Not A Bad Sunday

It's like Groundhog Day here over and over again, this overcast damn chill-bone weather. There is nothing inspiring in it for me, I am like a plant who can survive the gray but who does not thrive in it, not at all and yet, do I do anything to move towards some light and cheer?
No. I do not.
I hunker down and take baths in boiling hot water and drink coffee and tea and make chili and watch the chickens and read Swamplandia! and fret over the fact that I should AT LEAST make a list of things I must do before we leave for Mexico.
I am inert.
Well, to everything there is a season, and so forth and the chili was very good, at least.
And truthfully, I am not unhappy.
Not a bit.

I am, in fact, pretty darn content.

I don't have a lot on my mind today that needs discussing or airing. I am thinking about the play and the first read-through we're going to have this afternoon and how it'll be the first time since Wednesday that I've left Lloyd.
I'm thinking about that list I need to make for my trip but even though we are leaving two weeks from today, it just seems completely impossible for me to even imagine leaving not only Lloyd but Florida and indeed! the country! But somehow, in my mind, Cozumel is only an extension of my heart-home so it doesn't seem like a very daunting prospect. At least not yet. I still remember the things I bought to take to Cozumel the first time, some of which I used or wore and some of which I did not. I didn't realize how hot it would be there so the jeans I took I wore exactly once, I think, and that was the last time I ever took a pair of jeans. I did use the water-proof eyeshadow I'd bought in mermaid colors and also some Dewberry perfume from the Body Shoppe which I don't think they even sell now but if they did, I would buy some because I loved it. I had no idea how young and beautiful I was back then. 1987. I was thirty-three years old. I wore that Dewberry perfume and had mermaid eyes, even when I swam, and we danced in a discotheque there called Scaramouch and for a week I was not a mother or an old hippie but a mermaid/madonna/goddess with silver flashing in her ears and on her arms and every picture taken of me I was wearing an expression of bliss.
Ah me.
Ah lah.

I tell you this- I will be taking eyeshadow in mermaid colors again and I will be wearing it. Maybe not when I swim or snorkel, but for going out to supper. Believe it. And silver bracelets. Oh yes I will, even those these arms are not the arms of someone I recognize anymore. I recognize the bracelets. Perhaps I will even buy some more.

I have so many memories of Cozumel. I hope we make some new wonderful ones this trip. Memories that can shoot through even these Groundhog Days of winter's continual gray as my once-blond hair grows gray, as my face and arms grow ever-less recognizable to me. That handsome man who has traveled so well with me over the years and I may not dance at Scaramouch but we can still dance. We can still trace the path of the moon over the water to Tulum by its silver trail. We can still laugh and we can still love and so yes, I am thinking of that today, this gray day, as the leaves continue to fall, as the chickens scratch in the dirt, as I am content with memory, with present, with looking-forward to what may come. The good parts, at least. I think there will be more.

The Full Moon From My Backyard.

Google is still messing with me. Click on 'em if you want to see them fully. Haha!

Full Moon Wishes And Dreams

Oh, goodness, I feel like the quiet hub of a buzzing, whirling world. Not the center of the universe, just the part that is still.

Mr. Moon is in the woods for the second time today and besides that, has sold a car. He comes in to shower with take-your-scent-away soap and change into whatever outfit he needs for the activity before him. One thing I do not enjoy about hunting season is having to use all unscented washing detergent and softener. Laugh all you want, I love the smell of some fabric softeners. But if anything smells of anything, the deer will know and so there you go- he must be unscented, as if that were possible.
He brings home trail camera pictures and videos of the deer and other animals that trigger the contraption. Today there were two bears. Bears are big, y'all. But Mr. Moon just laughs and shoos them away if they get too close. They look like big cuddly pets in the videos but those are blurry and black and white and I know that up close they are huge and have very long claws and very sharp teeth and no, black bears do not generally (hardly ever!) attack a human unprovoked, but still...
Jason hunted this morning too and came in to report that he'd seen some young bucks or does or something. I guess bucks. "I've seen them grow up," he said. "I feel like their father. I can't shoot them."
This is the kind of hunters I know and love. They go for meat and to see what is in the woods and they go many, many times without raising a rifle.

Anyway, all of that is happening in the woods and in the world and I have been here, going as far as the trash place, the post office. That's all. Hank and Anna came out to visit and we did and I have chili cooking and that is all.

I had to water the plants. Had to. And in doing so, I discovered that some of the hens are laying again in the fern on the front porch. Those eggs above are the ones I found in there. I know they are fresh because I only uncovered the plants a few days ago. Eggs are packaged to last. Believe me.

I put two cans of tomatoes in my chili, paranoid now about the report that canned tomatoes leach some horrible chemical from their containers and that we should never, never use them.
Oh fuck it.
I can't possibly keep up with this shit. And then someone will come along soon and say, "Oh, no big whoops. We were wrong." And if not, we'll, I guess my chili is going to kill us.

Eggs might be killing us with cholesterol or maybe this year they aren't, but I'll tell you this- the way they are packaged will not. And how beautiful! No Madison Avenue art department could come up with a fancier package, no label required.

When Hank was here, I gave him a quick run-down on what his chicken duties will be when he house sits for us while we are away. "I guess you don't really need to know their names, do you?" I asked him.
"I don't think so," he said.
I sighed. And then told him all of their names anyway and pointed out how to identify them all. I know it looks like I have six identical black hens but if you know them, they are as different as night and oh...a different night.
It doesn't matter to a soul on this earth except for me. The chickens don't care although I am convinced that Elvis knows his name. I have seen Owen call him and he has come to the boy. Owen and Elvis have grown up together. Do you remember when they looked like this?

And then this?


So hard to believe. Now Owen lets the chickens out and calls them and feeds them. "Owen DO it," he says. He cracks crackers for them by stomping on them with his boots. And then casually reaches down and picks up a piece which is bigger than the rest and pops it into his mouth.
Sigh.
He also lets the goats nibble on carrots and then before I can stop him, puts the carrots back into his own mouth. But he returns the favors- he chomps up collard greens and spits them out for the chickens to eat.
So far, it's working for all of us.

Well. Saturday night. Prairie Home Companion is about to be on. The chickens are up in their roost. The sky is growing dark. I need to remember to go out look at that full moon.

And it's Lon Williamson's birthday! Mr. Moon and I need to call him and at least leave him a message, tell him how glad we are that he was born, that he is a part of our lives. Happy birthday, Lonnie! We love you truly! Always and forever. There is no one on earth like you which is sad, because if there were, it would be better here for all of us. As it is, your presence graces us always.

And to dear Elizabeth- thank-you. I cannot wait to read this book to my grand boy. It made me so happy to read it to myself and I hope he loves it as much as I do because I want to read it many, many times.


I am not sure why my pictures got so small but they did and it's just one of the many mysteries of life, especially when Google is concerned.

I'll leave you with this, which is the last paragraph of that book:

That night, when she went to bed, she was very tired. But she looked through the branches and she could see a million stars. The wind blew gently and rocked the tree like a cradle. It was very peaceful and Miss Suzy was happy once more.

May we all sleep peacefully and be happy once more.

Love...Ms. Moon

Comfort And Joy

Dear Jo sent me this as she knows how much I love Bill Murray and hate Christmas. Add that up and this is pretty much the perfect greeting.

This ignoring Christmas thing is going pretty well for me. I have no guilt about it, well, mostly, and I am looking on at the hysteria with a bemused expression on my face wondering why we don't ALL just say no to the ridiculousness of it all. I mean, if you love putting up a Christmas tree, well then, do it and enjoy the hell out of it. If you don't, fuck it. If you have a way to celebrate which is joyful and meaningful to you, then that is a beautiful thing and be grateful and if you don't, well I'm here to tell you that it is A-Okay.

