He's Coming Home

 

This was in my mailbox at the Post Office today and I knew immediately that someone from blogworld had sent it. It made me laugh. I turned it over to discover that it came from River, a long-time reader here. I opened it up and it is absolutely perfect for being sent from Australia. 

Look at all those crazy Australian critters having a merry old time of it, hanging out with Santa and grilling on the barbie down under. Thank you, River! That is precious and I really appreciate you taking the time to get the card, address it with all known street names for where I live, put postage on it, and send it. It got safely here to Lloyd and somehow found its way into my PO box. We DO get some of our mail in front of our house in a regular mailbox and the address there uses Old Lloyd Road BUT, it is not "Lloyd," it is "Monticello" which has a completely different zip code. 
It's confusing. I think that all street addresses in our county are addressed to Monticello because it's the only real town in the county. 

I believe I am getting a husband back tonight. He is on his way. He ran into a bad traffic situation and won't be getting here in time to make my martinis but as we all know- I have no problem whatsoever making my own.
He is going to be so tired and I'll be so glad to see him. Glen and I know how this goes, though. As he said the other day on the phone, it takes me a day or so to decide if I still like him or not. 
I can't disagree with that.
I get used to not having him around which translates to not having to take care of anyone but myself and it's a bit of a shock when that Very Tall Man walks in the door with bags of laundry and his pillows and blankets and the ice chest with Tennessee sausage in it and his loud voice, bringing in the cold and the sort of energy that hasn't been a part of my life for a week. It's so quiet and peaceful here when he's gone and then suddenly there's football on the TV and other footsteps than mine in the house and noises from rooms I'm not in and Maurice is darting around being whack because that's how she is when her dad human gets home and well...you know. 

It's the energy that changes the most, I think. I can just feel his presence where before there was an absence of it. And it takes me a little while to adjust to that presence and the sounds and the energy and the other stuff. But I do.

I always do.

I had a very nice thing happen today besides getting River's Christmas card. My oldest still-in-touch friend called me. I've talked about her many times. We met in sixth grade, we buddied up and were in school together, Girl Scouts together, the highs and lows of first dances and first loves together. God, we must have spent a year at least, in total, talking on the phone in high school. 
Oh, the stories we could tell! Ay, yi, yi, mamacita! 

And now we talk about how old we are and how we don't know how we got to this advanced age and all the parts of us that are going wonky and we talk about grandchildren and husbands (she's been married even longer than I have) and today we discussed her retirement which she finally took. 

And we laugh and we laugh, just the way we always have. 
Our lives took very different directions. She's ended up in Maryland and I stayed in Florida. She married a med student who became a neurosurgeon and I married first a guitar player and then Glen Moon.

But none of that matters when it comes to our friendship. Lord, we knew each others' siblings and parents. We had overnights at each other's houses. We still laugh about things that happened in Driver's Ed. We remember the cars we first drove. We went to Cotillion together. We went on many, many camping trips together. We had the same teachers. We almost got arrested together. 
It's a comfort and a joy to still have a friend like that.

So we talked for about eight hours or so and then I took the trash and went to the post office and did some laundry. 
I've really deviated from my rigid routine today. I DID NOT WASH THE SHEETS! Hell, I've barely wrinkled them all week and haven't touched Mr. Moon's side of the bed. I did wash my pillow cases. It just seemed so unnecessary to strip the whole bed and remake it when I've only slept on about a third of it and am extremely clean when I get under the covers every night. Does that make sense or are my standards slipping?

I picked some camellias.

Not that one. It's so high up in the sky that Mr. Moon would require a ladder to pick it. It's going to freeze tonight for sure so we'll lose all the blooms. Might as well bring a few inside. 

I also covered the porch plants again. A few of them do not look so good, having survived what I thought were going to be above freezing nights but which obviously were not. 
Oh well. Most of them are way too big anyway and I can just trim 'em back. They'll probably send out new growth in spring. 

So that's about it. Thank alla y'all for keeping me company while I've been alone. I have to say I have not been lonely for one second but I might have been without you guys checking in. And my kids, of course. 

I did play the piano (so very poorly) this afternoon for a very short period of time. I told Mr. Moon that in a text and he texted back that he didn't think that he's ever heard me play an entire song in our forty years of marriage.
"And you never will," I said. 

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I think I gave up when I couldn't even keep the one I made some years back to not wear as much black, and then a few years later on to say the word "cocksucker" more often. We were watching Deadwood. 
I mean, that was a very low bar and yet, I failed. But I'm going to try and make time when I'm alone to sit down and stumble through some music from John Thompson's Modern Course For The Piano books. No matter how badly I play, something happens to me when I make the correct chords on my old, completely-out-of-tune piano. I sort of love its funkiness. It's like the piano and I are vastly flawed but somehow, in tune with each other. 

All right. 
Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon