Don't Make Me Tell You What I Really Think

Owen was in a terrifically good mood today. He was quite excited at the prospect of going to the mall and announced to me that we WERE going to the mall and he showed me the dollar he had to take with him to buy something. He was unclear about what he would buy, but he was excited at the prospect. 

Lily was meeting someone she'd met online to buy some cloth diaper inserts and I asked her if this was like a drug deal.

We met up with the insert-seller at the children's playground right in front of Macy's and the transaction was made and Owen played for awhile on the shiny, plastic, padded things and Lily and I drank Starbucks (conveniently located thirty feet away) and Gibson watched the children and kept his thoughts to himself. He is in the middle of teething and is not quite himself, not quite as full of smiles, but such a good boy.

I asked Owen for a hug while we were at the playground and he almost gave me one but then he pulled back and said in an accusatory tone, "I need water!" so Lily went to the Starbucks to get him a cup and he followed her and discovered that they had chocolate milk and that is what he bought with his dollar. Of course, a chocolate milk at Starbucks costs $1.89 because it is organic and celestially blessed but Mama and Mer-Mer chipped in and he was happy.

We went and found some shorts for Boppy and then bought a teething toy for Gibson, a Sophie Giraffe, which I hear is all the rage and Lily had been wanting it and so we got it.



We had paid five dollars to rent a race-car stroller for Owen which we considered to be a good investment as we could buckle him in and that proved to be true. Well, that and the giant gumball Lily bought him which kept him happy and quiet for quite some time and so Lily and I decided to get our money's worth by strolling a bit. The mall is such an interesting place. I actually saw, for the first time, I think, a guy who was wearing his pants completely below his butt requiring him to hold the pants up with one hand which seemed awkward to me but I wished I could have told him what I was thinking which was that if my butt looked so cute in a pair of undershorts, I would not be adverse to showing it either, although perhaps he should consider some elastic-waisted pants, thus freeing up a hand.
Next time. I will do it next time. I swear.

I also saw a girl who had no arms at all but whose hands stuck out directly from her shoulders. I had the inclination to point her out sotto voce to Lily with words something like, "Look- aren't we lucky with our normal children?" but that seemed to be something my mother would have said and which would have added another layer of guilt to me and so I remained silent but I did think how incredibly lucky we truly are with our miraculously normal children.

We decided that with Owen buckled in and happily chewing his gum we could risk going in the Sephora which we did. Lily and I both love shiny, crazy-colored eye shadow and I know what I'm going to get her for her birthday. I saw a display of some line of cosmetics made from something called Argan oil and there was a hair serum which they had a tester of and since I'd just washed my hair and it was loose, I decided to try it. Why not? The girl who worked there came up and waxed eloquently about it and sprayed my hair with it for me and after she'd done that, I read what was in it which was basically SALT and OIL which is exactly what I'd just washed out of my hair (albeit my own salt and my own oil) and let me tell you something- NO. I have never in my life put anything on my hair in one application which fucked it up so much but whatever. I am a grandmother. I am not supposed to have this much hair anyway.

We bought nothing but it was fun.

By the time we left the mall, we were all pretty much done. It had been lovely but it was time to go. We were all hungry and we still had to go to the grocery store which we did. In front of Publix there was a man with one of the most impressively large and stitched lacerations on his face and head I'd ever seen in my life. As a nurse I can assure you that it was perfectly clean and looked to be completely free of signs of infection. If I had been the physician who stitched it, I would have been very proud. When we passed, I smiled and said "Hello" and he said "Hello" back and I couldn't even imagine what sort of instrument caused such a wound but in my professional opinion, he's going to be fine.

Lily and I rushed through Publix as quickly as we could. I bought many vegetables and quinoa, which I needed. It was so expensive! "Don't they have any that's NOT organic?" I asked. Since I was hungry, everything looked good to me and I bought pineapple and cantaloupe and an avocado and portobello mushroom caps and sweet potatoes and spinach and arugula and red onions and white ones too. It's like some switch has been flipped in my head and I am truly ready to eat well again. Or, to be honest, well-er.

By the time I got home I was completely exhausted. I had to go to bed. And, being a grandmother, I could.

So that's what my day was like with my daughter Lily and these boys







who are beautiful and make me incredibly happy to have stuck around this long and I keep thinking about all of the things in that gerontological nursing book which stated "Although (x, y, z) is not caused by aging, 5o% of the aging population has (x, y, z)" which seems ridiculously nonsensical to me.

It is the 4th of July and no, I am not going to say that I am grateful for all of the soldiers who gave their lives for my freedom because I am so damn idealistic that I think that humans should have gotten past the point of needing to kill each other to defend anything a very, very long time ago and one of my very most favorite parts of the whole damn Bible is the part about beating our weapons into plowshares and I am ashamed of the fact that old men keep conscripting young people to go and risk their lives for anything.

Well, that's me.

Love...Ms. Moon