Life Is Messy

Okay. Time to go back to Mexico.
Yep. The medification of those waters has finally bled itself out and I need to renew my prescription.

If it were only that simple.

Well, it's not, is it?

Last night, when I was trying to figure out whether or not to call the Coast Guard, I started aimlessly going through the Cozumel My Cozumel message board in hopes of stray pictures of anything soothing.
It helped.
Especially pictures like this:

That's actually the beach at Tulum, which is across the water from Cozumel but hey- same ocean, same blue, same palms, same peace.
(Thanks, Steve!)

Oh, what the hell am I bitching about? I've got roses in bloom and I've got baby chickens and I've got a hen on the nest who may or may not be hatching some more babies.

That's Miss Flopsy. She's been on the nest for days. I assume there are eggs under her. I am not about to stick my hand under her body to check, though. I've never yet had a hen hatch me out any eggs so this would be a new and lovely experience.
The babies we hatched in the incubator are getting big and it's time to put them outside in a protected situation so they can scratch in the dirt. Mr. Moon built them a cage thing the other day but he's not quite finished with it and it's too damn big for me to move. I had envisioned something smallish- there are only five babies- but you know Mr. Moon. He found some building materials and went for it and he's offered to put it on wheels for me because yes, it's that big.
But he's in Orlando today. He got up at four and made that drive. He got there safely. Now all he has to do is endure the chaos of the auto auction, hopefully purchase a car and then drive back home. Four hours of road between here and there. For him, anyway.
He'll be fine. He'll get home sunburned and exhausted, but he'll be fine.

So I've got roses and I've got baby chickens and I've got two grandsons up the road if I can't live without some of that sort of love. I've got everything. Every thing.

So why am I going through old pictures and seeping tears? Why is the portal between here and there dissolving quietly in my mind?

I'm such a wimp. I am such a whiner. I am such a crazy person some days.

Well. Another thing I have is a walk before me through the woods and down the road and under the trees and beside the horse farm and the sky is very blue and I need to get my feet back under me here, where I actually am, and weed and hoe and clean and wash and tidy and sweep and pull up my big girl panties and cowboy up, Cupcake, and quit looking at pictures and just get on with it.

I wish I knew exactly what was making me feel this way, giving me this yearning, longing, sadness.

Well. It's all always inside of us. Every bit. The joy and the terror and the fear and the contentment and the memories of every thing that created those feelings originally, even if we don't have the visual images to call up, either in our minds or with the photographs. It's all still there and sometimes the boxes holding it all just get bumped and the insides tumble out and there you go- a mess to go through and clean up and we do and I will and Elvis crows I am here, I am here! and Miss Flopsy sits on the nest and the roses open and the magnolias down the road are putting their white blossoms out for display in the sunlight but somewhere, some where south of here over the water and over Cuba there is an island...

Oh god. I'm just a mess today. That's all there is to it.

When The Mama Gets Worried

I swear to god. I was this close to calling the Coast Guard about ten minutes ago.
All day had passed without one word from that man, Mr. Moon, and the sun is setting and I didn't have the least knowledge of where he and his friend put their boat in nor did I have the phone number of his friend and neither did directory assistance.

And my stomach was in knots and the blood supply to my hands and feet had somehow gotten cut off and well, you know what anxiety feels like.

My number one rule (and perhaps the only one that truly matters) is Do Not Worry The Mama. I had enough sleepless, worry-filled nights in my life when I was married to my first husband who played guitar and so who had a damn fine excuse for not coming home at any certain time and I can't tell you how many times I planned his funeral, waiting to hear his car pull up in the yard and then by the time he did get home, I was ready to kill him and wanted to kill him but I never did kill him and now I just don't have any energy left for that sort of worry which is mostly okay because Mr. Moon does NOT stay out at night and he is good about letting me know where he is and when he'll be home and what he's doing and do I need anything at the store?

When the kids were little, Mr. Moon and I looked at a house we both wanted to buy. It was beautiful. Old. Ridiculously wide cherry-planked floors, a gorgeous kitchen, a piece of land with it that made our eyes water with joy.
But I would not buy it because I knew I had kids who would be learning to drive eventually, who would be driving home at night because that's what teenagers do, and the house was way up a two-lane country road with no lights, almost to Georgia, and I was absolutely aware of the fact that I couldn't handle the stress of waiting up nights for them to get home safely.

I still think I made the right decision.

I don't do well with worry. I am not a glass-is-half-full kind of woman. If one of mine is supposed to be somewhere at a certain time and they are not, I freak the fuck out. My mind goes places that would make Truman Capote shudder. I have spent my entire life waiting for the other shoe to drop and any disturbance in my tiny little universe seems like the Big One is surely about to happen or has, in fact, already happened and I just don't know it yet.

So when that phone rang and it was him, tired but okay, HIM, my husband, I was so damn relieved. Phone batteries on both phones in the boat went dead. Can this be true? It must. My husband doesn't lie about such things, plus, why would he? He's okay. He's fine. He said to go ahead and eat.

As if I'll ever eat again.

Or at least, that's how it feels right now.

And besides that, he's got a long drive home and I know he's exhausted and of course HE HAS NO PHONE BECAUSE THE BATTERY IS DEAD and no charger with him either.

Well.

He's okay. He'll be okay.

All joking aside from what I said this morning (and really, it was no joke) I can't even imagine a life without that man. Every part of my life is touched and held and protected and reflected and joined by his life.

Pure and simply, I love him.
He aggravates the hell of me sometimes, just as I know I aggravate him. From such aggravation an oyster creates the pearl and he is the pearl of my existence.
And when he isn't aggravating me, he is delighting me. He is making me laugh. He is holding out his arms to me as he has done since we first met, offering his body as shelter against all storms.

And he is who he is and that means he is going to go out into the woods in the darkness and he is going to go out onto the sea and he is going to drive down dark highways and he is going to do all of the things that make him the man I do love and I refuse to be like the woman in the Lyle Lovett song whom he tells, "If I were the man that you wanted, I would not be the man that I am."

Until I met this man, I never knew I wanted a man who hunted and fished. I would have told you that that was the LAST kind of man I wanted. He is none of the things I thought to wish for when I wished for a good man except that he is the best man I know.
He is right with himself.
And that is all right with me.

When people remark on how tall he is I sometimes say that he has to be the size he is in order to fit that heart of his in. And I know he did not wish me to worry and it probably aggravates the hell out of him that I am the sort of woman who worries so much.

Look at the size of his hands on that baby boy.
Hands that can hold a world.
They hold my world.

I am just so glad he's safe and that I can quit worrying.
Sort of.

Maybe the blood will return now to my hands and feet. Maybe my throat will open again. Maybe my eyes will quit tearing up.

Maybe I'll quit being so damn dramatic. I wouldn't bet any real money on that one, though.

But life goes on. Thank every power that be.

Now if I could just get warm.

Further Proof That I Don't Know ANYTHING

What the hell is this weather doing? Chilly again and overcast but supposedly no chance of rain. I suppose I should get my ass out and water the garden.
I don't know.
One of those mornings where I know nothing and it is made blatantly obvious to me over, and over, and over again and on my deathbed I'll say, "I know nothing and I never fucking did," and then I'll die. Done. And everyone will say, "Jeez. What a waste! All those years and she knew nothing."