I'm looking at it this way- I did Christmas for my children, not for me. They are grown up and can do Christmas for themselves which allows me to finally and at last, step away from a situation which causes me mostly depression and pain. Thank goodness my husband doesn't really care, one way or the other. But if I don't eat one Christmas cookie, much less bake a bunch of them, I'll be perfectly fine.

Man, I used to go all out. My first husband and I used to throw a wingdinger of a Christmas party. I'd make eggnog that would knock your socks off and bake and freeze cookies for months. I'd cook a turkey, a ham, make a fruit salad big enough to fit into the engine compartment of a DC-10. I made and decorated cookies specifically to hang on the tree. I made fruitcakes in early November and wrapped them tenderly in rum-soaked cheesecloth and set them to ripen in bright tin containers. I wrote Christmas letters and sent cards. I made gifts. I bought gifts. I drove five hours to Winter Haven on Christmas days so that we could share the children with two grandparent-homes and still have Christmas of our own.
Yeah, boy. That was fun.
Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.
Done.

Am I going to be sad to wake up in Cozumel on Christmas morning to see that beautiful water chuckling against the beach instead of seeing Owen's eyes light up at all of the booty underneath the tree?
I seriously doubt it.
Does that make me a bad grandmother? A bad mother?
No, it does not. I am here almost 365 days a year, being the best mother and grandmother I know how to be and if not being there on Christmas morning makes me less of a grandmother then so be it.
I'll be less.
I'll take it.

I might make the traditional Christmas Eve dinner Moon chicken salad and give that to Lily before I go. I wouldn't mind doing that. And that's about as much of tradition I care to do.

Ah-lah. I'm still not feeling well and it's another overcast chilly day here in North Florida. The sort of wet-chilly that gets in the bones and settles there. The sun is a milky disk behind the clouds and does nothing at all for warmth or cheer. I am going to rest today and perhaps get out my old sewing machine and do some repair work on clothes I want to take to Cozumel. Perhaps.
I'm still plowing through Swamplandia! but it is not making me happy. Definitely surrealism. I get enough of that in my dreams, thank-you very much, but I do appreciate a fine writer and so I'll keep going with it, I suppose.

It's one of those days and I am thinking of the Myth of Mary, Mother of Jesus and how unfair it is that not only have we created the story that she gave birth unattended in a stable (and I am sure that the number of women who have given birth unattended in less-than-perfect circumstances is legion) but we have insisted that she had to witness her son's death and then go on to become a goddess herself to whom we go with every sort of prayer and heart-wish and how saying her rosary is a punishment and how confusing all of this is and how I am NOT a goddess, my heart always in my hands in offering, but am a woman, a real one, a mother, a wife. As much as I love my images of the Holy Mother I also resent them because even in her feminine guise, it somehow seems to me that there is more than the whiff of the patriarchal in the insistence of her pureness, her never-ending patience and giving and eternal suffering.
This is what a real woman should be, religion tell us. The Madonna is the example to which we should aspire.
And if we are not, do not, then what are we?
The whore?
Well, we can be both and not perfect at either but able to choose which and when and where and how.

Does any of this make sense?
I doubt it.

I am Mary but I am not THE Mary and I am the mother and I am the wife and I am mostly just the woman who lives now and will someday die. I have done Christmas and this year I will not.

I will find my own magic and gratefully so and the world will go on just fine and the wrapping paper in that tiny room under the stairs in my house can be used by the mice for nests for their babies as far as I am concerned and I am just so glad not to be feeling the need to be out in the marketplace buying trinkets and stuff that no one needs and resenting the enforced cheer of the canned carols and bottled snow and I am no good at either giving or receiving gifts, having already been given more than anyone's share of bounty in the form of this life, this family, this love and of that, I can give continuously back in my own imperfect, human, womanly way and this is what I plan to do until I cannot do it any more.

Beans and rice. Sky and water. Man and woman. I will celebrate all of that which is human and ours to enjoy.

Comfort and joy. For me this year, not to be sought in places I know I will not find it.

And that is the truth.

Surrealistic Pillow (and if you know what THAT is, you're old as shit like me)

I do not feel well. In fact (she whined) I feel sort of like shit. I am serious. I ache everywhere and I am tired. Tired, tired, tired. Like my body weighs four hundred and fifty pounds or maybe tons. I am not sure. Maybe I have what Buster had.
I hope not. Dog-to-human contagion cannot be good.

I was the worst grandmother today. I bet Owen watched four hours of PBS children's programming. The whole day has been gray like perpetual twilight and that did not help. I did go flamingo fishing with the boy but I was SO glad when he dropped the last of the flamingo legs into the pond and we couldn't find it. Hahahaha! Now those flamingos are permanently napping. Owen doesn't care. He carries the legless birds around like dolls or pets. He makes them eat out of the chicken feeder and drink from the birdbath. He rides them like horses. He throws them in the air and tells them to fly.
They never do.

Before Owen left, his daddy picked up all the toys in the den. He couldn't have made me happier by giving me a diamond and pearl tiara. I washed the dishes and thought I might die. I took a bath and boiled myself and finally got warm. I read some of Swamplandia! which I think I am enjoying but am not entirely sure. The woman can write and some of her phrases just crack me up but it's a tiny bit surrealistic and as my daughter May pointed out the other day, I don't really like surrealism. Maybe it's not surrealistic. Maybe that's just what it would be like if a family lived on their own island in the Everglades and had a tourist attraction called Swamplandia. Maybe.
Hell. I don't know.
I don't know shit.
I just feel like shit.

I think it's surrealistic.

Mr. Moon is on his way back from Ocala. When he left, he thought he'd be back by 6:30. We joke because he always bases his time estimates on what we call Glen Time. I always add at least an hour or two to whatever he says and I'm generally right. He just called to say he'll probably be back by 7:30. I am wondering what to do about supper. I am not especially hungry but the idea of food is not unappealing since I am not actually dead. We have leftovers but they are leftover, leftover leftovers and I have no interest in them at all. I'd just as soon eat a boiled potato. I wish that something unbelievably yummy would show up as if by magic (I guess it would HAVE to be magic, wouldn't it?) that I would want to eat. I can't even think of what it would be. I told May the other day that when I die, I hope people bring over hams. Then I thought about it and said that actually, it would make more sense if people brought over hams while I was dying but could still eat. She said she'd bring me a Connie's Honeybaked Ham. That made me happy. One time I asked Lily if she and her sisters would brush and braid my hair for me every day when I am very old. She said they would. That made me happy too. I would like to be a bright-eyed old biddy whose children braided her thin, white hair for her and then sat her down at a table with a plate of sweet-fatted ham and some collard greens every day. Wouldn't that be nice?
I think it would.

Well, I am not dying and so I guess I'll have to braid my own damn hair if I want it braided and cook my own damn ham if I want one. I don't actually cook ham because if I did, I would eat the whole thing and I doubt there is anything in this world as bad for you as eating an entire ham. Some people want to eat cakes, I want to eat ham and by god, when I am old, I am going to eat the SHIT out of some ham. I'm going to eat ham until my skin turns pink and I start peeing brown sugar.
Sorry if that makes you feel slightly queasy. Let's try to think of it as surrealism.
Would it help if I added a dwarf (sorry- little person) clown to the image?
Who ended up dead in a musical brain? Because that's what happened in the story that May and I were discussing which sparked the surrealism conversation in the first place.
I hated that story.
She told me that when she read it, she knew I would.
She knows me so well.

