Really?

How in the world can it be winter? It's about seventy degrees and dense gray skies and it must have rained because drop, drop, drop, heavy drops come off of the trees.

I took my fate in my hands last night and said to Mr. Moon, "I am going to sleep in the guest room because I want to SLEEP," and I did, snuggled down with a book and I read and read and read and then I turned out the light and I just slept.
I will be like a remora on him for the next ten days and it will be wonderful but I wanted one night of my own, just me, and look- we all need and deserve that sometimes and this morning I am actually not feeling anxious so much as excited. Maybe some nervous but nervous is normal and good whereas anxiety is sickening in every sense of the word. It is a dis-ease. Instead of butterflies in the stomach which nervousness brings, there is barbwire in the stomach with anxiety. I don't think I can state it any more plainly than that. Today I have a little bit of barbwire but there are a few butterflies dancing around it.

I wonder what my dreams will be like in Cozumel. Will they be informed by light and water? Will I still dream of the chickens and people coming to my house and needing food and beds? We generally go to bed pretty early in Mexico and get up early too. When the sun goes down there, it does not linger babies. It drops like a rock into lava and the fire flies up into the sky and colors it and the water too. When it comes up in the morning it comes UP, and we generally do too.

Oh my god. Mr. Moon is grinding deer meat in my kitchen right now as we speak. Are you kidding me?

I married a hunter. At one time, I was his prey. Tomorrow I am going to remind him of why that was. Today I am just the wife, the grandmother, the do-er of laundry but tomorrow?

Tomorrow? Really? It's tomorrow that we're leaving?

Lord. I gotta run.

Feed the butterflies, blunt the barbwire, fluff the velvet, paint my nails.

Sharpen my remora suckers.

Going to be a busy day.

Holy Night, Holy Shit

Oh holy night. Owen was just here for a quick three-hour visit while his daddy helped his granddaddy cut up and wrap Mr. Moon's doe from last week. Owen was in go-for-it-mode and he did. He ran around like a caffeine-hopped up rabbit and I just followed him around. Lord, that child. Run, run, run. Jump, climb, go under, ride...whatever, just keep on going.

"Jump, Mer!" he says as he leaps into my arms. That's all the warning I get, too. It's a wonder I haven't dropped him yet. The day I do is the day he learns something about life.

I asked him today, "Who's my boy?" and he said, "Owen!" and I said, "And who is Owen's Mer?" "Mary!" he announced. I can't help it. I love it when he says my name. He's started calling Bop, Boppi, which I think is just charming as hell.
He ate three energy bars without asking permission, two "bits" of dog food ("liscious!") and an apple. When I changed his diaper I called him a Pee-o-sauras and he laughed. When I asked him for a kiss good-bye he said, "Sure," and pulled my chin to him.
I'm going to miss that child.

And boy, do I need a break.

So I packed today. Then I took a bunch of stuff back out so that I could get the suitcase zipped. I'm about 90% done with the packing. Honestly. I charged the camera batteries. I have the Kindle loaded and charged. I asked Hank to buy me a used copy of Lonesome Dove because mine is MIA. I packed sparkly eye shadow and mascara and stuff like that. I figured out what I am going to wear on the plane. Believe me, it is festive, silly, and will be comfy. Velvet is involved. Yes. I am wearing red velvet to a Caribbean Island. So what? It's Christmas. Let everyone else travel in PJ's and cargo shorts. This woman is wearing velvet.

Two more nights.

I'm about to go pimp a frozen pizza. That's all I can handle at this particular moment in time.

Owen's coming back tomorrow afternoon and will be here until seven-thirty. Hank's coming to spend the night and take us to the airport on Saturday morning. I have a few presents to wrap for Owen. I need to make the traditional Moon Chicken Salad before I go for the kids' Christmas celebration.

Oh holy night. Oh holy shit.

Grandma is ready for her vacation.

Belief

So quiet this morning here in Lloyd. Until my dogs get the idea that someone is coming and begin to bark. And then the quiet is split apart and my back tenses and if it doesn't snap entirely before I leave, it will be a miracle of some sort.

I was reading the paper this morning and there was an editorial (I do love the editorial section) that made me laugh, be sort of pissed, and shake my head. All at the same time.
It was about Santa and the myth of Santa and children's belief in Santa. The man who wrote it was discussing how his five-year old niece was questioning the reality of Santa. He assured her that yes, darling, there is in fact a real Santa. And then, at school, someone in authority told the child that no, there was no Santa and the child called her uncle and sobbed and accused him of telling her a lie.
So the uncle talked to someone he knew in the educational system and how she responds to children's questions about Santa Claus and she said, "We've been told not to discuss things like Santa Claus with the children. They don't want us teaching children about things they can't see, hear, touch, or feel."

Sounds sensible to me although I don't know why a teacher would tell a five-year old there is no Santa. That's inappropriate for that age if you ask me but anyway, let's get on with our story.

The uncle asked the person who had given him this answer this question:
"How do we raise children to have faith and to become spiritual adults if we're teaching them to be nonbelievers before they even start to believe?"

Haha! Exactly!

He went on to say that if all the adults would just stick to the same story, children wouldn't call it lying.

Yep. That about sums it all up for me. When it comes to religion.
I don't believe I even need to add any discourse on this one.

But, that's just me. I do believe in what I can see, hear, touch, feel. And I have seen things and felt things and touched things that gave me enough wonder to open my mind to the possibility of so much more than I can actually explain. But I don't need to attribute any of that to a faith of any particular sort. Now if you have, then that's fine and I'm glad for you.

But I ain't going to believe something based on a lie even if "everyone" agrees to tell the same lie. This is true whether it pertains to religion or politics. Or nutritional advice, for that matter.

Well, there you go. My thought for the day which is no more and no less valid than the guy who wrote that editorial if you want to get right down to it.

The shortest day of the year has passed, it is now truly winter. The days will begin to grow longer, the nights less so. This is something which can be measured and it is something to celebrate.

Let us do so.

Amen.

No, Really. Siri, Where Am I?

I got a pedicure. I figure I can paint my own damn fingernails. I always choose the same color. OPI's I'm Not Really A Waitress.

It's red. Dark, shiny red. It's like with eye shadow- if you're going to wear it, WEAR IT!

Plus, I really like the name.

I called Mr. Moon today and told him that I thought maybe I should get a bigger suitcase. Mine is just a tiny bit bigger than a carry-on and honestly, it's just not big enough for an extended vacation. "What about that suitcase of your mother's?" he asked me.
"Did we bring it home?" I asked.
And yes, we had and my husband even remembered where it was and it's awesome. An American Tourister and it has a yellow pom-pom on the handle, even. A homemade pom-pom. That may or may not stay attached. Not sure yet.
I really can't tell you how excited I am about that. Thanks, Mom! I will have room for my stuff.

I took care of Owen for a few hours today at his house. Lily set us up with the TV to watch Toy Story 3 and all was well until the screen got some message on it about the fact that things were about to end and I'd have to readjust the settings for the movie to continue.
WHAT THE FUCK?
And sure enough, the damn thing stopped and I had no idea what to do. None. There's another TV in Lily and Jason's room and Owen needed a nap. Believe me. And he didn't take to the idea of Mr. Peep and back-rubbing but said he'd lay down with me if we could watch a movie. Do you think I could figure that out either? Haha! No way. Owen got so frustrated with me.
"I can't do it, Owen. Mer doesn't know how to make it work."
"Maybe!" he said desperately. He was shoving DVD's in drawers, trying to show me how.
Jesus.
Lily called to check on us and told me how to play a DVD, which I did and Owen laid back and watched Franklin's Christmas or some such shit. Turtles do NOT walk around on two legs wearing their shells like a backpack. They just don't.
Whatever. I read a book and kissed Owen whenever he'd let me and Zeke cuddled up next to my leg. It was fine.
I made the mistake of telling him that Bop and I were going to get on an airplane and fly over the ocean to Mexico.
"Owen come?" he asked.
"No, just Bop and Mer," I said.
Oh boy. That was a mistake. There were tears galore. The promise of presents meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.
When Jason got home and it was time for me to go, I crept out feeling like the most inept grandmother in the world. I failed at technology, I failed at taking him to Mexico, I failed at everything.
He kissed and hugged me anyway.