I do know this- I'd rather not have a deathbed. I'd rather keel over in the cookie aisle at Publix, perhaps overly excited at the large selection and then just DIE so hard and so fast that no one has time to even break my fall, thus ensuring that I die twice- once from a massive something-something and then again from the ensuing head injury.

Okay. That might scare a child.

Whatever. We are all subject to traumatizing events in our childhoods. You can count on that.

Last night I made egg salad sandwiches with tomatoes on them for my husband to take fishing this morning. He got up at some very ungodly hour to go fishing out on the ocean and I had those beautiful hardboiled eggs and so I smashed them up and mixed some Miracle Whip and yellow mustard and sweet pickle relish and salt and pepper in with them and spread all of that on lovely whole grain bread and sliced up those tomatoes and put the sandwiches together and wrapped them all up with plastic wrap for him to take.
I also saved back a small piece of the carrot cake we brought home from Lily's for him to take as well. This reminded me of the day I had Jessie Moon, my youngest daughter. All day long I was in labor and I was walking around with my contractions, trying to be OPEN and allow myself to accept the strength of the contractions with OPENNESS AND GRATEFULNESS, etc., but mostly cursing under my breath and everyone in the world was there that day, all cheerful and happy because I WAS IN LABOR AND THEY WERE NOT and they cooked food and decorated as if for a party and my friend Lynn made egg salad, which I have never really liked in my life and someone brought a carrot cake, too.

So the point of this story is, is that by the time Jessie Moon was born and I was able to eat again after being in labor for a night and a day and puking most of that time, it was late at night and so I got up from my bed with my tiny baby and went into the kitchen because I was STARVING and I wanted some carrot cake so bad but there was not one crumb of carrot cake left. Not one. But there was egg salad.
I'll never get over that.

You've perhaps heard that story before. Whatever. Perhaps it shall become my traditional Easter Story although Jessie wasn't born on Easter but a few weeks later.

So I thought about that story last night and as always, when I think about egg salad, I wonder why I don't really like it because it is basically the same exact thing as deviled eggs but just with the whites all mushed up with the yolks. I'm a deviled egg purist. I don't hold with putting gourmet items in deviled eggs. The most gourmet item you will find in my deviled eggs is a little bit of mayonnaise along with the Miracle Whip. This is where I prove my Southerness.
Yesterday at Lily's after Owen hunted his Easter Eggs

everyone wanted deviled eggs and so Mark and I peeled eleven eggs (Owen wanted to keep one to play with) and then I deviled those eggs so fast you'd have thought that someone was holding a stop watch and they were not pretty. Oh hell no.
But they were damn good and we ate them as fast as I'd made them.

I thought about my Lis who PIPES her yolk-mixture back into the whites and how she would have had the vapors if she'd seen me scooping that stuff into the whites with a FORK and there wasn't even a sliced olive to go on top. Sure enough, when I talked to her later, she told me she'd not only piped the yolk mixture but had dyed her whites with beet juice and I bet they were the prettiest eggs in the world. She put a tiny bit of chopped dill on top.

Well, that's the difference between me and Lis. She is strong on presentation, I am strong on...uh...NOT presentation.

I still don't know why I love deviled eggs but do not care for egg salad.

So Mr. Moon is out on the ocean fishing and I don't know why but he does and that's all that matters. He left me a note that said, "I love you," with a heart on it. I also don't really know why he loves me but I sure am glad he does.

Someone I know posted a thing on Facebook the other day about how to be truly happy in a relationship you should be so happy with yourself that you would be okay without that other person and I wanted to smack someone. Specifically, the person who posted that shit.
Does that make any sense to you? I mean, if you're seventeen, maybe.
If you're fifty-seven and you've been with someone you love for twenty-eight years how can you even begin to imagine being happy without them? I don't care how much you love yourself. And who really loves themselves, anyway? I once knew a woman who was totally in love with herself to the point where it was bizarre and crazy but she was happy.
Her husband left her.
I imagine she was still happy but I am not sure.

Well, I could go on like this all day but I probably better not.
I'm going to go into town to go to the breastfeeding support group (aka Boob Group) with Lily and Gibson and then we're going to Babys (backwards) R us and maybe even get some lunch. Owen is staying home with his Uncle Chris. I thought I was going to babysit him and I was hoping we could watch some great kid movie together but I guess that's not to be. Oh well. I like to be surrounded by breastfeeding women and babies. I could take pictures and post them here. That would make as much sense as anything but I won't. That would be an invasion of privacy and if I do know one thing, privacy should NOT be invaded, especially when it comes to breastfeeding which reminds me of the guy I knew who claimed that his wife practiced the Las Vegas Showgirl Style Of Breastfeeding, meaning she didn't care who saw her breasts.
That still cracks me up.

I am enjoying getting to know Gibson with all of my heart. He is a fine baby and a relaxed one. He likes to be propped up into a sitting position and he holds that little head up and looks all around and if he gets fussy, he doesn't do it in an annoying way. He does it in a polite way and then if he gets some milk, he quits being fussy. He's a little like Yoda if Yoda breastfed.

All right, all right! I'll stop now! I think I am a bit worried about Mr. Moon being out on the ocean because honestly, well, they go out there really far and if anything happened out that far, it would be scary and no, I do not love myself enough to be happy without him.

That's all.
I mean it.

Yours Truly...Ms. Clueless

In Praise Of Bunny Babies And Their Daddies

It Was Crazy. It Was Fun. It Was Good. God, I'm Tired

Taylor, Billy, Shayla.

Hank, Taylor, Billy.

Lily, Gibson.

Potato Salad.

Salad with beans.

Collards and mustards with tomatoes and onions.

Bread.

Food. Billy and Taylor. They were not mad at each other. I swear.

Easter Eggs.

More.

"I Came Out Of A Chicken Butt."


Grilled grouper.
Mr. Moon caught it, cleaned it, and cooked it.

Owen on his mother's back, playing with May.

Jason and Gibson

Owen egg-decorating.

My heart.

More eggs.

Every picture I got of Waylon was a complete blur. Sorry. He and Owen spent a great deal of time chasing each other around the back yard.


At one point I said to Mr. Moon, "I now understand why old people buy those RV's and take off."

Phew.

And tomorrow we'll all meet up again at Lily's and Owen will hunt the eggs that the Easter Bunny will hide for him. And there will be ham. And angel biscuits. And after that, Mr. Moon and I are going RV shopping.

JUST KIDDING!

(Maybe)

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. Jessie and Vergil- we missed you so. And you know it.

Who Do You Have To Sleep With To Get A Chocolate Bunny Around Here?

I cursed myself with the statement about how chill I've been since returning from Mexico and some switch flipped last night. I went to bed pissed and I'm still pissed but I have at least recovered from my thought that I'm not even going to do the egg-dying thing tonight.
I guess we will.
Does anyone really WANT to?
I don't know. I have thirty eggs in a pot on the stove and that'll be thirty hard boiled eggs.



