I've Got My Memories To Keep Me Warm

So yes, it is cold. We have the heat off and right now it's about forty-five degrees in the house although there's a space heater in the room where Mr. Moon and some neighbors are watching a basketball game and a space heater in the room where I am writiing this, so it's not so bad. I have on many layers of clothing and we'll make it through the night, even though it's supposed to get down to about fifteen degrees.
Yes. Fifteen. And they had snow at Disney World, which just cracks me up.

Florida. Ya just never know.

But it's gotten me to thinking, this cold, about other times I've been cold and how one time, when Mr. Moon and I went to New Orleans when we'd only known each other for a month it was so cold there that that the whole damn city water system had frozen and there was no running water and we stayed in some guy's apartment which was filthy and freezing and there was no water and yet, we had such a good time. Such a very, very good time.

And I've been thinking about how when Hank was only about seven months old, his daddy and I and another friend moved into a shack where you could see the outdoors from between the boards in the walls and the floors and we did have a wood stove but we had no wood cut at first so we burned some old wood furniture in that stove. And we didn't have a bathroom or running water in the house- just an outhouse and a rusty old hand pump outside and how I had to pump the chunks of ice to get the water flowing. We survived.

But the time I'm thinking of where there was just NO relief from the cold was a time when I was pregnant with Hank. His daddy and I went to visit friends in Tennessee for Thanksgiving. I was a few months pregnant with Hank and we weren't married yet, his daddy and I. It was so cold and our friends lived in a house that looked much like the one in the picture above. They had a woodstove but only in the kitchen and when it got time to go to bed, I thought I'd die. I had on layers and layers of thermals and socks and there were piles of blankets and quilts, but Lord God Almighty, that old house was drafty and it was cold. They had no bathroom either, or running water. Just an outhouse and I have a vague memory of having to go out there in the frozen moonlit night, pulling down all those layers of pants and thermal underwear, sitting my ass on the cold wood and wondering if my steaming pee would make it to the ground before it froze.

We hippies put ourselves through some crazy shit, trying to prove that we were strong and able and trying to get back to the land. We discovered that the land could be cruel but it could be wonderful, too. I envied my friends that drafty old house on a hill in Tennessee. It seemed like a fine place to live to me, cold as it was. We made Thanksgiving in that woodstove-heated kitchen, and the only thing I remember us cooking was a soybean casserole and vegetarian gravy made with flour and milk and soy sauce. Can't say much for the casserole but that damn gravy was awesome.

So a night in Lloyd without the central heat isn't such a big deal. I have on layers, yes, and we have the space heaters. I made a big pot of white bean and venison chili (Mr. Moon's favorite and a favorite of mine as well), thickened with corn meal and heavy on the garlic and cumin. I do hate being cold but I'm not suffering. We have indoor plumbing and lots of dogs to snuggle with if we need to. We have electricity and running water. And I am damn grateful for those.

You don't miss your water, they say, 'til your well done run dry and I agree with that. In fact, I think it s a damn good thing for your well to run dry occasionally to remind you of how the simplest things are the most important things. The people who lived in this house a hundred and fifty years ago didn't have gas heat and they didn't have running water and they didn't have bathrooms and they didn't have cars to get them to the stores they also didn't have and they survived. I'm not as tough as they were. I know that. But because I was a hippie, back-to-the-land baby-boomer who told society they could stick it where the sun don't shine because I could live without all your modern conveniences, I know I can do it. I've lived without running water, without any heat but wood, and without electricity. Not for too long, thank God, but long enough to know what it's like. Long enough to know that humans, like hens, are hardier and more resilient than we know.

So one night without heat? Oh please. I can get in the damn bathtub if it gets too cold. I've got me a man and four dogs to cuddle with. I have SPACE HEATERS!
And cashmere. And even...a mink jacket which is the warmest garment I own. I could sleep in that thing if I wanted to. Mr. Moon would probably like that. He bought it off the sister-in-law of a business partner of his years ago and I wear it approximately once a year and I do not feel guilty. Those minks had been dead a long damn time by the time I got it and I cherish it and bless those little minks every time I put it on and I think about how our ancestors wore furs to keep warm and that is partially the reason we're still here as a species. No. We don't need them anymore. At least not in the First World, where we live. But they sure are warm, those furs are and we probably pay the big bucks for them because our DNA tells us that if we have enough fur to wrap ourselves in, we will survive and so will our babies.

It's Sunday night and it's cold and I feel lucky. Now if the pipes freeze and the gas man can't get here tomorrow, I'll be singing a different song. I'll be bitching. You can count on it. But one night? Oh honey. That's an ADVENTURE, not an adversity. I've been colder before.

And when that heat comes back on after the gas man leaves, I'll know damn well how lucky I am.

And that's a good thing. That's a real good thing.

Cuddle up. Stay warm. Don't feel guilty to wear your furs if you have 'em and need 'em.

I won't. Maybe I should, but I will not.

And I will be so grateful not to have to go sit my ass on wood in an outhouse to pee tonight. Even if you've never had to do that, you be grateful too. But it might be a nice thing to go outside anyway, to look at the black star-punched night sky.

Just for a minute. It won't kill you. And you'll feel so much warmer when you come inside.

Night-night. Sweet dreams. Sleep tight.

Collard Sickles, Anyone?

I mean, I mean...well DAYAMN!

Shitfire but this is getting ridiculous.

Despite leaving the sprinklers all on, we've lost three out of four from the cold. The one that's still running left us this ice-plot. I'm not feeling so bad about not having planted cabbages and spinach now. They'd be dead anyway.

I go out in the mornings and pour hot water over the chicken waterer. It doesn't thaw the water but it leaves enough in the tray for them to circle 'round and get a drink.

While I was out taking pictures, I had to get one of Elvis. That rooster has grown into a magnificent bird.

He towers over Sam and outweighs him by a pound, at least, I'd say. He knows it, too. Yesterday the roosters got out and Sam jumped on Miss Red who was already out, having rushed the door when I opened it for Betty because she is tired, I tell you, of being one of their favorite sex objects. Sam did his quick-quick tail-waggle and then Elvis pushed him aside, jumped on Red and showed Sam how it's really done. He had that hen FLAT. I mean, you could have made a lovely chicken cordon bleu with that poor little chicken.

"Elvis!" I shouted, but he took his time before he jumped off. And then Red reconstituted herself like one of those magic sponges you put in a glass of water and got to her feet and came over to see if I had anything for her.
Chickens are resilient and hardy birds.

Lily called me this morning to tell me that she was reading a rhyming book to Owen (she's such a good mama) and when she got to the page with the Little Black Hen, Owen grabbed for the book. I tell you, that boy already knows about chickens. He studies them with his big, brown eyes as seriously as if his life depended on it. Of course he studies everything like that but I'm sure he can already recognize a chicken. What a smart boy he is.

Oh Lord. Mr. Moon has discovered that we are dreadfully low on gas. As in- hardly any at all. And the gas guy can't come until tomorrow. Mr. Moon is pacing the house and he's set the thermostat down to fifty-five and well, what else can we do? It's Sunday. It's supposed to warm-up to forty-one today. Toasty! And every one of the five fireplaces in this house have long-since been converted to...gas!
And I cook with...gas! I don't know why we didn't expect this to happen. The fucking heat pump's been on without ceasing for a week.

