I Am Not Making This Up

All right, all right, all right. I did finally get that pocket put in. It is not the greatest but it will do. I am pretty happy about it and will be wearing that dress a lot more often now. So how many days and weeks and months and hours did that take me? 
Several thousand, I reckon. 

And then I pulled another dress out of the closet that I do like but almost never wear because it doesn't have pockets and I rectified that situation in about twenty minutes. The dress is one I got at the World Market a long time ago and it's similar to that beloved old hippie staple- the Mexican wedding dress. Or what we called Mexican wedding dresses. You know- embroidery around the neck and related areas. 

It's the softest dress ever but without a pocket, it was useless to me. Mostly. I started embroidering around the edge of the pocket I made out of a piece of old tablecloth, but I think I may abort that mission for now at least. It wouldn't match the embroidery the dress already has on it. I don't know. But I do have a pocket. It's not exactly a perfect match for the dress but oh- who cares? 

Not me. 

I have done almost nothing besides pockets today. I haven't done one darn thing outside except to take the trash and go by the post office. And I do feel guilty about that but more than feeling guilty, I feel as if I have cheated myself. Even though I spend a lot of time on my back porch, it's not the same as being outside outside. I haven't even so much as picked a pepper. Or a cherry tomato. Or even taken out the compost. Oh wait! I did walk the cardboard throw-aways out to the burn pile. That doesn't even count. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will do some things outside. I need that. Even when it's too hot and the mosquitoes are out (and hey! cases of Malaria have popped up around here!) I feel better about myself and the world in general if I've spent some time out of doors. 

I have added a few more things to my get-rid-of-pile. I also took two items to the dump that needed badly to go there but that I've been hanging onto for some stupid reason. One was a sort of stained glass panel that was obviously someone's first attempt at that art and I'm fairly sure it was being self-taught. The other was a Thomas the Tank engine folding lawn chair for children that none of my grandchildren have sat in in forever and which has been folded up and leaning on the porch wall and was mildewed and useless. 

I threw that one in the household goods bin and I left the faux stained glass leaned up next to the compactor in case anyone wanted it. I doubt anyone will but you never know. The guy who is in charge of the dump today was sitting in a rocking chair that I'm sure someone left and that he saved. There's a tiny little shed that the workers can sit in that has air conditioning which I am sure is a life saver. There's also a TV in there which I'm certain was another save. The AC might have been too. I waved to the man in the rocking chair and he gave me a horizontal peace sign. I felt like Snoop Dogg's great aunt or something. Which pleased me. 

I remember when I was married to my first husband and we lived for a few years in a ten-by-fifty foot trailer on a piece of land we'd bought a few miles down the road from here, basically in the woods. We were going to try and build our own house but, well. Mmmm.

That didn't happen. 
We did eventually buy an old house in Monticello and had it moved to the property and the ex and another friend of ours who was an actual carpenter, fixed that house up pretty nice and I loved it so much but that's not what I meant to discuss. 
No. What I meant to discuss was how fucking hot it was in that trailer. It was horrible. It was hell. It was one tiny sliver away from unbearable. And so, one day we went to Tallahassee where we bought a used window unit air conditioner, installed that bad boy in the window of our bedroom which was basically a tin sweat box with one window in it, and oh my god- it was the best thing ever. 
We laid there that night on our bed with the Indian print bedspread tacked on the wall and we were chilly. 
And you know what? We felt guilty. We thought about all of our friends who were sweating in their beds in the shed/shacks with latrines that they'd BUILT themselves and here we were, luxuriating in artificially cooled air in our red shag carpeted trailer with running water and a bathroom. I mean, we were breaking all sorts of back-to-the-land hippie codes. I probably even had some canned beans in the kitchen cabinet. 

And that trailer was luxurious to us. We'd moved in there after living in the house we rented for $75 dollars A YEAR that had holes in the walls and floors and no running water and an oven that sort of exploded if you tried to use it, with doors made out of planks. It looked not unlike this house. 

We froze our asses off in the winter and sweated through the summers. Baby Hank used to play in the canning kettle I'd pump water into in order to let him cool off on the hottest days. 

And yet, I sort of loved that house and as I always say, I am grateful for my experience of living in it. In its own very basic way, it was beautiful. 

Ironically, it burned down years later when a couple who lived in it installed an air conditioner in their bedroom window. The wiring in the house was beyond funky and as the story goes, the guy of the couple was a drug dealer and the fire took hold so quickly that they were lucky to get out with their lives but all of their drug dealing cash went up in flames. 

So living in that trailer was like living in the Palace of Versailles for us. And Lord, did we appreciate that chugging, noisy air conditioner. 

Well I had no idea that was what I was going to talk about today which is how it usually goes here. Mr. Moon is back on land and we have not lost our electricity unlike last week. It did rain for a hot minute which made things so steamy that when I walk out the door my glasses steam up to the point where I am blinded but as with the pockets- oh, who cares? 

Here's another picture of the ginger I started from a grocery store root along with my mango that I started from a Roseland mango seed that came from a tree that I ate the fruit from as a child. 

Ginger on the left, mango on the right. 

And here are some more zinnias. 

Thanks for coming along on this trip down memory lane. All stories are true and there has been no need for any sort of poetic license except that maybe it did not take me exactly several thousand days, weeks, months and hours to make that pocket. 
But close. 

Love...Ms. Moon