I have been a Pretty Good Girl this week, staying out of trouble and getting in my walks and generally living life in a normal, sane, sober fashion and so of course, this morning I got up and could barely walk.
Oh please. Give me a break.
I've been taking good walks for most of my life. It's my way of exercise and I don't give a shit what anyone says, it's good exercise and science is starting to prove that and as I said a few weeks ago, the odds of injury are about as low as you can get with exercise, and it's aerobic if you walk fast and it's weight-bearing and it's cheap and above all, for me, it's what I will do and so there you go.
Plus, as I have also pointed out more than once, it satisfies my inborn Puritan need to suffer, especially in this heat. Honestly, I think I spend most of my time out there in an out-of-body state of mind, listening to my book on CD and a bear could probably cross my tracks and I wouldn't even know it. One step in front of the other, just keep on going, a walk is a controlled fall, and I just don't fall and that is how I walk.
I did notice that the blackberries are coming on. I think it would behoove me to start taking a plastic bag with me to gather what I can although that involves stopping so I'll probably do something completely insane which is to DRIVE to where the berries are, get out of the car and pick and then drive home.
So sue me.
I do usually stop to pee in the woods and I'm sure that's where I keep picking up these ticks so I'm probably killing myself by exercising but what are you going to do? Bathe in carbolic acid, I suppose.
No, no. Of course not.
Anyway, I'm back from my walk. I told Mr. Moon this morning that I could barely walk so why was I going to take a walk? and he said, "Good question."
See above: Need to suffer.
And he has just driven out of the yard with the boat and so I am alone here with the dogs and the chickens and the semi-feral cat who lives in the flowerbed and who only sighs with deep resignation when the chickens eat her cat food.
I have absolutely NOTHING I simply must accomplish today which is a sort of bliss. I not only have that Esquire Magazine, I have the New Yorker summer fiction issue AND the latest Oxford American which is so packed with good writing that to give it its due you need to spend as much time on it as you would a novel. I am also reading a real novel with my eyes and one with my ears and so I have plenty to do in the leisure category. However, I am going to have the Opera House Jezabels over for a pizza and martini ladies' night out on Saturday and so of course I am suddenly hugely aware of the mess and disorganization and plain old filth of my house. They don't really give a rat's ass but it's certainly a good excuse to at least do something about the kitchen and I am thinking it would be a good day to really do a good sweeping and mopping of my back porch. Owen pointed out two dog pees on the porch to me yesterday and I did wipe them up but let's just say that if something fell on the floor on this porch even I would think twice about picking it up and eating it.
That's pretty bad.
There are also tiny black sugar ants all over it and they are stinging me as we speak and mopping isn't going to do a damn thing about that but maybe I'll kill a few billion or so.
Don't you just want to come live in Lloyd? I know you do.
Last night I was out here on the porch typing away and there was a giant roach-like looking creature on the window sill right beside me but I knew it wasn't a roach because it had HUGE antenna (what IS that, Syd?) and he wasn't bothering me and Mr. Moon came out and said, "Do you see that thing?"
"Yes," I said. "It is keeping me company." I was thinking of that poetry-writing cockroach, Archie, friend of Don Marquis. I had to look that shit up, y'all.
Anyway, it's almost noon and I have SUFFERED and I am still suffering and if I do mop anything, it is going to be a slow process. And I'm going to take a nap today or know the reason why and the reason why better be a natural disaster which destroys my bed.
I'm pretty happy.
Love...Ms. Moon
Sometimes you give me the best laugh.
ReplyDeleteDTG- And not one thing on earth could make me happier. Love...Your mama
ReplyDeleteIt sounds hot and sticky and perfect. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm a walker, too. And it's just as you've said - a sort of nomadic need to move and travel. Just got back from my own walk at lunch down to the co-op and the heat is like a sentient being out there. xoxo
I read today that for about 10% of the population, running makes your heart worse -- not better -- and that you can die from running. HA! How about that shit? Everyone in the Exercise Tower is all a-twitter, hoping that all the cattle/people who hate to exercise will use that as an excuse not to do so and yadda yadda yadda. I think the Buddha was perhaps right when he said that life is suffering but we can make the best of it. And I think you're right to laugh at all of it and make us all laugh. Laughter saves everything from certain death.
