Happy Valentines Day, Y'all

We're doing out best to make each other a lovely dinner.
I hope the same for you.

Sacred Struggles

Let's talk about Valentine's Day. Really, I'd rather not. I am so screwed up in the head about that holiday. I wrote a post about it two years ago that was titled Valentine's and Other Follies of the Human Heart and really, it said it ALL! For me, anyway.

And now I'm two years older and my Valentine and I have been together for two more years, making it a grand total of twenty-seven years together, twenty-five married, and still...STILL, I pre-grieve Valentine's Day.

WHY can't I just either forget it and pretend it's not happening or else MAKE A PLAN? We discussed it last night, Mr. Moon and I and we sort of came up with a plan. I will make him a very special dinner and there will be romance and maybe he'll get me a little something-something.

And of course he's already stressing out about that. WHAT? What would I want? I mean, he already bought me new pruners this week. And I appreciate that and I appreciate with all my heart the fact that there is NO WAY for him to come out a winner on Valentine's Day. My head is logical but my heart is screwed up. The screwed-upness comes, I'm almost certain, from not having a father and then having a stepfather who abused me. Because of that, no matter what happens, no matter how long this wonderful, loving, sane man loves me, I'll still be broken in some part of my soul and I'll still always be looking for some magic to happen (on Valentine's Day?) to make it all good, to mend all the broken pieces, to make me feel really and truly and at last....loved.

And that's just too damn much to ask of one man on one holiday.

Yesterday, over at Just Eat It, Michelle posted a piece that made me cry. I don't mean little tiny tears formed in a shiny glaze over my eyes, I mean I sobbed.
It's about a father and a daughter and the strength to make that bond work.
Michelle said, "cause that father/daughter thing is serious fucking business," and she is right.
And it's not something you can go back and redo when you're all grown up. Sorry. Can't happen.
And it's not fair at all, not one tiny molecule of fairness to be found in the situation, that Mr. Moon has to keep paying for something he had nothing to do with.

Valentines. Fuck it. Whether Mr. Moon just ignores the day entirely or buys me a ruby as big as one of Miss Betty's eggs, it ain't gonna fix what's broke and Mr. Moon is going to feel as if he failed me but it's not Mr. Moon that will have failed. And I have to keep telling him this. And I have to TRY very hard to remember that fact myself.

The responsibility lies with my old drunk, dead daddy. And with that man who was sick in the head. And with a mother who didn't understand. And with me. Don't forget me. Because by this point in my life, it's time to quit blaming and cowboy up and accept what is instead of hoping someone else can fix me.

I don't forget for one second that I am living a life better than anything I could have dreamed of in my wildest dreams. I have EVERYTHING right here in my hands, my house, my heart including the proof of the man who says he loves me, napping in a cozy little bed in the hallway.

So there, Valentine's Day. So there, Cupid. So there, Zales Jewelry.

I don't need your crappy red hearts and gooey candy and little honey-tipped arrows.

And all I have to do is remember that and take what comes my way as just more gravy on the deliciousness that is my life already.

Remind me, okay? Because like I said, my mind is logical but my heart still bears the scars of being shattered too young. And I know I am not alone. I feel so stupid even writing all of this down but maybe, if someone who reads this understands and recognizes her- or himself in it, it will have been worth it.

We have to love ourselves to let our hearts accept the love of others and until we do, nothing in this world will convince us we are loved. That may be the key right there- the key to our hearts.

Well. I don't know.
But, as we say here in the Church of the Batshit Crazy, bless our hearts. Our wounded, sacred hearts.

On Valentine's Day as on every other day.

Bless our crazy hearts.

And This Is How We Really Look

Or at least how we looked last night.

I found an outfit. It wasn't bad and it showed off my legs which let me tell you something you may not know- I have great legs! Really, I am not joking. Especially when they are encased in black stockings, which they were.
I may be old and Jesus, I show it, but my legs will be the last to go.

So we got ready and we went to Kool Beanz and we waited and waited and waited and finally we got our seats at the bar and we ate oysters and shrimp and tuna and it was a Mermaid's Feast if there ever was one.

And then, instead of going home and falling asleep which is what we would normally do, we started our Billiard Hall research.

Oh Jeez.