The hen house may end up being the warmest spot on the property by the time this day and night are over.

Ah. We'll be all right. I have cashmere. I'm already so anxious today that the idea of freezing to death doesn't push my needle much farther into the red than it already is.

So, that's Sunday at my place, Mother Church Of The Batshit Crazy.

What's happening at yours?

Winter And Waiting

It's been a strange day. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary except for our ten-thousandth day in a row of below freezing temperatures. I cannot stress hard enough that I'm not asking for sympathy here. That would be ridiculous. I've seen the pictures of the snow where many of you live. I'm only saying that we're not used to this. Not at all. And it's not very interesting, watching our beloved plants die. If it's going to be this cold, we Floridians want something fucking dramatic, okay? We want SNOW or at least sleet. Or...something.

I mean, we're incredibly impressed when water freezes outside.

We're a simple people here in the south. I admit it. Maybe it's because our blood boils in the summer, killing anything that is too complex and only the hardiest of emotions survives. Love, lust, a deep hunger for fried food, growing things in the dirt, anger, wonder at the simplest things like eggs in the nest, a dog that sits and lets us scratch his head, handling snakes in church to prove our faith in God.

Okay. That was painfully stereotypical. I apologize but I don't take it back.

So yes, it was a strange day. I don't know why. Just a Saturday that my mind somehow got confused with a Sunday, the bleakest day of the week. I went to the calender to see if it was the anniversary of anyone's death. It felt like that today- like one of those days when you just feel so damn sad but you don't know why and then you realize it's been X-number of years since so-and-so died. So-and-so whom you loved so very much.

Well, it isn't but it in one week it will be the anniversary of Lynn's death. This time, two years ago, we knew her time was close. We gathered in her room, her friends, her family, to weep, to say good-bye. To sing to her, to hold her hand and be with her while she was still here. She looked so beautiful on that bed, her profile cut like a knife with disease and grace. I guess my body is remembering and then my mind follows. Well, Lynn is free. I remember when my friend Sue died and we were having her wake, an old friend of hers, a fellow who'd always carried a torch for her, said, "She ain't paying rent no more."

And that is a comfort, you know.

Winter is a natural time to think about death. It's all around us. But sometimes, like with my wisteria, what looks like death is only rest. And that's why we look forward to spring when that which has seemed to be dead, sprouts tiny little leaves of green which become bigger and bigger and then, voila! Rebirth!

Well, people who have died don't start sprouting new limbs and don't come back to life but we like to pretend that Jesus did. I don't believe he did. I mean, his disciples didn't even recognize him. "Whoa, dude! Who are you?" they asked.

"I'm Jesus, you assholes," he was reported to say. Or something like that.

Oh, bless our human hearts for wanting to believe we live again. And I don't know that we don't. As I have pointed out before, I don't know shit.
I believe in the human spirit. Don't know about the soul. They may be one and the same. And I believe that energy is neither created nor lost. So- who knows about reincarnation? And I definitely believe in DNA. I carry the genes of all my fore bearers and so do you. And that's real and definite and something to believe in.

And as long as I carry Lynn in my heart, or Sue, they are still alive somehow. And shitfire. Sue wouldn't want me being all sad and downhearted. And Lynn? She'd kiss me and say, Oh honey. Have a yum-rum and dance. It's funny how different Sue and Lynn were from each other. Sue was a Patsy Cline-listening-depressive, a lot like me, while Lynn probably didn't spend an hour of her entire life feeling sorry for herself.
I loved them both and was incredibly lucky to be loved by both of them.

Do you ever feel like I'm just way too southern? Do you? All my talk of magnolias and chickens and death and grandchirren and angel biscuits and hunting and camellias and collard greens and existential sadness and insanity and oak trees and birthin's?

Well. This is who I am. A southern girl. Woman. Whatever. I have my moods. I haven't ended up confined in the attic yet. It could happen. Lord knows, it could happen. Anything could. I live in the south where it's been below freezing for ten thousand days in a row. Where we are boggled that a bottle of water left in a car can freeze solid. Where we mourn our dead with every molecule of our beings and when we throw their ashes into the air we say, Be free! and we wear every bit of wool we have in our closets no matter how old and moth-eaten it is when it gets cold. Where we have strange days and have to remark upon them.

Our blood is thin. We were reared to be slow and sit on the porch and when it's too damn cold to sit on the porch, we go a little crazy and we think of things we've lost and the people we've lost and we weep and we lie in bed and wonder if we've now, finally, lost our minds.
We think maybe we should see a doctor but then our southern-ness kicks in and we get up and make some coffee and go give the chickens some cornbread that we made last week and we mop the bathroom. And we think, "Oh hell. Tomorrow will be a better day. I'll think about all of it tomorrow when I am stronger."


And it will. I swear.
And it will warm up eventually and Lynn and Sue are alive in my heart and I have a candle burning and the heat is on and we have good leftovers to eat and so what if it's been a strange day? I live in the south. We're strange. I'm strange, at least. It's strange that it's so cold and has been for so long. But the azaleas are just resting. Really resting, unlike the dead animals Mr. Moon and I see on the side of the road and remark upon with words like this: "That possum is just taking a nap. Yep. A nice, long nap."

Because we southerners know about naps. And strange days.
I think I just need for my blood to warm up again. Just need to get through the next few months of death-anniversaries.
I may be taking a lot of naps myself in the next few weeks or months. Do what I can to get through these strange days.

Whatever gets you through the night. Or your life. Or winter.

It's all right. It's all right.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Ice sickles.


Buster's found a new perch in the library. He can not only see out of the window from there but it's right over the heating vent.

One of Miss Carol's eggs. One is all you need. That is my medium-sized skillet.


Mr. Moon in his natural habitat. The indoor one, anyway.

A picture which belonged to my grandfather. I have no idea how old it is. It is painted on silk. I love it.

The peep.


The rooster.


The reason to get up on Saturday morning. Well, reasons. Garrison and coffee.

Nandina Domestica. Winter color.


Sukie on the nest.


Betty on the ground. She how she is healing? Her head feathers are coming in nicely.


Riches. Straw for the chickens and then mulch for the garden. Prefertilized.


The wisteria rests.


The little man's walker waits along with his toys.


An American Farce?
Oh. I hope not. Besides, I'm only fifty-five.

This Is All That Matters

Look- this is what I have to say about having a grandson and being able to take care of him a few days a week:

This is the biggest honor of my life. It has given me an entire new reason to live, to exist, to love. I already have plenty, but this is a new one. And there is not one second in my taking-care of this boy that I don't remember that his mother is the one who has given me this honor, this gift, this trust. Not for one SECOND.

I ran into an old friend at the library the other day. A woman whom I have known for years. We have a strange relationship. I love her for a lot of reasons but in my heart, I know she is truly not...quite...right. And never has been. And when I told her about my grandson and how I was getting to take care of him a few days a week when both his parents are at work, she told me that her daughter has told her that when she has children, she might not let them be a part of her life.

And it made me realize that no matter what mistakes I have made in my life, no matter how badly I've fucked up, there is the honest truth that my daughter trusts me to take care of her child.

I doubt I will ever in my life receive a higher honor. And I know for a fact that nothing will ever make me as happy.