And this is exactly why I need to go away. 
Look- I do not love with part of myself. I love with ALL of myself. I love that boy and my children so much that my soul can't keep up with it all. Does that make sense?
It's not work or living in a place I don't love that I need to get away from- it's the overwhelming sense of needing to be the best, best, BEST that I can be for these people.
I need to go somewhere where all I need to be is Mary who loves her man and who can spend hours doing nothing but watching the sky and the sea and waiting for the cooks to start grilling the damn garlic.

Who can wake up and say, "Where's my coffee?"
Who can say, "It's ten o'clock in the morning. I want my nap."
Who can say, "Look at the beautiful children."
And need to do nothing for any of them. Who can hold my husband's hand twenty-four hours a day if that's what I want.

Three more nights.

I'm cooking brown rice. Time to go tend it.

I'm not really a waitress. I want to wear silver. I want to be in a place where if you asked Siri where I could get a margarita, she might explode.

Three more nights and Cozumel is waiting for me.

Tomorrow I pack. Here we go. Yellow pom-poms and all.

Room for my clothes and my smooshed-up pillow and my make-up.

Jessie and Vergil- are you ready?

I am. I am so ready that the walls between my realities are shimmering like eye-shadow, like the doors between perception, like the air over the grill where garlic is cooking and the sun is setting and the Maya are speeding home in boats over the water like the gods of the sea they are.

Oh yeah. 

Siri- Where Am I?

I woke up to rain this morning which around here is a good, good thing. I came out to the kitchen and said, "Morning, baby!" but no husband was around.
I said to the walls, "Husband?"
No answer.
So I put on my hat to protect my glasses from the rain and went outside and there he was with an umbrella and the paper, smiling to beat the band.

Husband. Soul.

He can hardly keep his hands off...the new iPhone. This delights me. We are getting old, you know, and it is a good thing when we learn new things, whether lines or technology. There was an editorial in the paper today by a guy about our age who got a new iPhone and he can't figure out shit and he was bitching about it. I understand. I bitch about technology all the time- especially the functions on clocks and ovens and coffee makers. They're STUPID. But the iPhone- SO not stupid. It has occurred to me that although the iPhone is probably marketed mostly to the youngs, it may end up being a godsend to the olds.
Just as we are forgetting everything, we suddenly have access to this auxiliary brain.
"Did you know," Mr. Moon asked me as he was playing with his phone this morning, "That I can say, 'Siri, remind me at ten to call John,' and she will?"
We can literally ask Siri where we are and she will tell us.
"You are in your yard," she will say. "You are going to feed the chickens."
Okay. Maybe not quite but maybe.
Here's another thing I love about that device, especially for my husband- he has always been intimidated to write although I cherish the letters he has sent me over the decades with all of my heart. They are beautiful letters. And here he is- plugging away with the texting to Jessie and to Lily and with every little thing he writes, he will feel more comfortable. In a way, it's astounding to me that we're depending so heavily on texting these days. It's a step BACK in communication, right?
Ah. Not for those of us who love words with all of our hearts.
And no, a text is not a poem or a story or a novel but it could be.
I don't know. I just think it's sort of a crazy miracle, this device. Twenty years ago if you had said, "You're going to have a tiny computer that will fit in your pocket and it will take pictures and movies and allow you to communicate through voice and written word and it will answer your questions with a human voice and it will give you access to encyclopedias and dictionaries and movies and it will tell you where you are and how to get anywhere you want to go and it will tell you the time and the weather and it will keep track of all you need to do and when everyone's birthday is and you will be able to point it to the stars and it will tell you which constellations you are looking at, and, and, and..."
We would have said, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Well.

It's just something to think about on this morning in December. I've let the chickens out and two hens are sitting on nests already. Mr. Moon has taken Siri in to work. I wonder what she looks like in Mr. Moon's mind's eye. I bet she has big breasts.
I wonder what my Siri will look like to me.
A goddess, maybe. The goddess of information. Will she tell me what to cook for supper? I hope so. I sort of wish that Mr. Moon and I did not have to eat at all before we leave for Mexico. I am so weary of coming up with things to cook. Frankly, I am not even interested in eating at this point. My belly is a bowl of nerves and I go all day and then suddenly realize that my blood sugar has dropped to a bad point and that I have to eat something RIGHT THAT SECOND and that never works out very well. I am tired of salads and vegetables and I am tired of beans and of meat, both. I am tired of anything that my hand has touched to prepare.

I think I am a bit weary of everything right now and what I am looking forward to most of all about Mexico at this very moment is lying down on a bed with the doors to the balcony open and being able to hear and see the water and sky. Just that. Being in a place that is ours but not ours, everything open to us but nothing required.
Yes. That.

Why does it take so much energy to get to the point where you can relax? I do not know.

But I better get off my ass and start today's busyness in the direction of that relaxation.

Would it kill me, do you think, to get a manicure and pedicure?
Mmmm....
I am going to consider this.

And you know what? I apologize for my posts lately. They are pretty darn worthless. I realize that I am doing some fairly serious disassociating and my mind skips along the surface of things like a stone over the water, touch, touch, touch, gone...and it shows here. I know it does.
Well. So it goes.

In just a few days I hope to have mind and body firmly back in the same place, eyes looking out, everything I am seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, doing all feeding my one soul.

Love...Me

Just Bloggy-Blog

I just got back from rehearsal and it was a good night. Things are going to fall into place, I can tell. It's one of our actor's birthday in a few days and so Jan had brought a cake and we all sang him Happy Birthday and he blew out the candles.

We are a family of sorts down there at the Opera House. Judy and Denise are going to be involved in this production too. Judy is stage-managing and Denise will do costumes and props. This is another reason to be part of this play- to get to see those ladies whom I love so regularly.
I really am the straight woman in this play. I don't get any of the really great, wild lines but that's okay. I'll do my best to make it a very fine part. It's a fun part. We have a new actor with us for this production- a fourteen year-old girl who has never acted and I can already tell that this chick is going to steal the show. She's adorable and funny and has the knack. She wore Tigger slippers tonight- we all fell in love with her a little more for that. She is very quiet offstage, but when she gets up there, she is sassy and sure of herself and is already figuring it out. She's smart, that one. She's soaking it up.
Yeah. This is going to be fun.

So I girded my loins and applied the L'Oreal.
And I got about $7.00 worth of color, meaning that no one has noticed because there's hardly any change at all.
Well, at least it didn't turn orange or anything.
Sigh.
I should have just bought a damn bottle of Sun-In to take with me which is my favorite way to color my hair. Spritz-spritz, play in the sun. Done.

And I got out my suitcase. And I started putting some things in. Oh boy. This is real. This is really, really. Three more nights and then we're leaving. Airports make me crazy. Well, I'll tell you what really makes me crazy- Mr. Moon. He does this thing where we wait for boarding and he always wants to be like the last person on the plane, which is fine, but then, right as they're boarding the last rows, he takes that moment to decide to hit the head for one last pee before we board.
I always think we're going to miss the plane and by the time he comes ambling out, I am practically screaming at him. "Come on! Come on!" and we slip in just as they close the doors. Mr. Moon on a plane is not a happy man. His legs are twice as long as most people's and I am not even exaggerating. His jeans come up to my bosoms when I fold them. And since there's not enough leg room for a normal person on flights these days, he is generally miserable. He always asks for front row seating or emergency exit seating and sometimes we get that and sometimes we don't and I can't tell you how often we have been separated in flights because at the last minute he'll score a seat where he can actually sit without his knees being in his ears and I'm stuck back behind him about fourteen rows.
Sigh.

Also, the last time we went to Cozumel, his bags got selected to be searched in Tallahassee. They gave off a "suspicious" gas. Turned out to be his shaving cream. But damn if they didn't go through every thing in his bags. And I sat there and babbled like an idiot to the woman doing the searching and kept telling her how anxious I was, blah, blah, blah, and she finally said, "Look, God will take care of you."
Hoo-boy. She didn't know who the hell she was talking to, did she?

The flying part doesn't bother me unless the weather is really bad and the flight attendant pulls out a rosary WHICH HAS HAPPENED TO ME! I was worried on that flight. Yes. I was. The lightening and the thunder and the wind and the turbulence and the bumping (it was a tiny plane) were bad enough but when she pulled that rosary out of her pocket and pretended to read while closing her eyes and holding it in her hand...
Well.
That was not a good moment for me.

But hey! We lived! God took care of us! And so did the pilot.