I hate Easter. Not because of the egg dying. I love the egg dying.

There's a blog I lurk at because the writer can't seem to make up her mind on whether she wants to talk about her vagina more or God and it's just insanely fascinating to me, and lately God has been winning and she put up a picture of a bloody Jesus hanging off the cross yesterday and maybe that's why I'm pissed off.
Bloody Jesus.

Have you ever been to a country where they hang up the corpses of animals to be sold as meat? I have. Flies are involved.

I just feel old.

Old as old bloody Jesus hanging off the cross.

Yesterday Owen told me to stay out of the bathroom because he was pooping. Because he is the boss of me, I did. I was approximately five feet away. I went in to check on him and he had gotten a lipstick and smeared it all over his face and hands and at first I thought the child was bleeding and my heart skipped several beats but I knew it wasn't blood because if it was, he'd have been screaming.

Oxyclean and hot water and laundry detergent will, in fact, remove lipstick from towels and rugs.

I didn't even really fuss at him. He also took some antlers of his grandfather's and poked holes in the screen with them. I thought he was smacking the screen with a strip of plastic he'd been holding seconds before and so didn't feel the need to go and look. I could hear him. He was fine. I've half-raised two brothers and entirely raised four children of my own and I should know better than to leave him alone, even if I can hear him, but it never occurred to me that he'd be poking holes in the screen with antlers.

I didn't really fuss about that either. Here's what I said, "Your Bop isn't going to like that."

Haha!

When Bop came home he didn't fuss at him much either. They pretended to fish off the side of the porch. They caught several sharks.

It's cold here this morning. Well, around fifty degrees or so, which is cold when it's been up in the high eighties already. We have the heat on in the baby chick room. Those baby chicks are growing so fast and one of the banty chicks is as big as Curly Sue, the "regular" chicken, and they flap around the box when you reach in to take them out so you can clean their cage and I think they could probably fly already. Also, some of them have such long necks that I am wondering if they aren't actually anhingas (aka Snake Bird) or at least somehow related to our chicken Ozzie who has the longest damn neck I've ever seen on a chicken. I can't see how this could be but there you go- long necked birds.
They're getting little tail feathers now.
They shake 'em.

If you're looking for a point here, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
(Point-disappoint? Mmmmm....)

So. Easter.
We have the baby chicks, we have the eggs. I saw a rabbit in the woods the other day. He did not have an Easter basket with him and he ran like hell when he saw me.

Here's a lily. Well, an amaryllis.

The funny thing about that amaryllis is that I brought it home from the woods. No, amaryllis don't grow in the woods normally. It was growing out of a pile of yard-trash that some asshole piece of shit person had dumped in the woods about eight months ago. I pulled it out of the mess it was in and brought it home and planted it in my flower bed and there it is.
I saved it! I saved its little amaryllis life!

I do not have any chocolate bunnies and I do not have a ham. Lily's making a ham tomorrow.

So we have Easter covered, as far as I can tell with the exception of the chocolate bunnies although I do not have any bloody Jesus hanging from a cross.
I will hang the clothes on the line.

That'll do.

I better go cut some collard greens. I better go hang those clothes. I better go attend to those eggs.

God, I feel old. I don't think that "Easter makes all things new!" thing is working for me.

Maybe it's working for you. I hope so.

Maybe I should talk about my vagina.

No way.

Yours sincerely...The Very Old Ms. Moon

That Boy

Wears my red cowgirl boots outside to feed the chickens.

His brother has my heart gripped in his tiny fingers.

I ain't got nothing more to say.

Tonight.

That's enough.

Good Morning

Such stillness but with the mad, loud swish, bump of the occasional car/truck over the railroad track and then speeding down the road. I don't even hear it unless I allow myself to.
Maybe it is never quiet in Lloyd. I only wish it to be and so it is.
Mostly, though, I know that I hear the birds be they wild or the domestic fowl.

Gold sun lighting up green. We've had rain three days in a row.

Open my refrigerator and eggs roll out. Well, they would if they weren't contained in cartons filched from the recycle bin at Publix. I love people who recycle their egg cartons. I see now why Easter is the time of eggs- perfect! I have seven hens. I get six or seven eggs a day, laid neatly in two nests in the hen house. Tomorrow night my babies and some other-babies of mine are coming out to dye eggs and eat supper. Mr. Moon will cook them fish on the grill. I will cook them greens from the garden, some bread. I need to boil my eggs and they will be hell to peel. Old eggs peel easiest, fresh ones hardly at all. The difficulty in peeling my hen's eggs, even after they've been in the refrigerator for two weeks, makes me realize just how old the eggs we get from the store are, how our definition of "fresh" has been tainted.

I finished Cocktails Under The Tree Of Forgetfulness last night and I need to go back and reread Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight. I think that Cocktails is strangely a retelling of the first book, but with a lens held in a different place and an explanation for the madness of the author's mother. Read those two books and tell me that any of us have any idea of how strong human beings can be, given the circumstances.
They are love stories, pure and simple and complex and painful and uncushioned by any of civilization's silky niceties.
Love of two people for each other, for the land they live on, for the work they do with their hands and their backs, for their children. Love, love, love.
And harder work and more loss than I could ever imagine. And madness.
Two people who could not and did not give up. Ever, ever, ever.

Well, I'm thinking about these things today and I'm about to go to town to get my boy, my Owen boy, and bring him out here where he can run naked if he wants and hit trees with bamboo and eat cheese toast with toothpicks and share apples with a mule and hold a baby chicken and get dirty and then get clean and maybe take a nap, maybe let me read him a book about a baby bird who can't find his mother.
The story of my life is written in his genes and his baby brother's too, and yet miraculously, I am allowed to be part of their lives at the same time.

It never ends, does it?

Not really.

That's Good Friday, here in Lloyd.

We go on.

No. I Am Not Stoned

I have been just this side of worthless today. I swear. I've just been tired or, as we sometimes say around here, "tiard."

I went to that appointment with my mother. She's been sleeping a lot lately. Well, ever since they put her on a little bit of Prozac to see if that would help with the headaches. It has helped. Tremendously. TREMENDOUSLY! and she just looks more relaxed and seems less anxious. The doctor there at the place where she lives is just Mr. Laid-Back. I have no idea if he's a good doctor or not but I sure do like him. He's nice to my mother and doesn't condescend to her. He flirts with her a little bit which she loves. One of the nurses who works there came and sat down by Mother when we were in the waiting area and pretty much just enfolded her in her arms and laid her head over on Mother's. Mother looked a bit alarmed, sitting there with this nurse three times her size draped over her like an afghan but she didn't say anything and tolerated it. This nurse is one I'd never met. She was just freaking jolly. She looked about twenty-three but according to her she has grown and almost-grown children. So she snuggled up to Mom and we talked awhile and then we saw the doctor. The social worker was there too. Now, in one of those situations which make me believe that yes, we do create our own reality and sometimes we just run out of ideas, the social worker for my mother is the same woman who was my friend Lynn's social worker.
This seems completely impossible to me but no, she really is.
She's sort of a hoot. But I like her and I think she gets things done. So she was there and the doctor and the social worker student volunteer guy who is the most serious young man I've ever met AND a student nurse. And me and mother all in that small room.
So the doctor talked to Mother about her sleepiness and I suggested that maybe she's just relaxed enough to get some damn rest now and the social worker agreed that being a little sleepy is a hell of a lot better than being in pain all the time and we all tossed that around and the doctor agreed and I suggested that Mother needs to swim because she loves to swim and always has and if you met her now, you'd think that she'd spent her entire life teaching swimming because she somehow infers that although I never knew her when she taught swimming so it's been at least fifty-seven years since she did teach anyone to swim because she certainly never taught me or my brothers as far as I know.

