Groggy and Froggy

It has been the quietest of quiet days and I have done nothing even vaguely interesting except rescue another tiny green frog. And to be honest, that's really not very interesting.

I'm not sure how the little things are getting into the house but they always do and many of them perish for lack of water which is why they congregate around the sink. As darling as I think they are, I do not like to touch them- there is no logic there- and so I catch them in containers and let them free in a patch of wet border grass. 

The cucumbers and zinnias which I planted on Saturday are already breaking ground which I think is some sort of record. Not quite four days from seed to sprout. 

Still, not that interesting to anyone but me.  

Not all days are full of mystery, excitement, drama and excellent quotes from my grandson. They are resting days, I suppose, and I did take a nap this afternoon and had a variation on the back-in-school dream where you can't find your classroom and you know there's a final and you haven't even looked at the book and so forth.

This one was about graduation. I hadn't realized I was graduating and yet, it seemed I was. And was supposed to be giving a speech which I hadn't written and I hadn't taken a shower and I didn't know where the ceremony was to be held. 

The mind is an odd thing and I was glad to wake up although I felt out of sorts and groggy in the afternoon heat. Does the word groggy come from feeling as if you've been drinking grog? I am too lazy to look it up. Perhaps Hank will know. 

Anyway, Mr. Moon is home and safe, the soup is heating up, I have made one of those ridiculous bastard angel-food cakes out of a mix combined with a can of crushed pineapple and it has blueberries and almonds in it. I've lost my mind. 

Ah well. I've mopped a floor, I've made a note as to where the next magnolia blossoms will be opening, I've been quiet, I've had a walk, I've thought a lot about a lot of things and so it goes in Lloyd, and it has been fine with me. 

I'm A Human Being

I've got to start getting out to walk before nine a.m. That or just admit that I am trying to kill myself. The part of my walk in the picture above is fine. Shaded and coolish but there are parts of the walk in the sun and they are not as pleasant. Add to that a random hot flash or so and I come home stinking like an adolescent boy, red as a beet and dripping with sweat.

Lovely image, right?

Well that's the deal. That's the truth.

I don't have a damn thing to talk about today except for a few things that really do not need to be discussed here because they would probably come under the heading of "mean gossip and observations."
Yes. I sweat, I stink, and I'm mean.

But I'm in a pretty good mood anyway.

I hope you are too.

I Am Making Soup. I Am Listening To The Day Put Itself To Bed

I'm making soup. I'm taking this day as it comes and I'm walking though it and I stayed with my grandsons and we did a whole lot of cuddling and I'm making soup and it may not be fit to eat because I put two peppers from the garden in that I was not sure of as to heat and my left hand is burning now a little bit and it doesn't even matter. You make soup for therapy, one kind or another.

I was talking to Jason about the news I'd gotten last night and I didn't think Owen was listening. He has a little cold and he seemed to be plugged into a movie he was watching but out of the blue he said, "MerMer, were you sad?"
"Yes," I said. "I was."
"Did you cry?"
"Yes, I did."
"And what did Boppy say?"
"He said it was okay to cry."
"But now you calmed down?"
"Yes. Now I'm calmed down."
"I do that," he said, his eyes going back to the TV. "I cry and then I calm down."
"That's all right," I told him. "That's what we all do."

We cry and we calm down and we cuddle our grandkids and we tell our kids how much we love them and our partners too. Maybe we even tell the wives of our ex-husbands that we love them and we mean it and then we realize what a blessing that is- to have that sort of relationship with the other-mother of our kids and maybe we cry a little more.

And then maybe you go to the store and you buy some outrageously priced organic chicken breasts because you feel guilty these days about the factory raised chicken and you bring them home and you cook them in a broth and you go out to the garden and you pick peppers and green tomatoes and ripe tomatoes that maybe the bugs or the blossom-end rot has gotten to because soup is a food that takes the scraps and makes it good. You cut up squash and the carrot greens from the carrots your friend grew and you peel and slice up some of the garlic he grew while you're at it. You talk to your daughter on the phone while you chop and slice and peel and chop some more, you add it all to the soup, then you talk to your ex-husband.
Your hand begins to burn and you rethink those peppers but too late now, Mamacita. 

Owen was doing that thing today that scares the hell out of me wherein he climbs his parent's headboard and dives off onto the bed like Spider Man and after every dive he would cuddle me and I said, "Oh Owen, I have so much love in my heart for you."
"I have chicken banging poop in my heart for you," he said, hugging me tight.
"Oh Owen, that makes me so happy," I say, thinking, I've got to remember that one. 
And I do.

This is what I feel like today- that I know that my friends are probably walking through this life right now with the blinders and a gray blanket of grief wrapped around them and the only fucking thing I can do is to try and balance out the universe and notice every good thing, find pleasure in every good thing, remember every good thing and let all the rest of it just get on and go.

So that's it. That's been my day.

I just talked to my husband who is out of town. He called me to tell me he made it to his destination safely and that's what you do when you love someone. You let them know you're safe. That's what we all want. We want to know that the ones we love are safe. While we were talking, I shelled peas and added them to the soup too. It's time to get shut the chickens up. I cleaned and filled up their waterers today. That felt like maybe the most important thing I could do today, the most concrete. That and taking care of my boys. That and making soup and using up the carrot greens. That and finding and rescuing a little green frog in my kitchen. That and hugging people I love real tight.

What else is there?
Not a damn thing.

Be well, y'all.
Be well.

The Worst Sort Of News

Last night, just as we sat down to eat, the phone rang.
It was one of my oldest friends and he called to tell me that one of his daughters had died on May 25th.

And what do you say? And what do you do?

I cried. I cried as he told me how it had gone. She'd had a cancer, one of those cancers that is really hard to treat and yet treat it they had done. She'd gone through everything and there had been ups and downs and there had been hopes and there had been, of course, the fear of the unthinkable and then the unthinkable had happened and he called to tell me.

There's so much I could say. So much I could say about this friend and his place in my life and how the course of my life has had much to do with his presence in it. I've written about him many times here and he and his wife and I have stayed in touch over the years. They had four kids, I've had four kids, and usually, once a year we manage to get together and catch up, at least a little bit. Careers and grandkids and the stuff life throws at you and all of it. The huge, whole random gift and grit of it all. And when their daughter got diagnosed, that was the hardest thing to hear, until last night.

