And Maybe It's Because Of All Of You

Well, we did get some rain and it's not supposed to rain today but the sky is greasy-nickel again and yet, somehow, I have been in the best mood for at least twelve hours.
I know, right?
Twelve hours of contentment. Lord. Sure, yeah, I was asleep for eight of those hours but that still counts. And in the spirit of being grateful, I am reporting that and saying also that I have no idea why but it's true.
Maybe it's the Magic Of The Opera House.

Who knows? Not me.
We're coming along with the sound effects except for when I screw things up which is about forty times a rehearsal. I am the worst. I don't know why they let me do this.

Maybe it's the fact that Jessie and Vergil have set a wedding date which is April 13th of next year. They plan on getting married on a mountain near Asheville and so things are in motion. They chose that date due to availability circumstances for the place where they want to be married and get this- April 13 is Lily and Jason's anniversary which seems crazy but also funny. Lily doesn't care. She's just excited to think about a wedding, as are we all.
I got this e-mail from Jessie last night:

I sure am excited. I've told Melissa, May and Lil that next time I'm in town we will have to have a dress-trying-on party. May suggested lunch and I suggested sparkly, yummy drinks. I will dance for you in each dress I try on- that's a promise.

I hope your night is nice. I wish I could give you a big hug right now. I always need my mommy to hug me. 
Sleep well tonight. 

How could I not be in a good mood after reading that?

Or who knows? Maybe it could just be the soup I made yesterday. Sometimes when I am feeling overwhelmed, as I was yesterday, I make soup and it feels as if I am taking all of the niggling little details of worry of my life and combining them together, transforming them by the alchemy of heat and broth into something lovely and delicious and health-giving and the metaphor restores me just as the soup does.
The real soup, not the metaphor soup, has this in it:
Venison, onions, garlic, cabbage, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, broccoli, corn, collards, edamame beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas and brown rice.
I ate it twice yesterday and I will eat it again tonight. I think this soup could sustain life forever if you threw in a little fruit and yogurt.

Well, whatever the reason for my contentment is, I am grateful and thankful. A whole lot of both of those. Just thought I'd tell the universe about it, in case it wanted to throw more my way.

And one more thing, our beloved Beth Coyote told me to listen to some of Dina Martina's Christmas carols and so I went to Youtube and listened to this and it made me giggle and so I'm giving it to you in hopes that you might giggle too. Elizabeth, if you're going to do your annual Christmas Carol event, I strongly recommend you include this one.





Love from Lloyd...Ms. Moon

The Mircle Of Acceptance, Even Yes, Of The Very, Very Good

Even though it is definitely chilly, there is a very strong feeling of spring here. Could have something to do with the fact that things are blooming, just as they might in...spring.
Those are Japanese Magnolia, above, and they, like the camellias, are early bloomers.
And the redbud, which also chooses to open in flower before any real hint of heat arrives but which is a definite sign that it will.
I have seen the redbud blooming in other places in the area, but just noticed that my very own trees are blooming as well.

They are not a showy flower, the redbud, but more of a mist of color, if viewed from a distance.

I noticed that the dogwoods are even knobbing up

and that the trillium is opening. I love the trillium. It looks ancient and otherworldly to me.

I am so grateful that a former owner planted them here. The chickens scratch around them daily but leave them alone.

I woke up this morning, this chilly pre-spring morning, still achy and feeling slightly feverish, worrying about the play, but still with an overall feeling of okay-ness.
Jessie and Vergil were asleep upstairs, the house was quiet, Mr. Moon already gone to the gym and then to work, and birds were whistling outside my window a song which brought the word "spring" to my mind. I do not know my bird calls but after fifty-seven years on this planet, my mind associates certain bird songs with certain seasons, just as my skin can register the humidity and the simple feeling of the same. I cannot explain it. It just is, as I am sure many of you know and can recognize exactly what I am talking about. It's not unlike a good midwife who can walk into a room where a woman labors and know exactly where she is in her progress without having to check her dilation.

The calender may say winter, but the air and dirt and birds and bushes say spring. Or at least- spring-soon. That train has very much left the station.