BUT, she does love to swim. And of course there's a beautiful pool and swimming facility at the place where she lives (I told you, they have everything and I'm not kidding, even a thrift store that's open three days a week and a new pub, too, but you have to bring your own booze) but she has resisted swimming there from the moment she moved in. I think, quite frankly, that the pool was the last point of her resistance to the move we forced her into last year from her little townhouse to the place she lives now. In her old place, the pool was just steps from her door and she loved that pool but she hasn't stuck so much as a toe in the pool at the new place saying she'd have to call someone and find out when she could swim and how would she get there and so forth, throwing barriers in the way to the last piece of goodness she thought she'd given up but hasn't really.
So the social worker told the social worker resident to figure out how to get Mother in the pool three times a week and he looked at her like, "What?" but she insisted he could do that and to "Make it concrete!" which I thought was funny because you know, the pool? Concrete?

So my work there was done as far as I could see after I took Mom back upstairs and made sure she got her lunch. She had told me that they didn't serve lunch that late although the nurse who had swallowed her up in her warm embrace had said just a few minutes before that they served until one. Mother insists that they get them in to that dining room and get them out in a big hurry, but I think it's sort of like a cruise and everyone just rushes in whenever the food arrives and eats and gets out, all of their own accord and sure enough, there was still food and someone to serve it and so Mother had her plate and another lady came in late and I left.

By then I was starving too and so I decided to go to the Mexican place that has a Goodwill book store right next to it and treat myself to a used book and some enchiladas which I did. I bought The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman and haven't some of y'all said you loved that book? Especially you, Elizabeth? By the time I'd finished my lunch I was into the book and it was just the most pleasant experience. But I was so tired that I barely made it through the rest of my errands and then I came home and put things away and it was raining that nice sort of rain that sounds like a shower in the next room is running and maybe someone you love is in it and is going to come and get in bed and snuggle with you, and I laid down and I went to sleep.

When I got up, Mr. Moon called to say he was on his way home and I answered the phone by saying, "Hello. This is your worthless wife."
Seriously. Worthless.

But I don't care. I'm just tired and that's okay. I walked four times this week and I've been pretty busy and some days you just don't have to break any records for accomplishments. I got the dishes washed and the laundry done and the shopping done and I took Mother to the doctor and I cleaned out the chicks' cage and I'll make us a good supper.

Have you noticed that I've been pretty darn chill ever since I got back from Mexico? Okay, sure, I've had my moments, but mostly, I've been, on the whole, a lot more laid back and mentally okay. Please remind me of this if I start getting all whack again and I'll just figure out how to get back to Mexico for a week to ten days and all will be well. Hell, whatever it takes to keep depression and anxiety at bay, right?
I'm sure Mr. Moon would agree with this. Just totally positive!

I'll tell you one more thing- I got a new broom yesterday. Getting a new broom for me is like a kid getting a new bicycle or, perhaps these days, a new telecommunications device, but whatever, it's so nice and springy and they only cost ten dollars. I should get a new broom twice a year! Think of the joy and increased cleaning ability!

It's the little things, people! Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens! Hell yah!
Something, something, something and warm woolen mittens!

I'm glad I could remind you of that.

You're welcome.

See you tomorrow when it'll be Good Friday. Maybe I'll go buy some new dishcloths. The wonders never cease, the joy never ends.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon

A Thursday

Okay. Well, I guess you guys DO come back and read my comment responses.
I'm very glad to know that. And let me add that if you ever want to make a further comment to a response- that's cool too. Like I say, I aim for it to be a conversation and as many of you pointed out, this does feel like a community and that feels good.

So good morning and we slept late for us and it's another beautiful green day. It rained again yesterday afternoon after a fine cracking thunderstorm. It came and it went but whatever rain we got is appreciated, we are grateful for.

I'm about to go take a walk which I have been doing regularly this week and it feels good. I have been a slacker for some time now, putting that as a last priority and I know better. I've been a regular exerciser for more than thirty years but sometimes I let it go for awhile and I always regret that but it's the way of it and I always start up again and it's a relief just to know I can stil do it- walk fast and hard for forty-five minutes, an hour. Whatever. My walk this morning won't be as much fun because I finished that James Lee Burke book and I was so wrapped up in his world. He is one of those authors where his "place" is as important as any character in the book and I remember when I had that real Yankee agent for my book and she kept reminding me that every time my characters went outside they did not have to report on what the sky looked like but reading Burke, I tend to think that I was doing all right with that.
Well, it's a damn moot point at this point but I am going to miss that book with its excellent narration, its wire-strung tension, its descriptions of how it feels when the earth needs rain and the rain keeps acting like it's about to make its entrance onto the stage of your world and yet, doesn't, and that heat, that constant longing for the reassurance that the rain gods have not completely deserted us, that our world can continue on with its desperately thirsty life.

Or something like that.

But here it is, another day and I'll start listening to a different book and the library is filled with James Lee Burke and I'll start going through them. I do this. I get captured by an author and I just read and read and read through their work unless it was a false flirtation and one of their books does something that pisses me off or doesn't do something that I need for us to continue in our relationship and then I'll move on. I used to read Burke but his violence put me off and I quit. Maybe I have grown up. Maybe I have accepted the fact that there is violence in this world and people who are evil and I can handle it better now if it is all wrapped in beautiful descriptions and longing and forgiveness. Especially of the self.
Who knows? Not me.

I am going with my mother to see her doctor this morning. Her doctor sees her in the clinic downstairs from where she lives and so that's convenient. She mentioned the other night that she desperately needs a hair cut. There is a beauty salon where she lives too (they have everything there- everything!) and I asked her why she doesn't just make an appointment there. "I am not paying twenty-two dollars for a hair cut!" she said.
I was taken aback.
"How much does your regular guy charge?" I asked.
"Sixteen."

I thought about the gas it would take me to go to town and pick her up and take her over there and then take her home.

Sigh.

Well, I'll probably be much the same when I am her age although if I am like I am now with my hair, I won't need to get it cut ever, maybe trimmed once a year. When we were at the library yesterday for that story-hour, I realized that every other grandmother there had grandmother hair- short and white. My own hair was still wet from the washing I'd given it after my walk because when I finish my walk, my hair is soaked from sweat and it's not short and it's not yet all white. I felt a bit like Owen- not really fitting in- and don't we all feel that in one way or another?

