Rooster Bowls And Boy Toys

Lunch was just pure pleasure and once again, we lingered long although today we were at the Mexican restaurant where all of the lunch specials are $5.79 and hell, we ate enough chips and salsa to cost that much. August being there helps us to just relax and eat slowly and kick back while he's nursing, and Gibson was a good boy, playing with two plastic super heroes or villains or whatever they were, creating scenarios for them and when he'd dropped one he would make the little plastic guy say, "I'm okay! Don't worry!"
Recently he's learned how good it feels to have his back scratched and I love to scratch it for him. He does that thing that we all do when someone scratches our back, which is to bend our shoulders forward to make as much scratching surface as possible. I've always said that we have no idea how itchy our backs are until someone scratches them for us. Sometimes I wish we were still more like our ape-cousins, spending hours each day bent over each other, grooming and picking and scratching. Of course we are far too civilized for that but who of us does not love the feel of having our hair washed when we go to get it cut, the warm water, the fingers of the person attending us as they rub in the shampoo and massage our heads, or having our legs and feet rubbed at the nail salon when we get a pedicure?
I give you this, although I believe I have given it to you before. It is well worth watching more than once.



A sort of quiet ecstasy.

We passed August around and even Gibson asked to hold him and I helped him to do that. I keep thinking of Vergil saying, "This family sure does love babies."
Oh. We really do.

Jessie and I went and did a little shopping after we finally left the restaurant. We went to Tuesday Morning which is just a treasure box of everything a person might want from luxurious towels to pillows to quilts to chocolates to toys to lamps to rugs to pots and pans and napkins and wrapping paper and dishes and shower curtains and candles and silly useless shit that no one needs. Jessie bought a rug and a baby toy and I bought some puzzles and science experiment kits and activity books for the boys' stay with me this weekend. Also, four new bowls, made in Portugal.

It had occurred to me the other day that I am dissatisfied with my soup bowls which I use many times a week for beans and soups and stews and fuck it- I am sixty-one years old and as a wise friend told me years ago, when it comes to the things we use every day, it is well worth buying that which pleases us. And these bowls do please me and did not require taking out a loan to buy them. I paid less for all four of them than I'll probably pay for the ingredients to fill them for one meal.
Such a good deal.

So here I am and I'm going to make some sort of fresh tomato sauce for pasta with kale from the garden and I haven't seen Maurice which worries the hell out of me. I know. I KNOW. She always comes back. But I have to worry about something. It's as if I am afraid that the gods will hear me if I talk too much about my blessings and then curse me with their jealous powers. I will never forget reading "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck when I was young and being struck by her description of how, after a baby was born, people would say derogatory things about the baby so that the gods would not smote the baby.
Smite?
Whatever.

May there be no smoting or smiting for any of us.

Love...Ms. Moon