Pondering and Yearning

Well, the weather has changed. It's not quite as cold but now it's wet and gray and going to get colder again tonight. Dammit! This just sucks. I'm sorry to be a whiner but I am.

I just got back from yoga and my class is going to be canceled for awhile because my teacher is about to get her fourth back surgery in three years. I need to stop going to that class anyway. I go because it's within a few minutes of my house and easy to get there and back instead of having to drive all the way to Tallahassee and because it does help me in so many ways but there is much about the class to be desired. I certainly don't reach any damn states of ecstasy or even get close to inner peace for various reasons. One- I'm not enlightened. Two- The class is held in my teacher's house and her husband is usually there, either on the phone in the next room doing conference calls for his work with a World Leader In Computers or else slipping into the kitchen to get another diet ginger ale out of the refrigerator and very, very often when my teacher says, "Bring your awareness back to the room," she is wasting her breath if you know what I mean.

Quite frankly, I usually leave the class feeling more frustrated and agitato then when I got there. My teacher is as different from me as a human woman could be although I do respect her on many levels. She is a very believing Catholic and she also believes in Western medicine with a vengeance although I am not sure why- it doesn't seemed to have cured any of the myriad of problems she seems to suffer from and often makes them worse. Case in point- her back. She is about to go get things fused in there and then will have to wear a brace for three months. But she will not even consider just resting her back or trying acupuncture or anything other than what the surgeon recommends.
So I either say things I shouldn't or shut my mouth which takes more energy than I need to expend these days on such ridiculous matters. It's her body- why should I care?
I don't know. Because I am Miss Fussy Know-It-All, that's why, if you want to know the truth.

Ah well and la-di-dah.

But at least my body is stretched and that felt good. In fact, it felt wonderful for a moment or two and that is worth a lot.

It's Friday. I remember back to the old days when Mr. Moon and I used to go out every Friday night. It was written in stone and we'd dress up for each other and go out and have drinks and maybe go dance and have supper and meet up with friends or just be alone and we'd be Mr. and Ms. Moon, not parents, just us. It was glorious.
We've gotten lazy though and old and now Friday's are just like other day except that we often have a martini and know we can sleep in the next morning unless Mr. Moon is going hunting but that doesn't affect me.

I miss those days when we really fixed up for each other and looked into each other's eyes and remembered what we were doing all that hard work for and relaxed into each other's arms and for a few hours were as wild and crazy as we needed to be, and then went home to be Mama and Daddy and wash up the dishes the kids had left from their Friday night ritual of pizza and movies, buzzed and happy and ready to start it all over again, real life.

That picture above is from one of those Friday nights and it had to be around 1996. A friend of ours at the bar took the picture and e-mailed it to me. It was probably the first picture I got on the internet, sent directly to me. Times have changed, babies. Times have changed.

Some for the better for sure. Some not so.
And that's what I'm thinking about today. How I used to wash my hair on Friday mornings and braid it so that it would be curly for the night and I'd wear it down and put on make-up and I remember one time I was standing there in the bar and a guy walked in and he just stood there, his mouth agape and looked at me and said, "You are so beautiful."

I suppose I was but I just laughed.

Owen's coming soon and I want to get a curry thing in the crockpot and it's so cold and gray. It's Friday. I am stretched but when I get up from sitting, it takes me a few seconds to get everything working again. I am like Pearl who can't count on her joints and muscles and tendons either and who stands with her head under things, sometimes even the power cord of this laptop if she wants to be close to me while I'm writing.

I suppose I am yearning. I love that word. I am yearning for those Friday nights when I felt beautiful and didn't really trust my feelings. I am yearning for those evenings when Mr. Moon and I would meet up with friends and laugh and dance and make-out in broom closets and alleyways. I am yearning for youth, I suppose, and I am yearning for a sense of inner peace, too, which I thought I might achieve when I was older but that I am obviously not pursuing properly but taking the easy way out and acting as if I am, when truthfully, I know I am not. How can I say anything to anyone about their choices when mine are so often deeply flawed and I know it?

Well, as Jimmy Buffett said, human beings are flawed individuals and there is a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning and I know that on a few, at least, of those Friday nights, I achieved something like enlightenment, being merely me, Mary Moon, dancing under the stars with the man I loved. Whom I still love and danced under the stars with just last weekend.

Stuff to ponder, another word I love right up there with yearning. We ponder, we yearn, we choose our paths, we lose our focus, we stumble on, our joints eventually remembering their purpose, our muscles still strong enough to take us down the paths we choose. We may not dance so much but we can lie together under the covers on a cold night, touching just this much skin, or maybe not even that, but knowing that the person we love is right there next to us and in that we take comfort, we ponder our great fortune, we may yearn still, in our dreams, we travel as lightly as we can, holding each other as tightly as we can, all of us.

Yes, you. You too.

Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Tiny Bits While Tiny Boy Is Sleeping

I know I say this all the time but Owen changes from day to day. Not just in his looks but in the things he does. He is sleeping with his arms over his head today, which I've never seen before. Lily says his daddy does that too. DNA is a powerful thing, isn't it?

And he's started to notice the dogs. Up until now, he's just sort of ignored them, even when they tried to lick his face. But now, they catch his attention and he studies them.
Here he is looking at Pearl. It's not a great picture but you can tell what it is.


I swear. It's almost as hard to take pictures of babies and dogs as it is chickens. They all move too fast.

All right. Moving on to stuff that has nothing to do with Owen:

I think I've probably lost most of my porch plants and it's only going to get colder. This hurts my heart. Those plants are like babies to me. I mean, not entirely. I thought I'd scratched Owen's face with my ring today (shit- I said this wasn't going to be about Owen and I've lied again) and I almost called his mother and confessed. The mark is gone now so I guess it wasn't so bad. But I wouldn't have called anyone in the world if I'd scratched a porch plant. Wouldn't have thought of it. But I have had some of those plants for decades.
Sigh.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: Why has the menu ALWAYS changed? WHY? "Please listen carefully as our menu has changed." Bite me. Since when? Since yesterday? Last year? Why do you keep changing the menu? It's not like your options are seasonal like different greens or fruits.

Even though it's a play, I still feel incredibly discombobulated to find myself lying under Colin when we're rehearsing. It's amusing and funny but it's still strange.
But I sort of like it. He makes me laugh so hard. This is going to be a very, very amusing play.
And I couldn't help it the other night. I squeezed his right chestular area. He announced to everyone: "She's playing with my breast here!" in his English accent, very indignantly.
And I probably shouldn't have done that and if he'd done it to me, it would have been highly inappropriate. But hell- there I was squashed up beneath him on a very small love seat. It seemed the thing to do.

Speaking of Colin, having an eye removed has done nothing to deter him from living his own amazing and unique life. He's taken on the role of Bud The Stud for this play and this week he's flying to Washington State (I think) to pick up and trailer back a kit to build an airplane. A real airplane. Not one of those lighter-than-air things. No. This one is bigger than the airplane he has now. With an engine and everything. And he's going to put it together in his hanger. I asked him if he was going to have help.
"Oh God no," he replied. "No one's as fastidious as I am."
He's right. The man makes a spread sheet for everything including his exercise and his line memorization. There is no one like Colin.