And now Jessie and Vergil have eaten their breakfast and gone to town and again, I am alone and the house is quiet and I so grateful for this day of nothing-much-to-be-done in front of me. I have beans simmering on the stove for soup and I am going to warm my aching body in a tub of hot water as they cook. I am surrendering today. To my body's need for rest and for my mind's need for ease. I am making the soup as a therapy, which is one that works for me. The eating of it will not be anywhere nearly as restorative to me as the making of it. I have greens to go in it and tomatoes and deer sausage and a little bit of left0ver chicken. Garlic, onions, carrots, celery- they go without saying. And some sweet potatoes. I may grate some fresh ginger into it and I may not. We shall see.

There are years where spring comes before it is "time" and yet of course, whenever it comes is the right time. We can do nothing to change that and can only respond to it as do the birds and the dogwoods, the redbud and the buckeye. There are days when it would seem that there is much to do (I was invited to go to town to be with Jessie and Lily and Owen and Hank) but the wisest thing to do is to simply accept the fact that the body needs rest and to do that and also, to rest happy in the knowledge that my children are all in the same geographical area, the same one I am in, and to be glad that they are getting to spend time together. There is great peace in that for me. I do not have to participate in it to feel pleasure in it.

I can do nothing to change this play and its repetitive dialogue and subsequent dragging but I can study my lines and do my best with the part I have in it. I am only one of four in the play, I am not the director, nor did I write it. We will and have all done our best and it will get better as time passes and even in its imperfection, there were moments of magic in it for me last night and I readily acknowledge that.

You know, spring is a miracle whenever it happens and so are days when nothing much is required of me. I intend to take this miracle for what it is, even with the small aches and worries.

My children are all in town, my daughter Lily is beautiful and blooming with new life about to be born, I have spoken to my husband this morning and we love each other, there are beans simmering on the stove and chickens scratching around the emerging trillium and all of this fills me with great peace and gratefulness. The rest I will let go of as I truly cannot change much of any of it. I refuse to be frantic today. I refuse to obsess about the small things which are not perfect.

I sound like a walking serenity prayer, don't I? Well, so be it. For today that's plenty for me. It is quite obvious to me that today is a day to restoreth my soul.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Soup And Other Kindly Things

Owen grounded me today firmly in this world. "Hey there!" he said and he took my hand when I walked into his house and then he said, "Come on!" and I did and he showed me many things and he hid under a basket and we did a puzzle book and I am amazed at how quickly he is learning.

He is putting words together now and can make himself well understood. Lily asked him the other day what he did with his Bop in the woods and Owen told her about the four-wheeler and the tractor and the deer and he said that Bop put butter on the trees.
Lily was mystified by that last bit and asked her daddy about it.
"Peanut butter," he said. "I put peanut butter on the trees. The deer love to lick it."
(According to Mr. Moon's trail camera, the foxes love to lick it even more, but that's another story.)

I asked Owen today about Halloween and he told me that he'd had a good time and that he'd gotten candy. CANDY! He did indeed. I also asked him if he had put anything else up his nose. He said no. I asked, "Did it hurt when you put something up your nose yesterday?"
"NO!" he insisted.
That boy will NOT admit to being hurt. But he will let you kiss his bug bites if he gets them.

He did the puzzle animals so nicely. I was surprised. I didn't know he was able to do that. And I see him at least three times a week! Ah- lah. I can't keep up.

On the way home I stopped at a thrift store which used to be the best place in the world for treasure. They had no idea what they had, ever, and sold everything for pennies. They've gotten a little more educated. The store's profits go to the support of a very, very Christian home for young-ladies-gone-bad. I get their newsletter and it is full of how-I-got-saved-and-now-I-am-so-happy stories. The girls also sing gospel and sell CD's for money which goes to the school.
This of course is always a bit disconcerting to me but what the hell?
I know a woman who volunteers there. I went to nursing school with one of her daughters and I had heard that this woman's husband had died this year. When I went in today, she was there and we talked and I cried and we hugged. Fifty-two years they'd been married and they were up at their house in the mountains in North Georgia and had had a beautiful day and eaten supper on the porch and he sat down to watch a golf game on TV and she went upstairs and she heard a noise and she came downstairs and he was gone.
Like that.
She looks as if she has aged twenty years since I've seen her last. But she says she is okay, although she thinks about moving to some place like China because everything here reminds her of him. I understand. A little bit, at least.
I hope with everything in me that I go before Mr. Moon. I could not live in this world were he not by my side.
"Well," this woman said, "As my husband always said, 'We shall abide.'"
I suppose one could abide. I do not know if that would be living.