There's so much I could say but none of it would help make any sense of any of it. So I won't even try. I'll just say that I cried a lot and that I love my friends a lot and that my husband held me last night and let me cry and his sorrow was vast for them too. I did the only vaguely religious ritual I ever do, which is to light a candle. It will burn for seven days.

We are stardust (quite literally) and some of us are golden.
This girl was. That's what her daddy said to me last night. "She was pure, solid gold."

Light. Love. I would say we go on, but sometimes we just don't. Eventually all of us will return to stardust in a more earthy form but sometimes that seems to happen way too early.

And so it was with this dear girl.

And there's nothing I can say to make that any better.

It's The Little Things

If I did one of those fucking Oprah gratitude journals, which I do not, I would have to list this physical place where I live in every day's entry.
We all know that and in fact, this whole entire blog may be one of those fucking gratitude journals and if that's the truth, I'm just a fucking nitwit who is too cool for school and too cool to admit that she keeps one and I DO NOT, IT'S JUST THAT WHEN I AM GRATEFUL I ADMIT IT.

So yes, it has been a Sunday but I did not fall completely into despair but rather did the things which I only do when I'm already in a bad mood because why ruin a perfectly good mood doing things you dislike? In this case, those things would be scrubbing toilets and trimming sago palms. If you do not know what sago palms are, they are the palms in the background of the above pictures. They are not technically palms at all and I have a love-hate relationship with them. Their fronds are slightly poisonous and sharp as tiny razors and so when you trim them, you end up with itchy arms but it's not a terrible toxin. It does go away quickly. Still. It's not that much fun. And yet, they have a certain jaunty and dangerous beauty.

I do not need to discuss toilet scrubbing. We all do that. One would hope. Although I can remember boyfriends back in the olden days who obviously had no idea after leaving their mothers' homes that toilets did not magically self-clean and oh, it was not charming.
I look back on those days and can't believe that I would voluntarily enter certain of those houses or apartments without wearing a full Hazmat suit and yet I did and I survived with only the usual expected resulting problems, mostly a terribly misguided belief that these boys NEEDED me. Obviously.

Oh. The incredibly sweet and stupid notions of youth.

Anyway, yes, I scrubbed the toilets and trimmed the sago palms and did the laundry and did not mop any floors whatsoever and I took a nap.
There.
That.
Was it.

But Mr. Moon and I met up on the front porch for a martini and the chickens came up and I got some stale crackers to feed them and they pecked, pecked, pecked on the porch floor for every tiny crumb and seed and they made me so happy which they always do. I took some pictures, mostly of Elvis, my brave and gentle rooster. And then he jumped on one of the hens and had his way with her right there in front of us, his beautiful cape of wing spread over all so as to provide privacy, I suppose, and I wondered if our portrayals of Dracula as he spreads his cape over himself and his luscious victims while he pierces their throats and drinks of their blood came from someone's observation of just this behavior.

I do not know. I do not know shit, as I point out frequently.

The top picture is of Miss Flopsy who is way too skinny. She is my hen who sat on eggs last year, spending weeks and weeks on them, barely removing herself from her nest to eat or drink and that is what I fear for Miss Baby. I look at Miss Flopsy and I can see the dinosaur in her. She was a very fine mother and I feel very guilty that we let her and her babies out of the coop too early which led to the taking of every one of those chicks by hawks or owls.

But. Grateful for this yard which is beautiful either from the back porch or the front or the side. Grateful for my chickens with their bawk and their cluck and their hoooo as they go about their day. Grateful for  the potatoes I'm about to scrub and cook. Grateful for the man who allows me to be in a pissy mood without taking personal offense. Grateful for my clothesline and the centuries-old oak trees I am blessed to share space with. Grateful for the second fragrant bloom of the wisteria, even if it is sparse.

Grateful for the sleep and the awakening, the coffee and the vodka, the great, grand absurdity of it all. Grateful that despite it being one of those Sundays, I have not fallen into tears or paralysis. Grateful that my sagos are trimmed, my toilets, nice and clean.

One Of THOSE Sundays

Well, it's Sunday and one of those Sundays where I feel rather leaden, not Sabbathy at all and the sky is iffy and I'm tempting fate and trying to make it rain by hanging clothes outside.
Yes. I do laundry every day. Multiple loads. Yes, there are only two of us living here. Don't ask me to explain because I don't understand it myself. But thus it is, thus it has ever been, and thus it will be.

Anyway, I think I dreamed of the Asshole last night and had other dreams, the themes of which are so well-known to me that they have become nothing more than dreary and boring. Perhaps they are what have set the tone for this day. I do not know but it feels like Sunday and not in a good way. We've had our pancakes (apple, peach, sweet potato, pecan and flax- I know you need to know this) and I've cleaned up and Mr. Moon is back out to attend to his project and I am feeling grumpy with a small slice of bitter on the side about his projects which never seem to involve things which I need or want and I tell you this not to complain about him but to remind you that yes, I am human as hell and so is he and in many ways, we are completely typical of any long-term marriage although of course, being human, I like to think of us as unique and special. I am quite sure that if pressed, he might well admit that there are plenty of things he wishes I would do rather than spend so much time sitting here writing and reading.
Probably scrubbing the mildew in his bathroom, for one thing.
Ah-lah.
Well, not all dreams can come true.

I have no idea what I'm doing today besides hanging laundry on the line and hoping for rain. There is plenty to be done in both the house and the yard but I do not feel especially inclined to do any of it. I feel that there is, however, no way to escape the fact that the kitchen and laundry room need mopping and so I shall probably do that but so what? So what, so what, so what? Who will even notice and who will even care?
No one but me. And so, in a sense, why do it?
Fuck if I know.

Oh wait. I had threatened to talk about side boob today.
Hmmm....
Let me peruse the Huffpost Celebrity section. Hold on...

Nope. No side boob today. However, I did look at the "Celebrity Bikini Bodies Over Age Fifty (Photos)" and now I just sort of want to either
(a) Kill myself now and get it over with, or
(b) Poke certain over-age-fifty celebrities in the eye with a very sharp, pointed object.

Or perhaps, first (b), then (a).

With the exception of Rita Rusic (and who the HELL is Rita Rusic?) because she obviously needs to have a chat with her plastic surgeon.

Okay. I looked her up. She appears to be a woman who likes to wear bikinis. A lot.
Good for her.