Why, when you're checking out at the grocery store, do they always ask you if you found everything you were looking for? If you answered "No, I did not," what would they do? Call the manager to report it?

Isn't it wonderful to get real things in the real mail? (Thanks Maggie May.)

Watching daytime TV is an alien experience for me but I must admit that when I'm giving Owen his bottle, I do it. I can see how easy it would be to get hooked on that thing. There's so much delicious nothingness going on. AND, today I saw a commercial for a product I MUST buy immediately- Kaboom! Foam. Oh yes. You should see the way that stuff cuts through soap scum, hard water stains and and calcium build-up! It was on TV. It must be true, right?

Why do they still sell Chia Pets? Do people still buy them? And what ARE they?

What's the deal with Detox Diets? If you want to detox, why don't you just buy some of that stuff you have to drink before you get a colonoscopy? That shit works in hours. Easy peasy. Save you tons of trouble.

And what's the deal with raw foods? Really? Fake bread you didn't cook? I mean, if you're going to eat raw food, why don't you just eat raw food? Why do you have to go through all that trouble to try and make raw food taste like cooked food? I don't get it. I. Do. Not. Get. It. And why do they have all these people spouting facts about foods and enzymes that just are not true? Take a damn chemistry class, people! How about microbiology? Try a course in that at a university. Then you can tell me that cooked food is dead and does nothing to nourish the body. Okay? Or maybe a physiology class. Yeah, take a physiology class and then we'll discuss the pounds of fecal matter lining your colon.
Oh wait- you read it in a book? Or online? Or in a magazine?
Yeah. Shut up.

Why is it a always an investment when Mr. Moon wants to buy something but it's never an investment when I want to buy something? I don't get that. Boats, cars- those are INVESTMENTS. Get it?
Lipstick, furniture, and new clothes are not.
Even jewelry, according to Mr. Moon, is not much of an investment.
Hmmm....

And why am I sitting here asking these silly questions and making silly pronouncements when I could be cleaning the bathrooms? Well. Because. I haven't bought my Kaboom! Foam yet. That's why. Sure. I have regular Kaboom! But it's not as good as Kaboom! Foam now, is it?
There you go.

And there you are. That's about where my intellect is today. Floating somewhere barely above the I'm-smarter-than-a-fruit-fly-level and far below the I'm-as-smart-as-a-fruit-bat-level.
And guess what?
Owen's here and I don't care.

Oh! Oh! One more thing! I saw it on TV! That movie? Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges? Guess who else is in it?

ROBERT DUVALL!

Oh my God. This is going to be the best movie ever.

I'll think of more stuff later but for now, that's all I can remember that I wanted to talk about.
Have a good day, y'all. Stay warm and kiss a baby if you can. I highly recommend it and it works better for depression than anything I've discovered.
And I'll bet nine out of ten doctors would agree. On television. If you paid them. And here I am giving it out for free.

What?! Am I crazy?
You bet.

Love...Ms. Moon

Me Today

For Nicol

Remember these, sweetie?

It's All Right, Mama

Just a few hours later and see- the darkness has passed. I promise. I knew it would. I'm about to trot off to town to do data entry, go to the library. It'll be warm in those places. I found another egg this morning, I fed Betty grapes. The sheets are in the wash and they will feel so good tonight. Kathleen is coming over this afternoon and I am making eggrolls for dinner.
You see? You see?

Yes. It's cold as hell but the sun is shining so very brightly.

Is it for you?

Oh. I hope so.

And here's a picture from yesterday of Pearl and Dolly just because it's sweet:

It's All In Our Minds

My eyes are watering. No. That's a lie. They are seeping sadness. I am at a place that is not a good place. Aren't you tired of hearing about all of this?

I'm tired. For no reason. I slept very well last night burrowed down in weights of covers, cold air slipping through the cracked window to cool me when I had a hot flash so that they did not last so long. But I'm just weary. Weary of myself and this mind that tells me repeatedly that there is really no sense to any of it. I open the paper and a German woman has killed her grandchild on St. George Island, a place I went to for healing several summers. Killed her grandchild? I close the paper. Perhaps the doctor visit wore me out, even though it took approximately ten minutes and there was nothing at all for the doctor to be suspicious about. He took his little can of freezy stuff and left after he looked at me while lecturing the entire time on the ABCDE's of skin cancer.
It's good that he gets this information across but I swear to God I want to smack the holy living shit out of him after he says the same thing for about the fifteenth time, me standing there, clutching the gown around me to preserve some semblance of modesty although the bull done left the barn on that one after all the places he'd looked. He did tell me I have a fine head of hair. At my age, I'll take that as a compliment.

When he left, I asked his assistant if she doesn't go insane, listening to this speech over and over and over again, all day long, five days a week.
"I just zone it out," she said. "I have to."

So the doctor and the holidays which, although they were not so bad this year, really, they weren't, they have worn me out too. Even my house, which is my place of peace, is not giving me solice. I look around and see dirt and clutter. I open a drawer, a cabinet and I think, I should clean this up, but I don't have the energy, I shut it back but can still feel the chaos in there, even though I cannot see it.

Outside, everything is brown and dead and dying. Even the camellias are dying on the bushes. Their bright colors turning brown, brown, brown. I hate brown. Anyone who paints a house brown is suspect in my book.

Winter. It's just winter. The season of no-hope. I know, intellectually, that things will change. That buds will open, the azaleas will blossom, the tiny violets will cover the yard with white and purple, the dogwoods will make snow of the flowers in their limbs. I know all of that.
I know that Miss Allegra will get through her chemo and will find her strength and health and joy again. But today, she is in hell and that makes me sad, so sad. I think of all the suffering in this world and it bears down upon my chest like a heavy weight.

Well. Owen is coming tomorrow. He is everything- promise and reality of joy now. Life can be hard. It usually is, truthfully. We keep traveling. What else can we do? My chickens cluck and bawk and lay me eggs, still, even when it is so cold. They, too, are promise.

And so I write myself into hope. Words can promise, fingers type out the ones that tell the story of now and of tomorrow. Perhaps.

I suppose this is why people who have religion are, at heart, happier than those who do not. They can put their focus on the glories which have been promised, or at least believe there is a reason for suffering.

Not for me. No, not for me. I can only hold the thought of my grandson in front of my heart like a carrot on a stick, also the azaleas and the dogwoods and the tiny perfect violets and go collect the eggs and look up into the clear winter sky and see the remnants of the blue moon we celebrated, knowing it will fill and fatten again, that moon.

And tomorrow will be different. Hell, in an hour things will be different. Change is inevitable.

It's okay to leak the heart's sadness through tears. It's okay to be sad for someone we know is suffering. It's okay to close the paper. It's okay to think of eggs and sassy chickens.

It's okay to go on. It's what we do. We humans.

Bless our hearts. Yours, mine, bless us all on this cold winter morning when we have to remember that yes, there is suffering but joy can be found if we turn our mind to that. That's what my fingers have typed. I must believe it.

This Is Not The Kind Of Attention I Crave

Pussy? Me?
Not just about the cold.
No, I am a pussy about so many things that it's pathetic.