Okay. Breathe in. Breathe out. Make tomorrow's smoothie. I have to go to town tomorrow to run to the library and get a few things. Razors. I have no razor blades. Okay. I do have one. I think I've been using it for approximately six months. I might as well be running a Popsicle stick over my legs.

It's been a good day. Owen was mostly sweet and he hugged me a lot and we walked to the post office holding hands. This was a first. He wasn't in the stroller. He was a good boy and held tight to my hand and he opened the door of the post office for me and he twirled the knobs on the other boxes and he held my hand all the way home. Except for the part where he said, "Hold me," which I did, toting in on my hip, that old hip which has toted so many kids and which by now must feel like a well-worn sofa. Although it's not quite that big. The hip that if I move a certain way pops and snaps.
It's okay. That hip was designed to carry babies on and as long as I have breath in my body and can stand upright, I'll be using it for just that purpose.

Night, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

That Man

Bop and Owen are out there doing something manly with a hammer and here I am, sneaking a word in.
That boy got here at 5:30 this morning! He was holding a plate of cheese toast which he had saved the whole long ride to eat at Mer's house. His daddy told me that while he was getting ready this morning Owen was saying, "Come on! Go!"
And after he ate his toast, he wanted to go back to sleep and so we all did, Bop and Mer, and Owen.
When I carried him into the bedroom, his grandfather said, "Hey buddy," and Owen said, "Bed! Talking!"
Haha! The talking bed.

My head is better today but my body feels as if someone hit me all over it. Just sort of hard, with a board maybe. Those anxieties can sure beat you up. This is true. Last night, Mr. Moon asked if there was anything he could do to help me and I thought about it and I said, "Could you rub my feet?" and he did and it was the best, sweetest thing he could have done and it put me down like a drug, put me out like a light.

That man.

He's the best and I know it.

Eating Oatmeal With His Bop

Star Light

So my advice to you tonight is to go to the local CVS and buy a string of changing-color star lights. I've had a string up in my kitchen, plugged in continuously for a year. They are still lit and changing color but I went and bought a new string today for when those someday fail.

See? Here I am, being helpful as shit.

I went and got my hair trimmed and had a very nice chat with Jesse, the woman who does the trimming. She's such a nice woman. And it's such a Steel Magnolias sort of place. If it's not her kids who are coming in to talk to her, it's one of her dogs who is peeking around the corner to see if anyone wants to give them a pat and a scratch. You can't beat that. I don't even know if my hair looks good. I haven't even really looked. I hate looking in the mirror, especially at the hair salon. I have the roundest face. It is quite like the moon, in fact- that round. I try to accept that as "my" beauty but it's hard. I don't know why.
I do like my lips, though. I have nice lips.
My nose? Never have liked that. Eyes are fine but hidden behind glasses. I keep thinking about the possibility of getting my eyes fixed next February and it seems like a sort of miracle. No, not a "sort" of miracle- a real one. Not because of the vanity of not having my eyes hidden but because I have no idea what it's like to wake up and to be able to see. No idea what it's like to not view the world through glasses or contacts. I know I'm not alone in this by any means. When I made up my mind to go ahead and make the appointment to see if I was a candidate, I read a letter to the editor in the local paper a few days later and it was written by an eighty-year old man who'd always had horrible eye problems and when he finally went to get his cataracts removed, the doctor was able to do the laser surgery on him to correct his vision as well and he was blown away. Eighty-years old and he was so grateful and amazed that he wrote a letter to the editor of the paper about it.
Can you imagine?
I'm hoping I'll be able to imagine. I'm hoping.

Well, my husband is home. He called me awhile back. Okay, he had Siri call me. Is that her name? He just got his new G4S phone and he's pretty excited. My phone may or may not be in before we leave. Whatever. Does Siri speak Spanish? Does she translate? Does she do foot massages? I feel like I have a new sister-wife. Siri. Well, that's fine with me. I can use all the help I can get around here. As long as she doesn't get into bed with us, I'm cool.

Do you ever think about the fact that there is no phone book for cell numbers?
I do.

Owen's coming tomorrow in the very early morning again. I am looking forward to snuggling back into bed with him and his Bop. I hope he's in a happy mood.

All right. Go to the CVS. Get you some star lights. You will not regret it. And if you wait until after Christmas, they'll probably be half off.

God. I'm like Siri of the blog world.
Not really. I doubt Siri EVER says, "I don't know shit."
Because in fact, she knows everything, as far as I can tell.

Siri- what is the meaning of life?
Don't mean shit.
Oh wait. That's Mr. Natural. I got them confused for a second there.
I can't believe I've lived long enough to know who both Mr. Natural AND Siri are.
And yet I have. With my round moon face, my changing-color-light stars.

Ms. Moon- what is the meaning of life? To love one another and to create.

That's what I know.

And that it's time to warm up soup and make a salad.

Let's get some sleep tonight, y'all. I mean it.

Fly Juice

Walk and sweat and yes, that helps and I do know it and in fact, it is a measure of how anxious I am of how easy the walking is. The more anxious, the less difficult the exercise. The mind-body connection, as we all know, is so very strong. The anxiety prompts fright AND flight and gives the body the adrenalin to fly, or at least walk the miles.

And now to clean the chicken nests, now to water the plants. Now to realize the truth of the matter of how the mind does not always realize that a long-ago threat, sharply remembered, is not a present threat. Isn't that odd, the way it happens? Is it a glitch in our cerebral evolution or is a good and sensible reminder of that which threatened us before may indeed threaten us again? Probably made more sense when the threat was starvation, prompting one to gather and dry more berries, kill and smoke one more beast.

Well, whatever, it is what it is and I have no beasts to kill and butcher and dry on a fire for winter's cold days; my freezer is full of beasts.

And my hen house is full of shit, which most assuredly, I am as well, albeit of the metaphorical kind.

High Anxiety

I was awake a good part of the night, lying still as a corpse, worrying.
Worrying about everything.
I doubt I'll get a decent night's sleep before we leave. I feel as if I've already ruined our trip by all the worrying. I feel sick from all the worrying. I am exhausted from all of the worrying.
I hate this.
It sticks to me, even in the morning light. I get up heavy with the worrying. My back curls forward to ward off the worrying, my shoulders up by my ears.
I worry about specific trip-related things, non-trip-related things, every-related-and-non-related-thing.
My suitcase- how can it be big enough?
Am I a fool to take my laptop?
How can I memorize lines on a trip?
Do I have enough clothes? When am I going to pack? Why haven't I started packing?
How can I leave Owen for ten days?
And then there's whole other layers, other UNIVERSES of worrying that are so ridiculous that I can't even begin to relate them here. One must not let certain things out of their bolted boxes.

I always do this. I comfort myself with that knowledge. I always do this and yet, I survive. Well, let us be honest- I try to comfort myself.
It doesn't work.

So. The very thing I need to sustain me- sleep- has been rudely cut away from me. When I do sleep, the dreams are so busy, so exhausting in and of themselves that I am no better at all for the sleep I do get.

Another thing to worry me.

I need to calm the fuck down. I need to go take a walk. I need to make that blanket. I need to go get my hair trimmed today. I need to start figuring out the packing. I need to

STOP.

It's a vacation. A real vacation. I'm not going on a journey to be tortured. No one is going to care what I wear. Everything will be fine and lovely.

Hell, one time when we went we lost our tourist papers. They still let us leave.
One time, we left our money at home. We still managed.
One time, we got to the airport a day late. Life went on.
One time we got pulled by the police on our way into a park. They just wanted a ride.

And it's not even worries about things like that. It doesn't really have anything to do with suitcases or lines. It's just me, being crazy. I can feel it, when the crazy comes on. It's like I'm coated in a film of crazy and I can look through it but I'm still inside it, encased in it, hindered by it.

*******************

A million years ago, when I was a five-year old girl, it was just about this time of year, maybe right after Christmas, when my mother plotted and made her escape from my father with me and my little brother to Florida. She managed, with the help of good people to get us away, to get us to safety. It all happened in the middle of the night. There was real threat from my father. He had a gun. He was a bad drunk. Being five, I could only know the very fringes of all of this, but I remember. And the worst thing for me was that my mother forgot my blankie. Yeah. I had a blankie. Hell, I NEEDED a blankie.

And when we got to Florida, my mother got so sick she had to be in the hospital, meaning that my brother and I were being taken care of by my grandparents whom we knew not at all, who were very old, in a strange place. And there were whispers and there were worries and there was no joy and it was a very, very bad time.