In local news, Miss Baby, my sweet little banty hen, appears to have gone broody. Mr. Moon reports that she is sitting on her eggs on a top shelf in the pump house (a place I can't even see without a ladder) and I am in a bit of despair over that situation. As far as I know, the poor dear has never once known a rooster in the Biblical sense and so she could sit up there on those eggs until The Rapture and nothing is going to happen except that she's going to starve to death or die of dehydration.
Sigh...

All right. Just got a text from Mr. Moon. An Airstream trailer should be appearing in my yard within the next hour. Oh boy. Maybe we can fix it up and rent it out by the night. We could list it on Travelocity.

The Downtown Lloyd Inn. 

Minutes away from the interstate and not much else. Private, small accommodation for one person or a close couple. Peaceful country surroundings except for the train which passes by frequently approximately ten yards from your bed and the lovely, bucolic sound of roosters crowing from well before dawn until sunset. No wireless, iffy electricity and funky plumbing. Kitchen-equipped. Bring your own damn food because ain't no one going to cook for your damn ass and the only place to eat nearby is a Subway at the Truck Stop. WE DO NOT RENT TO RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS OR ASSHOLES. And we do not share our liquor.

For information, room rates and to make reservations call:

(850) 997-XXXX.

We may or may not answer, depending on our moods.

Yep. Sounds like a new project.

Have a decent Sunday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

It has been the best day. It has been a growing day. A soothing day, and I haven't left the property and I've hardly spoken to anyone either, for that matter. Mr. Moon took off in the early afternoon to go attend to a project involving an Airstream Trailer and not that I don't like having him around or anything but if anyone in this world loves a bit of solitude now and then, it's me.
Well, me and that Buddhist nun who went off and meditated in a cave for fourteen years or something but that's a bit extreme.

I read Madame Radish King's posts wherein she talked about making some bread and proofing her yeast and it reminded me that I have been severely neglecting my sourdough starter which is not only a living, breathing thing but was given to me by The Sauce Boss himself, Mr. Bill Wharton, and even though yes, yes, YES goddammit, I said I was going to quit making bread, I just couldn't help myself and I took a bunch of oatmeal and ground it up in the food processor and then I added some hot water to that and some honey and made a sort of slurry out of it and then dumped in some of the stirred-up starter and added flour and mixed all of that and some salt and an egg and olive oil up in a big old bowl with my own hands and then I kneaded it by hand just for the pure pleasure and gave the Kitchen Aid dough hook a day off. It's rising like crazy, nice and lovely, sitting on top of my stove, the second rising in fact, and I think it's going to be good bread with mighty shoulders and a nice crispy crust.

I vinegared the coffee maker and then dumped the vinegar water in the washing machine to clean that out and did a few loads of laundry and washed up the dishes and then I went out to the garden and did a little weeding and planted a nice, long row of cucumbers, four different varieties, along the fence in a place where they'll get some damn light because the earlier cucumbers I planted are shaded by the peas and aren't doing shit. Then I weeded an area right by the front of the garden and planted one and a half packs of zinnia seeds, Giant Mixed Colors, my favorite. I remember distinctly the very first seeds I ever planted as a child and they, too, were zinnia seeds that my grandmother had in a glass, stoppered bottle and why, I do not know. I don't recall her ever growing anything except demented but she was a sweet soul and she told me those seeds were old and probably wouldn't grow and she was right. I remember going out every morning to check them and not a one of them came up but somehow it did not deter or discourage my future gardening attempts. I don't even know why I love to plant things so much. My horrible stepfather, The Asshole, as we call him, loved to garden and actually, he was a planting fool and he could grow anything and you'd think I would refuse to do any activity which he loved but I do believe that the love of growing things is a powerful force in our very DNA and so there you go. Growing shit and keeping chickens. Yep. Right there in the DNA. They'll find the genes for those things eventually, just as they'll find the genes for Patriotism and Religion, and they needn't bother searching my DNA for those because, as I have said a million times, I am lacking them.

I knelt in the dirt to weed and plant and it smelled so good and a couple of times I brushed up against the basil and that's all you have to do to release that good scent. I gave my weed scraps to the goats next door because I feel so sorry for them. They never get anything fresh and green and they run for it in a thundering herd when I dump those weeds over the fence. I was sweated through and dirty as hell by the time I set the sprinklers on the garden and came in and took a shower and then I went around and took a few pictures.

Who doesn't love an oak leaf hydrangea? Yes. I have already posted pictures of these blooms this year but I can't help doing it again. They are just magical to me. Tiny tissue-like flowers on a cone-shaped bloom, white as angel-light, airy as a perfect meringue.

These are the beginning blooms of the lace-cap hydrangea. I think that's what they are. They're going to be pretty, trust me. I hope. They don't really get enough sun (this is a theme in my yard) but they look like they might do something nice this year.

And then this. Oh my god. I feel as if I've just given birth.

Can you see it? Probably not. Here. Let me give you a better view.

The teeny-tiny leafling of the giant begonia that I've had rooting since last November. NOVEMBER, PEOPLE! I've kept the soil moist and watched over those things so tenderly for seven months! And I started the original plant from a few cuttings that a woman I know who works at a nursery gave me some years back so it's not hard to understand why I feel so very maternal about that tiny green leaf. I expect more and if all goes well, I shall gift them to people when they are big enough to leave the nursery pot.  

I am a fool for begonias. Yes. This and the love of wild birds is a definite sign of aging. 

Fuck it. Makes me happy. 

All right. One more picture.

The vegetables are what I picked today. The snow peas are still coming on as is the squash, and the banana peppers are just becoming mature and those cherry tomatoes are our first of the year. 

The eggs are some of what we got today and yesterday. Some. I hadn't had one of the Tiffany blue eggs for quite some time so I was happy to see it. 

And that's what I've done today. Planted and picked and punched and cleaned and weeded and watered and restored my very soul. My husband's on his way home and Prairie Home Companion is on and the bread is just about ready to go into the oven.

Don't tell me I'm not the luckiest woman in the world. Don't even try. Because I know that I am.

If I Call It A Church Can I Get A Tax Break?

Slow-moving around here in Lloyd today. I slept until almost nine which is absolutely unheard of. That room we're sleeping in is like a cave and I doubt you could get us to move back to our old room for anything. I had always despaired of the way that room gets so little light but finally after living here for nine years, I understand the appeal of a cave-like room to sleep in. I look at the bedrooms in photos of the mansions of celebrities and I can't even imagine sleeping in one of those rooms the size of football fields. There's no way to make them cozy. Go ahead, put a full-sized sofa at the foot of the bed, fill up that gargantuan space with seating areas and collections of antique whatevers, hang a damn chandelier over the bed and you'd still feel like you were sleeping in a gym. No thanks. I like my little cave. Here's what I see when I wake up and peek through the curtains.