I remember going to a place on the internet back in the days when the internet was a much smaller place and it was a site purporting to help people figure out whether or not they were actually part-alien or something like that and one of the telling questions was, "Do you often and have you always felt different? As if you don't belong?"
But before I let myself get all wrapped up in wondering if I might, indeed, be part alien, I realized that if there are people who have never felt that way, I had never met one.
This reminded me of when I'd gone to the survivor of sexual abuse group for a few years and I'd walked in there feeling as if I were a unique individual with unique problems and by the time I left I realized just how much I had in common with other women who had been sexually abused and how I wasn't really unique at all which was fine. In fact, it's a good thing sometimes to know that. We may feel different but at the bottom, we are all so very similar in many ways, especially if we have all grown up in a similar situation.

Well, here are the chicks, not a great picture but look at those pretty faces, all with permanent eye-makeup to die for (dye for- sorry, really bad pun) and they are doing well and eating about fifty times their weight per day in chick feed.


I gotta go walk. It's important. And I know it. I walk out the kitchen door and I come home and walk back in it. A short journey but a good one and it suits me fine. Every day basically the same walk and yet, never quite the same experience.

Love...Ms. Moon

Can I Ask You Something?

How many of you honestly and really come back and read my responses to comments?

I am just so very curious.

We Are Not Amused

That is a picture of Owen at his first library preschool story-hour.
It did not go well.
As you can see, he is lying under his chair on my sweater but let me add that he is facing away from the story-teller lady. I don't think he was expecting the sort of foolishness he encountered in that room today. I am not sure what he expected, but it was not the horror of what he found there.

First off, there were other children there. Polite children who sat on their chairs and paid attention. Mostly. They trained their eyes on the story-teller lady as she led everyone in songs with attendant hand-motions and so forth. This, to Owen, was the horror of which I spoke. The songs. The singing. The flying of the hands through the air to accompany the songs like birds, like bunnies, like the wheels on the bus, oh my god, the sheer horror and mortification!

When we sing, Owen does not like it. If we try to dance in his presence, he will die. "Stop! Stop!" he will beg us. And we will laugh because it's so funny but I guess it's not funny to Owen.
At the library, he took one of his mother's hands and one of mine in his own hands to prevent us from making the hand movements. Literally. There was nothing he could do about the rest of the people- the polite little girls, the goody-two-shoes little boys, the chortling babies who bounced up and down on their grandmother's laps, the other mothers all sitting in a semi-circle and being serious about the singing, the bunnies, the birds. But he could prevent his mother and me from wiggling our fingers. Oh yes. He could. And he did.

One song ended with the question, "Can you sit very still with your hands folded in your lap?" or something like that.
Under her breath, Lily said, "Probably not," and Owen repeated her loudly. PROBABLY NOT! he said and I think that is when he crawled under the chair.

The book-readings were not quite as agonizing as the songs but frankly, he didn't care much for those either. "Look- a dog!" Lily and I would say and Owen would glance up at the page being pointed to and look away as if to say, "Oh please. You call THAT a dog?" No, he didn't care about the dog or the sunflower or the sheep or whatever the hell the other book was about. Not. One. Bit.

He may have been rolling his eyes.

And then, as if to say enough is enough, he got up and went to the door and opened it.
Lily and I gathered our things (Gibson slept through it all in the little pack thingee on his mama's bosom) and followed him out while all the other children were still paying attention, still being good little boys and girls.

I tried to interest him in the library in a book about a chicken but again, he had no interest whatsoever. I was telling Hank about this and he said, "Why would he need to read a book about chickens? He HAS chickens."

Quite frankly, I was completely amused by the whole experience. I thought it was great. When Lily was Owen's age, she would have acted the same way, except that instead of quietly going to the door and opening it, she would have thrown a leg-kicking tantrum in the middle of everything and I would have had to lift her bodily and haul her from the room myself, feeling judged unfit as a mother by all of the other mothers and the story-teller lady AND the other children.

So I just thought it was funny and an indication that my grandson is not like all the other children, which I already knew, and Lily wasn't upset either. It was, after all, his first experience in a room full of other kids and throw in the mortification of GROWNUPS SINGING IN HIS PRESENCE and well, it just wasn't his cup of tea.

Later on though, we asked him if he'd like to go back next week.

"Oh sure, sure," he said.

I can't wait. I wouldn't miss that for the world.

Water

Last night's rain made the green greener and the air cooler and so it is a bit of a new life which happens again and again and again.



"Easter makes everything new!" proclaimed a flyer I got in the mail yesterday from a local church and I thought, "Oh my."

I don't think so. I don't think Easter dresses and a ham or even a sunrise sermon retelling a very old story make everything new. I think the fact that everything renews itself this time of year is what makes everything new although of course, there is nothing new about it- it is ancient, even the tenderest green curl of the fern, unfurling under the fallen leaves from last year. Even the water which falls from the sky which has risen and fallen and risen again, molecule by molecule ever since hydrogen and oxygen first figured out how to mate on this rock-planet, remaking it into a water planet.



I am the resurrection and the life.



I think water may have been the first to say that. And it says it still and it is true as it falls onto the parched dirt and then steams up again from root to leaf and back up into the sky and I am in wonder at the way we take this so for granted and do not recognize it for the Holy Miraculous Happening that it is.



That's my sermon for today, if indeed I have one.

Beautiful Boys

It was a very fine day. I took my walk and when I got back, Lily and the boys had gotten here and were already settled in the Glen Den, Lily nursing Gibson and Owen playing with his toys. I was hot and sweaty and took a shower after I kissed them and Owen accompanied me and took off his clothes and pretended to take a bath while I took a shower and I put my clothes back on but he did not. This was handy in that every time he needed to pee, he went outside and did it.
As Lily says, he is not yet potty-trained but he is becoming house-broken, and we are proud of that.

Before I took my shower, though, we all went to check on the baby chicks. Once again, Owen said he wanted to hold one, but when the little chick was put in his hand, he didn't really like it. He did pose in front of them though, so that I could take his picture.

I think he is the loveliest two-and-a-half year old in the world. Of course, I am his grandmother and so of course I think that and I SHOULD think that but I honestly do.
"Come here," I tell him all the time. "Let me kiss you."
What IS it about humans and our need to kiss?
Sometimes he lets me. Sometimes he says, "Sorry," and runs on to whatever it is he wants to do next. But sometimes he says, "Sure, sure," and runs over and lets me plant one on him. His mama does the same thing but he ALWAYS kisses her. He kisses Gibson on the head a lot, too. He is quite cheerful these days, Owen is. I think he loves having his mama home all the time.

I made a curried chicken salad and felt like a real lady making real lady food. It was a curried chicken salad with apples and raisins and I served it on mixed greens. La-di-dah food. Owen ate Chex Mix and an apple. Oh well. Gibson ate...milk.

After lunch we hung out on the front porch some. I got to hold my youngest grand. He was in a good mood (and he usually is, that blessed little boy) and I took some pictures of him.

Here he is, thinking.

And here he is, sort of smiling.