Okay. I remember all of that and it makes sense to me, suddenly, why I get so apprehensive before a trip. Why I practically make myself sick.
Will it help, this knowing?

I doubt it. Right now I want to reach back in time and hold that little girl and tell her that she is very brave and that things will work out so very well. But that she has every right to be scared. I would like to explain it all to her. Tell her in words she might understand that none of this-NONE OF IT- have to do with anything she did.
Because no one, in those days, tried to explain anything to children. Or at least, in my family. We just soaked up the fear and the worry and kept our mouths shut.

Well. There you are. There you have it.
Ms. Moon is psycho-analyzing herself again. I'm sorry. That's the way it is some days.

Shake it off. Bleed some of it out. Forgive myself for my crazy. Cry some if I need to. Okay. Yeah, I do. Need to.

Get on with life. Take that walk. Start a blanket for a grandson who is so loved, so well-cared-for that he doesn't NEED a blankie. Doesn't suck his thumb and will never, I hope and pray, have to be spirited away in the night to safety. The idea itself is absurd. Remember that I am not five years old. I am a grown-ass woman who has a life of unbelievable richness. That whatever comes is going to be okay. That I am going to Mexico for fun and love and joy with my husband, not fleeing a drunken man with a gun who is my father.

Man. No wonder I hate Christmas. No wonder I am so very anxious before I leave for a trip. No wonder I worry about whether or not my children are okay, okay, really okay in their hearts.

No wonder I love my good man of a husband so much. No wonder I love routine and safety. No wonder I am amazed at the very fact I am still here.

Wow. I feel like I owe myself an hour's worth of counseling fees.

Okay! Well, that's my Monday morning! How is yours?

Jesus. I need to go back to bed.

With my blankie.

Love...Ms. Moon

Peaceful Sunday Night

Another rehearsal and I was made painfully aware that I am going to have to study lines in Mexico. Yes. Seriously. I HAVE to. There is no way for this old brain to cram lines. It can't be done. It is a process. A slow, painful process.
Well, I made the choice. And it will be fine. It can't possibly be as hard as Steel Magnolias, right? Of course not! Except that it's a 90-page play and there are only four of us in it. No, no, it's going to be fine. Just FINE! I can do this! And it's good for me. Good for the old brain to have to flex and stretch. Yep! I'm not worried one little tiny bit.

(Help!)

I got out the old sewing machine today and did some mending that I've been putting off for years. Quite literally. And tomorrow, I hope to make Owen's name blanket for Christmas. I have made all of my children blankets with their names on them and now it is Owen's turn. He picked out dinosaur flannel. I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to go see my lady in Monticello too, to get my hair trimmed. See? It's all working out lovely.
Now. If I just don't ruin my hair with the L'Oreal color I bought. Jesus. Why did I do that? Because it costs about a hundred dollars to get it done by a professional and the L'Oreal hair dye cost $7.50. Kathleen offered to come help me. I should let her. I used to do it all the time back in the olden days. But I'm not as brave as I used to be.

I had a friend once, an African American woman who asked me why all the white women she knew kept on dying their hair blond even into their older age. I thought about it for a moment and then I said, "Because so many of us WERE blond as children and we think of ourselves as blond always and so, we just make it happen."

She said, "That makes sense." But I think she thought it was pretty ridiculous. Well, it is. But women of all races do ridiculous things to our hair to conform to some ideal of beauty. Let's face it.

Well, I'm not going to go into THAT rant. I just want lighter hair for my trip. Ain't no sin. Ain't no sin at all.

And that's about the biggest thing on my mind tonight. I've been thinking about Keith Richards all day long. It's Brad Pitt's birthday too! He's forty-eight. And Stephen Spielberg's as well. He is sixty-five. My, my. December 18 must be a fortuitous day on which to be born.

All right. I'm going to go make ground-venison meatloaf and bake some potatoes. Sounds like a fine cold-night dinner to me. Mr. Moon just cut all his hair off and he looks like a different man and so I'll be dining with a stranger. Not really. He's so handsome. A guwt-lookin' man, as we sometimes say around here in Lloyd where driving home tonight I saw folks standing out and talking in their yards, saw the sun crazy-beautiful in the west, saw orange leaves shining like copper and gold in the setting sun as I drove that curvy black-ribbon road to where I live, to where the chickens were pecking their last morsels before bed, to where home is, to this place I love to call home.

Oh My God!

How did I totally miss this? Hank even put it on the calender he made me!

IT IS KEITH RICHARDS' SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY TODAY!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KEITH!

I hope he's surrounded today by his family, noodling around on his guitar and making bangers and mash and just having the finest time. Maybe having a drink or two, enjoying his life.
I sure have. Enjoyed his life. And his book, Life.
As we all know.

Thanks for the all the music, Keith. Keep up the good work.

Love...Ms. Moon

And Now The Words

Well of course no one watches the videos I put up because THEY ARE NOT VIDEOS OF CUTE ANIMALS (and hey- I get it- I love videos of cute animals) but it makes me happy to have Dear Keith on the blog. You know it does.
The one of he and Scotty Moore playing together is especially lovely to me because Scotty Moore was the guitar player in Elvis Presley's band and his playing was what made Keith want to be a guitar player and well...there you go.
Also- Levon Helms? Be still my heart.

But it's a beautiful morning here in Lloyd, crisp and cool and Mr. Moon and I just had pancakes and he's taken the garbage and I've washed the dishes and all is well. I have nothing profound to discuss and nothing to rant or rave about. I've got a list of should-do's that reaches up to the sky and I'll get to work on them but I am feeling no real pressure, just a sense of possibility and I have rehearsal at three this afternoon. We're not meeting at the Opera House but at the Episcopal church rectory because there's something going on at the OH which involves a lot of children but that's fine with me. The last time we met at the Episcopal church I was in a play with a VERY staunch Christian and I made some joke about hoping that God wouldn't strike down the entire church (there was a horrible storm going on at the time) because I'd entered it and the VERY staunch Christian took that opportunity to point out that I'd probably said that for a reason and the reason was that I was secretly hoping to be taken back into the bosom of our Lord and that he, the VERY staunch Christian, was praying for me and everyone there was a bit horrified, including the pastor of another church who was also in the play.

Ah. Good times.

I suppose I will take this opportunity to say that one of the many things I do not understand about religion is why it is better to do things which are good because God tells us to rather than to just do them because we know they are the right thing. If it takes the fear of hellfire to prompt good behavior for some, I suppose that the fear is a good thing but I believe that for most of us, we either want to do the right thing or we don't care or we're crazy or just plain evil and I seriously do not think that the Fear Of God is going to stop us from doing thoughtless or crazy or evil things.

But that's just me.

Whatever gets you through your life is all right. All right.

Love From The Church Of The Batshit Crazy.

Ms. Moon

And This (Why Not?)

Sunday Morning Hymn From The Church Of The Batshit Crazy

Foreplay

So a week from tonight, instead of cooking the Traditional Christmas Eve Supper and then filling the stockings with care and passing out from exhaustion, I will be gazing upon something like what you see above.

Shitfire, y'all.

I still don't believe it but I have gone a ways today in trusting that a little bit more. I sort of took the day off. I haven't done squat except for to go on a lovely walk and spend some time with the man and eat brownies.
Okay. I had some soup, too.
And write that poem. Can you believe I don't work for Hallmark? Me either.

So here's some news- we're getting iPhones. Mr. Moon lost his phone last week, probably in the woods, and because he can't run his business or his life without a cellphone, he went down and did the deed, signed the contract and has a loaner phone. Our real phones won't be here until the day before we leave, but this is pretty exciting. I've never had a phone that did anything but make phone calls and take pictures so you know I'm happy although, as Mr. Moon did point out, I never GO anywhere but hey- if i do- I'll have an iPhone!

Jessie, this may mean I visit more often. Especially if I get that GPS app. Which I will.

Mr. Moon has been playing with his phone and I think he likes it. This is the first time he's ever had an Apple product and after about half an hour he was set up with voice mail and figuring out ringtones and finding games and looking up the weather and I think this is pretty cool.

Lord. Here we are with two computers, two iPhones and a Kindle. I still haven't put enough books on my Kindle for the trip but I'm getting there. Of course I'll be taking at least ONE "real" book in case I drop my Kindle into the ocean. Maybe Lonesome Dove because that would hold me and I know I like it and I've only read it two or three times.
I always love spending time with Gus and the cowboys. Plus, I'm stockpiling magazines to take. And I bought a new journal and I have my beautiful red ink pen.