I realized several things during this research:
1. Billiard Halls are not my favorite places.
2. Amazingly, other people seem to like Billiard Halls a lot.
3. When we open one, there will be STRANGERS THERE. People I do not know. Yes, I should have realized this already but really, I'm dense. Did I think I know enough beer drinkers to support a bar? Well. Maybe.
4. I suck, suck, SUCK at pool.
5. Internet Juke Boxes are weird.

And last but not least:

6. Doing Billiard Hall research is not a very romantic date.

"Now make sure you check the ladies' room. I'll check the men's."
Uh-huh. Okay.
Why did I bother to wear stockings?

A barely-over-the-age-of-twenty-one year-old gal stopped Mr. Moon as we were leaving one place to ask him the question EVERYONE ASKS HIM which is, "How tall are you?" This is almost always asked by women who widen their eyes and cock their heads in the most flirtatious way you can imagine whether they are eighteen or eighty-seven. Trust me on this. I've seen it happen at least four hundred times.

"Six-ten" he always says and they sigh and flutter their eyelashes. I stand there like a five-foot-four potted cactus with a patient, bemused expression on my face.

Anyway, that girl insisted, I mean insisted that we were not leaving that bar without her buying us a shot of tequila! I mean it! That was the feistiest twenty-two year old girl I ever met and I wasn't arguing with her. We drank our tequila like the good little boy and girl we were. Whoop-ay-ai, motherfuckers! I'd already been tipsy enough to tell the bartender there that his mama must really love his dimples. Hell, I probably batted my own eyes.
Oh boy. Maybe Mr. Moon was right and I shouldn't tend bar although you can bet the ranch I won't be drinking if I do.

In my defense I will say that I'm sure that boy's mama does love his dimples.

We finally ended our rounds at Halligan's at approximately 1 a.m. This is where we actually shot a game of pool and I realized just how intensely bad at pool I am.

Anyway, that was that, and I'm sure that before the this evening is over I'll be enjoying the little Valentine's Day gift that Mr. Moon brought home last night. Here's what he brought me:
Veggie chips.
Bean dip.
Wasabi peas.
And oh yes, some Kona Coffee.

Who says romance is dead?

Me. Maybe. Possibly.

But still, it's been a nice day and I have some venison backstrap in the crockpot with spices and onions and apples and I hope it's good.
I'm still wearing my silver necklace because it's mine and I can.

And let me ask you something- What do you look for in a Billiard Hall/Sports Bar? Tell me, please. Tables, yes of course. We will not be seving hard liquor. We will be making sandwiches. We might have a few video games. We might, occasionally, have a bit of musical entertainment. An older lady wearing purple eye-shadow may or may not be serving drinks and making sandwiches. We will not have an internet jukebox if I have anything to say about it.

We need a name. So far we're thinking of a few including Shoot The Moon, Big Shots, Bank Shot, and my favorite, but the one Mr. Moon will not even consider- The Bad Girls Pool Hall.
Suggestions, please.

Because really, I can't go out and research the Billiard Halls myself anymore. I can't stay up that late, I can't drink a beer at every bar. And forget the tequila.
Please. Really. I insist.

And oh yes. A very happy Valentine's Day to your and yours and if yours is you and you alone, I have this to say: Buy yourself a gift. Don't let it be Wasabi peas. Eat ALL the chocolate. Because you can.

And bless our hearts, okay? Again, I insist.