I have a 9:40 appointment this morning at the dermatologist. Just an annual scan. You know- where the doctor goes over your entire body from your scalp to your toes looking for signs of skin cancer. And it's a miracle I haven't had any thus far- I've spent my life in the Florida sun and when I was a kid, there was nothing but Copper Tone, Sea'n' Ski and zinc oxide which I now hear is the standard of choice for preventing skin cancer. Who knew?
Anyway, I'm showered to within an inch of my life and even shaved my legs and I'm ready to go, panic attack hovering around the door asking, "Is it time yet? Can I unleash the dogs yet? Ready to pass out? Come on! It'll be fun!"

All I want to do is hang out here in Lloyd in my new soft Target pants and my new soft Target slippers which are "fur" lined. I really, really do not want that doctor to see me in all my glowing, blobby nakedness. No. I do not. He chants all the signs of skin cancer: borders, colors, growth rate, size, etc., etc. as he looks at me.

One year he talked me into trying an evil, evil drug called Effudex (or something like that) which peeled every bit of skin from my face and left me bleeding on my pillow before I ended that little experiment. Children ran from the sight of me. Adults politely turned their eyes away from my face. And the skin on my face has never been the same since. Damn him.

Another year he tried to talk me into Retin A.

Look. I am an aging woman. The sun and time and gravity have had their way with me. This is why I wear clothing. My face is my face.

Ah well. My panic level tells me it's time to go. Let's get this over with for the year. It's really not a big deal. Not like, oh, a colonoscopy, which I did get a notice about a few weeks ago. The Gods of The Colon have determined that it's time for me to undergo that procedure AGAIN.

Right.

Well. Off I go, panic barely in check. I have to see a doctor. Actually, he has to see me. Every square inch.

ARGGGHHHH!

She Was Trying To Protect Her Head By Jumping On Mine

Well, I had a new experience tonight. Miss Betty flew up and landed on my head. Damn- where IS the camera when you need it?

I had gone out to let her into the hen house which is our routine. I let her out in the morning and back in in the evening so that Sam doesn't attack her. It's been working well. Her head is almost healed and usually, at least a few of the other hens want to go out with her so she's not a complete outcast. I don't put her back in the hen house until the other chickens have gone to roost because when they go to bed, they become almost comatose and Sam lets her settle in unmolested.

Tonight she didn't want to go in and it was cold and I had to go turn on all the outdoor spigots and sprinklers and I grew a bit impatient and urged her in the door before she wanted to go. I closed the door and sure enough, I heard a shriek and a ruckus. I opened the door back up again and Sam was off the roost and chasing her. She took wing and landed right on top of my head.

What could I do but laugh? It didn't hurt a bit. In fact, it was oddly pleasurable, having Miss Betty on top of my head like a very soft, warm hat.

But I knew we couldn't stay that way- me with a chicken on my head- and so I went to lift her off and she flew up to the roost and I shoved her to the back of one of the nesting boxes where several other nice fat hens were already settled in so that Sam couldn't get her and she could be warm. I gave him the evil eye and said, "You leave Miss Betty alone," and he gave me the evil eye back but he settled down.

I closed the door and waited for a bit, but all was quiet and I went on to turn on the sprinklers and spigots to let the water run so it won't all freeze up and bust our pipes as we say around here.

I know I've been talking way too much here about how cold it is but golly! We're not Yankees and our blood is thin. And we're not supposed to have a night with temperatures reaching as high as the thirties for a week! A WEEK I TELL YOU! This really is abnormal for us. We get those dipping-down nights but usually, after a day or two, the temperature rises back into the more humane regions and we all breathe a sigh of relief and get on with our lives. We don't even have the wardrobes for this sort of weather. It's like when the temperatures get into the nineties up in Connecticut and no one has air-conditioning and people start dropping like flies.

I just have to say I am eternally grateful for the lovely central air and heat unit we have. As old and drafty as this house is, it gets pretty toasty. And so here I sit wearing my Goodwill cashmere feeling cozy and fine, knowing that even though Mr. Moon is out of town tonight I will sleep well with little Zeke cuddled up in the bed next to me. He's small but warm. And I'll think of Lily and Owen and Jason in their bed tonight, all asleep under the covers together, Mr. Baby nursing when he takes the notion, Lily holding him close. If there is anything cozier than sleeping with a nursling, I do not know what it is.

We had such a good time with him today. We took him to lunch and he wore real shoes like a real human and then we went to Target and I took him into the garden center briefly and told him that he better get used to the smell of fertilizer because he's going to be visiting lots of nurseries with his Grandmama and that when he grows up and I'm gone, whenever he smells fertilizer he will think of me. May was a bit appalled when I said this, but it's true. I hope.

It's cold tonight but spring will come some day and Owen and I will stroll around the plant nurseries together and he will smell dirt and green things and fertilizer and then I'll bring him out here and he'll smell more. I'll teach him to plant seeds in the ground and every time he comes over he'll be excited to see how much they've grown. And I just realized that we're going to have to let one of the hens hatch us some eggs so that Owen can watch them grow up, too because I want him to know all about chickens and where they come from. He's already seen them having sex but I don't think he really knew what he was seeing. He will one of these days, though. He'll watch Sam or Elvis jump on one of the hens and he'll say, "Grandma, why's Sam on top of Daffodil?"
And I'll say, "Ask your mama."

Who knows, maybe someday a chicken will even fly onto his head. And I hope he'll laugh because he'll know the chickens so well that they won't scare him one bit. That he'll find the idea of a chicken on his head to be completely delightful.

Stay cozy y'all. I know it's cold where most of us are tonight. But I know that most of us have heat and blankets and warm food for our tummies and some of us have babies or dogs or lovers to cuddle up with and isn't that the definition of riches?

I think it is.

Stay warm. And if you ever have the opportunity to have a chicken jump onto your head, I'd say go for it.

It's Cold

This is what Pearl, my fourteen-year-old boxer dog does all day long. She sticks her head under things. She has her stations of the cross, as it were, in every room and she follows me around and sticks her head under whatever she can find in that room. This is the dining room and as you can see, she is sticking her head under some dried palm fronds. In the kitchen, she lets the hand towel on the oven door touch her head.
I don't know why she does this but she does.
The palm fronds, the kitchen towel, a tablecloth.
While the Christmas tree was up she broke half the ornaments by standing with her head under the branches and the tree skirt. She stands quietly for awhile and then she either gets an itch and must scratch or else she just goes into some sort of spasm and whoops! there went another ornament.
Bless her old doggie heart, my Pearl.
We all get old and weird. I know I am getting weirder, the older I get. I don't stick my head under palm fronds, but I do want to keep my head under this roof. Especially right now. It's freezing outside. I think I need to go heat some water to pour in the chicken's water so they can drink. Really- it's that cold here in North Florida today and supposed to get colder tonight.
We're not wired for this here. We are all big pussies about the cold and we wander around with as many clothes and coats on as we can get and we look at each other in bewilderment like, "How'd this happen?" much like Pearl looks when she suddenly loses her grip on gravity and all of her legs come out from under her.

All right. I better go take care of those chickens. I hear Sam out there, crowing for his hens to get UP! I am sure they are mostly still in the hen house, fluffed up and fine where they are but the man, oh, the man! He wants his morning fucking and he needs the hens for that.

Life in Lloyd where it's cold as a frozen bone outside and we are none of us prepared and don't want to get our head out from under the palm fronds, our funny little chicken asses off of the roost.