So do you.

Let's check in tomorrow. I got nothing more to say tonight.

Junk In The Trunk Of The Mind

Owen's lying on his belly on the coffee table watching Sesame Street. It's gray outside and cold.
I got him out of his pajamas and changed his diaper and feel like I have pretty much done my job for the day.
I might just keep this couch occupied all day long.

So I see on the news feed on the interwebs that Michelle Dugger has had a miscarriage with what would have been her twentieth baby.

I just read (could this possibly be true?) that she had a miscarriage with her second pregnancy and she had been taking "oral" birth control (my mind went to strange places when I first read that one) and that's when she and her husband decided to let God decide how many children they would have.

I wonder if God decides how much sex they have. I can just imagine it. There's Mr. Dugger, living his daily life, trying to support his tribe of children, maybe driving to the Costco where they probably take their own personal fork lift to help load the groceries when all of a sudden, God says, "Jim Bob! I want you to have sex RIGHT NOW!" and Jim Bob sighs and says, "God, must I? We're out of diapers and frozen mashed potatoes." And God is all, "YES, JIM BOB, you MUST HAVE SEX NOW!" So he turns around and goes home and there's Michelle, trying to make dinner for twenty-five and the kids are screaming and she's wearing the same thing she was wearing the year they got married and she hasn't washed her hair in four weeks and she turns around when her husband comes in and she says, "Where are the diapers? Where are the mashed potatoes?" and then she sees that God-given message on his face and she peels the children off of her and heads resignedly to the bedroom where she does God's will.

I'm going to hell. I know it.

Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. Have any of you read Swamplandia! by Karen Russell?

P.P.S. Owen just asked if we could go fishing.

A Boy Goes Fishing

When Bop heard that Owen was patiently fishing in the fishless pond in our back yard with a pole made of a wire flamingo leg, he wasted no time in getting to the store and buying that boy a real fishing pole of his own.

This is what ensued:



And then this happened:

The boy caught his first fish. And there were seven caught in all. Caught and released to swim away and perhaps be caught again.

He had a great time with his Bop and while they were gone, I played with my new Kindle and all I can say is that for the grand total of $2.99 I have The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, Little Women, and Little Men on a $99 device and as far as I can tell, I'm already ahead.
My library is begun.

And Owen and his mama have just left and the dishes are washed and Owen is coming back tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. and this old woman is going to bed.

And one more thing- Buster, as you can see in the first video, seems to be making a rapid recovery. He is eating again as well as moving around.

Love...A Grandmother

Agitato

Everything is just pissing me off today.
I looked at the paper and was informed that our governor is cutting more jobs and using his voodoo economics to try and run Florida like a business and god dammit, government is NOT a business, it's to keep the roads paved and the kids educated and the people taken care of who can't take care of themselves and, oh, don't get me started.

And then there's this whole hazing thing at FAMU where a kid died and oh boy, all of a sudden it's like everyone's going HAZING? HAZING? who let THAT happen? when, in fact, it's been going on forever and everyone knew it and now pastors are getting together to PRAY about it.
Like, okay, God- here's something you need to pay attention to because it's bad and we know you've been busy but please- can you do something to stop it? Just thought we'd point this out. Thanks. 

Then there's the Lifestyle section or whatever it's called these days and HEY! Did you know that this year PURPLE is huge? Yeah, but you know, you have to use it properly because it can be overwhelming. Like, oh maybe just use a lovely shade of purple to cover a favorite chair in the hallway.

The chair in my hallway is covered with toys and a hat. Who has the sort of life where they redecorate whenever one color becomes more popular than another?

Madge, did you know that purple is hot these days? Shouldn't we redo the wallpaper in the den with maybe some flecked plum thing? What do you think?


I think that if you like purple, it's already being used in your house and if you don't, who cares if it's the hot color for decorating this year?

Jesus. Humans. We're so fucking weird.

And I'm agitated because Buster is obviously pretty darn ill. I didn't think he'd make it through the night. So what do we do? Go spend hundreds on lab tests to find out he has some horrible dog disease that we're not going to treat him for anyway? Approximately thirty percent of what Mr. Moon and I talk about is how we wish these dogs would disappear and how tired we are of cleaning up their poop and pee. The dog is eleven or twelve years old. And I apologize to you dog-lovers out there. I do. But honestly- I've never been one and I've been stuck with four dogs forever and finally Pearl died, the Oldest Living Boxer on the planet, and Zeke is mostly living with Lily and Jason and Owen and now...well...

But THE GUILT!

Well, he doesn't seem to be suffering. He's just sort of laying there. He did get up and go out this morning to pee and he did drink water. So.

I don't know. I just do not know. I know I feel overwhelmed and although I haven't looked in the mirror, avoiding that at all costs most mornings, I feel certain that there is a big L branded into my forehead, perhaps scarlet, perhaps PURPLE and that's what it's like here in Lloyd this morning where it's cold and clear and Elvis the Rooster has his feathers back and looks fine and sartorial in his black and white with that lovely accent of red and Owen's coming at one.

Frankly, I think you should stop whatever you're doing right this second and go read what Maggie May posted today or maybe last night, whatever. I love it. And it suits my mood.

And oh yes, today is the anniversary of John Lennon's murder and perhaps that explains why I am in such a foul mood, still angry after all of these years when actually, I should just be grateful that he was here with us for the time he was, bless him, bless him, bless him.

This Night

Oh life and it just keeps going until it doesn't and that sliver of a moon whose picture I took so recently has swelled again, deep belly-full, almost truly full. It hangs silver in the dark black sky, one star above it shining like it's little sister.

As soon as I wrote that post about the wind and the pewter this afternoon it all changed. Suddenly and without fanfare, all of the sky cleared and turned brilliant-winter blue and every trace of cloud was gone, blown away or wiped away, like those magic slates we used to have, one pull up on the plastic, all clean again.

Changing and changing is the ever-constant of it all.

I wrote this morning and then deleted about my dog Buster puking on the rug and I was complaining about it and tonight he is not well. I don't know what's wrong with him. Lately he has been acting so old and his cataracts shine like road-played marbles. He doesn't seem to want to move tonight and I had to take him into the house. He was lying on a chair on the porch in the cold and he made his way slowly into the den where he eventually and slowly got up onto Mr. Moon's chair.
Damn. Animals. Damn.
We just spent over three hundred dollars today on Zeke going to the vet for his TEETH and his itching and damn. All I do is complain about these dogs and then they get old or sick or old and sick and change...
Change.

I am cooking chicken (I am such a hypocrite) and all sorts of vegetables and olives in a red sauce and bread is rising and Mr. Moon is just getting in from the woods and salad is picked and rinsed and waiting in the refrigerator and cooking never seems to change. Same pans, same knives, same ingredients in rotation but the movements I make in the kitchen seem always to be the same. Reaching for this skillet, the cutting board, slicing, chopping, sauteing, simmering, steaming, mixing, kneading. Turn on the flame, turn it down, check the bread's progress, stir the sauce.
It is a sort of constancy that I love. Set the table, bring out the butter, the salt, the hot sauce, the glasses of water.

This is life. This is life. Constancy and change. I told Owen today that his Bop and I were going to Mexico and we were going to get into the ocean and look at fishes just like the ones we were looking at in the salt-water tank at the restaurant where we were having lunch. "Stop," he said, and put his hand up to my mouth. "No."
"Yes," I said, "We are," and I told Lily about it and she said, "He is going to miss you so much," and I said, "And we will miss him too but sometimes, you have to go away together, you and your man."
"I know," she said. But I am not sure she does. I doubt she remembers when her father and I first went away to Cozumel but as we packed, she kept putting her toothbrush in my suitcase. She probably remembers in her bones, missing us.
But we always come back.
Better than we were before.
Always. And if going away together is what keeps us together and fills us up with something magical, then we are not only doing for ourselves, but for our family too.