That just makes me happy.

If for some bizarre reason I HAD to live in a mansion, I'd probably have to find a gardening shed out back to sleep in. 

I wonder what sort of circumstances would arise in order to force me to live in a mansion. Well, whatever, I hope they never happen. I am so happy here. 

There's a little article in the paper today about creating a "sacred space" and it's all about bowls of water and pebbles and prayers and sitting and "holding the place sacred" and blah-di-blah-di-blah but what it made me realize is that I want my entire house to be a sacred space. If I am a householder yogi, which I guess I must be (is that the same thing as being a housewife?) then is not the place where I live my life my church, my place of practice? 

I think so. 

Chop wood, haul water, etc. 

The first sacred spaces were of course outside. I think they still are. Groves and waterfalls and beaches, prairies and mountains. Can there be a temple or a cathedral which draws the spirit up to the heavens better than a forest? Can there be anything anywhere which humbles us with such direct evidence of the vastness of the universe more than an ocean and the sky? But you know, humans seem to have some need to build structures to demonstrate faith. I understand that. In my opinion, the Mayans got that shit down and did it right. 

Tulum

I remember once being talked into going to some Universal Unitarian Church or something like that and it was fine. It was nice. There were people there showing a slideshow of their work with some indigenous peoples somewhere and there was music and while all of this was going on a wicked beautiful storm came up and there was a wall of windows behind the place where all the stuff was going on and the rain was lashing and the trees were bowing and swaying and the lightening was crashing and thunder was pounding and I wanted to stand up and say, "Excuse me. Could we just all shut up and stop ignoring what's going on here right outside those windows because that's some holy shit right there, now?"

Of course I did not but I'd rather be on my porch watching the storms come in or smelling the magnolias or watching, as I have been this morning, parent birds feeding their young'uns at the feeder, passing seeds from their beaks to the babes'.

I love that in my house the outside is not that much delineated from the inside. 

I love that in my house there are places everywhere which to me are sacred, although perhaps not to anyone else and my bathroom with its beautiful tub and my mermaids and my madonnas is as holy a place as anything I can imagine, especially when my grandsons are in the tub, the light shining through the windows, a sacred space for sure to me. Owen likes me to let the water keep running and he calls it the waterfall. 

He's on to something there.

So yes, my bedroom is a sacred space, even if though it's not really tricked out like a bedroom with the exception of the bed but that's okay. I'm working on it. Slowly. Well, to be honest, I'll get around to it eventually. Right now that room is where we do nothing but read and sleep and fool around and a cave is perfect for those activities if one has a nice light beside the bed for the reading part. And yes, I do change diapers on that bed and yes, Owen does call it the "diaper room" and yes, I do try to get the boys down for a nap in there (usually unsuccessfully, as applies to Owen) but those are holy activities as well. To me, anyway. And when they leave to go home, it reverts back to the Panther Room, the cave where we sleep and dream and love and read and that's my form of religious practice, I guess. 

All of those and cutting up and eating holy mangoes and making bread which I do not have to pretend turns into the body of Christ (ick!) when I swallow it for it to be consecrated and the miracle of turning on the tap and having pure, clean water pour forth. And sweeping the floors of the kitchen and the hallway, the Holy Hallway where when I am so lucky to have musicians playing in the house the acoustics are perfect. 

Yeah. I got your sacred space, baby. And I live my life in it. I don't feel the need to set aside any specific areas to worship in and maybe I'm just coming up with one more rationalization for staying home and being here in this house, in this yard, in this place where the lines between those two are blurry, often only a screen to separate me from the great good trees, the chickens who roam and peck and scratch and cluck, the birds mating and then feeding their young, the garden where we grow some of our food, the squirrels who race and skitter and sometimes fall in the sort-of pond where the frogs croak and the skinks and lizards sun themselves. 

Well, if that's what I'm doing, so be it. I am happy here in my old house and my prayers and my worship are my life and this, this writing is my song and my sermon, and now it's time for me to shut up and move on to the next thing in this beautiful day where I have nothing at all I have to do which makes it a Sabbath even if it's a Saturday, and I promise to keep it holy, and sometimes that may involve the sacred and sometimes that may involve the profane but here at the Church of the Batshit Crazy, as long as there's some love and some light the lines get a little blurred there too and I'm not qualified or sanctified to draw them anyway and am perfectly content and comfortable rambling around in both.

Much love...Ms. Moon

Real Time, Good Time

When I first started ba-logging and had no idea what I was doing and no idea who was out there, my son Hank introduced me to a local blogger who went by the name of Juancho.
I started reading his blog and realized that it was cool and okay to write about whatever you wanted to write about. And we met in real life and became kinda like friends and we've stayed in touch and I get my hair trimmed by his beautiful wife and he's still writing the most tasty posts you can imagine unless you already read his blog WHICH YOU SHOULD BE and he and his wife came out tonight to hear Lon and Lis (who gave what I personally think was about the best performance I've ever heard them give) and I insisted that we get a picture taken of us together.

Here it is.

Juancho and me and Frida. That's her on my T-shirt. 

Sometimes Tallahassee is just all right with me. 

I'm glad I went out. I had a real good time. And supposedly, Juancho is going to be posting the same picture and he's probably going to wait until he wakes up and is completely sober and his post is going to be The Boss Of Me but whatever. 

I just like the picture. 

And the fact of the matter is, he left before I danced with Mr. Moon and so when it comes to dancing, I Am The Boss Of Him. 

I better go wash off this make-up. 

It's after midnight and god knows I might turn into a damn pumpkin or something if I don't get in bed. 

Night, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

It's A Real Good Night

Call Ripley's

We're going out tonight.
Yeah, I know. The very infrastructure of the universe may crumble. But Lon and Lis are playing at the Mockingbird and I miss my girlfriend and it's been a coon's age since we went out, Mr. Moon and I.
I wonder how long it's been since I put on make-up. I literally have no idea.

Hank's coming out to meet us and May's working so it'll be a win-win-win-win-win. Or something like that.

So. I better go get ready.

Here's a picture I took this morning when I went to get my paper. It's an aloe bloom with a spider on it which you may be able to see if you click on it. The light's pretty nice.