I looked at all of the stuff in the store and I didn't buy anything but some tiny fabric roses that I can use for my Virgin cards and boxes. I spent $1.61 and that's not going to buy very much toilet paper for the girls-gone-bad-who-are-being-saved but I didn't need or want another thing. Aunt Bob, the woman who runs the store and who appears to be immortal, thanked me "kindly" as she always does. I am glad I stopped by there, even if there were no amazing treasures for me to buy today.

And then I came home and I am making soup of as many colors as Joseph's coat.

Leftovers and some collards and cut-up yard-long beans from the garden all went into the pot and it is simmering now. Just what we need- leftover leftover soup. But you know me- nothing makes me as content as making soup. I wish I had some sweet potatoes to put in it or some sort of hard squash but I don't and it will be fine as it is. There is even some of the leftover chili in it and no, Mr. Moon did not win but yes, a person who brought in chili which tasted most like "chili" won. I fear that McCormick's chili seasoning and canned-everything-else was involved there. He did win a fifty-dollar gas card, though. And his chili was delicious. People just wouldn't know fucking gourmet if it bit them in the fucking ass.

I sure do swear a lot for a grandmother. I don't swear around my grandson. I promise. Although yesterday when I stepped in dog shit I did almost say shit. It came out like, "Shhhii..."
I refuse to feel guilty for that. No way, no how.

I still find it unbelievable that I am a grandmother and yet, here I am. And I keep thinking about how when you fall in love with someone you tell each other that you want to be with them when you are old and gray-haired and sitting on the porch and watching your grandchildren and well, here we are.

There are worse fates, believe me.

Especially when the one you love grows up to be as darling as Mr. Moon has. Especially when your grandson says, "Here there! Come on!"

The sun is setting. The soup is simmering. It smells real good here tonight.

If I learned anything today it is this- don't take joy for granted. It is also that fifty-two years is not enough. It is that we shall abide.

Isn't that amazing?

We shall abide.

Awww.....

One of the new hens, the one, in fact, whom I saw Elvis doing some serious feather-ruffling with the other day, has laid me an egg.
It's brown, and compared to Miss Mabel's egg, quite small. I remember that- how when they first started laying, my older hens' eggs were tiny.

Oh, bless her little heart, this hen.

I have said it before, and I will say it again- chickens are the best pets I've ever had. I can't even imagine life without them now. I just feel so damn lucky that I get to have them. To be able to live out here in this relatively rural area where we can keep them. To have them greet me when I go outside. To watch them scratching through the flower beds, napping in the sand. To see the way Elvis watches over them and calls them to come when he finds something good to eat. To watch the two different flocks become one. To hear their lovely voices chatting away as they go about their daily rounds, almost as soothing as water in a creek, running over rocks.

Yesterday Owen and I took crackers out to feed them and Elvis walked right up to Owen who stuck his hand out and said, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" and kept repeating it as if expecting Elvis to say something back. Maybe like, "How ya' doin', dude? Got a cracker for me?"
Honestly, I wouldn't be that surprised if Elvis did. It just makes me laugh to see the boy and the rooster, almost at eye-level, observing each other. Roosters and boys are both curious creatures and I do prize curiosity as a virtue.

It is a beautiful day here in Lloyd and I can look up and see a cardinal fluttering in the distance like a piece of red cloth which has somehow caught flight. The heat is back but it is less humid, and therefore more tolerable. The air is clear and sunlight catches on the broad green backs of leaves in changing silver pools and although we need rain, most of what grows in this yard is heat-and-drought tolerant and may look a bit wilty, but remains vigorous.
The ashe magnolia has also given me a gift which I only found today.


That is its cone with beautiful hard, glossy, red berries in it. I expect the hurricane lilies to come popping up any day now and the firespike will begin to bloom soon. These are also red. Spring is more about the pastels- the pinks and lavenders, the creams and the yellows. Late summer brings the crimson, almost as if the heat of summer has erupted finally into flame.