An owl just hooted one hoot, the sun is setting here behind the pecans. Not as showy a sunset as I will be looking at in Cozumel, but a sunset nonetheless. I swear that the clouds in the sky at sunset in Cozumel make the profiles of Mayan gods. You probably don't believe me do you? If you've been there, you do. There is something absolutely profoundly magic about the Yucatan. In fact, magic is too cheap a word. It's one of those places of power, attraction and wonder, whether it's because of the metal of the meteor that hit there so long ago which is embedded in the very dirt of it or because it's a place where the aliens made contact (trust me) or because of the spirits of the gods and goddesses or of the people who lived there or the people who live there or because of...
I don't know.
I just know that it's a pretty sure bet that when we look out of the plane window and see the Yucatan peninsula bathed and bordered by that water of startling blue and green and I know that underneath all of that jungle there are ruins discovered and undiscovered and also the ancient "white roads" called Sacbe which the Maya made and which probably cross and recross the entire peninsula, and the cenotes, the hidden deep wells of water in the underground limestone and all of this covered up and hidden, like some fevered dream of crazy explorers and also the villages and towns and communities of now, well, I will cry.

Yep. I'll cry. Sure as shit I will and then here will come the island, that tiny dot growing bigger and bigger


and I'll press myself back into the seat so I can see it better and then- modern magic- we'll land and step off the plane and the soft air and heat will hit me and the sounds and the smells will envelop me and the voices of the people at the airport, stamp, stamp the passport, outside again and into the van and there, the water, close-up and there the people, and there the hotels and there, there, there, we will be there.

Let's see. Am I going to really be worried about the stockings I am not filling, the dinner I am not preparing?

Oh. Hell. No.

I am going to be in my heaven-place with that man, that man, that tall sweet good-looking man and I'm going to be crying and smiling and saying, "Look, look! Here we are! We're here again!"

A week from today.

Ah-lah.

Bless Our Hearts

Bless, bless, bless us all,
Each and every one.
Bless us as this day is lived
This day is blessed with sun.
Bless the chickens in the yard
And bless the child and mother
Bless the man who is the friend
The husband and the lover.
Bless the dirt and bless the trees
Bless the leaf and flower
Bless the tub and bless the water
Bless the sink and shower.
Bless the crazy
Bless the sane
Bless both straight and gay
Bless the velvet of the night
Bless the break of day
Bless the balls and bless the cock
Bless the breast and tongue
Bless the cunt and bless the belly
Bless the old and young.
Bless the chores that never end
Bless the bed and sleep
Bless the birds and bless the squirrels
As they fly and creep.
Bless this moment that I take
To sit and write and think
Bless the machine and bless the pen
Bless the paper and the ink.
Bless the friends whose voices I hear
On the phone so dear
Bless the ones so far away
Bless the ones so near.
Bless the quiet, bless this house
Bless the hands and feet
Bless the womb that did me well
Bless the food we have to eat.
Bless the Beatles, Bless the Stones
Bless Beethoven too.
Bless all the books I have to read
Bless chicken's eggs, brown, green and blue.
Bless the wind, the earth's own breath
Bless the needed rain.
Bless the joy and bless the tears
Fuck unneeded pain.
Bless the ceilings, bless the walls
Bless these old pine floors
Bless the porches, bless the shelves
Bless the window panes and doors.
Bless our babies
Bless their lives, bless ANY love that's true
Bless us, bless us everyone.
Bless us, both me and you.

What a day. What a true waste of a day. I went to town.
Why?
Oh god.
Who knows?
Not me.
I had the idea I could get my hair trimmed. I haven't had it trimmed since Steel Magnolias and that was last, uh, March? How hard is it to get your hair trimmed? Impossible for me. I went to a place that May had told me about where there was a certain stylist who did good things with longer hair. The place was closed.
Closed. For rent.
And when it got to the point where I was just aimlessly pulling into any place that said Salon, I knew my fate would be to get the worst hair trim in the entire world- not that it would matter one damn bit- but it didn't matter in the end because every place I tried was CLOSED.
What's the damn deal? Tough times for the beauty biz I guess.
I will call my lady in Monticello tomorrow, see if she has time for me next week.
It was one of THOSE days where I kept driving around, stopping at places for fools' errands and nothing made any sense at all. The most important thing I did today was to buy a new non-disposable coffee filter. I am not kidding you.
When I was in the Bed, Bath and Beyond, buying that coffee filter, a woman was talking on the phone to someone about a coffee maker and the phone was on speaker and everyone in the store could hear the person on the other end yelling, "I don't want a one-cup coffee maker! I never said I wanted a one-cup coffee maker!" and all of us shoppers looked at each other ruefully- I mean, we couldn't NOT hear this. And the woman in the store with the phone was so patient and if it had been me, I would have told the rude girl on the phone to get her happy ass down to the Bed, Bath, and Beyond her own damn self and get whatthefuckever she wanted. Fuck it. You're done, bitch.
Ho, ho, merryfuckingho.

But in one store, and it may have been Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Happy Christmas, War Is Over came on the Muzak and I had to stop and listen to John and Yoko and those sweet children and think about the fact that pretty soon, very soon, our troops will be out of Iraq and dammit, that is something. We may still be fighting all over the place and sending out drones- I do not know- but look- we won't be sending our men and women over there.
Our girls and boys.
Our children.
To kill their children.
Thank-you, President Obama. Thank you for that.

And I was grateful and I remembered last night when some old dude from the home got up and said a little thing about how our troops would be coming home and he remembered being in WWII, I guess, and he sang I'll Be Home For Christmas in his old man voice, but it was true and strong and listen to me- if we wanted war to be over, enough of us, it would be. I'll never forgive George W. Bush for starting that war for no reason, NO REASON WHATSOEVER, but based on lies and more lies and nothing has come of it that will help anyone. I don't care what anyone says- war is never the answer. And if it is, I am living on the wrong planet and we are asking the wrong questions.

Shit. I don't know. I feel worn down like a penny left on the railroad tracks. Being in town with all of the Christmas shoppers has flattened me, the traffic, the way none of the shoppers seemed happy, the woman screaming on the phone, the way all of the beauty salons were closed, the way Walmart's garden center had not one flowering plant besides poinsettias and enough of those to provide a small nation with one apiece for its citizens, lines and lines of hothouse poinsettias, doomed to death by early spring and what was the point of all that water, that fertilizer, that energy?

But. But we'll be pulling out of Iraq. That part of war is over.

I don't know.

I went looking for War Is Over on Youtube but dammit, because of some legality we can't get the old version here in America anymore but we can get this one and it's got John speaking about government and the people and the power and it's eerily prescient and I couldn't get through the whole thing because it shows war.
You don't have to watch the whole thing either. You can just watch the part about peace and love and peace on earth and watch Yoko talk about how it's also about nonviolence in homes and bless her. Bless her heart.



My home is peaceful tonight. I am making soup. This is how I deal with things. I chop and I simmer and I cut and I gather and I make soup. And I am so grateful that this year I am not participating in something I do not either believe in or understand. John Lennon talked about how the government was focusing on long hair and stupid stuff like that and now we are focusing on giant screen TV's and buying, buying, buying and it's all the same- don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. Buy the crap, buy the party line, buy the lie that war is justified and if you don't believe it, you are not a true American while the main contender for the Republican party in the presidential race believes that giving children jobs as janitors is the way to educate our youth in moral values and the work ethic.

Yeah, well, I'm done with all of that. For now, at least.

I know there is much to celebrate and be grateful for in this world but for tonight, I am hanging on by my fingernails with not a whole lot of hope for the fucked-up human race.

I'll probably see things differently tomorrow and for tonight, I'm just grateful for peace here, in this house, in this part of the planet we call Earth, for the fact that troops will be coming home.

Amen.

Death Of A Man Who Thought

Shit. Christopher Hitchens has died.

Or go here.

Not everyone had the balls to say that Mother Theresa was fucked up. Or to be waterboarded to see if it was really torture.

May he rest in peace. No more torture for him.

Christmas Cheer

The anger has passed. It went away and now I'm tired. Not only because I got up at five-twenty this morning but because I carried around that big old box of mad all day and I didn't need to and I knew it and I did because I'm a stubborn old mule, but I've let it go.
Mostly.
And I've thought about it a whole lot and I hope I've learned something.
I doubt I have, but I hope I have.