How To Make It Through A Sunday

"What?" He's saying. I'm just playing with my stuff here. You mind?
Oh. My Owen. I walked into the kitchen and he began to grin at me.
"Your grandmama's here," said Lily. She was holding that boy. Or maybe she said, "The Crazy Chicken Grandma's here."
Whatever. Didn't matter to me.
In the little over an hour that I was there we played on the blanket, doing patty cake and touch-the-toes-to-the-nose and he talked to me. He's so serious when he talks. He forms his words carefully and lets them out in a string of sounds which sound very, very serious. He waits for me to reply.
"What?" I ask him. "What are you telling me?"


He looks off into the distance as if to say, Oh Lord. These Bigs are so retarded.



His first tooth is almost through. He chews on his hands and my hands and a clean diaper and anything he can get in that mouth of his. He doesn't seem too upset by the whole process, as if he were just going through it and knew it was going to happen and whatever.
I changed his diaper twice and blew on his belly. He loves being naked. Loves it. As all children do.
And we danced. I took Lily her copy of Lis's CD and she put it on and we danced, me and the O-Boy. The last song on the album is called Time and it's my very favorite.
"This is the sound life makes," sings Lis, "Like the first breath a baby takes. When it's born."
And I cried, holding that boy in my arms while Lis sang.
I called her on my way to Monticello and left a message on her answering machine. "I danced with Owen to your album and it was one of the highlights of my life and I cried."
She left an message on my answering machine.
"You made ME cry."

Yeah. We crone-ish women. We cry all the fucking time. You know why? Because we know how precious each precious moment is. We don't have time to waste on panty-waist emotions. Dancing with your grandchild to the album your heart-friend made? Reason to cry.

Which brings me to the play we're doing now. Our first real rehearsal went really well. Kathleen has got this director shit DOWN! She's thought about it. She knows where she wants us to be when we say our lines. She is ready. I am so impressed but not in the least surprised.
And it's going to be funny. But in a way, it's not that funny because part of the humor comes from men accidentally taking a drug which causes them to experience menopausal symptoms including crying for no apparent reason. But we women don't cry for no reason at all. The reasons may not be readily apparent, but they are real. Things TOUCH us. They make us cry. But what the hell? It'll be funny in the play and there is nothing in the world I love more than making people laugh. It also occurred to me as we were blocking the first act and Colin was lying on top of me that I haven't had another man lay on top of me since Mr. Moon and I got together in 1983!
But I do have to say that if I MUST have another man laying on top of me, even in service of The Theatre! I am glad it is Colin.

I remember back when I was going to that therapist last year and she said, "Oh my! You are a writer- the way you speak! You need an outlet for that!"
And I said, "Oh well. I do. I have this blog..."
And then she said, "And you are an actress! Your voice! You need an outlet for that!"
And I said, "Well, I do. I act in plays in Monticello."
And she said, "And you need to nurture!" and I said, "Well, I have chickens and I'm about to get a grandchild."

And that was the last time I needed to see HER.

Anyway. That's what my Sunday turned into. The trifecta of what-I-need.
Not to mention the little organic chicken in the oven (oh Lord- I can't believe I can still eat chicken) stuffed with a dressing I made of homemade bread, homemade cornbread, onions and celery, and a cozy house and a sweet husband.

Phew. Made it through another Sunday.
Did you?

Got To Go

It's Sunday and the blues are in my pocket and I haven't seen Owen since last week and I have rehearsal this afternoon so I am going to rocket into town to see that boy. Mr. Moon is going to babysit him this afternoon for a few hours while Lily and Jason are at work and I'm at the Opera House so I have to take this time to go get my fix, my sense of peace, my sugar, my heart, my joy.

I woke up cold, both feet and soul and the chicken water keeps refreezing. Betty and Carol are hanging out together and we ate some of our hen's eggs for breakfast with grits and bagels and let me admit it here- bacon. One piece. I had one piece. I swear. Breakfast warmed me up but not enough. I have to go see my grandson. I had dreams of long-dead friends and that shit freaks me out and so I want (need) to go see my boy who is very much alive and remind him of who I am. The chickens are fine, Mr. Moon is fine, the dogs are fine, I am sure that Owen is fine but I can hold him while his mama does some laundry or whatever it is she needs to do. I am sick of making soup and it isn't helping and I cleaned out the refrigerator and so what? and we took the tree down and put the stockings and Bad Santa away but none of that fed me, not even the bacon, but I know what will.

And after I get his sugar I'll go to Monticello where I'll play with Jack and Jan and Colin and Marcie and Pat, and Kathleen will get to be the boss of us and that, too, will feed me.
Hey! When you're hungry, you have to feed yourself.
And sometimes soup won't do it.

I'm off.

Be good. Feed yourself if you're hungry. That's all I have to say.

Call Me

As I said in an earlier post, I have lost my address book. It is gone. I lost it when Lily was in labor. It probably slipped out of my bag where I had it in order to have all the phone numbers of the people I would need to call when the baby came.

It turned out that by the time Owen was born, I was too exhausted to call more than a few people and their numbers were in my cell phone and so I did not realize the loss of the little pink book that had the names and addresses and numbers in it of all the people I know. I went back to check at the hospital the next day to see if anyone had found it but no, there was no trace of it. I feel sure that when the room was cleaned, it was picked up with all the bio-hazard trash and burned in some giant incinerator, it's little picture of the Virgin on the front turning first blue, then black, then disappearing entirely with all that information collected over so many years that meant nothing to anyone in the entire world but me.

And here's the thing- there are a few people in my real life whom I do not e-mail. Seriously. This is true. For whatever reason. And there is one in particular with whom I am fairly desperate to get in touch with. Her name is Mary Lane and we became friends in the sixth grade and she was the one who patiently sat outside the stall of a campground bathroom when we were on a Girl Scout camping trip the night I learned to use a tampon. You know what kind of a friend I am talking about.

The last time I talked to Mary Lane was right before my birthday in July. She was expecting her second grandchild and her father was about to die. And I haven't heard from her since and I haven't been able to call her and it is just now I am panicking because I realize that yes, really and truly, my address book is lost. And worst of all- I tried to google her today and discovered that her daddy died right after we spoke.

If, as my wise counselor of old once told me, we go to relationship school in our parent's house, we can also attend classes occasionally at the houses of our childhood friends. This was certainly true for me. Do you remember going to a friend's house and realizing that things which were done and said at your house were definitely not done or said at your friend's house? That the relationship between parents and children varied wildly? That this friend's parents barely spoke to each other while this other friend's parents seemed to have a secret which they shared sweetly between themselves and no one else? It was like traveling in a foreign country, just to visit someone else's home where the rules and customs were mysterious and curious and where the kitchen smelled completely different and the foods cooked there were not the foods cooked in your own mother's kitchen.

Mary Lane and I were best friends for years. We spent a lot of time in each other's houses although I think we spent a lot more time at her house than we did at mine. There were probably a lot of reasons, the main one being that at my house, everyone was certifiably insane, the vibe was terrible and the food was not as good.