A good day. A day in which I did truly try to constrain my thoughts to positive ones about myself. I am not ready to take the pledge yet, but I am THINKING about it. A day where a friend came by and we had a perfectly entertaining chat, talking about everything from geothermal energy to Tate's Hell to road maintenance. A day in which I cleaned a little bit, thought about my upcoming trip to the beach, and cooked beans which are slowly, by degrees, being turned into soup. A day in which I found the first-laid egg of a hen and the first cone of a magnolia tree I planted five years ago. A day in which I took a sane walk which served not to punish or make me suffer, which let's face it- is how I usually view my walk- but as a way to exercise, to be out in the woods and in the fields and to actually enjoy that.

The most simple of days doing the most simple things and that is the sort of day which bring me the most pleasure. Hell, it's too hot to eat soup but making soup is one of the joys of my life and so I have done it anyway. Although I do not by any means enjoy cleaning, if I set my goal at one or two rooms instead of trying to do the entire house, I find that it is a matter of an hour and so what? I can concentrate on this house which is such a fine house and which I have been given the very real honor of living in for however long I live here and I can find actual satisfaction in tending it.

No. I did not get to my office. But tomorrow I think I will. And that will be another sort of pleasure and I am far more apt to do it, to accept that pleasure, if I don't spend the first part of the day telling myself that there is no point in me trying to write, I will never get a book published, etc., etc., but just to do it for the joy. If it brings us joy, it must be something we should do.
That's what I think.

And so, that has been my day here in Lloyd. A day of very, very simple tasks done with no resentment and no hidden agendas, just a sense of purpose and contentment.

I would not ask for more than that. And why in the world would I?

How To Make Soup

When your refrigerator gets to the point where you can't open it without the orange juice falling on you and your grandson, it is time to make soup.

Gather all of the leftovers. Search diligently in all of the corners and drawers for the containers of foods you have cooked and not finished and saved for the last week.
They may include many various and diverse items, depending on your menu for the week.
Such as:
Red cabbage, onions, apples, golden raisins, dried cherries and caraway seeds. With a tiny bit of bacon.
Venison cooked with the above.
Rotisserie chicken from the Publix Deli.
Green beans, carrots, and heirloom small potatoes.
Organic salad greens which have just gone one step too far in age to be presented as salad.
Quinoa.

Fill your large, favorite pot with water halfway up. Add a packet of Knorr vegetable soup mix.
Cut up the potatoes and carrots into bite-sized pieces. Add those.
Add the red cabbage, etc.
Cut up the venison and also the chicken, giving all the skin and tendons and other parts you don't want to your old, old boxer dog who is standing there with hungry eyes, waiting for such treats.
Throw in the mixed salad greens. Don't bother to cut them, they will wilt to small size. Let it come to a simmer.
Taste. Consider.
Soy sauce? Salt? Some tiny frozen peas that need to be eaten soon and I am not kidding?
Oh yes.
A bit of smoked paprika? Pepper?
Uh-huh.
Wait! There's a small container of salad in the refrigerator. You know there is. It was made with greens, of course, and tomatoes and basil and pickled carrots and cauliflower and grilled asparagus in olive oil. Toss that in too. You'd forgotten the mozzarella cheese in there. Oh well.
Taste again.
Oh yes.

Put the lid on and let it simmer for awhile. Join the dogs in licking your lips as the smell fills the house. Resist the idea of gettin' jiggy wid it. Don't add no cumin seed. Don't add no shallots. If you have some red wine, I suppose that would be okay. Take the ingredients you have as an ordained situation.

Consider making some oat bran muffins with carrots and apples and cinnamon as you go out to shut the chickens up in the hen house. Think to yourself how nicely this would tie it all together into a meal.

Think about how some people are feeling all gourmet tonight because they went to Boston Market instead of McDonald's.

Feel sorry for them.

Bake your muffins. Make sure to include walnuts.

Wonder what you would call this soup, if someone held a gun to your head (oh, please, NO!).

Decide on Hunter/Gatherer Love Soup.

Serve with butter and local honey.

To yourself.

Tomorrow, when your husband is back in town, serve the same meal to him. Kiss him and thank him for the deer meat.

Bow your head to the joyful task of eating.

Amen.