The whole family except for Jessie and Vergil (whom we miss so much we can barely talk about it) went to the assisted living place where Mother lives for the holiday dinner this evening and it was really very, very nice and we had a good time. I'm not kidding you. The food was good, there was entertainment which ranged from professional local jazz musicians to three of the employees singing three part harmony with one of the resident's very young granddaughters doing the hula. Also a woman singing at the piano and after about half a song, my mother turned to May and said, "I've heard better."
Haha!



Santa was there. I have known that particular Santa for approximately thirty years. He is a kind, good man and tried to charm Owen into sitting on his lap but Owen was shy. He sat on his mama's lap, though, and let Santa talk to him.

We all sat at a big round table and Owen behaved himself pretty admirably. He ate his salad, some of his steak and his bread. He had a bite of the pie (which was really very good) and spit it out. The kid just doesn't care about sugar very much. He did have a cup of coffee (decaf from his mama's cup with about four creamers and some sugar) and I think that was his favorite part of the dinner. Except for the bread. He really liked the bread.


He also liked all of us taking turns to go outside with him to play, especially Aunt May.
And I think my mother had a good time. I tell you what- that place she lives is just beyond belief at how lovely it is, how sweet the employees are, how every detail is taken care of, inside the buildings and all around them too. The grounds are like a park. There are libraries and reference and reading rooms and lectures and a gym and a pool and activities around the clock. You just sort of want to sit down and start working on a jigsaw puzzle. You know?

After the supper we went up to Mother's room to see her decorations and her room is just as cozy as can be. She had her electric candles in the windows and she showed me the garden porch again. She is so proud to take care of the ferns, to help Miss Mabel , to haul the water in the little red wagon which sits in the hallway just for that purpose. She's so funny though. She was talking about Miss Mabel who will be 102 soon and said, "She just can't live much longer," which I thought was pretty hysterical. I mean, Miss Mabel looks fine to me. And anyone who can keep a beautiful little garden like that going has got to be at least a few miles from death's door.

So it was a good evening. I guess that was my Christmas celebration and it was enough for me. We sang carols (which horrified Owen and if we had started dancing, he probably would have died on the spot) and we drank alcohol-free champagne. Well, some of us did. Lily appreciated that. In fact, I believe Lily would move into that place in a heartbeat, especially after she saw the coffee shop which leaves Starbucks in the dust.

A woman took a picture for us but as you can see, May was moving and Owen was screaming. He did NOT want to pose tonight.

Well, hell. That's how we look except May's beautiful face is usually more defined.

And I took a shot of Lily and Jason and Owen as we were leaving.

I have so much to be thankful for.
I am humbled sometimes.

I am amazed.

Well. Long day. Time for bed.

No Owen tomorrow. Maybe I'll go to town and see if someone can fix up my hair.

I don't suppose you can get emergency liposuction and face lifts, can you? Sigh. Not that I would, of course, but it's amusing to think about it.

Sleep well, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Old Testament Ms. Moon

You know how God is an angry God? Well, today Ms. Moon is an angry Ms. Moon.

I am not going to get into details but I'll just say it- I am angry. Not at Owen or any of my sweetlings or Mr. Moon but I am just PISSED OFF!

It's sort of a universal pissed-offedness with a soupcon of personal directed anger.

Is "soupcon" the right word? Spell Check doesn't seem to mind it.

You know what I mean. You've been there.

And for once, I am not taking that anger out on myself. I am not going to direct it inwards. I am not even spending a great deal of time trying to be all compassionate about it. I am just going to be angry and eventually I won't be and that's that.

Boy Oh Boy

Oh god. These dreams are going to kill me.

But that's not what I came here to talk about.
Actually, I did not come here to talk about anything. Owen came again at 5:45 and we went back to bed and I just got up again and between the Sarah Palin showgirl dream and the I-was-lost-in-a-big-city-dream, I'm exhausted.

He'll be up in a minute.

I'm going to have to get back to you. I think I better make some oatmeal.

Love...Ms. M

Family Friendly With The Occasional Use Of The F-Word

 Well, it was a good day here at Mer's Playhouse and when I say good, I mean we got a lot of sleep in. For some reason, Owen does like to sleep in our bed about as much as I do and if someone told me a story every time I laid down with them and also rubbed their back so very gently while they did it, I would think I had died and gone to heaven and I don't know that Owen feels quite that way about it but he does seem to accept nap time here.
Thank god.
And no, when he's asleep, I do not get up and go do things like laundry or dishes, I just go to sleep too.
I am no fool.

But when we weren't sleep, we were doing all of our regular things which these days includes a lot of Owen testing me and me trying to decide whether the issue is worth arguing about or not. Some things are, some things are not. For both of us.
I showed him the bag of Reese's Pieces and he was immediately pretty excited about that but when he heard that he'd have to poop or pee in the potty to get some, he was completely disinterested.
"No way," is what I believe he said.
I think he would have said, "No fucking way," had he known that word and I am just grateful as hell and a bit amazed at my restraint in not using the F-word around him that he does not. I had a friend once who said fuck approximately once a sentence and was shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU! that one of her daughter's first words was indeed that particular one. Anyway, Owen does not seem to know it yet and his strongest curse word so far is "heck" which I have reported here and he uses it like, "What HECK?!" This cracks me up.

Anyway, we had a good time playing with some strange citrus fruit that a friend brings us which is sort of like a cross between a grapefruit and a lemon and I never know what to do with them. He swears he eats one every morning but I just don't think I could. The juice would probably make delicious drinks of the alcoholic and -ade sort but I am not Martha Stewart. Today, however, the fruits and a box of nails were in proximity and Owen began to stick the nails into the fruit and he did that happily for about fifteen minutes while I read an article about Queen Elizabeth in the Vanity Fair magazine. Why not? And let me say this- Queen Elizabeth may be a tip-top monarch but she sure gave her children short-shrift. I guess it's hard enough to be a working mother, much less the Queen of England AND a mother and thank god for good nannies.

Another thing we did with the fruits was play catch. That was fun and then I showed Owen how to throw them into a pot where flowers used to be until they froze and the chickens ate them all and that was enjoyable too, especially since every time we threw them in there, Owen got them out and wiped them off carefully and earnestly before he threw them back to me which caused me to say, "Oh Owen, I love you so much!" and he looked at me as if I was insane and immediately quit wiping them off and we went on to something else.

And of course we gathered eggs and I actually did a tiny bit of weeding in the garden while Owen dug holes with a trowel but then he decided to help me and began to weed up my sweet little lettuces and so we left the garden but it was great while it lasted. He played on Bop's trailered four-wheeler and when I tried to remove the key from his hand he threw it on the ground and it took me approximately twenty minutes to find it, all the while saying things like, "Owen! Bop would not like this! Bop would be SO mad!" which did not disturb Owen one bit although he did get down and try to help me for about two seconds and then he said, "Mer do it," and climbed back on the four-wheeler.

I was relating all of this misbehavior to a friend of mine via the e-mail and he, the grandfather of two, wrote this back to me:

"Kids are brats, especially boys, and must be dragged into civil behavior, if not beaten. Try thumping him with your finger, firmly on the head , but be careful not to hurt your finger."

I found that comforting and will consider it, especially the next time Owen is fighting me about changing his diaper and kicks me in the ninny, which he did the other day. I doubt I will actually thump him but I will think about it. This friend raised three sons of his own and they have all grown up to be good boys and fine men and so I know he must be right although I wonder what his wife would have to say about this advice. She would probably look at him and give him that look which wives give to husbands but maybe not. Maybe she would agree. All I know is that Bop is far less apt to accept behavior which I tolerate which is why it's a good thing for children to have grandfathers as well as grandmothers.

Of course Owen redeemed himself about fifty times and not just by wiping the grapefruit-oranges clean but with hugs and kisses and "pleases" and "thank-yous" and general clever and angelic behavior when he wasn't being a terror.

Here is a picture of that very same Sweet Wild Boy and the chickens:

He was sharing his apple with them, especially his best chicken-friend, Elvis.

His mama called and asked if we could spare some eggs to send home with Owen and here he is, holding the carton we got ready:


 

He did not break a one.

And while we're doing pictures, here's one for Michele R who wanted a picture of the gray cats:



Luna (top) and Ballsy, the one-eyed-fattest-feral-cat-in-the-world.