Click On The Song And Joanie Will Sing My Valentine's Song To You

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and I am feeling grumpy about it. Oh, don't get me wrong. After several severe tongue-lashings (okay, not really- after one pitiful, weeping plea, to be exact), Mr. Moon did call down to Apalach to see if any rooms were available for the weekend but of course, it being Valentine's weekend, there were not.
So instead we're going to go out to eat tonight at my favorite restaurant and then we're going to go dancing and romancing.
Wrong.
After dinner we'll be going to various billiard halls and sports bars to do research for the new project.
Ay-yi-yi, as they say in places where ululation is practiced, and also, be still my heart.
Well, I suppose it's better than crawling under the house, although that may happen too before the weekend is up as there is something funky going on with the electricity in the far end of the house. Frankly, I think we should hire the skinniest electrician we can find but then again, why pay someone to do something that you can do yourself?
Which brings me back to the billiard halls because it looks like this is really going to happen and it's going to be a big ol' do-it-yourself project from tearing down walls in the building to laying the tile in the bathroom. At least two or three of the children are going to be involved as well because quite frankly, they have a lot of experience in the bar biz. Some of it from one side of the bar and some of it from the other. Me? Well, I'm not sure Mr. Moon wants me working down there because, as he put it last night, "Someone will piss you off and you'll get mad and that will lead to a problem."
Oh, Mr. Moon. You know me so well.
Plus, I think he has in mind to have younger, um, tastier people working at his bar, which is probably a good idea but come on! Who wouldn't want to be served their ice-cold beer by a motherly lady with purple eye shadow who will not only listen to problems but have many suggestions as to how to deal with them?
I imagine that kick the bastard out would be a bit of advice that would be serviceable in many situations.
Also, I can instruct love-struck ladies on how to get their man:
Make biscuits.
See? I am full of good advice and I have a writerly ear which means that I actually LOVE to hear about people's problems.
And if someone pisses me off, then obviously we don't need them in our bar. Right?
So what's the problem?
I don't know.
I imagine these and many other things will be discussed tonight on our date. I am planning on wearing my silver jewelry and just saying that makes me think of Joanie Mitchell and her song, Carey, and living in Denver in 1973 and how cold and lonely I was and listening to that album over and over again, wishing I was going to the Mermaid Cafe to have fun that night. I found two silver bracelets in a little shop there and I bought them because they gave me a feeling of having discovered some part of me which had been missing and I've been wearing silver bracelets ever since, an armful of them that clink and tingle and tangle as I dance or move through the velvet darkness of a night out.
I have a new piece of silver jewelry which came most fortuitously in the mail today, bought off of ebay in a transaction arranged and pulled off by Maxine and me which should qualify us to work in the CIA or maybe that other secret organization which we don't even know the initials of. It is perfect for a Valentine's Eve outing and you can be sure it will be part of my silver tonight.




I'm just praying it's not one of those nights where I can't figure out what to wear and finally end up, a hot-flashing pathetic mess on the bedroom floor in front of the closet, crying, "I can't go out! I'll just make porridge for supper!"
No. I hope it's a little bit magical, that we'll look into each others eyes and say, "Hey. This is going to be a new adventure. Let's work hard and make it work. And by the way, have I told you how much I love you?"
And then tuna will be eaten and yes, we'll go shoot some pool and maybe somewhere we'll find a jukebox that plays something that we can dance a little dance in a dark corner to, our eyes flashing, my silver too.
Honey, get out your cane. And I'll put on my finest silver. We'll go down to the Mermaid Cafe have fun tonight.
Oh, you're a mean old daddy but you're outasite.
Sing it, Joanie. Remind us of our yearning years while we're still firmly embedded in our earning years, trying out new adventures, working hard, remembering to wear our silver.

Valentines And Other Follies Of The Human Heart

"Without love, you are nothing."

That was the sign posted on a church marquee that my husband and I saw as were driving home from the airport on Sunday night.

"Good Lord," I said. "As if being alone on Valentine's Day wasn't enough, now churches are telling people that without love they are nothing."
"I don't think they were talking about that sort of love," he said.
"Well, it didn't say what sort of love," I replied. "It just said love. I can see some poor lonely person reading that sign and deciding to just go sit on a railroad track until a train came along to put them out of their misery."
"Huh," he said.

Valentine's Day is a screwy holiday if you ask me. From the earliest days of grade school when the pretty, popular girls got the good Valentines that came in the punch-out Valentine's card kits and I got the stupid dumb ones because I was fat and the teacher's pet, it's been nothing but a soul-sucking disappointment to me.

I've been in love with the man I'm married to for twenty-three years and we never, ever get Valentine's Day right. Last year we decided to just cook something on the grill, have a drink and let that be it. I'm sure I cooked something special to go with whatever was going on the grill (my memory- it's a sad, sad loss) but by the time the grill got cranked up and the meat was done, we'd had too much of the drink and I was in tears and had taken the opportunity to do what I do best, which is to get psychotic.

"There's no more romance in our relationship!" I wailed.

"What?" said my husband, standing there with the platter of high-dollar meat that we surely didn't even need unless you're talking about the fact that it was food and I certainly needed to eat something.