ReplyDeleteOh Mary, walking is the best thing ever and sex and I miss both of them like nobodies business. Elizabeth made me laugh about the runners because we lived across a lake with a famous runner's path around it and the runners were always dropping dead and it was always the runners with the fanciest running "equipment" that did too not just the regulation people that decided to sprint past the bath house because it's creepy. And they were uniformly young. The ones who died from running I mean. And healthy. Except for the lady who got hit by lightning there and it went in her right eye and came out her left toe.
ReplyDeleteWait. My mind fell off its tracks.
I'm going to have sugar ants here soon at werk if I don't clean out my desk drawer.
love,
Rebecca
She makes me laugh too, DTG. There is nobody like you, Ms. Moon and I love the way you express yourself when you write.
ReplyDeleteWalking is my exercise of choice too, although I don't pee as I go - it's the city and all.
ReplyDeletePizza and martini night? What a great combination. Are you making the pizza? I'll bet money you are. If you're a bread baker then you're a pizza maker. I just use those Trader Joe's doughs but they work great. Hope there will be a pic of a Ms. Moon pizza....
I hate exercise. I do like yoga and swimming and walking in the woods but I despise all cardiovascular exercise.
ReplyDeleteWalking is FREE and available right out your door. I have been thinking about the suffering part, as a Buddhist it's required. I wrack myself up exercising. If it don't hurt, it didn't happen. But then we get to the endorphin part, which I like. So.
ReplyDeleteIf it's about being kind to ourselves, I don't have an answer. Walking takes me to the lake and the trees and the blooming flowers and the baby geese so ,even if it hurts, I gotta get out there, as long as I can.
I love you, Ms Moon.
~Beth
Chrissy- Are you in Tallahassee? Yes. The heat is like a BEING!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth- Hey. If it's not funny, it's wrong. Or something like that.
Madame King- What? Dang. Well if I die from lightening and it's fast, I'll consider that a damn fine death. Well, I would if I was alive to think about it.
Nicol- You just like my sense of humor. Which makes you extremely intelligent. Right?
Liv- Of course I make my own. If I couldn't pee in the middle of walking, I'd have to take much shorter walks.
Birdie- Swimming and walking can both be cardiovascular as hell.
Beth- I think something got screwed up in that Buddhist thing. Forgive me but I think the deal is that life IS pretty much about suffering or at least it used to be even more than it is now. But are we really supposed to suffer in order to be better? See, I'm not sure. It can serve its purpose and it can makes us stronger but it can also tear us down. Hell. I don't know what I'm talking about.
I love you too.
URGENT: This is supposed to be the issue that has a long-awaited story from my bestest teaching pal Dale Ray Phillips--can you PLEASE tell me if his story is in the OA?
ReplyDeleteXOXOXO.
I love to walk and loaf and take my ease while doing it because I am carting around 145 to 150 pounds of female pulchritude at any given time, and that's the only way I will ever lift that much weight. LOL.
Pamela- I checked! He is there! I will start with his story. You really should get this magazine. Everyone should, really. If you like to read. Which I think all of us here do.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYou're awesome and walking is the best and I've never heard of fabuloso but I did have the bleach out yesterday and there's something about the smell of bleach that is so reassuring, I guess it's all toxic as hell, but a reassuring toxic.
ReplyDeletenow for a little bill murray and a martini fest.
Our palmetto bugs have long antennae--as long as the body. But I'm sure you have the same roach there.
ReplyDeleteIt has been hot today and miserable! Summer in the Saouh. Get ready for three months of misery.
Deirdre- Fabuloso is a cheap cleaning liquid which smells like Mexico. I love it. I'm completely with you on bleach. I am an over-bleacher.
ReplyDeleteSyd- It rained enough today to prevent the mizry's. Palmetto bug? Really? Whatever it was, it was well-behaved.