See you tomorrow. If the universe stays aligned, that is, and the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise. Etc.

A Good Death

A year and some ago, I wrote a post that you'll have to go back and read for this to make any sense. You can find that post here.

I just refound and read it because I came across an obituary in the paper this morning that read:

Phyllis Straus

1928-2013

Phyllis Lindsey Straus was born on July 20, 1928. She died peacefully in her bed next to her beloved dog Solly on April 19, 2013. There is no doubt that if she could have chosen her death that would have been it.

There is more. The tender, bare outline of her life events but it is in those first lines that I am dumbfounded because in the conversation we had which sparked the post, that is exactly how I told her I wished she would die.

And she did it. 

I am thinking about her this morning and how I'd see her car at the Post Office, a beat-up old Volvo with a Janet Reno for Governor bumpersticker on it. She was not a small woman, she was a woman who even as she became frailer and slower you could just look at and know that once she had been very powerful, very strong, and she had to have been in order to do the giant sculpture that she did. She had those bright blue piercing eyes. She was fiercely independent. She was something. 

When I lived in the house she had bought from us and that she died in, I had planted a rose on the garden fence and it was the reddest, most blooming, fragrant rose I've ever seen and ever since I've been trying to figure out what its name was but I have never been able to and none of the roses I've looked at after talking to nursery people are the same. I wonder if that rose was still growing in her yard because if it was, it was probably blooming when she died. 

I hope it was. With all my heart, I hope it was.

I am thinking about that and her and I am thinking of how that little Cracker house which I did love so very much had two front doors and I was told that back when the house was built, that's how they did it. One door was used for the everyday comings-in and goings-out of the living and the other only used for coffins to enter and leave, empty and then filled. I wonder if they passed Phyllis out that door. I doubt it. Who observes customs like that anymore? 

It doesn't matter. 

What matters is that Phyllis Straus was able to die there, in her home that she loved with her dog whom she adored, some of her giant sculptures in the yard, her art which gave her life purpose. 

Well. It is a slow, quiet day in Lloyd and one of our inhabitants is gone and has been for a month and a half and I am not sorry she's gone because the way she left was perfect and exactly what she wanted. I am not sad at all, but thrilled for her. She got that job done and she did it right. 

I would wish the same for all of us- such a death. 

Meanwhile, life goes on for us who still live here. I took my walk and I saw a few people and said hello and I've taken the trash and gone to the Post Office where I will never see that Volvo again and don't remember rightly the last time I DID see it but I don't think it was that long ago. We never did talk again, me and Phyllis. We didn't have to. We said what we needed to say when we had that conversation back in January of 2012. And I'm glad we said it. 

All right. I've got stuff to do. The living are so busy, aren't we? But I'm thinking about Phyllis and I'm thinking about that house I loved and over the course of this one morning two magnolias which I can see from where I write on the back porch have opened up from their tight buds into full-flung and white-petaled flowers and their scent drifts on the air. It all goes by so quickly. Pay attention and do whatever it is that makes you feel alive because life is so short and the years that we can do what we love are even shorter.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Yadda-Yadda-Yadda

Dear god it was a busy day.
Here's a partial list of the things we did:
Let the chickens out of their coop and fed them their scratch.
Checked for eggs. Found three.
Had choose-your-own breakfast. Owen chose Honeynut Cheerios. Gibson choose a scrambled, very fresh egg. Damn. You should see that kid eat eggs. It's...almost scary.
Fed goats.
Played with the rope that's been hanging down from a branch on an oak tree since before we moved here.
Twice.
Played tea party AND washed the tea party dishes. Washing up was done by Owen in the bathroom sink.

Played with animals on Mer and Boppy's old bed (now known as Jessie and Vergil's bed).
Went to the side porch and sat in the swing for a little while.
Walked around the back yard a lot. We discovered a darling little begonia reborn from one planted last year in the old cement swan.

Climbed the fig tree. Okay, only Owen did that.
Discovered many baby figs. We won't get to eat any because the squirrels will eat them all but it's a cheerful sight anyway, to see all those nice little green figlets.
Pretended to ride horses across the yard. Gibson's and my horse was pretty slow. And no, WE DID NOT PRANCERCISE NOR WILL WE EVER!
Made popcorn in the Whirely Pop as predicted and shared with the chickens. More on the Whirely Pop in a moment.
Told jokes. I decided today to try and introduce Owen to the elephant joke. He sorta didn't get it but he laughed. Then he told me some jokes. I sorta didn't get them either but yes, I laughed. We are a polite people.
Cleaned up a poop.
Cleaned up a broken shot glass. ("Don't tell Boppy!")
Had lunch. Here's Owen munching on the most beautiful heirloom carrot that our friend Tom brought over last night.

Rested. Haha!
Played one and one half games of Candy Land.

I'm sure there was more. I know I also washed dishes twice, got two loads of clothes done, and tried until I almost cried to get Gibson's car seat put back together with all of the straps in the right place after I washed the pad because it got wet yesterday in the unexpected rain storm. Long story. Anyway, I never did figure that motherfucker out and Jason had to do it and I feel like an idiot and think that maybe they should use this exercise as one of the challenges on Survivor. Owen kept saying, "That's not how it goes, MerMer!" and dammit, he was right. Unfortunately, he was too busy playing with his Megazord and breaking shot glasses to do it for me.

Needless to say, MerMer is exhausted. Mr. Moon just asked me if I'd gotten those seeds planted yet. He is lucky that he still has a head.

Okay. The Whirely Pop. I've been meaning to discuss this. I got everyone in the family one of these things for Christmas and they are absolutely fabulous. If you, like me, are somewhat suspicious of microwave popcorn and don't mind twirling a handle for a few minutes you can enjoy fabulous popcorn with very little added fat.
It looks like this:

Go HERE to check it out.

I highly recommend the Whirely Pop for all of your popcorn needs. 

This is a completely unsolicited and unpaid recommendation. 

Well, I guess that's it. An action-packed, fun-filled day in which jokes were told, chickens were fed, popcorn was whirled and Owen won Candy Land for about the ONE MILLIONTH TIME IN A ROW! 

Here's hoping your day was every bit as exciting as mine. 