The weather changes, the wind blows in this air and that, the world turns and turns and turns but in the same patterns, the moon rises and increases and decreases and we barely register it and do not feel the earth's turning at all beneath us, we reach for the cutting board, the flour, the yeast. We grow up, we grow old, we are born and we live and we die and we resist change with all of our hearts and we yearn to get away, go away, we yearn to come home to the ones we love.

We are brave, we are not, we are strong, we are weak. The moon rises. The bread rises. Our spirits rise and fall, we are a part of it all like a symphony, like a river, like the moon.

Translation

And now I know what that wind was saying this morning and there was no innocence at all in its blustery insistence, no, it was saying exactly this:

I am about to blow some cold motherfucking air up your ass. Dress accordingly.

Cold and getting colder every second and the wind is rippin' it, telling more of the same and the sky is pewter and when I was just about to turn into my driveway, a huge hawk swooped down in front of the car and magically lifted up into a tree, just like the horse did in my dream this morning, same color, even, but this was real and a hawk and he glared at me from the tree branch, as if angry that we had almost been in the same spot at the same second and it was all my fault.

The Interpretation Of Communication

It's gray as an old blanket here this morning. A tiny bit of drizzle. Not enough to wet the whistle of the collard greens, but better than nothing, I suppose although at this point, it feels more like the old gray blanket is trying to smother me rather than offering any sort of relief. The kind of weather that makes you constantly look up to see what is what, what is coming? What has been? What IS it that the wind is whispering about? Where's the code book? Something sinister it would seem but maybe not, the wind is just two mean girls in the bathroom at high school, discussing a third girl whose clothes are all wrong, who thinks she is all that but really, is not at ALL, and she has big breasts, too, have you seen the way she flaunts those things?

Who knows what the wind is saying or the breeze or the silence, when it comes right down to it?

When I go to let the chickens out of their house and into the run in the mornings, they are all making a sound deep in their throats. A sound of anticipation, of eagerness to be let out and it is almost as if they have become one machine and you can hear it beginning to rumble, to whir as it starts up for the day, as if the hen house is, in fact, a machine, vibrating with that day-beginning mechanism warming up.

I love my chickens so much. Who knew that having chickens would be like this? My heart swells, absolutely, at the sight of them. I study them, I have come to know their different sounds and what they mean. Sometimes. This is not to say I understand everything nor ever will.
For instance, there are three nests which the hens generally lay in but one never knows which nest will be the favorite and some days, they line up to use the same nest and when that happens, as it is happening right this second, the hen-in-waiting will cackle a song of impatience and hurry-up. I have no idea why she doesn't just hop into another nest to lay- the two nests which were the favorites a few days ago are empty. So why is she so determined to lay on the nest which is already occupied?




That's Miss Trixie, waiting. With great, rhythmic chanting of reminder that there are other patrons, please finish up your business and let me do mine.

Elvis ignores these small squabbles, if indeed they are squabbles. But as soon as the hen on the nest lays her egg and jumps down and begins to proclaim her accomplishment and her plea for an escort back to the flock, he will come running to her. It is the Way of the Chicken.

And if anyone ever tries to tell you that chickens are stupid, just slap them for me, okay? Tell them that no, chickens are smarter than we know and if they are perceived as stupid, it is because we are blind to their sort of intelligence which has nothing to do with humans. We see dogs as smart because they can fetch this or figure out that or please us in some way but chickens have no need to please us and believe me- they have more figured out than a dog ever will.

As far as I can tell, at least.

The camellias are starting to open. Another thing which brings me more pleasure than I could ever have imagined in my youth.

Winter's reward and reminder of life always renewing, always there-is-a-season, even if there is much brown, even if there is dry, rusty rustling and unkind-gossip-whispering and the squirrels race down the trees and across the fence, they are the toddlers in the midst of the funeral party, they only care about their own pleasure, their toenails scampering along the bark, they chase each other for fun or for the prospect of fucking- who knows? but they do it and when I tell the Mr. Peep story to Owen I have the grandmother squirrels calling the young squirrels to the nest at naptime and they all cuddle in together and the grandmother squirrels says, "Close your eyes, my little darlings. Time to go to sleep."
And why not? Perhaps it is true.

 


Well, I have written far more than I intended and I suppose it is time to go about the business of human communication and interaction which is no less complex, nor more either, than that of the leaves, the wind, the chickens, the flowers, the squirrels.

Thank you for coming to Lloyd this morning. Thank you for listening to the words of my heart, for sharing these things with me.

I absolutely mean that. I hear your whispers, too.

It is all one. Of that, I am most certain.

Fantasy Fishing And Other Fine Things

Long day involving many activities including one I've never done before which was fishing in the almost-pond in my backyard with the metal legs of the flamingos. Those flamingos. They get around, let me tell you.

Owen is so the boss of me. I think I'm just too old and tired to fight him. He tells me what to do and basically, I do it. I can just see someone asking me, "Why in the world did you let the child play with a knife?" and me saying, "Well, he wanted to. He said please, for god's sake."

I'm like Flo, my mother-mentor, the famous chimpanzee whom Jane Goodall studied for years. She was so old when she had her last baby that she didn't have the energy to discipline him or make him grow up and when she died, he did too.

Good thing Owen has a real mother who is only twenty-six. That's all I can say.
If he were my actual child, he'd still be nursing and in diapers when he was nineteen because I wouldn't have the strength to wean and potty-train him.

That would be so bad.

Anyway, he's home now with his young mama and I'm home alone. Mr. Moon may be stuck down in Ocala. I'm not sure. He asked if I wanted to drive down there and spend the night. At that point Owen had just left and I looked around at the chaos which was my house and said (whined), "I haven't even washed the breakfast dishes yet," which was the wrong answer. I should have just gotten in my car and driven down there and spent the night with him in a motel and it would have been an adventure AND fun but no, I'm old as Flo and all that pond fishing wore my old ass out.

Besides, Jan called and I got that part and I need to start memorizing. NOW!
What have I done? Oh Jesus. But I'm excited.
I should do like Colin used to do when he got a part- make a spread sheet with timelines and so forth to check off every day of lines memorized. Seriously. That's how he did it.
Alas, I have no idea how to make a spread sheet. I think Colin used spread sheets to tell him which pair of Levis to wear daily. It worked for him. He looked fabulous in those Levi's.

Well, Mr. Moon called. He'll be home around ten. I'll probably be in bed by then.
I'm going to heat up some soybeans and cook some broccoli and read this script and enjoy the peace and quiet. There's a whole world out there and I'm not involved in it and that's fine with me. From what I read on the internet, there's some crazy shit going on out there and the Muppets are Communists and Rick Santorum says that if gay marriage was legalized then "their sexual activity" would be seen as equal to heterosexual relationships.
Say what, Rick?
Have you tried gay sex? If not, then you shouldn't comment on the equality of gay versus straight sex.

I'll leave you with that one. It is obviously only my opinion and frankly, as I always say, I don't know shit.

The world is lucky that I am neither a mother at this age or a political candidate and one is about as likely to happen as the other.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon

A Little Bit Cranky This Morning

Turning off my alarm I knocked a pair of earrings off where I had set them before I fell asleep last night.
A favorite pair.
They are somewhere under that bed or the little dresser or the vanity. In the dust.
It's going to be a long day.

