Sunday Sorta Blues

 This is the side view of the tiny house that Tom bought. Yes, it does sort of look like a trailer but it is of wood construction. Here's another view.

It even has a little front porch. 
If you do a google search for images of tiny house interiors, you may be shocked at how roomy they can seem inside. Tom will have a full kitchen, albeit a small one, as well as a bathroom with a walk-in shower and a washer and dryer. Some tiny houses have sleeping lofts with stairs leading up to them but that would not have worked for Tom with his mobility issues. 

These pictures were taken when Tom and Glen went to see it on the day Tom purchased it. Tomorrow it will be delivered, set on blocks, and leveled. Tie-down will have to be done by someone else. Probably Mr. Moon. Also water, septic tank, and power will have to be connected. 
He took the afternoon off today as everything is ready for the delivery. It has been nine days of solid work to get ready for this house and I hope, as I have said before, that Tom will come to enjoy living there. 

I am having a longing day. I don't even know what I'm longing for. Perhaps it's for a little cabin of our own in the woods somewhere, overlooking a spring or a river. Sometimes even Lloyd seems too busy, too noisy with traffic and booming bass in cars and sirens and lawn mowers and leaf blowers. 
Which is ridiculous. 
Okay, the train really is noisy. And I doubt that any of y'all quite grasp how close the tracks are to my house. 

Here's my backyard. You can see the portion of the fence that was still standing after one hurricane or another took the rest of it out via tree-fall. Do you see the dead pine tree there to the left behind some other trees and bamboo and bushes? Well, right behind that is the railroad tracks. The trains do shake the house but they haven't shaken it to the ground yet. The windows rattle though. We barely notice the train noise anymore unless one comes through with a very different whistle than we usually hear. There's a crossing just about what I'd think of as a quarter of a block away so we get that warning every time one comes through.

Anyway, back to the idea of the little cabin in the woods. This is a weird time in our lives. I know that in reality, we should be looking for a house in town closer to the kids so that when we really start to need some help, they'll be right there to come check on us or to change a lightbulb or whatever. But I don't want to live in town even though Tallahassee has some darling neighborhoods with older, charming houses and big trees and nice yards. There's a house for sale on Jessie's street as we speak that is darling. 

It's got tons of bookshelves and a nice backyard with a screened-in porch and a little in-ground pool and patio. 

Can't get much cuter than that. 

But I don't know. Town. 
I mean, if you're going to live in town, that's a fine place to do it. But there's part of me that can't imagine not living where I'm surrounded by all the nature I have now, where we have a semblance of privacy, where Glen can keep all the dang vehicles he wants in the yard. Where we can have our garden and he can have his giant garage and I can have my beloved old house that rambles and ranges through one room after another, built no doubt by families who needed more room for their big families, where the camellias and palms I've planted grow and thrive.
It's probably silly but if logic were humans' main driving force, it would be an entirely different world. So in a way, I'm not unlike Tom who will do almost anything to stay there on his piece of land surrounded by the things he's planted. 
And I would not be completely adverse to that little cabin in the woods where we could go and stay when the bright lights, big city aspect of Lloyd gets to be too much now and then. 

I guess what I'm wondering is, when you do you give up on dreams and make all of your decisions based on practical reality? 

I picked some more green beans today. I am one picking away from having enough to fire up the canning kettle again. While I was out there, soaking wet from sweat anyway, I decided to just take a shovel to the sweet potato vines coming up everywhere. Clear 'em out. Nip those long-ago planted potatoes in the bud. 
So to speak. 
Guess what? 

Too damn late. Even the smallest plants had potatoes growing. No wonder that the early Florida pioneers lived on sweet potatoes. You can't even stop them from growing if you want to. I'm going to let those cure for a little while and then I'm going to scrub them up and steam some and see what they taste like. If they're okay, I'll freeze them either pureed or cubed. Or hell, maybe I'll can them. I belong to a FB group called "Yes We Can, Darling," and by god those people can everything up to and including eggs. 
Do not ask me why. It doesn't always seem to me that the preserving certain foods makes much sense, either time-wise or money-wise. Are they preparing for the End Times or something? Are they prepping? 
But I do now know that I could can sweet potatoes if I really wanted to and they would be good for soups and breads and pies, I suppose.

Oh, Sundays. They can be fine or they can be days that bring out the worst in my soul. How I hated them as a child. Sundays were the days that I could count on the stepfather's unwanted attentions and then of course we went to church and after that, we often did things as a family. 
Oh yeah. That was fun. I remember specifically one Sunday when Mother and that man were still newlyweds and my mother was all over herself, being thrilled at doing those normal family things and we drove to the beach which was only about twenty miles from where we lived in Roseland and those were still the days when you could find a little pathway in the jungle to the beach from the road and have what seemed like the entire Atlantic coast to yourself. We parked and for whatever reason, had not changed into our swimsuits at home and had to take turns doing that in the car and he, that man, told me that now we were a family and families did things like not worry about being naked in front of each other. 
I may have only been about ten or eleven years old but I knew damn well that that was bullshit. I may not have understood a lot of the things going on but I was pretty sure about that. 

And there you go. Some Sundays just bring up these memories, letting them spring forth unexpectedly. Amazingly, many Sundays don't anymore. But now and then...

Here's something that I find pretty amazing which has nothing to do with any of that- Jon Batiste is going to be opening for the Rolling Stones on May 23 when they play at the MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, NJ. 
I am a bit gobsmacked. I have come to think of Jon Batiste as a possible Bodhisattva, a being of enlightenment and talent that cannot be measured. Do you know what I'm talking about? 

And he has agreed to open for the Rolling Stones? 
And even more mind-blowing- they're going to try and follow him? And you know I ask that as a hard-core believer in the fact that they are the best rock band in the history of the universe and in fact, invented the rock band as it came to be known AND the rock star as it came to be known. 

Well. All I can say is- this is going to be interesting and I have to say I wish I was going to be there. 

All right. Once again- that's enough.

Love...Ms. Moon