Recap

I have done my Mer-Mer duty and I have had a nap and I have had an espresso and I have tidied up the house and washed the dishes and I feel like Elvis looks which is molting and scraggly and he lost his last two long, curly, fancy tail feathers in the last day or so. We have found them and they are part of the Elvis feather bouquet over the sink

and that area is getting really messy and I need to do something about it, just as I need to do something about so much of this house.

Things just do get away from you, you know?

And it's not just inside. It's outside too. The wisteria growing on the trellis has escaped all sense of decorum and has reached up and grabbed branches of the pecan tree growing above it and is threatening to pull it over like a green, grasping, skeletal nightmare hand reaching up out of a mouldering grave to catch and trip and pull an alive, whole-bodied person under.
Or something like that.

The other day Boppy and Owen and I were on the side porch and Boppy and I were sitting on the porch swing, swatting mosquitoes and Owen began closely examining the porch.
"This place dirty," he said. "Really, really dirty. You need clean this place UP!"
He is so right.
Sometimes I wish I could just take a pressure washer to the whole place, inside and out. I swear, if I designed a house, there would be a damn drain in the middle of each room, just so I could do that. Boy-oh-boy, I'd have the cleanest house in town! Of course, I'd have to have all plastic furniture or something. Maybe everything could be built-in. Of cement.

That would be cozy.

And clean.

Michelle Obama is actually speaking in Tallahassee tonight and you can go for free. Of course all the tickets got snatched up immediately and they're not even guaranteeing you a seat if you have one and I would no more drive to town and try to find a parking place and haul my ass up to the Civic Center than I would try to flutter-kick a barge across the ocean. I mean, no. I'd love to hear Michelle speak and see her for real and in person although no doubt she'd look like a tiny ant with really good arms from wherever I found to sit. If I found a place to sit. If I had a ticket. Which I don't. I suck like that. May was telling me about this new bar in Tallahassee which is called The Speakeasy, I think, and it's just like an old fashioned speakeasy and you have to call and make a reservation and they give you a fucking password and you can't use a cell phone in the bar and you're supposed to be quietish and well-dressed in there and they don't have vodka because they didn't have vodka back in the speakeasy days.
"You and Daddy should go," she said. She went because the place did a soft opening and invited the staff of lots of different local restaurants and she said it was sort of fun and all the cocktails were fancy and had things like egg whites in them.
"Yeah," I said. "Probably not. Although I may reach a point in blogging where I start doing things specifically to have something new to write about."

I just looked it up on the internet. It's called Alchemy. Here's a picture from their web site.

Dude is cute. I could tell him that I bet his mama loves him if I went there and he was our server.
Yeah, probably not.

See? I don't have to go to new places to write about them. I can just talk about them with absolutely no real knowledge and no experience at all! This is a blog, people, not investigative journalism.

Anyway, I'm not going to town to hear and see Michelle Obama although she is my favorite first lady so far ever even though I do adore Hillary and I liked Rosalynn Carter a lot and I always thought there was a whole lot more going on in that lady's head than anyone realized. Betty Ford was pretty cool even if her husband was a doofus. I'm sure I'm forgetting some first ladies but honestly, I do love Michelle. I always think about this picture when I think of her:

I love that picture so much. SO MUCH! She's wearing her husband's jacket and holding up that froth of a skirt and it's from the inauguration night and he's leaning into her and he's telling her something GOOD and she's like, "Uh-huh, well, we'll see," and it's like every bit of hope and dream and fruition of work and miracle and at the very core of it is...this woman.

Well.

It's thundering and sounds like John Goodman is throwing balls down the celestial lanes to the west of us and Mr. Moon will be home soon. He's gone to a viewing at a funeral home for the sister of a co-worker. I just got off the phone with my darling Jessie and I have brown rice on the stove. I'm tired as hell and realize that not only have I not even left Lloyd since last Thursday, I haven't left my YARD since Friday except to take the trash on Sunday and I hope to sleep tonight and maybe go to town tomorrow, even if just to the grocery store. I kept my grandkids alive one more day and if you get right down to it, as Roseanne said, I have done my job.

I think of how Michelle Obama moved her mama into the White House so that she could help with the First Daughters and I love her even more for that. She didn't hire some damn nanny, she brought in her mother and Obama said, "Okay," and you just look at those girls and you know grandmothers are important.

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.

Baby laid me another egg today. Elvis will grow new tail feathers. Someone just rolled a strike on lane 12. Michelle is at the Civic Center. I've done, as Mr. Moon's papa used to say, All I'm big enough to do.

Love...Ms. Moon