Of course, I think that HE is the most beautiful two-week-old in the world. And I kiss him so much that I'm afraid his lips might wear off. I remember worrying about this same problem with Owen though, and he still has lips so I guess it won't happen.

While I was holding Gibson, Owen was running around the front yard naked except for his new Scoobie shoes and shooing the chickens. That's what he calls it because we tell him not to chase them. "Shoo, shoo," he says, brandishing his stick which is an old dead branch from the Confederate Rose right by the porch.
"Don't you chase my chickens, boy!" I told him. "You chase my chickens and I'm taking that stick away and we have to go in the house!"

This slowed him down some but not a lot. I gave him some old fruit salad and told him to feed the chickens instead of shooing them and he did. He is such a boy. I love him so much it makes my heart hurt like maybe it's going to explode.

But still- he can't chase my chickens. No one, not even my grandson, is allowed to chase my chickens.

Lily was tired and the boys were getting that way so they packed up and went on home and I came in and tried to pull the house back together and then I laid down and took a little nap. When I woke up, Mr. Moon was home and it was raining a little. It still is. Not enough but maybe the dust will get tamped down, at least. I'm writing this on the back porch and he's sitting across from me, playing poker on his iPhone, coming down from the ride back from Orlando. He's so handsome. I think he's the most beautiful fifty-seven-year old man in the world.
Of course, I'm his wife. But still.

Here's a picture of him with two of the groupers he caught last Sunday. Remember I talked about how happy he is to go fishing? Well. Here's what I mean.


And tonight I'm going to heat some of that grouper up that I cooked on Sunday and we'll eat it for our supper.

It's been that kind of day. Nothing out of the ordinary and yet, one perfect moment after another, each in its own way.

I'll take that. And kisses. All the kisses I can get.

But don't chase my chickens. I'll take your stick away and we'll have to go in the house.

Come here. Let me kiss you.
Thanks.
I mean it.

Gifts of Pain- Who Needs 'Em?

Well I didn't go to bed at 7:30 and I didn't finish that book. What I did instead was stay up and wipe down the kitchen surfaces because the dust that Mower Guy kicked up had coated everything to the point where it was not...hygenic? Not that I'm afraid of dust, really, but it was nasty.

I threw some stuff away, too. I'm in a throwing-away mood. I'd love to just bring the wheelbarrow into the house and start tossing stuff in it. Tossing without regard to sentimental attachment. Tossing without reflection on whether or not I will ever in this lifetime or the next want or need some specific thing.
Tossing without borders, so to speak.

I would need about fifty wheelbarrows.

Okay. In completely unrelated news, I just found this online:

Tallahassee, FL --- April 2, 2012 --- 5:37p.m.

A local minister stepped down from her post just before announcing she is an atheist.

A member of Lake Jackson United Methodist in Tallahassee says Teresa MacBain left the church Friday, March 30.

A day later, a video was posted online from a recent American Atheist Conference.

In it, MacBain came out as an atheist to the crowd.

Church members are meeting tonight to discuss leadership plans in her absence.

MacBain was with the church since 2009.

We have not been able to get in touch with MacBain or church clergy for comment.

(Thanks, Anna Amundson for the link.)

Wow. Bless her heart. I sure would like to take her to lunch and listen to the story of how that happened.

I don't even self-identify as an atheist. I just don't believe in religion. There may be a god; I don't know. But if there is, I don't think his eye is on the sparrow. The sparrow may be god for all I know.
I just don't know.

But that took some courage, I would think. Especially around here in the Deep and Very Religious South.

I went and looked at the video of her "coming out" and it was not unlike any other support-group situation. There were quite a few former ministers there. I guess I hadn't realized that religious indoctrination is so strong that if one comes to the conclusion that ones beliefs are false, it takes a whole lot of support to speak out publicly.

I remember reading about Mother Teresa and how for the last forty years of her life she did not feel as if her prayers were being heard, as if God and Jesus had removed their presence from her to the point where she sometimes wondered if they were there at all, and yet, her spiritual advisers kept reassuring her that they were indeed hearing her but that they loved her so much that they were giving her this gift of pain.

Or something like that.

And I just wonder- how can someone believe this? How can someone hold on to something for so long when there is just no proof at all of its existence?

And then hell, I realize I can't even get rid of a pair of shorts that I once loved that I haven't been able to wear in a decade and I know I should just shut my mouth.

We all hang on to things and beliefs and ways that we know, in our hearts, we have no need for anymore. That in fact, may be clogging up our closets, our hearts, our very lives. We do. That is just the way of it.

I think today I will try to start thinking about this as it pertains to my own life. To consider what life would be like if I managed to let go of things that are nothing more than gifts of pain. These things can range from that pair of old shorts to my constant need to feel guilty about things.

Huh. Well. I guess that that article WASN'T exactly completely unrelated to what I was thinking about, was it?

All right. I've taken the trash to the trash place. That's a start.
Now. To figure out a plan to see my grandsons. I suppose I better call their mother. Whom I would also really like to see.

Life's always interesting, isn't it? And humans- well, bless us. We get it wrong, we get it right, we get it both. I think that for me the important thing is to just really not be afraid of being who I am. And at the age of fifty-seven I am just really beginning to figure out who that is.
And of course, everything changes all the time and just when we think we have something nailed down and figured out, we realize we don't. Just when we think we've got the surfaces cleaned off, the dust kicks up and covers them again.

That's okay. As long as we're true to our good hearts, it'll all work out.

I think.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon

Title This Mess And Win A Prize!

I took every bit of energy I had today and used it to go for a walk. It was a good walk although the yellow lab that accompanies the people on horseback at the horse farm place and who always runs at me as if he was about to attack did it again today and I've been dog-bit more than once so that was unpleasant.

I'm not really frightened of dogs, especially a yellow lab but still- there I am, strolling along briskly, listening to James Lee Burke, da-di-dah, and all of a sudden a yellow ball of fury is heading my way, barking and snarling.
You'd think he'd recognize me by now and know that I am no more of a threat to him or his people or their horses than an old bird but he doesn't. Apparently.

It's beginning to piss me off.

His people on their horses call him back and he does respond to them but he does so with his head over his shoulder, looking at me as if to say, "Ah, if these people weren't here, I'd show you a thing or two with my fine white teeth! Yah!"

Whatever.

After the walk I did everything that I did very slowly. I hung laundry on the line and gathered eggs and cleaned out the hen house and the baby-chick cage (I have decided that my life is mostly about poop and I am okay with that) and I made one trip after another around the place and through the house and it was all done with great deliberateness. I was too tired to think of how to get two across-the-house errands done at once so I might take the broom into a room on one trip and then set it down and go back and get the shirts hanging in the laundry room and put them away in the closet in the room where the broom was and then pick up the broom and sweep.
I was not multitasking but who gives a shit?
Not me. I was listening to Rain Gods and having a fine time.

Of course, since I had the clothes hanging on the line Mr. Moon called to tell me that the guy who mows was on his way. This never, ever fails. Mostly everything was dry anyway because it's so hot so I slowly and deliberately went and took the clothes OFF the line and folded them and put them away and that probably took about four hours.
Not really.
I love hyperbole.
Last night Mr. Moon apologized for burping so much. "I've burped 89 times," he said. This was after we'd both been asleep and were awake again. For some reason that made me laugh. 89 times. I couldn't stop laughing.
I'm still laughing, if you want to know the truth.