Wait! Wait!
With the aid of the Tinkerbelle flashlight I just found them.
And a lot of dust.
Crisis averted.
Dust is winning, though.

And could I please just have ONE more dream about living in a house that needs complete cleaning out and repairing? Could I? Please?

Thanks.

And I Dreamed Of Chickens...

Owen threw no hissy fits when he got to the house this morning although he did assure me that he did not want a nap. I agreed that it was a bit early for a nap.

We did our regular things and he is starting to use short sentences. He is a busy child. He loves to play with my mixing bowl and the three different beaters. He hangs the whip from the dough hook, he tries to figure them all out. He is a thoughtful child, Owen is. And sometimes, when you ask him something, he will literally put his hand up to his face and say, "Mmmm. Think."

He has no interest in the alphabet or numbers and will sometimes even put his finger up if I am trying to "teach" him something in those departments and say, "Stop." It is as if he knows he is not ready- let's not waste time on this shit. But I can watch his mind working, I can watch new concepts forming and taking hold. It is a glory.
Having raised four children of my own, I know how each child learns so differently. My first child wanted to read desperately and taught himself at age three. Just...one day the boy could read. Sesame Street and me reading him endless books. And the same ones, over and over again.
My second and third children learned to read right in late kindergarten, first grade. "Normal" kids.
And then came Jessie who didn't really seem to care about reading much. She liked it when I read to her but she, like Owen, wasn't interested in learning the alphabet herself and then (poor fourth child, as she was) she came home from kindergarten one day and said, "Mama. I can't learn my ABC's."
"What?"
"I can't learn my ABC's."
Turns out the child had a reading disability of a fairly serious order. I was stunned. Reading for me has always been just opening my eyes and letting the words in. Simple as that. It all made so much sense.
But I had to pay attention, I had to realize that she really did have what we perceive as a problem. Since she was my fourth child I didn't freak out. I knew the child was smart as a whip and could memorize like no one else in the house. And also, I knew that her father probably would have been diagnosed with a reading disorder if they'd known what the hell reading disorders were when we were young. As it was, he was just made to feel stupid. And then went on to get a college education and lead a life where reading wasn't really that important to him. He can tear a contract apart but reading for pleasure is not something that came naturally to him. I can remember other kids when I was in elementary school who just could not "get" reading and even the best teachers had no idea what the problem was and those children too, were made to feel less intelligent than all of us little smarty-pants who could read anything. Remember when we all had to read out loud in class? Hell, I was so good that the teacher in the second grade let me read our after-lunch chapter books out loud to the entire class while she went and got another glass of tea while some of the children were still stumbling over the second-grade reader.
I wonder what all was set in motion there.
For one thing it made those stumbling children hate my guts. I do know that.

But back to Jessie- she was lucky in many ways. She was born in a time when it was recognized that not all brains process words and letters the same way. That there are different learning styles. And she was diagnosed and had a reading teacher who tucked that child under her wing and worked with her and loved her AND Jessie was born with a persistent spirit and a strong soul which served her well. And she, of course, graduated from nursing school with a BSN and a very, very high GPA. I even think that having to come up with strategies to learn to read has helped her in countless other ways in her life and so, in a way, she was doubly blessed.
She learned not to give up, for one thing, and I hope she knows how incredibly smart she is to have conquered that "disability."

So when Owen shows no interest in learning the alphabet song I don't freak out at all. So what? The child knows which animals live in the woods and which live in the jungle and which live on the farm. This is important to him so he knows. Reading, for now, is not and he is two years old and when he tells me to stop talking about it, I shut it right down. No problem. He knows how to hold a fishing rod properly, how to use tongs, where beans, tomatoes, greens, and eggs come from. He can get his desires, his jokes, and his meaning across. Knowing that he already understands humor makes me know how smart that little boy is.

And I get to watch this. I get to be a part of this.

He and I took a long, lovely nap today. We read a book and then he asked for Peep and turned his back to me which means he wants me to scratch his back and so I did and he fell asleep and then so did I and we slept for forever, or at least a few hours and when he woke up, he had the wildest bed-hair I've ever seen.





I gave him snacks and then took him to his mother. And he'll be back tomorrow at eight.
This is my life and if I am sure of one thing, it is that I can't do shit to save the world but I can sure as hell pay attention to my grandson and do whatever I can do to encourage his strengths and let him know that he is, in his own very Owen self way, perfect.

Nap hair and all.

That's me.
Night, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Come, Let's To Bed

Come, let's to bed, says Sleepy-head.

Sit up awhile, says Slow.

Hand on the pot, says Greedy-gut,

We'll sup before we go.

To bed, to bed, cried Sleepy-head

But all the rest said no!

It is morning now, you must milk the cow, 

And tomorrow to bed we go.

This is a rhyme in Owen's Mother Goose which I just hate. There is absolutely nothing more frightful to me than the idea of being denied a night of sleep and lately, I have been waking up all night long to lie awake, still as a corpse, and wish I could go back to sleep.

There is now a new twist on the whole situation which is that when I DO sleep, I dream that people keep coming to my house and they refuse to leave and they keep me awake ALL NIGHT LONG and when I woke up this morning, early, early because Owen is coming, I kept thinking, "It is morning now, you must milk the cow/And tomorrow to bed we go," and I just sort of wanted to cry. 

Hell, Nobody IS Perfect

Goodness gracious.

I went to Monticello. No one showed up but Jan and Jack and Jon Taylor, whom I have acted with in many shows and his wife and son, Baby Colin. We're going to have to stop calling that child Baby Colin. I think I shall refer to him hereafter as B. Colin to distinguish him from Colin whom we all talk about all the time and every time we do, I still well up.
Jack and Jan are directing and Jon's wife Stephanie is not auditioning and neither is B. Colin so there you go.
There's another audition tomorrow night and they may pour forth to read then.
Who knows? Not me.
What I do know is that all of a sudden I'm sort of excited. Okay, I'm excited. It seems like a really well-written and funny-as-hell play. It's Nobody's Perfect by Simon Williams and the part I read for is a book publisher whose first line goes, "' Megan's heart was pounding as Alfonso carried her along the narrow cliff path...' Uh-ho, not another orgasm on the beach..."

Now don't you just know I want to say that line?
And somehow, I just feel ready to be a part of something again. To be part of that process of creating from the page. One of my favorite roles ever at the Opera House was one in which I played opposite Jon and we were a Texas couple visiting in Boston and as always, when I work with Jon, we came up with bits and one of them was just this glance that we gave each other that we'd planned out and I don't even know if the audience saw it or registered it, but I'll never forget it. It felt so real.
And yes, he's too young (and I'm too old) for us really to play opposite each other but dammit, Jon can ACT older than he is. He IS older than he is. And he can play anything. Man, woman, old, young, anything. And as Jack always says, "It's only fake believe."

So...maybe? If I did it a little Rose Marie from The Dick Van Dyke Show?

Or maybe I'm just too old. Honestly. Just bringing up Rose Marie from The Dick Van Dyke Show illustrates the point that I am older than dirt's inventor.

Well, another role will come along if I don't do this one. They generally do.

And Owen's coming tomorrow at seven. I have missed him. Lily said he's missed me, too. I said, "Did he actually say that?"
"Well," she said after a pause, "Sometimes when he got upset he wanted you."

And that is good enough for me.