Love...Ms. Moon

This Part Of The Amusement Park We Call Life

The breeze is coming up now and then and rustling the magnolia leaves and they give up the water they collected last night and it pelts down, a time-released bit of rain, time-relief, too. The frogs sing in voices of croaky ecstasy.
Before we got the storm last night, it rained just a tiny teaser bit in the afternoon and the boys sat out on the back steps and let it fall on them and Owen collected the drops from the roof in a shot glass, his favorite thing to drink out of.

Yesterday was such a good day that I had a hard time falling asleep and I am sure there is a bit of mania involved when anxiety leaves and life is just plain good with nothing special except everything is special because  the shackles of the dread and fear have been removed and it makes sense that I would float freer, a bit reluctant to let go of the sweetness of it, the relief, even to sleep which is, let's face it, normally my favorite activity on earth. So I am tired today and a bit hip-achey (Gibson loves to be held more than any child I've ever met) and they're about to come back to play and play all day, as I used to say in the Mr. Peep story. We shall take it easy, whatever that means with a three-and-a-half year old and a fourteen month old who is determined to keep up with his brother unless he is wanting to be held.

When they left last night, Owen insisted on taking home the bowl of leftover noodles from supper. I told him he could eat them here today for lunch but no, he wanted them at home for his breakfast. He was so tired but still in a good mood and how could I refuse that? "Take the noodles, boy," I said, and he did and why not? I'd give him anything he wanted, almost. I am a lenient grandmother and he knows it, just as Gibson knows that if he wants to be held, I will hold him.

Oh, I am sleepy and I need to eat something for breakfast myself but not noodles. They will be here soon and the day will truly begin and here we go, I am stepping on the merry-go-round, we twirl around and around and Owen knows how to operate the CD player now so we have music as our horses go up and down, mostly The Rolling Stones, Gibson dances, bounces and "You want to do a puzzle, MerMer?" and "I am hungry, MerMer," and perhaps I will make popcorn in the Whirly Pop again and we will sit on the porch and share it with the chickens and maybe we will read books and play feed-the-animals and pick the peas and feed the goats for real and the day will pass like that, up and down and around and around and perhaps, maybe, there's a good chance, that this is the best time of my life so far.

And Then

The earth became a place of more ease and a storm came through and burst the sky with first thunder and lightening and then rain, powerful and beautiful.
And this.

And then, this.

I even got my closet squared away.

Twenty-four hours can make the biggest difference in the whole wide world. 

Why Does Gravity Suck So Much Today?

The anxiety has diminished greatly for which I am overwhelmingly grateful but it in its place there is a grave heaviness, a denseness which is physical as well as mental. These are all certainly connected.

I took a walk. I made myself do it. I know it's the best thing possible to be done for any sort of mental problem whether anxiety or depression or grief or indecision or whatever is troubling the mind and soul. There is very little which cannot be helped by a walk. This is something I do believe although I am not one of those who thinks that exercise can cure any ill. When I was going through my worst anxiety a few years ago, I was doing yoga three days a week and walking quite regularly. I was eating as well as I've ever eaten in my life, and yes, taking my supplements.
Hell. I think I was even drinking green tea.

But. I have walked. Not so fast and not so far, but I have done it. The blackberries which I had so much hope for during our earlier spring when we were getting rain daily are still tight and hard and green. I so wish it would rain. We are back to bone dry. The sun just went behind a cloud and in that very second, a few frogs began to croak. They are as thirsty for the rain as I am. Probably more.

I have to do something about my closet. And when I say "do something" I mean that I have to get rid of things. This is a common theme for all of us, isn't it? It is spilling over with clothes which I have not worn in a decade and yet, which I am loathe to cull. And yet, oh. I must. When I went shopping with May and Lily yesterday, I actually bought two shirts. And a sweater.
One, a Frida Kahlo T-shirt and May got one too. We bought them in a store in the mall which none of us should even be seen in for more than one reason but the main one being that when I went to check fiber content, I felt that it should read, "10% cotton, 90% Bones of Bangladeshis." I mean really. There is no getting around this.
And yet, it is such an awesome T-shirt. And extremely reasonably priced. Of course.

Then we went to another store. The Gap. What's up with fluorescent-colored garments this year? You could wear those things to direct traffic in. We were not impressed with the Gap's offerings but both of us, independently of each other, found and selected the same exact black tank top. She held hers up and said, "I'm sort of liking this."
I showed her what I was holding.
"Me too."
We bought them. I also bought a very nice sweater for ten bucks. It was on the sale rack and very soft and thus, made of the bones of the softest and tenderest of Bangladeshis, and I will be surprised when I find it next winter because I will have forgotten that I bought it. It is this sweater which is forcing my hand on the closet situation. I know that if I don't do something about that closet, I won't find it next winter. It will have disappeared into the chaotic morass of clothing in there, never to be seen again. And really I do want to find it. I do want to wear it.

I have a few hours before I become MerMer and so I should get in there with bags and determination.
I do have bags.
It's the determination which I am sorely lacking. And energy. I know that if I laid down on the bed I would never get up and so the best thing, I think, is to keep moving.

Well, it's a plan. One should have a plan and a goal, right? When life is overwhelming and you cannot do a damn thing about the Big Things, it is best, perhaps, to do as much as one can about the tiny ones.

Take a walk. Clean a closet. Wash the dishes. Do the laundry.

Don't lay down. Unless you do. That can be a plan too and has a certain dignity in it if done correctly.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Head Fuckedupedness

The anxiety has come again and it's tough. It's so tough. I hate the way it makes me feel, removing me from the immediacy of experience as I crawl inside my own head.
It feels as if I am carrying a very ugly ill gray creature in my belly. That. Is how it feels.
It is way too illogical and too formless to capture and release. It erases joy and anticipation. It is dread and it is constant heart-cramp. It is a soul-eater and brain-deceiver and I want it to go away.

I know it will.

I am just always so afraid after that summer those years ago when it came and stayed and stayed and stayed until I went quite mad and finally had to ask for help that it will do it again. But even then, eventually, it did go away. Mostly. It would seem to me that once anxiety has descended into your bones it is always there, or traces of it, ready to rage back with vigor and vengeance at any god-dammed time it desires. And it makes the living of life so difficult for those it has chosen to take residence in.

But we go on. We go on because there is no other choice and we wait until any particular period of exacerbation passes which we must have faith it will.