When the guy who mows did his mowing, there was so much dust that I couldn't even see him in the middle of it. He was just a huge noise in the middle of a dust cloud. I bet you my spit is dusty. I KNOW my house is dusty but it was already so who cares? My sister-in-law is coming to visit in a few weeks and before she comes I have to
(a) Clean this house, and
(b) Make sure that rat is dead.

Although Mr. Moon did indeed trap a rat, when I was in the guest room last night the rat who tries to get through the door from the dining room did it again so it wasn't THAT rat whom he killed. That rat makes so much noise at the door that it would wake the dead. This is not something that you want to put a loved-one through while they are staying at your house.
I mean, I can barely stand it and I live here voluntarily. I wouldn't be surprised if that rat made its way to the chick-cage and caught and ate my baby chicks. I've never seen it (thank you, Jesus!) but in my mind it is as big as the Super-Saver Family Size of laundry detergent and has teeth as pointed and sharp as razor wire. Dripping with blood.
Probably not really but who knows? Not me and I hope I never do.

Where the hell was I? What was I talking about?

Oh. Nothing.

So actually the guy who mows is still here but now he is doing the wire-whip thing or whatever you call it and it's still noisy. Have you noticed that I haven't said, "It's so peaceful in Lloyd this evening?" I didn't say it because it isn't. It's a wonder I can hear myself think.
What if people don't really lose their minds at all? What if, instead, they just get "think-deaf"? You know, like we get regular deaf but some of us get think-deaf so we can't hear ourselves think so we appear to have lost our minds?
I think someone should study this.

All right. I know what you really come here for.

Pictures of chickens!

Here you go:


There's Curly Sue and the littlest one (still unnamed- I have no idea why, but Mr. Moon did not really like the name King George Jesus- sorry Madame King but in my mind I will call him or her that anyway) and as you can see, Curly Sue's wings already look more mature than they did this morning.
This is NOT hyperbole or an exaggeration of any kind. It's just the truth.
Aren't they just the cutest things you've ever seen? Almost at least?
I was thinking today that if Curly Sue does turn out to be a rooster, at least he will be The Son Of Elvis and therefore, probably a very fine rooster since his daddy is without a doubt, the world's best rooster in every way. I can't imagine a finer rooster and I am so proud to be the one who gets to live with him.

All right. Mr. Moon has gone to Orlando and so I will probably eat some leftovers and go to bed at approximately seven-thirty and read until I finish that Alexandra Fuller book. I've already read 68 pages, just dipping into it here and there and it's only 277 pages long. Damn it. It is choice, that book. I knew it would be.

I just found a tick on me. A big one. But it was crawling and that's a good thing. It had not yet burrowed into my skin to inject me with special tick poison and possible Lyme Disease.

Gawd.

As Lily said that time the bat was in the bathroom with her and a roach crawled down her leg at the same time: TOO MUCH NATURE!

Nah. I love it. It's just Florida, not the Amazon Jungle. Most of our toads aren't even poisonous and many of our snakes are not either.

Let's all sleep GOOD tonight, okay?

Your Faithful Correspondent From Lloyd...Ms. Moon

Just For Fun (Thanks, Martin)

Wings That Are Beautiful But From Which Flight Does Not Arise

I hate the nights I cannot sleep well and last night was one of them and I drifted around the house like a moth in my ancient white cotton nightgown, the dogs looking up at me curiously whenever I passed one of them, sleeping on a rug. I finally settled into the guest room with an old copy of Oxford American because I'd left my Alexandra Fuller book where I couldn't get to it without waking Mr. Moon and I knew he was having a hard time sleeping too.

It's going to be hot again today- up into the nineties almost. I am beginning to truly understand why some folks around here, as they get older, buy tiny places up in the mountains of Georgia or one of the Carolinas to spend their summers in. The heat here is bad and it is getting worse and there is no sense in spending half of this short life panting lifelessly on the porch or being imprisoned in the air conditioning.
Yesterday was a reminder of how that could be a good idea- to have a place to go to where it's cooler and maybe there would be a creek with cool gray rocks to lay a body in to gaze up at the leaf-framed sky, to become chilled even in the summer.
I don't know. What I do know is that by the time Mr. Moon got the boat cleaned last night and the fish too, he was so tired he almost fell asleep eating dinner. Fishing the way he does is hard work and that's no joke at all.

I'm tired and I need to go out and walk. Even my ass is saggy these days and I don't have enough ass to excuse any sagginess there. I need to clean out the chick's cage and give them fresh pine bedding. They are stretching their little wings and I can see the feathers growing in, the smallest feathers in the world and last night when we went to bed I told Mr. Moon that the chicks would probably be flying by morning time.


Well, they're not but click on that picture to see those tiny feathers. They are a wonder, they are so delicate that there is nothing to compare them to which would do justice to their fragile beauty.

I miss my grandsons. I wish they lived next door. Is there anything which could be more luxurious than having the grandbabies that close? Well. I am not ungrateful for the fact that they are only fifteen minutes away by car. My heart would break if they lived in another state.

We'll probably never be those people with a cabin in the mountains.

Good morning. Good morning. Someone has laid an egg and I need to get busy too.

Books And Stuff

I worked in the garden. I weeded. I hoed. I mulched. I lied about listening to the birds while I worked in the garden. I was really listening to a book on CD. Rain Gods by James Lee Burke. I have to tell you- Burke can write. He can really, really write. His characters in this one are just superb. Or, it may be the fact that the narration was done by a completely superior actor, a man named Will Patton. The narrators of audio books can make or break a book for me and it is rare to listen to a book this good narrated by someone who is this talented.
I mean, I'm picky. I have written, I have acted. Not very well on either score, but I sure as shit know the real thing when I hear it, when I read it. Burke is a dark writer. There's obviously been pain in that man's life and he uses it. He uses his pain and he uses his ability to see people as multidimensional and he is able to transmit mood and image, weather and hope and fear and pain and thirst and despair. He's real good at despair.

I don't know. Maybe I'm not a good judge of literature. I'm probably not. I'm just tired of struggling through writerly books and getting to the end and thinking, "Well, that's fifty hours of my life I'll never get back."

I just finished another book that I read with my eyes that I was SO glad to finish. This one wasn't writerly, I suppose. It started out well but then it got draggy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Also- I kept finding weird obvious holes in the narrative. Stupid things but they made me wonder what in hell an editor's job is exactly. Like- a couple is sleeping in two beds, separated by a space between them. This is made clear. Next thing you know, they are somehow together, pulling each other close. No one said anything about anyone getting up and joining the other in bed.
This seems sloppy to me.

I'm about to start reading another book that I'm extremely excited about and have great hopes for because everything I've read by this author has charmed me or made me think or both. Alexandra Fuller. I even wrote about one of her books a long time ago. I just went back and scanned that post and it's also about Jason Mraz. That post is here if you have any interest at all. Anyway, this new book by Fuller is called Cocktail Hour Under The Tree Of Forgetfulness. It is another book about her family which she wrote about in Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight and I loved her honesty, her humor, her love in that one. So I'm excited to start this new one. Oh yes. I am.

God, I love to read. I remember pretty much the exact day I learned to read and I've not quit since then. Probably most of you are like that too. I could no more go to bed without at least reading part of an article in The New Yorker than I could go to bed without brushing my teeth. Like you, I am sure, I hoard books. I make sure that I have extras just in case. (Of what, I am not sure- a nuclear holocaust? A Farenheit 451 situation?) Of course, as I grow older, this is not so much of a problem. I can pick up a book I've read and reread it and it will almost be as if I've never read it at all.
I am listening to Nora Ephron's book, I Remember Nothing on CD in my car, narrated by her (which is always a joy- to hear the book read by the author) and she is the same these days.
I suppose that before I die, I will just be rereading the same book over and over and over again, completely content to do so. I hope it's a good book. Perhaps David Copperfield or Great Expectations. Or maybe even Little Women. I could spend the rest of my life with those four sisters, I think.
Yes. Any one of those would do nicely as a never-ending read into death.

Well. La.

Mr. Moon is home from the island. They caught grouper. I think I am going to cook some for our supper. Pecan-encrusted, I believe. I may make a casserole out of last night's brown rice and broccoli and mustard-shrimp with an egg and some milk and a little cheese. I might go cut the one tiny, pathetic head of cabbage in my garden to make a cole slaw. I will make tarter sauce from olive oil mayonnaise (have you tried that stuff?) and capers and dill relish and chopped onions. We shall have lime slices and Crystal hot sauce on the table.

I think I will chop up a bit of a collard leaf in teeny tiny pieces to give to my baby chicks. Some of them are already growing tail feathers! Amazing! I can't wait until they are bigger and I can take them outside and set them in a floorless box with a screen lid on it during the day so that they can begin to scratch in the dirt for bugs and tender shoots and yet be protected and safe.

How'd I get so damn lucky?

I don't know. But I am.

You can bet on that. Fresh grouper, baby chicks, a big old handsome husband, grandsons, really cool and funny and awesome kids, a new book to start tonight, and you. You who are reading this when you could be reading Great Expectations or anything, anything at all in the whole wide world.

Thanks.

I mean it.

Love...Ms. Moon

Palm Sunday

The pecan leaves are coming on full which means that soon we'll be even more shaded here than we are now. This is a good thing and the planting of pecan trees around a house makes a lot of sense. In the summer, they are fully leafed and so provide coolness, while in winter, their branches are bare, which allows the sun to warm us up. They are the first to drop their leaves in fall, the last to come out in spring.
Do we ever get actual, oh, pecans?
No. The squirrels get them all and they start when the nuts are still green and hard. They pick them, one by one with their clever little hands, take one bite and then toss them down onto the ground so that our yard is littered with them, each one a sharp, stabbing pain in Mr. Moon's side and that is when he gets out his squirrel rifle and trains the sight right between their beady eyes.

It does no good.

As I write this, there is a squirrel perched on the side of the pecan closest to the house and he is fussing, fussing, fussing, flicking his tail and trying to communicate something to me. Or to someone. I don't know. Perhaps he is merely angry that there are no nuts yet for him to plunder.
A few times a week, at least, one of the squirrels falls into the little almost-pond in the back camellia bed. I hear a splash and then a frantic scrabbling and I look to see a wet squirrel jumping up onto the fence, flicking a sodden tail and sounding very, very pissed off. They seem quite capable of not drowning but they do not seem to enjoy the experience of being in the water.
Despite what you may have seen on You Tube, squirrels do not water ski voluntarily.

I am neither charmed nor offended by the squirrels. They are what they are and they share my world and always have, as far back as I remember. They are just...there.

I think I feel like a squirrel today- an ineffectual creature with no real known purpose who is, by its very nature, a comic creature. I chatter, I flick, I grasp without thinking. I have a nest which I retreat to.

It is Sunday. Palm Sunday. I trimmed back some palm fronds yesterday from the two I planted which flank the front porch entry. Mr. Moon hates those things because they block the path.


I patiently explain that when they grow up (this could take decades) they will not. Their fronds will be up in the air, their trunks too skinny to matter. He is probably right and I have probably broken some firm rule of Feng Shui and whatever happened to Feng Shui? Are there still Feng Shui practitioners? Probably in California there are.

I don't care if the palms do block the path. I live in Florida. I want palms. No one comes to the front door anyway unless it is the occasional Jehovah's Witness and even that last one came to the kitchen door which is where almost everyone enters the house.

I keep thinking about that woman. Not in an obsessive way but I do think about her. I wish I could have taken her picture. I was so fascinated by her eye wear, those obviously expensive glasses which were more like shades with their gold accents, the way they blocked the view of her eyes. I keep thinking about how when I told her that no, I was not a Christian, my voice full of anger, she said, "Oh honey. Something horrible must have happened to you."
She was so condescending. She was so sure of her beliefs.
"First off," I told her, "I am not your honey. Secondly, something horrible has happened to everyone."

I was so angry that morning. I know I was. And I am still angry at the fact that people believe it is not only their duty but their right to come onto my property to tell me about their religion. As I have said before, if I went door-to-door to tell people about my nonbelief, they would call the cops on me. I would be hauled in. I would be given a psyche consult, and yet, it's perfectly fine and dandy for people to come to my door, to knock on it with a Bible and poorly printed pamphlets in their hands to try and convince me that something which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever is not only true and real, but necessary for my eternal salvation which is a concept I not only don't believe in, I can't even imagine why anyone else would either.
I mean- who's the crazy one here? The woman who held her arms out and looked up and said, "We KNOW He arose from the grave! We KNOW He is with us now!" or me who said, "No. You believe that. You don't know it."
She looked at me so sadly. I think she looked at me sadly. Like I said, I couldn't really see her eyes.
"But we do," she said with incredibly forced and cheerful conviction.
And you know, it's fine for her to KNOW what she knows. She can believe any damn thing she wants but she has no right to come into my yard to tell me about the incredible joy she finds in her imaginary friend. If she was looking for nuts to gather to increase her spiritual wealth or feed her spiritual hunger, she was looking in the wrong place in my yard.

I'm going to go weed in the garden. I'm going to take the time to enjoy that which is real, which is blooming, which is balm to my soul, beauty to my eyes.

I'm going to listen to the birds and to the squirrels. I'm going to watch my chickens as they peck and scratch around the outside of the garden, me on my side of the fence, they on theirs. We are companionable, even in our separate spaces as we go about our disparate tasks. I am afraid that this is how I feel most comfortable. Alone and yet not alone. Busy with a leisurely task.

Here are my baby chicks this morning. They are fine and growing. This is their job. They do it well.


I don't just believe this. I know it.
There IS a difference.

Well, happy Palm Sunday from the Church of the Batshit Crazy where we at least KNOW we are crazy, or at least I do.

Yours in companionable tasks...Ms. Moon