Public Service Announcement

I am a teeny tiny bit sensitive concerning the fact that people get Cancun and Cozumel confused. It doesn't piss me off or anything, it's just that we go to Cozumel, not Cancun and I would NOT go to Cancun unless someone was paying me and yeah, I'd go and then I'd get the bus down to Playa del Carmen and get on the ferry to Cozumel.
And what's the difference you might ask?
They're both in Mexico on the Caribbean and have gorgeous beaches and people go there and drink tequila. Right?
Well, yes. Sort of, although it's a little bit like asking what the difference between Disney World and Wakulla Springs is or maybe more to the point- the difference between oh, say, Miami Beach and Dog Island.

Cancun was an invention by the then-president of Mexico to attract tourists about thirty years ago. According to the web site History of Cancun, Mexico, "The place chosen was a deserted sand spit somewhere offshore near a little fishing village called Puerto Juarez. The name of the uninhabited place was Snake's Nest, but of course in Maya language: Cancun."

Whereas on the other hand, Cozumel is an island off the coast further south which has had a town, a culture, and a life for a very long time. Supposedly it was settled by the Maya in the first millennium AD and according to our good friend Wikipedia, artifacts on the island date back even farther to "preclassic Olmec." Plus- Cozumel was (and still is to some of us) the sacred home of Ixchel, the Mayan moon goddess and was a shrine to be visited by Mayan women as a fertility pilgrimage.

Jacques Cousteau "discovered" Cozumel in 1960 when he saw the reefs there. It has been a popular diving destination ever since although I do not dive and have been told countless times that it's ridiculous to go to Cozumel and NOT dive, I don't care. I snorkel.
When Mr. Moon and I first visited Cozumel in 1987 it was a great deal more laid-back and "undiscovered" than it is now but I still love it. Things change. Some things, thankfully, do not. The people in Cozumel are what I truly think keep bringing me back.
I just love the Maya.
Damn, I do.
Plus- maybe Ixchel? Something draws me back over and over and over again.

Cancun is a full-out, completely invented tourist destination where people go to get crazy, drink themselves into stupors, eat American Mexican food and avail themselves of every Mexican vacation cliche in the book. Not that I haven't seen people drink themselves into a stupor in Cozumel but that is usually a person of the cruise-ship variety.
The cruise ships come and then they go.
Me? I go and then I stay.
Okay. We do sometimes go over to the mainland to see some of the amazing Mayan ruins. Chichen Itza, Coba, Tulum. There are others I would love to see and hope to some day. 

But I have no desire to visit Cancun with its giant hotels, its frenetic night-life.

Give me funky Cozumel with its zocaro where the little children play as their parents look on and the teenagers flirt with each other and the grandmothers are about two feet tall and have faces as deeply wrinkled as Keith Richards'. (You know I can't not mention Keith on a Sunday.)

Cancun translates to Snake Nest. Cozumel translates to Isle of the Swallows.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

And so- if ever offered a trip to Cancun, you might want to think about it. You might want to say, "How about Cozumel instead?"
Or even Isla Mujeres which is another island and one even smaller and less developed than Cozumel and another place I want and NEED to visit.

I have grown up in Florida and I am not ashamed to be a tourist. I am not even ashamed to visit tourist destinations. I just want them to be at least BASED on some sort of reality.
If there even is such a thing.

Glad we cleared that up.

Adios and vaya con whatever dios you believe in.

P.S. Elizabeth- do not take this personally. People think I go to Cancun all the time, including people I have known in real life for decades. Sigh.
I love you.

As Owen Would Say: What THE?! What THE?! WHAT HECK??!!

So okay, no more Herman Cain to kick around although his candidacy is merely "suspended," not ended and I have to think that has something to do with money, honey.

"I am at peace with my God," he says. "I am at peace with my wife and she is at peace with me."

I hope she gets a piece of the big ol' pizza pie of his wealth when she divorces him. That's what would bring me some peace in that situation.

On to Newt. Jesus. What happened to those Republicans wanting a president who isn't a "Washington Insider"?
Well, he'll have his fifteen minutes of being Top Dog and then someone else will scramble up the dog pile of can-this-really-be-the-best-the-Republicans-have-to-offer?

I'm gonna be all Honey Badger here. I don't give a shit. The more ridiculous the candidate they come up with, the better for the Democrats.
I wonder if Sarah Palin is just waiting in the wings, speaking of ridiculous.
I'll bet she is.
Jesus.

Mr. Moon keeps asking me what has happened to all of the cardinals at the feeder. I keep telling him that I DO NOT KNOW! They never write, they never call. I pointed out today that every darn seed in the woods is ripe for the taking and so maybe all the red birds are eating al fresco for real. He agreed this may be true. There's one juvenile at the feeder right now. "Go tell your friends!" Mr. Moon said. "Free food!"

The other night when Lis was here we got to talking about cooking. We do that a lot. She said, "It's time! We need to write the cookbook!"
"Okay!" I said. "But first, we need a title!"
We pondered, both of us for about one quarter of a second and then we spoke at the same time (this was post-martini, y'all, which explains all the exclamation points).
She said, Something Spanish!" just as I was saying, "How To Cook Southern!"

We laughed so hard. One has to wonder if we'll ever get serious about a cookbook.

Mr. Moon and I keep asking each other- "What do you want to do when we're in Mexico?"

For me, I think it mostly boils down to eating food I didn't cook, not washing any dishes, and lounging around on sheets I don't have to wash with my lovah.

Okay. There's more to it than that. But seriously? That's a big part of it. Just being honest. I want to buy some earrings, too.
And I have to admit that the idea of sharing my favorite place in the world with Jessie and Vergil is pretty darn exciting.
Here are some pictures that pretty much say it all for me:

But of course, I will have to make a pilgrimage to here:

 

And I hope the Insanely Huge And Terrifying Donkey is again part of the downtown Nativity.

And that one of my favorite statues is somewhere to be found. It seems to move around a lot.

And that this guy is still smiling in front of the restaurant where we always take our first meal.

And oh, so much Si, Si, Si! that we can visit Playa Corona and catch up with this old amigo and hear about his woes with his wife with whom he has been in a constant state of sort-of-warfare for twenty-something years and with whom he continues to have beautiful babies with despite that fact.

And now, on to the next thing which is that I have three hours to figure out why in hell I want to go audition for a play in Monticello. I have NO business making that sort of commitment at this point in my crazy, loco vida what with the trip and the baby coming and the fact that I barely have two brain cells to rub together to memorize lines with but... shitfire.
I just sort of want to.
For awhile there I had no desire to put myself out like that, no need to be out in the world, no feelings of goodness about any of it but it has all crept up again.
Dang it!
Well, again. There is only one female part and I might not get it and the odds are that I won't because the Tallahassee actors have discovered us here in the hinterlands and our beautiful stage and some of those women are HUNGRY for stage time and they are serious and they take classes and educate themselves and audition for things all the time and I'm just a little ol' granny here in Lloyd who don't know shit.
I mean that, too. Every word. I am NOT being self-deprecating. It's just the truth.

Well- one more thing- what in HELL is Mr. Moon doing out there on that four-wheeler? Oh. Picking up and hauling dead branches on a trailer behind it.
Lord.

Bless our hearts, y'all. Except Herman Cain's. And the entire Republican Party in general. I ain't blessing their hearts. They wouldn't want me to anyway. They are at peace with their God already and so anything I could do in the blessing department would be redundant, not to mention I just don't want to.

But I will surely bless yours. If you want me to.

Love...Ms. Moon

I'm not kidding you, the sky looked like that five minutes ago and I tried to take a picture of the waxing moon but it didn't come out. I don't know why.
I'm not upset about it, I'm not upset about one damn thing except the fumes of the flea spray Mr. Moon just doused our dogs with. We're in a battle with the fleas here which have become immune to Front Line and Advantage and dang, if this shit won't kill the little fuckers, I don't know what will.
Might kill the dogs and us too but I'm hoping not tonight.