In a last and completely non-related topic, I would like to pass on a link which I think may be better than Ativan for feelings of anxiety and self-doubt. Hank has been telling me about this radio show forever and I'm always, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," but today he said, IT IS TIME! and so I went and listened to one of the archived shows and I'm not even going to try and describe it but if you are feeling stressed out and need the comfort of a good, southern voice talking about spirituality and puppy-murdering (not really!), I suggest you check out The Miracle Nutrition Show With Hearty White.

Hank just finished his last final of his first semester back at college and of course he got all A's and he's going to go eat a burrito and drink some margaritas tonight and I am SO PROUD OF HIM! Meanwhile, I am going to go cook some stir fry and brown rice and hopefully, Mr. Moon has found his phone in the woods which he lost yesterday and will come home soon with that and maybe even a deer.

Life is full of wonder and if you have nothing at all to do, go ahead and stick some nails in a citrus fruit while listening to Hearty White and get back with me on how that works out for you.

Love...Ms. Moon

Moon Light And Morning Sun

The first time I woke up this morning it was five-twenty and when I went out to get the paper and feed the cats the moon was so bright it was shining off the tin roof of the garage and making shadows of the pecan branches and I thought I might swoon with the still, quiet, cold beauty of it.

Owen was happy when he got here and wanted an apple and asked where Bop was and when I told him that Bop was still in bed he said, "No way!" and then he wanted to get in bed with Bop and Mer and he wanted Mr. Peep to be told and his back rubbed and so it was and we all went back to sleep and he's still asleep and I'm up and the day is full on light and it looks like this:



And now Owen is up and I gotta go.
It's going to be a good day.

Fast Forward

Well, hell. It turned out to be a pretty damn decent day.
I went to Target because All Women Must Go To Target and I bought a shirt on sale and some trip-sized things like shaving cream and the best, the best- I bought that new-baby-coming some little sleeper thingees, all in yellow and white with duckies on them, size 0-3 months and isn't that fun? Oh. Yes. It is. A new baby coming! Little cuddly little thing with a face and personality we have no idea of yet at all.
Oh my. My heart can barely believe it. My arms already ache to hold that child.
(I must take a moment to gather myself. Okay. I'm all right.)

I went to ONE store in the mall that I know has kick-ass 65% off sale racks this time of year with all of the summer stuff and I tried on a bunch of things and bought a few that were not HIDEOUS which most of them made me feel. The clothes weren't hideous. I just looked hideous in them.
Sigh.
But. Still.
And then a few more errands and I got gas and why is getting gas such a damn pain in the ass? It's easy as hell to do but I still hate it. Maybe because I was raised in the days when you'd drive into the gas station and the bell hose would ding!ding!ding! and the guy would come out and you'd roll your window down and say, "Five dollars, please," and he'd put in five dollars worth and that would fill up your tank and while he was filling up the tank he'd wash your windows with great sweeping swipes of the squeegee and then polish it all off with a blue paper towel and he'd say, "Check your oil, ma'am?" and you'd say, "No thanks!" and then you'd give him five dollars and he'd tip his hat and you'd drive away.
Oh my.
I miss that.
Then back home to unload the car and put everything away and then to the Opera House where we did another read-through and oh my. Jon. He is just SO good. So good. I hope to be able to hold up my end of the banter because really, I'm just the straight woman in this play (not sexually, you know, but yes, that too, but I mean in the comedic sense) and now I'm home and it's time for bed because Owen is coming in the early-early and I have missed that boy.

I did see Santa today, by the way, but he was just hanging out with the photographer lady and wasn't torturing any kids.

And I bought Reese's Pieces to try and bribe Owen to use the potty but I don't think that will work because his will is far stronger than his desire for candy and that cute little puppy potty is just taking up space in the bathroom.

That's all. I hope you've had a nice day. Sleep well. I mean it.

Well the sun has come out, it has warmed up and I took a walk and I don't care what my problems are- those three things can make anything at least a little bit better.
I still feel overwhelmed and over-daunted but dammit, the sky is blue and I got off my ass.

I think I'll go hang the clothes out and gird my loins (or at least my bosoms) and go to town.

I will not be going to see Santa, however. You can bet on that.

Thanks for not coming and kicking me in the ass no matter how badly I deserve it.

Love...Ms. Moon

Someone Tell Me To Just Shut Up

I finished reading Swamplandia! last night and I don't get the hubbub over it. Sorry. For me it got bogged down in the swamp of it all and I do not know what the redeeming value of it was and maybe that's just because I'm ignorant.
I feel terrible saying something negative about a book that someone wrote with her very own mind but there you go. The truth is, there was too much, too much, way too much going on and it got to the point where I did not CARE what happened to these characters except maybe the brother, Kiwi, who had the good sense to escape the dank island of Swamplandia and leave the gators behind. It did not work for me on the level of metaphor and it did not work for me on the level of surrealism and it did not work for me on the level of realism. No one in this world could stumble around the everglades for days without water or food or bug repellent and not come out dead or at least in need of hospitalization and what the fuck was that Mama Weeds character all about? Or the red gator for that matter?

Ah Jeez. I should just shut up.

It's probably just me and this eternal grayness we seem to be consigned to like being consigned to a cold, damp hell of a tin cup for a world lined with damp paper towels and put into the refrigerator.
I think I probably have mold. Well, still, that beats the hell out of being lost in the Everglades with a bird-man rapist on your tail and nowhere to hide but a gator nest.

Thank god for small favors, eh?

I wish I had something witty to say today. I wish I had something pithy or enlightening or god, what's that word? INSPIRING! yeah, that's it but I don't.  I'm just in one of those phases when it takes everything I have to face the reality of life, even if it's a cushy-ass reality and the reality IS that I need to go to town and DO THINGS which I vaguely have an idea about but not really.
I swear- where do these moods come from?
I went to a website for survivors of childhood abuse and they all talk about "triggers" and I am thinking and thinking but I can't think of a trigger one lately, I just went to bed happy on Sunday night and woke up in deepest funk yesterday morning and that's the truth of it. No rhyme, no reason, just there you are, here's your breakfast of cold, gray grits, YAY GIRL! you washed the sheets and cleaned the nests in the chicken house, here, I've done my job, let me sleep.

Well, I can't sleep any more today (that's a lie- I could sleep all day long) and I better get off my ass and fake it 'til I make it and when you're smiling the whole world smiles with you, baby. I need to go off on a quest, perhaps, find the meaning of the red gator in the Underworld, thirst for knowledge, for meaning, for water, sweet and pure, keep my eyes open for buzzards circling overhead, for the rescue plane which could appear at any moment, either one.

Here's all of this and five dollars and forty-seven cents, go buy a cup of coffee.

Stay out of the swamp, don't trust a man dressed in a coat made of the feathers of dead birds, don't believe in the Underworld, don't believe a thing I say, it's all in my mind which is a swamp unto itself, filled with snakes and gators, filled with sawgrass that'll cut you to ribbons.

I think I'll go to the mall/take a walk/spend all day knitting in front of the TV/sleep until my skin falls off/take up crew rowing/find an open bar at ten a.m./get pregnant/go buy apples and a rotisserie chicken/make the bed.

I think I'll run away but no, that never works, you always take yourself with you and besides that, the Rapist Bird Man is an excellent tracker.

"Woof," says the dog and Santa Claus is coming to town and I'll bet he's at the mall right this second, waiting in his faux velvet suit to be spat up upon, to be cried on, to be adored and pleaded with and lied to about how good we've all been this year. Maybe he'd make room for me on his lap. Maybe he'd let me tug his beard, tell him my lies.

Maybe I need to shut up and plug in my Robert B. Parker book and go take a walk.

Yeah. I'd be a fool not to.

I Am Grateful For A Woman's Heart

I went to Kathleen's house today. She is home from helping midwife a friend into death and taking care of that woman's husband as he is not only going through such grief but also back surgery and so much pain. Kathleen has had to bear witness to too much pain and suffering in the past few years and she is weary of it. She is weary from it too.

I had to go over, you know, because sometimes there is nothing else that can be done but to go see someone and hug them and let them know that you are alive, you are here, there is still life on Planet Earth. I wish I'd had a bouquet of gorgeous flowers to take her but I didn't and so I took a plastic bag full of salad greens, all washed and ready to go. Her dogs have eaten all of her greens and so she has none at the moment.