"You used to pursue me. When you met me you were all about the romance. Then you caught me and that was that. That's all you needed to do. Now I'm like one of these," and here I nodded towards one of the many deer-heads on the wall. "Just, a thing."
"What are you talking about?" he asked.

And I had no idea, quite honestly. He doesn't treat me like a thing at all but I suppose that because dinner was late and I'd had one martini too many and he didn't buy me something from Tiffany's, I had determined that I was now nothing more than a dead trophy, stuck on a wall.

And if the truth be known, there is probably nothing any man can do that will proclaim his love for his woman (or a woman for her man or a man for his man or a woman...okay, you know what I'm saying) on one specific day of the year that shows the depths and breadths of his love.

Okay. Maybe if he surprised his love with a trip in a private jet to Paris where he had made reservations at some amazing restaurant and on board was a beautiful new couture dress that fit her perfectly because he knew every inch of her beloved body, along with a small token of his love in the form of platinum and diamonds for her to wear to dinner and bottles of wine and small perfect little bites of the most delicious food on earth to nibble on before they got to dinner and, well, yeah, maybe that would do it.

But short of that, how can anyone come through on Valentine's Day? Because the purpose of the day is supposedly to show the one you love just how MUCH you love them and that can't be done with flowers, candy, dinner reservations or even jewelry, although in my book, jewelry can come close.

Nah. It's not Valentine's Day where we prove our love.

It's every other day of the year when we prove it by earning the money and cleaning the toilets and thanking each other for doing these things. It's coming home every night and it's making dinner every night and it's going together to meet with the wedding caterer for the daughter's wedding. It's saying "I love you" at the end of every phone conversation and it's holding each other's hands during a funeral as tears run down your faces.

It's taking your mother wood for her fireplace and it's saying, "Sure honey, go fishing this weekend." Or hunting or going off to visit a friend or coming to see you in a play.

It's lying down together at the end of every day and saying, "I love you," again because you can't say it too much.

It's being together every minute for ten days and nights on a vacation and then getting back and realizing that you miss him when he goes to work and where is your best friend, your lover, your buddy to play with?

It's standing up in front of friends under a clear blue sky on a beautiful October day and saying "I do," to all sorts of crazy promises that you have no idea what the implications of are and it's creating a family and working insane hours and raising children and going to school plays together and it's having problems and it's staying and doing the hard work and making it better.

It's seeing each other age and not letting that get in the way and it's planning for the future and it's living in the day.

It's shared jokes that go back decades and memories, too, of crazy times and funny times and good times and rotten times and times you wouldn't repeat for all the money in the world and times you keep in your heart in a velvet-lined box and only open up and look at once in a while because they're so beautiful that you don't want to wear them out.

It's changing the oil in the car and it's planting camellias together and it's putting in a spring garden and it's shoveling chicken shit. It's being patient and tolerant and it's using good manners when that's the only thing that'll get you through something. It's acting sillier than you'd ever want your kids to know their parents act and it's being respectful even when you don't understand.

It's not walking out the door when the other one gets psychotic and starts wailing about romance.

It's about putting flax seed in his smoothie so he'll live forever and it's knowing that neither one of us will. It's about listening to his breath and his heartbeat and knowing that one day one of us will be there when the other one's breath and heartbeat cease and it's holding each other closer because of that knowledge.

Love is about all of those things and it's about dreams and reality and fantasy and hope and despair and joy and death and having someone to hold tight to through all of that. It's about someone to share it all with.

And by golly, it may not be true that there is nothing without love but it's knowing that it's easier, it's sweeter, it's a blessing beyond compare to have it.

And even though I know all of this, I know myself and that I will have a small breakdown tomorrow because we haven't planned anything for Valentine's. We haven't made dinner reservations, we haven't planned a get-away, and I seriously doubt any jewelry's been bought.
Which is not to say he hasn't bought me plenty of jewelry over the past two decades. He's bought me enough jewelry for a lifetime.

And he also chose not to take a bulkhead seat on the flight home on Sunday because it would have meant splitting us up on the plane even though he had to sit with his unnaturally long legs wedged into a space barely big enough for a midget's.

And that is LOVE, baby.

So I'll try to remember all of that and leave the deer heads out of it this year.

Because I have love and that is truly something.