I just dug back into that novel some more and here's the problem with it: it's too close to damn home. It's not a bad book although it needs massive edits and tightening and purging and so forth but it's just too close to home. Which means the bone. Which means...am I a writer or am I a shy little writer-wanna be?

Well, I will ponder this some more. I'm sorry I use the word "ponder" so much but it's one of my favorite words in the English language. I fell in love with it when I was a child and playing Mary in the church Nativity and the narrator said, "And Mary took these things and she pondered them in her heart."

I've been pondering ever since and I probably will continue to ponder until the day I die.

Soybeans are simmering, bread is rising. Fumes are dissipating, sun has set, Mr. Moon is ready to play some cards, Prairie Home Companion is on, I'm dressed like a homeless person in Goodwill Levi's and cashmere. In short, life is good.

Saturday night.

Y'all be well.

Love...Ms. Moon

Mistaken And Earned Identity

Ah. Last night was fun. I swear it was.

We stayed for the whole shebang and then Lon and Lis came over after on their way home and we all had a martini except for Lonnie who was driving and so I made him an espresso drink with milk and chocolate to keep his eyes open for the drive home.
Lis and I pledged our undying and eternal devotion and she cleaned the picture over the sink that she gave me so long ago. The picture that represents US.

The strangest thing happened at the restaurant. We were at a table next to a couple at another table and Mr. Moon knew them. He has done business with them and so he said hello and then the woman said to me, "Mary, I'm ....." and she said a name I hadn't thought of in forty years and lo and behold, I knew immediately who she was and when I last saw her she was seven or eight years old.
I knew all of her beautiful sisters, one was my age and we were in Girl Scouts together and friends, too, and their mama taught violin in Winter Haven and was the first teacher of my dear friend Dave Davidson whom I had just seen on Thanksgiving Eve.
Whoa. I have no idea how she knew it was me.
She's grown up to be as beautiful as her sisters.

So there was that and then of course, every one was telling me how much May and I look like each other and as one person pointed out, we even SOUND alike and then another person said that we even HUG alike and gave a detailed description of our hugs and that was fun.

But here's a funny thing that has been happening the last few times we've gone down to the Mockingbird to hear Lon and Lis and that is that I keep getting asked if I am Lis's sister and last night as we were leaving, a woman who looked remarkably like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (ie, gorgeous) told me that I had a BEAUTIFUL VOICE and obviously, she had mistaken me for Lis.
All right. So she was a bit drunk. But.

I find it so interesting that perhaps I look enough like I did forty years ago in some weird way that a person who hasn't seen me in that amount of time could know who I was and also, at the very same time, look and sound and hug like my daughter and ALSO, at the very same time,  look enough like Lis to be her sister. Or her herself.

Well, I've always said I was a generic white person. As I've grown older and my face is now more of what I truly am and have lived, I am not quite as generic but I can't tell you how many times I've been mistaken for someone else and one night, a long time ago, a woman INSISTED that I was her cousin and I could tell that she wanted to slap the crap out of me for denying it.

But here I am now and if I am to be compared to other people, I can't think of any two more beautiful women to be told I look like than Lis and May.

Now when I go out I usually (and last night is a good example) wear fancy clothes that Lis has given me. She finds the velvets and even gave me the red cowgirl boots and so I am dressed like her and as I told her last night, we have been together long enough so that we have grown to look like each other.
Now if I could only sing like she does.
Sigh.

And speaking of clothes- my goal for today is to go through mine and find what I have. I have a bad habit of taking things off and if they are not dirty, putting them in a basket in my bathroom (which is where my dresser is too) for future wearing. And so there is a basket of pawed-through clothes and I can't find a damn thing in there and my closet is just complete and utter chaos. I mean, I found my bag of Goodwill cashmere two days ago. It seemed to have just popped back through from that parallel universe where it was residing and boom! there it was. All my softness in one bag.

So. On this beautiful day I am going to sort and sift and see if I can start figuring out what to take to Cozumel. I told Lis last night that I had indeed bought something to take to wear and she said, "Ooh! What?" and I said, "You'll laugh," and she said, "No I won't," probably thinking that I'd bought the sexy Santa costume from Bealls that we're always joking about but no, that wasn't it and I said, "A pair of men's cargo shorts!" and she did laugh because that is so me.
Lis probably would no more wear a pair of men's cargo shorts than I would wear a sexy Santa outfit although we both love velvet and silk and best of all- silk velvet- and cashmere and cowgirl boots. Lis is far more into the jewelry than I am and has jewels for every occasion but we do swap those back and forth. Earrings, necklaces, etc.

And May dresses like neither of us, although a little like me sometimes and her jewelry is understated and she does like to paint her eyes with gold shadow and so do I.

Ah-lah. It's Saturday. Another perfectly beautiful day and we've had golden-yolked eggs and grits and toast and here I go to try and create order from my garments, one little thing I can do to try and make a place in my life more serene, less cluttered. And then I'll go out to the hen house and give them clean straw for their nests and fill up their waterer and their feeder and I'll tell them thank-you, my lovely hens, for your bountiful gifts and also to Elvis, my brave and gentle rooster who looks like no other although the hens do sort of all look like each other mostly but I can tell them apart and they are all beautiful to me.

Here's a picture I took the other day which made me happy and so I'm giving it to you. One of our little anole lizards, hanging out on the sink in Mr. Moon's bathroom. To me, that lizard looks just like every other lizard in this house and yard but I am certain that his mama knows exactly who he is.

We're going out. My eyes are spangled, my feet red cowboy booted. Velvet is involved in my costume.
My man is gorgeous, tall and fine.
We're going to go hear music and eat supper.
Lon and Lis.
I've already gotten hugs from them.
Billy's right. Lis smells better than anyone on earth.
Oh my.

Mer and Bop are goin' out on the town.

Attitude Adjustments

I was talking to Kathleen last night and Kathleen is like The World's Best Human or at least a runner-up in the Universal Pageant and she said that she was too tired these days to be happy.
Well, no mystery there. If she's not doing a play AND taking care of her father AND taking care of her dogs AND taking care of her yard AND hosting Garden Club meetings AND making soap AND getting her entire vast Christmas preparations done before December ALL AT THE SAME TIME, she's, well, I don't know.
Oh yeah. Making scarfs for everyone in the world. And hosting Thanksgiving dinner for various family and friends.
So yes, she's tired.
And she's leaving this morning to go down south to take care of a friend who had back surgery whose wife is in the hospital in a coma.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about.
What I wanted to talk about was how she told me that she'd heard a program on NPR about how a "good attitude" in terminally ill patients did not affect the outcome of their disease one iota.
Not one.
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to have a good attitude. Whatever life you have left (whether you have a disease or not) will be far more pleasant both for you and your friends and family if you have a decent attitude about things. This goes without saying.

BUT- it got me to thinking about how we all spend so much energy and guilt trying to be GRATEFUL every day and all that other Oprah stuff and let's face it- some of us were born with cheerful attitudes and some of us were not. Or else the good attitudes were lost somewhere along the way in early childhood or, well, you know.
And yet we are told over and over again that we should  be Zen-like and even DOG-like in our acceptance of life, ever-cheerful, ever-accepting of whatever life hands us, ever-grateful, ever uber-aware of how good we have it, etc., etc.,  our tails wagging, always ready to jump up and take a walk at any moment, and if we aren't, we probably have a brain-glitch wherein CHEMICALS are involved and we need medication and hey- I'm not arguing with that one- and of course it's nicer to be happy than to be depressed and it feels better but it's gone far beyond that.