Mary Lane's mother, like mine, was a housewife but she was a different sort of housewife. She dressed better, she didn't try to get away with substituting powdered milk for real milk and she had her own subscription to the Wall Street Journal. She was smart and not afraid to show it. She was a doctor's wife, long-suffering but tolerant, and she definitely had a social life. Their family ate with a tablecloth on the long table and it was at that table I ate boiled shrimp for the first time. I had no idea how to eat it, how to slip the little cellophane jackets off the shrimp along with the legs. But Mary Lane's brother, Jeff, whom I carried the hugest torch for for years and years showed me how to do it. I paid attention. And I have never, ever, in my life, cooked boiled shrimp without adding slices of lime or lemon to the cooking water the way Mary Lane's mother did and I never pull off a shrimp shell without thinking of that night, the tablecloth, Jeff sitting next to me, showing me how to eat the shrimp, the Mother at one end of the table, the Father at the other.

Mary Lane's family and house intimidated me a bit. They lived on a lake, which almost everyone in Winter Haven did (it billed itself as the City of One Hundred Lakes) but they lived right across from Cypress Gardens, right on the lake, not across the road from it, as we lived across the road from our more prosaic lake. They had one whole room that no one ever went into except to practice piano. It had white furniture and a white carpet. But they also had an entire room just for kids to hang out in. They encouraged Jeff's desire to be in a rock band. They bought him a keyboard, and paisley pants on Carnaby Street when they went to London in 1968 or thereabouts. Those pants got him sent home from school and so did the length of his hair but their mama defended him and she had clout. Now look- I'm not saying she was perfect. She was no doubt a Republican. But. She loved her kids. She didn't freak out and go into la-la-land the way my mother did when some teen-aged problem arose. Perhaps the fact that their youngest daughter had had cancer at an early age informed this attitude. She knew what was important. She knew what wasn't.

And Mary Lane's father was certainly a mysterious figure to me. He was never on time for dinner and the family generally waited (and not always patiently) for him to get home to eat. His work was more important than anything, of course! Not only was he a doctor, he was a cardiologist! He and his wife drove Lincoln Continentals, bigger than boats, and I remember going on trips with the family, listening to Three Dog Night and Abby Road on the tape player in the car, sitting near enough to Jeff to get hot and bothered and not knowing one damn thing about what to do about that. I remember on one trip, the doctor telling us how when he'd been in the Navy, they'd worn bell-bottom trousers. Oh yes! I bet he'd been a handsome sailor, Mary Lane's daddy. He scared me a little and he and I probably never had what you'd call a real conversation. Why would we? I was only his daughter's friend, I was at their house a lot, I went to church with them sometimes, I went on trips with them, he knew who I was, there was no need to get to know me. Adults didn't have that need then- to get into their kids' relationships. Not the dads, anyway. Certainly not the dads. They hardly bothered to have relationships with their own kids.

But I observed. And I saw that the doctor and his wife, although they certainly didn't sit around holding hands and I doubt I ever saw them kiss, had a room off to themselves which was regularly redecorated and the few times I ever entered it, I was impressed with the furniture, the thick carpets, the satiny drapes and bedspread, the wealth of well-dressed pillows piled up on that big bed. It all hinted at something that was certainly not going on in my own house.

Mary Lane and I stayed friends all through high school. We got into trouble together and we got out of it together. We fell in love with boys. We discussed boys endlessly on the phone, as well as so many secrets of our hearts. We suffered through Trig together. We went to Cotillion together, wearing our white gloves and our hose, nervously hoping our dance cards would be filled in. I got kissed for the very first time, leaning up against Mary Lane's mama's Lincoln in the parking lot of Cotillion by a bad boy nicknamed Mafia who had the goofiest grin this side of babyhood and who wore sunglasses all the time and Mary Lane was the first to know.

Of course.

And there were things we did not share, Mary Lane and I. We did not share the fact that my stepfather abused me. We did not share the fact that Mary Lane, in the throes of early-seventies worship of thinness starved herself. There were things even we could not talk about but the things we could talk about, we did.

She went to Emory, where her father had gotten his degree in medicine at the age of 21. And there she met her first real boyfriend- a premed student- even though she had sworn to me that she would never, EVER marry a doctor. They got married, she supported him through his residency while he became a neurosurgeon. I couldn't attend the wedding because I was overdue with my first baby, having gotten pregnant and married the guitar player father. She lived in Maryland, I lived in Tallahassee. But we always stayed in touch. Always.

And she came to visit me a few summers when I was renting a tiny cement hovel on St. George Island. I will never forget the night we went down to the ocean on a full moon and stripped naked and floated in the warm, salty Gulf under the stars and we told each other so many of the secrets we'd never shared before, grown women by then, married and mamas ourselves.

You know what kind of friend I'm talking about.

And now her daddy has died and we both have grandsons named Owen and I don't know how she's doing. If she reads my blog, I don't know about it. I think that some people who know me in real life do read the blog and are embarrassed to tell me, as if they are peeking into a window unbidden. But I hope she does. I hope she reads this because I really want to talk to her. I really want to be in touch with her. I want to tell her how sorry I am her daddy died. I want to hear how her mama is doing. I want to hear how the rest of her family is doing. I want to hear how she is doing.

So Mary Lane- if you, by some chance are reading this, please call me. Or e-mail me. Whatever. I miss you so much and we've been through almost an entire lifetime together and I need to still know you're there. I need to tell you that you're right- there is nothing in this entire world like holding your grandchild, like watching your child hold her own baby. I need to compare aches and pains and memory losses. I need to tell you that I learned a lot at your growing-up house. I need to say thank-you for sitting outside of that bathroom stall while I tried to figure out where my vagina was and how to put a tampon in it. I need to thank-you for being my friend when my life was at its hardest.

You didn't know it was, but it was. I didn't know what your secrets were but I know that if you had told them to me, I would have still loved you. I hope you would have still loved me if you had known what mine were. I think you would have.

I want to tell you that I still think of that rum and Jimmy Buffett-fueled night we floated naked under the moonlight and stars on St. George.

So call me, honey, if you get this.

And Happy New Year.

I'm thinking about you and your whole family. I'm thinking about your daddy and Raggedy Anns in velvet dresses and big blue jars full of lemon drops, and I'm thinking of mushrooms and crushes and Jimmy, Jimmy, Jeff, John, Jeff. I'm thinking of you, honey. I am thinking of you.

And I hope you're good. I hope you're handling everything the way you always have- with wisdom and humor and persistence. I remember in the eighth grade when we had to do the flexed arm hang for the fucking Presidential Fitness Test and how you struggled your way up there and held your body, shaking, by your own skinny arms and I thought right then that if I ever needed someone to depend my life on, you would be that person.

Call me baby. I've lost your number. But you're still in my heart.

And I need to know you're there.

Love...Mary

Just This

It's cold here today. Now when I say cold, I'm not even going to mention a temperature because it doesn't sound that impressive but let me say that people visiting here from "Up North" where the temperatures are impressive say that this cold is different.

I don't know. Why do we always need to be the best, the worst, the coldest, the hottest, the strongest, the sweetest, the oddest, the quirkiest, the funkiest, the craziest, the sanest?
Why do we need, this time of year to make lists of the best, the worst? Movies, TV shows, books, political moments?

I don't know.

Join my tribe. Or, alternatively, you don't look like me, act like me, think like me so get away and stay away. You are NOT my tribe and I don't recognize you.

