies where you can hide away for hours. Unfortunately, all the meth addicts and street people know about them and they go there to do things that are not very libraryish. Oh, well. I am glad they have a place to go and keep warm and read.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I loved the extra hour, but now my son is waking up at 5.30 am, which is not so good.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Liv- Especially with these eyebrows.
    It's possible no one would notice the difference.

    Ms. Fleur- No, that's crawfish you're thinking of.

    Birdie- Well, the libraries in heaven will all be old.

    Angella- Me and the rock shrimp.

    Jo- It's disconcerting as hell.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Rock shrimp are wonderful. They are caught offshore here. I like them a lot. Lately, we have been having tiger prawns show up which probably come up from shrimp farms in Central America.

    I like sleeping cold but with covers close enough to pull them up on me.

    Hope that you have a good day.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks for the photo. It looks like heaven. I'm curios about you listening to books. When do you do that?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Syd- Mr. Moon and determined last night that in taste, rock shrimp are superior to stone crab.

    Elizabeth- I listen to books when I am doing housework and yardwork and when I walk. What I really also love is that my husband listens to them too. He was never a reader-for-pleasure but now he is.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I've never had rock shrimp, but your description makes my mouth water.

    ReplyDelete
  14. This whole thing about adding an hour to the day makes me so exhausted!

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.