Birth Story

Last night, since Mr. Moon was out of town, I finally sat down and watched my copy of Birth Story which I received a few weeks ago. I had donated a few bucks to the effort of getting it out into the world and in return, got my very own copy and there it had sat in the kitchen on the center counter where things collect and I even took it to the beach for Lily and me to watch but we never got the block of time to give it our uninterrupted attention and so last night, I was ready. I steamed my peas and potatoes and a squash and went into the Glen Den to watch it and of course I couldn't find the damn DVD player remote but somehow I managed to manually work the thing which is a small miracle.

I had thought that the movie would be mostly about childbirth practices and perhaps a lot of hospital versus home-centered birth information and so forth but in fact the movie makers have made a documentary which was, to my very non-objective eye, a love letter to Ina May Gaskin and her Farm midwives and to the Farm, the commune that a group of hippies led by Stephen Gaskin, Ina May's husband, formed near Nashville, Tennessee back in the seventies. I was captured by it. Completely and lovingly. I've spoken so many times about how Ina May, first with her chapters in Hey Beatnik! This Is The Farm Book

and then with her incredibly beautiful Spiritual Midwifery

changed my life as I am sure it did many, many others. 

And watching the film was like watching the book come to life, all of those midwives whose pictures I had looked at a million times, the women who told their birth stories in the books, older and some of them still practicing, grayer, rounder, but still here. Still dedicated to the practice, to the art of midwifery and still convinced of the ability of the human female mammal to give birth with little intervention, given the chance, but always with a watchful, trained eye. 

It was beautiful.

There was old footage of some births including a breech birth and a shoulder dystocia birth and watching those was so very mind-blowing. To see women deliver babies in such situations is to see power so intense and so primal that it is no wonder that men are afraid of it, that they have tried to take it over and replace it with surgery, which is, after all, what a Cesarean birth is. The shoulder dystocia birth was especially moving for me because Lily's shoulders got stuck (she weighed over ten pounds at birth) and I did what Ina May says to do in such a situation which is to flip over to hands-and-knees, thus allowing the pelvis to open up more fully and she was born and here she is, having now had two babies herself, one at home. 

And I have been at a home breech birth, too. No one realized that the baby was coming breech until that butt appeared and there we were in the loft of a handmade hippie house and the father, who had delivered at least one of his other kids delivered this one too, and all was well. 

Anyway. Anyway. 

I watched that movie. Those graying midwives, Stephen too, now seventy-eight years old, the man who gathered this group of hippies together first with his Monday Night Classes in San Francisco and then with the Caravan and finally, to the Farm. The man who inspired Ina May to be brave enough to begin to catch babies in the first place, to not be airy-fairy or superstitious about it but to dedicate herself to learning everything she could about childbirth from books and from doctors and from other midwives all over the world and from the women she assisted in birth. Stephen's eyes still twinkle with the sort of light that only comes from those who are in on the Cosmic Joke of it all, who have chosen quite definitively to love. 

It was lovely to see Stephen and Ina May in their home now, still married, still taking care of each other. 

It was just a lovely film. 

Somehow, it reminded me that I was part of something important. That being a hippie did mean something. That one woman can change the lives of thousands, if not millions. It reminded me of my own strength and it reminded me of how incredibly powerful women are, how well-constructed our bodies are made, how joyful and correct it can be to give birth unmedicated and freely so that we can receive these children to us knowing fully how their passage into life from our bodies where they were formed and grew felt. 

Well. If you get a chance, watch the film. You can order it, you can attend a screening of it, you can probably Netflix it. Just google it. 

And now I'm off to my day. I'm going to go shopping with May, one of my own home-born babies. It is beautiful here today and I'm just in a very grateful mood for it all. For having been born in the times when I was, for being able to have my children the way I was intended, safely and with pure intent and purpose.

For Ina May Gaskin and for the movie makers who created that love letter to her and who have now shared it with the world, her work going on even as we speak, her message that women are stronger than we know.

Something to ponder always.

Love...Ms. Moon

I Think Peace. I Dig Potatoes

I dug the potatoes today and that was two hours of hot, sweaty work. But rewarding. We now have an old canning kettle over three-quarters full of the things and they will keep well for a long time. Some of them are tiny- marble sized and some of them are large, chunky things. But most are un-nibbled by ants or moles or whatever it is that so often gets to the potatoes before we do and I am grateful.
I, myself, am not un-nibbled though. The damn ants got to me through my overalls and above my gloves, biting and stinging and it was rather miserable work although there is great pleasure in the finding of the potatoes under the dirt, round and smooth and red. I simply waited too late to begin and thus, the sun was blistering down and it was hot.

I came into the house when I was done and took a shower and and heated Mr. Moon up some lunch and then I took him to where he rents a car to drive down to auction. The rental car place is way on the west side of Tallahassee and we are beyond the east side and so it takes forever and on the way home, I stopped at an Ace Hardware to buy okra seeds and cucumber seeds to fill in where the potatoes were. They had no okra seeds but I bought the cuke seeds and also some zinnia seeds because I have not planted any this year except for the ones I put in the old rusted reclaimed wagon from the dump with the lemon balm and the mint and the flowers were quickly eaten by the chickens although they have spared the mint and lemon balm. I also bought a clothespin bag and a higher quality type of clothespins than the ones I have been using. I love the Ace Hardware. It has a bit of everything and I was fantasizing that they might even have some young chickens I could bring home and set in the coop but of course they did not. It's probably too late for that anyway.

When I got home I was starving and ate a very sensible lunch of some cottage cheese and a mango and then, unsatisfied, I dove into the leftovers from yesterday's lunch in Panacea which was a stupid mistake which I have paid for already in part and will no doubt, be paying for all evening. Fried food. Oh Lord. Why? But it was so good. Cold fried shrimp may not sound like a treat, but trust me- it is.

And then of course I was exhausted and full and laid down on the bed and slept for about forty-five minutes and woke up feeling itchy in my soul and I washed dishes and folded laundry and felt as if I had accomplished nothing at all today, nothing whatsoever of any importance but I am trying out a new mantra which is "I don't give a shit," and it works. Sort of. I think I am completely weary of giving a shit about everything on this earth, from the things which I can do nothing about to the things which I can and which I fret over like a cat worries over a dead mouse which it is not even hungry enough to eat.
I went back out to the garden and picked almost a gallon bag of snow peas and I pulled up two bolted and gone-to-seed collards and fed them to the goats next door and turned on the sprinklers and planted the little azalea Lily gave me for Mother's Day and put the sprinkler on that bed and also set a sprinkler in the fern and camellia bed and put some more laundry away and here I am. Here I am.