Humans are weird but not quite as much if you know anything about the great apes or even chickens or ants, for that matter. We are all, and you can damn well take my word for this, animals. We may be able to invent and operate iPhones and genetically alter plants but plants have been doing a good job of genetically altering themselves for eons, thank-you very much. They don't need an app for that. We humans like to think we are all that but when you think about it, we're just walking-around-life with swollen brains and swollen egos and souls that can hate, that can love, that can come up with stories and music and poetry and paintings and for this we are different, but at the very bottom of it all, we are here trying to hold on to life, to make more of us, to keep our young safe and fed and warm.

***********

It's been so long since I started this post that I've forgotten where I was going with it. I should just toss it. There's nothing here I haven't said before. Probably repeatedly.
I guess what I wanted to say is that none of us is the best. None of us is the worst. We try to hold ourselves up to impossible standards. I am never going to be either Garrison Keillor or Susan Sarandon (WHY did she and Tim Robbins break-up? WHY?) and neither are you. We are not going to be Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins, thank-you, Jesus. We are not despots or saints. We are imperfect and we are glorious just as we are in that imperfection. I do not recommend that we wallow in our imperfections and call them glorious perfections of ourselves but I also do not recommend that we wallow in our self-conceived sins and self-hatred.
In fact, I think I would do far better for myself, my world, and my family if I could get out of that fiery, messy pit of self-hatred and find some rhinestone rose-colored glasses to view myself in a bit more often.

And you?

Okay. This writing is muddy and far from pristine. Don't go looking through the depths for pure glowing jewels of meaning. There aren't any.

But look- that camellia? I grew that. Or, to put it another way- I bought a plant, I planted it in my yard. I kept it alive. It rewarded me this morning, this cold winter morning, with that jewel of a flower. If there is anything I am slightly good at, it is merely keeping things alive that eventually reward me royally. Kids, plants, chickens.
Bread dough.
You know.

Not a gift in any way or a talent, either. Just life. I'm just a woman. I struggle every day of my life with wondering why I'm still here. I talk out loud about that struggle. I celebrate the moments when I know why I'm still here. I despair in the moments when I forget the reasons.

That's me. Are you in my tribe? Am I in yours? We don't wear certain colored hats and we don't have team colors so we must recognize each other in more subtle ways. We celebrate and despair together.

I'm struggling today. The camellia gives me at least something to pause and wonder at, to give me the least feeling that yes, I have done something. I kept that plant alive. I don't need rose-colored glasses to see that pink glory in that.

And now I'll go make soup.

The Church of the Batshit Crazy is in session. 2010 and we're still worshipping and we're still swaying in tears.

Same as it ever was. Dinner on the grounds. The music is good. The flowers are not on the altar, they're in the yard. So are the chickens. So are the greens and Mr. Moon and Jessie have just gone out to pick some to put in the soup. Greens, not chickens.

One day at a time. One moment at a time. Let us try to remember that. Neither the worst or the best. Just...this.

Good enough.
Close enough to heaven to glimpse the light, far enough away to make the journey interesting and daunting.

One step at a time. One breath at a time. Don't borrow trouble, the sky is not falling, we cannot know what tomorrow brings.

Rubies and tears, joys and fears.

We are the tribe of people who understand that.
Peace unto you as you work through all of that for yourself, as you share it with your tribe.

That's all. Just that. Just this.

It Was All Of That And More

Well, that baby of Lis's was born last night and with all the attendants of magic and powerful good wishes you'd expect to find in a fairy-tale.

And you know what? I forgot to take my damn camera. I have had several people promise me that they will send me some pictures and I hope they do. I will be smacking my forehead for the rest of my life over that mistake because there were so many beautiful images I wish I'd caught to share and keep. People dressed up! Women in velvet and hats with feathers and men in suits and ties and even tuxes and there was glittering jewelry and high heels and everyone looked perfectly suited to usher in not only the new year but the new CD. Everyone had one theme and one theme only as we all smiled and hugged and that theme was, "Isn't this wonderful? Our Lis...Oh! Our Lis!"

And she was so beautiful in a cut-velvet dress and her antique beaded sweater and vintage jewelry and she did indeed sing like an angel and Lon smiled the entire evening.

Everyone did.

People danced! I have never seen people dance in St. Augustine but they danced last night, gently waltzing under the trees to the sweet music.

The food was delicious, the drinks flowed, there were blue twinkle lights and shimmering beaded curtains behind the stage. The weather was warm and only about fourteen raindrops fell and most people were under tents anyway.

I don't think it could have been more perfect.

And now we're home and I just wanted to tell you that. It's going to get cold here tonight, I think. The new year has well and truly started. I hope it's a good one. I just pray it's a good one, although I am kicking tradition and superstition to the curb and have made a tuna casserole for our supper instead of black-eyed peas.

I am tired and I want to try and get the Christmas tree down before I go to bed. I swear to God, I have never in my life left a Christmas tree up this long. But I've just had so much to do this year. The parties! The glamor! The GRANDSON! whom I miss so much I can barely restrain myself from getting back in the car and driving to town to hold and smell and kiss, even if only for a few moments.

But no, I need to get that tree down so that tomorrow I can start life holiday-free. Time to put the make-up away until the performances of Sex Please! We're Sixty at the end of February. Time to put away the velvet and the jewels. Time to change the calender and write in all the birthdays and annivesaries for 2010. Time to start learning my lines. Time to stop eating sugar and white flour and cheese and bacon. Time to stop thinking of chocolate as a daily-necessary food-group and time to stop thinking of martinis as a reward for getting through another day.

Sigh.

And yet, won't that be glorious? To have time to take care of things including myself?

The house we stayed in last night belongs to a very dear friend of Lis's and of mine, also, and it's the most amazingly perfect house I've ever personally been in. Lorie's house. She has an eye for color and design and everywhere you look in her house and her yard there is something shining, lightfilled and lovely. And it's so clean that I think she must paint it every other week. Honestly, I can't think of any other way it could always look the way it does. Her cabinets are more orderly and arranged than mine were the day I moved in here. I had to take a few pictures this morning and I've used one of them for my new masthead. It makes me feel serene and peaceful just to look at it. I hope it does you, too. And being in that house inspired me to want to do better with my own home, which I do love so very much.

Lorie is one of those people- like Lis- who makes you feel as if your presence in her home is exactly what she has been looking forward to forever. Her boyfriend, John, is the same way. They define loving graciousness. They make you feel cherished and cared for in more ways than I can describe and they do it so gently, so heart-fully. They've inspired me too.

In a short while, you'll be able to order Lis's new CD at her new website. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking I'd like to do a giveaway with one of the ones I brought back. I'm not sure how I'll do it. I'll think about it tonight. As I have said before, I wish I could send one to every one of you because every one of you has in some way inspired me this year, or encouraged me or lifted me up when I needed it, or made me laugh or made me cry or made me THINK and if there is any way in this world I could begin to repay you all, it would be with the gift of these beautiful songs by Lis.

Happy New Year's. Let's get that tree down. Let's put on our walking shoes. Let's go change the baby. Let's all dance in the hallway. Let's drink more water and remember to eat food, mostly plants, not too much. Let's be in wonder at what light does with blue glass. Let's be gracious and loving.

Let's get on with it.

See you tomorrow.