She looked tiny and frail but her hug was strong and then Judy came over too and we sat in Kathleen's house and watched her measure and weigh and simmer and mix- her soap-making routine. I didn't help a bit. I just watched and kept out of her way and so did Judy and by the time I realized it was getting dark, we had all laughed a lot and talked about everything from death to taxes, quite literally, with a bit of birth thrown in and, okay, sex as well.

I guess that when Kathleen and Judy and I get together, we are something of a cackling coven.

Works for me.

Works for me.

As much as I would like to say that I went over there for Kathleen, I know that being with those two women was more comforting to me than I can even admit. Just sitting there and talking and being able to say whatever outrageous thing I want to say and to have that accepted and even laughed at- well, that's good. That's acceptance. That's love.
We are three such very different women but we have seen each others souls and we approve.
I feel gifted by the afternoon. I feel so lucky.

Judy and I left her with her gentle giant dog Harry with his paws around the untouchable cat Marina, with her boy-dog Bob, her baby clown girl-dog Edna and a bunch of cats whose names I honestly can never remember. She has good company, Kathleen does, in her little house with the blooming Flame Vine, her chickens, her animal kids. I bet her house smells like heaven right now with the soap-making. I hope she is not too worn out.

I hope that she and Judy both know how much I appreciate their company.

That's all I have to say tonight. Just that I needed that woman-fellowship and I got it and it was good.
We do not have to bear our burdens or our weariness alone. We may not be able to share the weight of them as such, but we do not have to be alone as we bear them.

Thank goodness.

Still Gray Here But At Least We Got Some Rain

This morning I saw a hawk fly down from a tree to sit on my garden fence and he stayed there until the baby chicks next door started fussing and then he flew off to investigate and I couldn't bear to watch. How any baby-anythings make it around here with all the hawks is beyond me. Yes, those hawks are gorgeous but scary too with those swoop-swoop wings that scoop air hard. They are big birds. They are predators.

I wake up almost every morning feeling as if I am already a failure at life. Then I spend the rest of the day climbing some sort of self-imposed ladder to something far short of "success" but mostly just acceptance of myself. As if. My craziness is as strong and scary as that hawk and any tenderness I may have for myself is as fragile as those downy chicks next door.
And yet, I mostly manage to do it.
It's a sort of miracle.
And then I get up the next day and have to do it again. It takes a lot of energy. More than I have sometimes. 

When we did our read-through last night I enjoyed it so much but still, after we were done, I had to say ONE MORE TIME- Look guys- I am too old for this part. I love this part but I am too old.
They all told me that I am not. That it will be fine. What touched my heart was when the wife of the man who is playing opposite me said, "Mary, you are gorgeous."
She did not have to say that. She is not one to throw compliments around like confetti. She is a fairly quiet woman.
She had no idea when she said that how hard I am going to hold those words to my chest as protection, as totem, as comfort.
It was a Mitzvah, just like when Jason picked up Owen's toys the other day before they left.

I read an article in Vanity Fair the other day by Christopher Hitchens. Here it is, if you want to read it.
He has recently been going through hell on this earth being treated for cancer and in the article he takes on that old saying, "What does not kill us makes us stronger."
He doesn't believe it and neither do I.

I was reading another blog this morning and in it, the woman wrote that all of her growth and all of her blessings have stemmed from difficulties. She's religious and brings Jesus into the mix and I love her attitude about so many things but this one- nah.
Specifically, I was thinking about how different I might be had I not had to survive childhood sexual abuse. I did survive it but goddammit, I don't think it made me stronger. I think it made me fucked-up in ways that will never, ever be completely healed.
It was not a blessing.

In fact, it has interfered with my ability to accept my blessings my entire life. It has given me the fear that no matter how good things are, there will be a hawk coming from the sky to swoop in and take those blessings from me. The better I have it, the more I have to lose, the more I have to fear.

I thought, I thought...(I was nine years old) that the man who was about to marry my mother would make everything better. He would take away her depression, he would make her HAPPY, he would complete our family, he would be...my father.
Instead, he made everything worse and he filled my life with fear.

You don't really get over shit like that. At least I haven't.
And oh sure, I am more empathetic because of what I went through. I am...well, to tell you the truth, I can't really think of anything else that's very positive to talk about which came from that experience. Nope. Just can't.
It wasn't a blessing in disguise and a whole lot of other horrible things are not either.

I'm not talking about not having enough money to buy a new car or breaking your arm or all of the things that befall us that yes, we do get through and can look back and see that we are stronger than we knew because we survived them. There ARE things which we survive which make us stronger. There is pain which has a purpose. Childbirth, for instance.

But there are other things which come like the hawk- the predator- that take so much from us. Even the basic sense that we deserve a life, not of riches or ease, perhaps, but just a plain, regular old life.

And when I write a post like the one I did last night wherein I talk about the incredible blessings of my life, I wake up the next day and think, "I do not deserve this. Something will come and take it all away." I could sit here and list a hundred things that I fear to the point of almost-paralysis. It would be so easy.

And every day, every single day of my life, I get up and I struggle through those fears and I do put one foot in front of the other and I get through. Just as many of us do who have gone through, who are going through things which seem unbearable. Things which do NOT make us stronger but instead take away all our reserves of strength and leave us panting for breath.

Of course we go on. Of course we do. Unless we don't. And some do not. Can not.

And this is the way it is. We humans want so badly to give everything a happy ending. To believe that there is meaning in suffering and we make up stories and religions that tell us exactly that. That even if this life is cruel and even if we are given more than we can bear, that in the next life, we will be rewarded for our struggles here.

See- I don't believe that for a second. I don't believe that and I don't believe that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger and I surely don't believe that god doesn't give us more than we can bear.

I just believe that it is what it is and that life can be beautiful and that life can be horrible and that life can be easy as walking down a dusty road under a clear blue sky and whistling a tune and life can be looking up to see the hawk flying low, heading straight for you and your babies.

And I believe that any kindness we can offer another is a good thing. I believe that we should be able to appreciate the smallest goodnesses of our lives and not dwell on that which is not a goodness which doesn't mean I am a Pollyanna but that we should do our best for our own self-interest to realize what we do have which is good and true. And that we should, in turn, be aware and grateful when those things are offered to us.

Because what else is there?

Perhaps I focus on the smallest blessings- the egg, the arugula, the softness of Goodwill cashmere, the son-in-law who picks up the toys, the kind comment from someone- because these I can accept. These I can be sure of.

Everything else is too much for me to bear sometimes- the very real and perfect weight of them in my life, my arms makes me know how much I have which makes me know how much I could lose.

So. There you go. Not very uplifting. But it's what I have to offer today.

And I want to say that if you are one of those people who carry burdens beyond what any human can bear (and I do not consider myself to be one of them), I have this to say:
I see you and I do not think that it is fair and I love you for continuing to bear that which is impossible to bear.

That's all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Back from the read-through and I am excited and calmly thinking about this woman I am playing in a play and how it can be funny and I can be funny and there were a few moments, even in this first reading where I could feel magic creeping in. I think I may have found us an actor for a role yet uncast and I am hoping (fingers crossed) that it will happen. He would be perfect or at least, very, very good. Oh god, I love the Opera House. I love the process of word-to-voice-to-movement with words from the page. Voice, body, make-'em-laugh, make-'em-cry. Make ME laugh. Make ME cry.

Came home and talked to Jessie, my baby, out there in the world, on her way to work and there she is- away from me but tucked always into my heart. I picked salad in the dark with a flashlight and when I snapped the arugula with my thumbnail, the scent of it flew up and I mentally paired it with tomatoes and vinegar and olive oil and garlic and it was like eating in the garden, it is like shopping in the ground.

Mr. Moon keeps opening his jacket when I am near to draw me in to his warmth, his heart. He has made a fire to cook the giant Tennessee grass-fed steak he traded for oysters from the bay we may live on one day, god willing, and I am thinking of the way they have found coastal seashells in the mountains of Georgia which were obtained from trading back so long ago and for this moment, it all makes sense.

Somehow it does and the bread is in the oven, the potatoes are in the oven, the steak is resting in a bath of oil and garlic and spices and the salad is waiting to be made, conceived in dirt and snapped with my thumbnail and the olive oil is resting in its bottle, the garlic is waiting in its paper-skin, the vinegar is waiting in its green-glass to anoint the arugula in its bowl. The fire is snapping, ready for meat to be cooked on it.

God. I am rich.