All day I have been thinking about the things I touched on this morning in my post about Memorial Day and what Elizabeth said in her beautiful post (her posts are all beautiful) and how we are all on holiday today to honor the war dead and how, of course, in this country that means we get off work and we  grill good ol' American food such as hot dogs and the Florida State Troupers had cars lined up in the shade in Lloyd, ready to jump on the interstate less than a quarter of a mile away because surely this must be one of their biggest money-making days because as Americans we always seem to have to drive somewhere on a holiday, never, I suppose, being satisfied with where we are or who we are with and so must go elsewhere to celebrate with others and it all seems so wrong to me. If we were truly to be acknowledging those who have died in wars, shouldn't we all be shutting ourselves into dark places and keening and moaning over the losses, the unimaginable losses? But no, that is not how we do it. We cook out and we drive places and we put up patriotic posts on Facebook (although it never seems to be actual veterans who do that) and some people, I suppose, shop the Big Memorial Day Sales! advertised in the paper and we do nothing, nothing at all to try and contemplate an end to war and we are still laughing at people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono who had the completely idiotic idea to put up billboards saying "Imagine Peace" and "War Is Over If You Want it" which, it would seem to me, would be a far more fitting tribute to those who died than waving flags and posting pictures of service men and women with their heads bowed in grief.

I mean- aren't we Americans? Aren't we supposed to be able to figure shit OUT?

Doesn't it say in the Bible in Isaiah that they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nation shall not lift up sword against nation and they shall not learn war any more?

Yes. It does.

Well, so what? It says a lot of shit in the Bible and you get to pick and choose as you want but that verse, that's one of my favorites. But really, is that any crazier than imagining peace? Than saying that war is over if you want it?

I heard our president on the radio today and he was talking about how we all need to be worthy of the sacrifice that our fallen soldiers made for us and again, that sounds way too much like Jesus dying on the cross to me. Here's what I think- I think that most of the soldiers who die in battle are not thinking one iota about freedom or liberty or even the United States of America. I think they are probably thinking, "Oh shit."

Well, thank god I do not really know. But I will tell you this- I am quite sure that every mother whose son or daughter was killed in battle did not have, as an immediate reaction to the news of her child's death, the thought that there was any glory in it at all.
There is NO fucking glory in war death. And I am not ashamed or afraid to say that I believe that. Not for god, not for country.

There is just waste.

I should go move the sprinklers. The sun is setting and the sky is golden and actually, I do give a shit although frankly, I don't think the planet does. It will go on or it will not. We humans can lie to ourselves about everything from our poisonous effect on our very mother Earth and her salty amniotic birthing oceans due to our greedy gas-guzzling needs (me too!) to the glory of war and death. We make up stories and we choose to believe them while we ignore what is right in front of us, be it flood or draught or the melting of the icecaps or the blood of our children.

I'm gonna cook me some peas and potatoes. I am a human being and an American and I am at the top of the food chain and I can eat whatever I want and I can use the earth's water for the benefit of myself.

And I'm going to keep telling myself that I don't give a shit, meanwhile being so crazy in love with the trees and the light on the magnolias and sound of the water falling on ferns and flowers and tomatoes and the vision I have in my head of the way the sun is looking right now setting over Dog Island and the little bonnet shark that kept visiting us every day in the very shallowest waters of the bay like a friendly little puppy that I sort of want to swoon.

Imagine Peace.

War Is Over If You Want It.

Amen.

In Which I Discuss Liberace, War, And Yes, Even Religion. A Little Bit

So last night we watched the HBO movie Behind The Candelabra starring Matt Damon and Michael Douglas and I have to say that it was pretty fabulous. For you young folks who did not grow up with Liberace, the movie may appear to be way-over-the-top. The clothes, the jewels, the chauffeured car driven onstage to deliver the maestro to his piano wearing a ten-foot fur train, his hair gleaming and frappeed, whipped into a lacquered froth, his face covered in make-up, his fingernails polished to a gemlike degree. Let me tell you though, the real, living Liberace would have put that to shame. The man made Elton John look drab, made Rupaul look positively butch.
And yet, to his dying (of AIDs) day, he insisted he was not gay.
He had to have had balls the size of Nebraska to make that claim while dressed like this:

Or while posing for album covers which looked like this:

And yet, he made the claim repeatedly. And women adored him. ADORED HIM! 

I remember once his show was on (and the man was a monster at the keyboard) and my mother said, "Do you think he's...one of them?"

"One of who?" I asked, knowing absolutely what she was saying.

"You know," she said. "The gays."

I cracked up.

Ah, different times. 

But I loved the movie and I thought that Douglas was fearless in it and Damon was fine too. The scenes where he cocaine-ranted made my stomach cramp and my skin crawl. And Rob Lowe- good god almighty! 

He looked like Michael Jackson, the end-years. Scary shit there. 

I tell you what. Growing up when I did was strange. Liberace was hot at the same time as the Stones were coming on big. Could Mick Jagger have worn eyeliner if not for Liberace? And hell, you have to give a nod to James Brown and his stage persona, too. And really- wasn't it all about sex? Confused and confusing sex, perhaps, but still. Throw in the Viet Nam war which was being broadcast into our homes via TV every fucking night of the week and it's no wonder my generation was a little...uh, apt to want to move to the country and smoke a lot of pot.

Ooh boy.

Well, it's really too early to be all analytic and shit. It's Memorial Day so we're supposed to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers who died protecting my freedoms but I have a hard time doing that. To me, it's a little like paying tribute to Jesus, who supposedly died for my sins. I didn't ask those poor souls to go fight in wars and I wish they hadn't. I didn't ask Jesus to get nailed to a cross and I would rather that have not happened either. If, in fact, it really did. Soldiers surely and in fact did (and do, probably right this very second) die in horrible wars and if none of them accepted their governments' mandates to fight, wars wouldn't happen. Of course, that is not how it works and I'm an idiot for even suggesting it. An unpatriotic idiot and as I have said many times before, I did not get the patriotism gene any more than I got the religious gene and I'm not going to pretend I did. We are who we are. 

Liberace was certainly who he was although at the time, he was afraid to admit it in words to the world, even as he lived a screamingly loud life proclaiming exactly who he was. And who seemed, in a strange and baffling way, to be incredibly proud of who he was. 

It's a crazy world. Watch that movie if you get a chance. 

I think my mission today is to dig up potatoes and so I shall. 

Good morning from Lloyd.

Love...Ms. Moon