It's almost like the old, superstitious dark ages when disease was blamed on demons. Now we don't call them demons, we call them bad emotions that can somehow create disease. I quit believing in that shit when my stepfather, who has feared cancer his entire life and who is FILLED with bad emotions, didn't die at a young age and never got cancer at all but in fact, is still alive at the age of 87 or something like that. 

So what are you saying, Ms. Moon?

Fuck if I know.

No, no. What I'm saying is that we should stop with the anguish and self-blame if we forget that dude with no feet when we're complaining about having no shoes. It doesn't help us one damn bit if we don't have shoes to remember the guy with no feet. DUDE WITH NO FEET DOESN'T NEED SHOES AND WE DO! I've always said that someone else's cancer does not cure our broken leg nor does it make the pain more bearable. Yes, it can put our broken leg in perspective but it really, on a physical level, does not help at all and on an emotional level, can only add to our agony.

And how we handle things, whether good things or bad things, depends on so many different things and feeling guilty that we don't have the right attitude about things just cannot be helpful. Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to feel angry or depressed and would be wrong not to. Some things we cannot be cheered up out of. Some things only time will resolve and there will be much misery and much crying and much sadness before that begins to happen. Some things should not be accepted at all.
I had a friend whose first husband was so horrible and abusive that she had to escape from him, literally escape, and years later, when she was married to a different man who was abusive in different ways, she couldn't help but compare that abuse to what her first husband had done and she stuck with him for years and years until she was almost completely beaten down and dammit, she had a great attitude but I swear, it ended up killing her and before she died, he crept back into her life like the snake he was and the things he did or caused to happen to her were the lowest of the low and even now, when I think of them, I shudder and I want to go find him and cut his head off because the world would be a better place if I did.

Sometimes it's not our attitude that needs changing, it's our circumstances.
Sometimes anger can fuel that change. Yes, acceptance has its place in this world and I'm all for gratefulness- if there is truly reason to be grateful and speaking personally, I have a lot to be grateful for but sometimes, when depression takes me over, that's not enough and the guilt I feel for it NOT being enough only adds another layer of blackness that I have to find my way out of.

Not today. Today I have a GREAT attitude and I'm grateful as all get-out and it's a beautiful day and I have no real obligations but I know without doubt that something will be coming along eventually, whether it is real or perceived that will knock me back and I accept that and I hope that if it is something real, I can do something to change it but if it's just perceived (due to those brain chemicals or whatever) feeling guilty about my fucking attitude is not going to help.

All right. That's what I am thinking about this morning. And if your attitude and mood are lovely today, then enjoy the hell out of it, and if they're not, well, don't feel guilty.
We are humans, not Zen masters. We are humans, not dogs. I am me, not Kathleen. I can admire her from here to eternity, but I will never have the attitude of acceptance and perseverance that she does. Never in my life.
I admire her and I love her but I cannot be her.

I am me. You are you. And no where is it written that we all have to have good attitudes all of the time.

Happy Friday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon

Yeah. It's All Right

My back is like piano wires stretched up to high C and beyond, all the way to can't-be-heard-except-by-dogs and I don't even know why, I certainly do not feel especially stressed out although these dogs- in and out/in and out, god, all day long, let me just vaporize them up to heaven.

I went out into the market place today and looked at book readers and thought I knew what I wanted but a very nice young man may have changed my mind. I sort of doubt it. Why do we feel that if we choose this over that then our lives will not be as they are supposed to be? This can certainly be true in the case of choice of oncologist but probably not book readers nor whether to have the salmon or the pasta for dinner. Whether to buy the mixer in red or stainless, the sheets in blue or yellow.

I called and made an appointment next January to get my eyes examined to see if I am a candidate to get the Lasik. I did that. I called. I made an actual appointment. I wish they could do it tomorrow. I can't see for shit any more and I know that these glasses which I've had for years can't be right any more.

So I did all of that and I walked and I cleaned toilets and I went to the grocery store and I picked salad and I am cooking sweet potatoes and I almost bought a beautiful pair of clogs at Marshall's but the line was so long I just went and put them back on their shelf. There was Christmas music playing but it didn't bother me and for one second I thought, "Mary, you love your family more than anything on this earth. You should not be leaving them for Christmas, you should suck it up and do it for them," and then I thought, "Fuck that. If them knowing how much I love them depends on Christmas then I have failed miserably," and I went on, cheerful in the knowledge that I am NOT going down that road, no way, no how. I plan on staying reasonably sane this month and that's a fine goal.

Lily and Jason and Owen made it safely to Asheville where they are with Jessie, and Owen talked to me on the phone a little but then he had to get off the phone to go chase the cat. So I am at peace over that.

I didn't meet Bill Murray or finish my novel or meet Keith Richards for lunch but I did wash my hair and shave my legs so I'm ready, should the opportunity for either arise tomorrow.

And now I'm so tired I can barely sit up but I'll make it through supper which will be non-poultry-related and then I'll go to bed and hope that I do not dream of chicken coops built on an incline which keeps flooding and endangering my chickens. Why I dream this every night is beyond me. But I seem to need to. I've had worse dreams, I'm just getting bored with that one.

Those sweet potatoes smell so good. I sure am glad I live in the south and can eat sweet potatoes and also, salad from the garden in December. I'm going to chop up pears and pecans to put in the salad. Man, that is going to be good.

You know what? I am pretty damn happy. When was the last time you heard me say that?
Well, I probably won't say it again for a long time but for right now, it's true. Piano-wire back and all. Gee Dee dogs and all.

Sleep well, my friends. I mean it.

Love...Ms. Moon

Today's To Do List

Cold, cold and the blood runs through me like molasses or something slow and sticky. The sun shines down hard but its light is ineffectual in the heating department and the thermostat says Replace Battery.
What? How does one DO that?
Oh my god, I just figured it out and did it. 
Okay. My work here is done.
Good-bye.

Not really.

I am making lists in my head. They go something like this:

Lose twenty pounds in next twenty days.
Buy silk underwear.
Buy Kindle.
Get hair done.
Get eye surgery.
Look like this:

Shitfire.
I wish.
I saw part of Laurel Canyon the other night which starred the amazing Frances McDormand. The acting of almost everyone in the movie annoyed the fucking crap out of me. Look- I am not an actor and do not pretend to be one but come ON! people. Frances, though, was amazing as she always is. It was worth wading through the crappity crap just to watch her.
Plus, I want that hair. I have that hair. It just has not been revealed by the proper stylist.
I want that body but I'm too fucking lazy.
I do not, however, want leather jeans. Who came up with THAT idea? I don't even really enjoy sitting on a leather couch.
Well.

So. Let's see. What else is on the list?

Figure out what to cook for supper. (NO turkey or poultry of any sort.)
Make bed.
Clean toilets.
Meet Bill Murray.
Finish novel.
Get it published.
Convince Larry David to give me role on Curb Your Enthusiasm in which I can swear like a sailor.
Clean floor around toilets.

Here's something I was thinking about the other night:
You know that old saying- don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes?

I think that might be the truest thing in the world.


You know that other old saying- I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man with no feet?

Don't tell that one to an eight-year old. It will freak the shit out of them.

All right. Obviously I have a lot to do today.
I might even have lunch with Keith Richards. We'll drink vodka and discuss our grandchildren and laugh until the tiny bells we have entwined in our hair tinkle and our mascara and eye-liner will run down our faces.

Our perfect, deeply-wrinkled old faces.

Be well, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon