Tuesday, February 26, 2019


That's the coconut cream pie. Mr. Moon almost swooned when he ate a piece last night after the basketball game. And then he called me today from work and asked me to please bring him his pie. He said that without doubt it is the best coconut cream pie he ever ate. 
It should be good. I made it with coconut milk and the half-and-half which was left over from when Lon and Lis were here. My kids love it when Lis has been here because they know that the half-and-half I bought for Lis to put in her coffee will be in the refrigerator. 
I tried a bite of the pie and I have to say it IS damn good. I also put almond extract in it because almond extract makes everything better. 
And now I have a blackberry and strawberry pie right out of the oven because I made way too much pastry yesterday and god knows you don't want to waste pastry. 
Can you freeze a pie? 
I probably should have frozen it before I baked it. 

So that's the domestic and culinary news.



I met up with some cuties today at the Costco. Maggie brought us all azaleas. I could NOT get a decent picture of her though. She refused to smile. 
Then we went to lunch. I embarrassed myself by demonstrating my flicking technique to August by launching a straw that had been tied into a knot into the seat behind him. There were two ladies sitting there. 
"This is why we can't take our mother out," said Jessie. 
I was laughing so hard that I could hardly apologize. 
Sometimes being a grandmother is just the best. 

Here's the picture I took before we all went our separate ways. Another curb shot. 


I told them, "Say POOP!" and as you can see, Levon actually did. 

So that was all good but when I got home I took some things to the dump including the giant bag of VCR tapes and DVD's. I left them on the side of the trash bin along with a T-ball stand. This is where we, the citizens of Lloyd, place the things we think others might want. 
"No scavenging," says the sign on the gate. 
Haha. 
So that was fine but when I was about to get in my car after putting my recycle stuff into their proper bins, the guy who works there started up a conversation about how STUPID people are. They put their trash in the wrong places and their recycles too. He's right. No one follows the instructions. So anyway, I stood there and commiserated with him and everything was fine but then he started going OFF and I knew I did not need to stand there and listen to his shit but he just wouldn't stop talking. He had to tell me what's wrong with kids today which is that their parents are afraid of them.
"I lived in FEAR of my father," he said, "But I respected him. Everyone feared my father but he was respected. And I threw my own sons up against the wall when they needed it. I wasn't afraid of them. They were afraid of me."
I should have just agreed and gotten back in my car but no, no, no. That is not who I am. 
"Well, " I said, "I don't believe that children need to fear their parents in order to respect them."
And he proceeded to tell me how important fear is. Blah, blah, blah. He's probably extremely god-fearing too.
This led somehow to him telling me how great things had been in Jefferson county before integration. How everyone had respected everyone else and everyone got along just fine. 
By now I knew I had to get away or I was going to explode but he just kept talking. 
"I've lived in Jefferson County all my life and I was raised a conservative and I will be until I die!" 
I could feel the anger building in me. 
"I was raised in the south too," I told him, "But I was not raised to be a conservative."
Then he started up about Trump. How he's done more for this country than any other president in the history of the United States. And how Nancy Pelosi needs to get another shot of Botox. And how Obama was the one who fomented the divisiveness and hatred in this country. 
That did it. 
You know, it's weird. I knew that this man was ignorant and that honestly any man of his age who works at the dump is not going to be the happiest person in the world. And that his father probably fucked him up good but even as I was thinking of all of this he somehow came to represent everything I abhor and am horrified by in this country right now and I sort of wanted to smash him with something. Something heavy. 
Fuck standing around and listening to this shit. I got in my car and said to him, "You, sir, are a racist, I think," I said. 
"No ma'am!" he yelled. "I am NOT!"
Right. 
I couldn't believe how shaken I was. I am a sixty-four year old woman who likes to think of herself as a compassionate and understanding woman who is far too old to get that angry. I wanted nothing more than to go back and scream at him about how ignorant he was, how wrong-headed, how maybe he should try watching something besides Fox News. 
And you know why I didn't? Because I knew it wouldn't do one damn bit of good. One of us could have ended up with a stroke and it might have been me. 

But shit. This guy works at the dump and, as he informed me, his family used to own four thousand acres of land here in Jefferson County so we can safely assume that he's come down in the world and he needs someone to blame that on. 
I have to tell you though that I am not a very Zen person.

I got over it pretty quickly. And frankly, it's best if I take my trash to the dump when it's closed. There's a gate that stays open all the time and you just have to schlep it a little farther than you would have to if you can pull right up to the bins.
As you may recall, this is not the first altercation I've had with guys who work at the dump. Best for me just to avoid the whole situation. 

I will end this whole confession of my un-Zen-ness with a poem that I read today. 
Of course it was written by Billy Collins. 

The Chairs That No One Sits In

BY BILLY COLLINS
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You see them on porches and on lawns 
down by the lakeside, 
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple 

who might sit there and look out 
at the water or the big shade trees. 
The trouble is you never see anyone 

sitting in these forlorn chairs 
though at one time it must have seemed   
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while. 

Sometimes there is a little table 
between the chairs where no one   
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown. 

It might be none of my business, 
but it might be a good idea one day 
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs 

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them 
for the sake of remembering 
whatever it was they thought deserved 

to be viewed from two chairs   
side by side with a table in between. 
The clouds are high and massive that day. 

The woman looks up from her book. 
The man takes a sip of his drink. 
Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking, 

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird 
then another, cries of joy or warning— 
it passes the time to wonder which.
I needed to read that today. It is way past time for me to go sit on one of those chairs on my own front porch and just pass the time viewing the trees and the sky and the earth waking up again into spring and the people who pass by either in cars or on foot, most of them good and all of them as real and as deserving as I am of life.
That I do believe in theory, even if it's really hard to always act on in reality.
I do my best as do we all.

Love...Ms. Moon

27 comments:

  1. Sometimes I find your posts so effing poetic and they make me so happy - this is one of those.

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  2. This post took me on a journey from delicious pie to delightful grands to a bitter and delusional trump acolyte (the best of any president in history--really??) to the lovely image of you on your porch, watching the sky. As a 90 year old photographer once told me, dont let the bastards get you down. There are so many of them around lately her words are always in my head now. Love you, woman.

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    1. Don't let the bastards get you down.
      I won't! I refuse to! Well, mostly.
      I'm just reminded once again that I am so glad not to be that bitter or delusional.
      I love you too, woman!

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  5. Sorry, I seem to be having trouble commenting lately ~ not sure why! I was trying to say...
    I’m glad you got away from the dump before you exploded...
    and those children are so cute and adorable and precious I almost can’t stand it...
    and you are definitely Zen in every way that matters,,,
    and I’d love to sit with you in those two chairs any day of the week!!!

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    1. Oh, Lulumarie! I would sit on my porch with you any time. I remember sitting on your porch with you and enjoying it so much.

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  6. I thought of you when I read that poem today, and while I read your post, my blood pressure rose and I wanted to jump through the screen and start yelling at that dumbass, but you're right. What's the fucking use? My therapist says to just keep telling the truth, over and over and over. You do that here, all the time.

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    1. Yeah. It would do no good to try and change the mind of a man of that age who has lived his entire life in fear and being convinced that that's the way it should be. He is Trump's absolute target supporter. But. I did feel as if I had to tell him that yeah, he is a racist. And he is.

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  7. What a day, Ms. Moon. Glad you began with pie, almond added, and the extra crusts in the oven, and those little children, my GAWD Maggie is so much something!! The dumpster Rumpster just made me shake my head...I have been in a "go f*ck yourself" mood all day and this pretty much drove it home! They are trying to wear us out I do believe...You showed such restraint, Amazing adulting, I am in awe! I want to cry.

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    1. Honestly Linda Sue, I think he might have gotten violent if I'd gone any farther than I did. Lily suggested that I should maybe contact his boss and she's probably right but hell- who else would work at the dump? I'm still contemplating that advice. I'm just grateful that even as I was hating the things coming out of his mouth I still had the insight that he was very damaged as a child. Not that that's a defense, just a reality.

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  8. I've been nursing a cold for the past week and a half, feeling sorry for myself as I ache and blow my nose. I hate being sick.

    I love the poem and it's true, there are empty chairs that need people relaxing, looking at the sky.

    As for racists, sadly there is nothing you can do or say that will change their mind. My new in-laws are mostly nice old people but they're racist too. They hate muslims, even though they don't know any. I have to hold my tongue but that doesn't work well. Now I just try to keep them at a distance which is sad for them but you also reap what you sow, even when you're elderly.

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    1. It's funny. That poem mostly reminded me of two Adirondack chairs that my grandfather had placed on his property on a river which I never saw ANYONE sit in. Ever. And of course, my own porch rockers as well as the porch swing on a different porch. I used to sit on it a lot when I was taking care of grandbabies. I rocked them to sleep on it so many times.
      It sucks when people that you absolutely have to have contact with are racists. I have a similar situation. A close in-law is a huge Trump supporter and evangelical Christian. We try our best to be polite and mostly we are.

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  9. There is so little I can add to what has been said. As for zen, think about it. You didn't give him your version of Humpty Rumpty, like an inverse coconut cream pie. You simply left him wallowing in his own version. You must hit the bottom in order to rise, and he's still on the way down.
    You are magnificent for producing so much love from half a carton of half and half. And, little Maggie is harboring a personality that will astound you.

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    1. He wouldn't have let me get a word in edgewise because...I'm a woman and he doesn't fear me.
      So there is that too.
      Maggie already astounds me. I can't imagine what's coming.

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  10. That is a beautiful (and very Zen) poem. I love Billy Collins. Actually, in a way, your encounter with the junk man WAS very Zen -- you got angry but anger in the face of injustice is what was coursing through you at that moment, and you were right to challenge him. You felt the anger but you didn't entirely give yourself up to it -- you didn't slug the guy. You were mindful AND angry. Or so it seems to me.

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    1. And OMG, that pie. Now I want a coconut cream pie in the worst way.

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    2. Well, I was angry, that's for sure. But like I said- with full knowledge that it wouldn't have done a thing for me to express the full extent of it.
      Yes. You DO want coconut cream pie, Steve. I promise you.

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  11. I love that Mr. Moon called you from work to ask for his pie. That just tickles me.

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  12. Never had coconut cream pie. Want to, now! I hit something on my phone and downloaded that pic of the kids on the kerb off Facebook the other day, and now it's a happy surprise whenever it pops up :)

    Fuck that guy. You can see why he ended up in the trash. Sad, tho.

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    1. Wow. Maybe you should start making coconut cream pies and key lime pies and selling them in Ireland. They could make you vastly wealthy! It's an idea...

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  13. I think you have more Zen than you think. Encounters such as what you had take so much out of you..... I think you were fabulous. I always end up second guessing myself and wondering whether I would/should have said more/less....... and it takes hours to come down off of that endorphin (or whatever) rush. And your pie....OMG. And where did Maggie and August get that curly hair that is so *to die for*?
    Susan M

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    1. I knew I'd said just enough even though I wanted to go back and say a hell of a lot more.
      Maybe there is wisdom with age.
      We think Magnolia got her curls from her other grandmother but we have NO idea where August's came from.

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  14. that is a gorgeous pie. I might have to make one.

    how sad that that man equates fear with respect. shoot, then he ought to respect the shit out of black and brown people. there is no getting to MAGAts. it's a cult. I always wonder what it is they think Trump has done for this country. keep out muslims and mexicans? cause nobody has brought back a single factory, coal mines are closer faster under Trump than Obama, farmers are going through record bankruptcies, etc etc etc. anyway. you did good. I would have been ruder much earlier and left him in the dust. I would not have stood there and listened past his first tirade.

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  15. Ironically, I was trying not to be rude.
    What a waste of time that was.
    You and I both know what people like that love Trump for and it has nothing to do with coal mines.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.