Not That Bad

Dang. What am I going to do with the extra two seconds of light today? The options are endless!

Actually, it's hardly what you'd call light now. The sky is heavy and ponderous, uninspiring and dispiriting. All of that. The narcissus are blooming, though. That's nice.

Too bad they smell like cat piss.

The hog dogs two yards down will NOT shut up. What is wrong with those people? They probably have no idea that their dogs are so obnoxious. I think the animals only bark when they're gone. They're gone a lot. 

I started wrapping Christmas presents yesterday. I hate wrapping. I suck at it. I bought one giant roll of paper at the Costco last week and therefore all of my presents are going to be wrapped in that. Well, except for the boys' presents. I found some Woody Christmas paper and some Sponge Bob paper up in the closet and I'll be using those too. The great tragedy is that I am almost out of tape. 

OH! THE AGONY! WHAT WILL I DO?

I decided yesterday that there are two things which I enjoy about Christmas. These are: fruitcake and ham. 

That's sort of sad, isn't it? 

But it's something, goddammit! And I've got a fruitcake and I've got a ham and by god, I'm going to enjoy those motherfuckers!

Lord, Lord. I am a bitchy, whiny, profane woman today. And honestly, I'm not really in that bad a mood. 

I had to go through my photos on my phone yesterday and cull about a million because my phone flatly stated that unless I did, there would be no more storage of photos AT ALL. It's so weird, going through old pictures. Gibson has grown so much and Owen has too. 

Here's a picture of Gibson with my mother and Matt and May at last year's Christmas supper at the Assisted Living where Mother lived. This was about a month before she died. 

Ooh boy. Anyway, it's a sweet picture.

As I recall, Owen spent most of the evening underneath the table with a plastic wine glass which all of us kept filling for him with the "alcohol removed" champagne. Here's what he looked like on Christmas morning last year though.

In my completely objective opinion, that is a pretty child. I miss his long hair. 

Anyway, here we are. Two days until I can cut into that fruitcake. Two seconds extra on our daylight. We might get rain today and most assuredly will tomorrow. I need to water the porch plants and the plants which are stashed inside against the freezing cold weather we are currently SO not getting. It's like 75 degrees today. I suppose I better find some tape. I need to plant my pansies. The cardinals are decorating the bird feeder with scarlet. One of my hens actually laid me an egg this morning. 

Yeah. All of that. Which makes it a pretty darn adequate Sunday here at the Church Of The Batshit Crazy where we do not exactly celebrate Christmas but mostly try to survive it. 

Which, so far, we are doing with great style and grace. Again, speaking completely objectively.

Gotta go find some tape.

All Love...Ms. Moon

Put On Your Scary Pants

Well, it's the solstice, right? Shortest day of the year? Longest night? Or was that last night? I get so confused. Aren't we supposed to run naked over fires tonight? Or is that another solstice? Obviously I am not a Druid. Or a Pagan. Because I know I have fact-checkers reading now, I have to be careful about these things. I don't want to mislead the world with my inaccurate factual reporting.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

We have done nothing to celebrate the solstice today. Well, that's not entirely true. We had a little private ceremony, followed by a nap. Does that count?
God. We don't even have a tree to worship. Well, not a cut-down decorated one in the house. We have plenty worthy of worship outside. Which is fine with me.

I got a text from Lily.

So maybe we all just need to put on our scary pants to celebrate the solstice. I myself am wearing some fairly scary pants- what I presume are a dead short, fat man's Levi's that I got at the Goodwill. They look scary but they are soft and comfy.

I'm going to go make a spinach casserole. It's about seventy degrees here. It's the winter solstice and the wind continues to blow, perhaps blowing the change of season in before it and the leaves rustle and the wind chimes make their voices known in the early night's darkness. 

The days will be growing longer. The nights will be growing shorter. 

I acknowledge that and appreciate it. 

I like trees. A lot. 

Solstice blessings on us all. Celebrate as ye will. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Yeah?

So we were watching the Hyde Park concert movie last night and I had an epiphany. The best religious ceremonies often offer epiphanies, don't you think?

So what was my realization? I'll try to explain.
I was trying to figure out why it is that the Stones sill look amazingly cool onstage and ARE still amazingly cool onstage, even though their sell-by date would seemingly have long since passed. I mean, they were playing a venue which they had played forty-four years ago, which would have made them in their twenties then and yet, they still brought as much energy and juice and jam to the party at the advanced ages they are now as they did all those years ago.
Well, almost as much. Probably.
This is what Mick and Keith looked like then:

The Stones never looked like they were "supposed to." They wore make-up and their girlfriends' clothes and accessories.

They took the ever-clever "are y'all boys or are y'all girls?" remarks and turned them upside down and Mick, at least, went full-on drag at times, 

while the girls still screamed for him, never once doubting that he was, underneath it all, the sort of man they would not take home to mother but the sort that they would happily keep all to themselves. And not to share make-up tips with, either. 

There was a period in Keith's junky-hood when he obviously didn't bother going to the dentist. One of the richest men in rock and roll history and the man played guitar onstage in front of thousands with missing and rotted teeth. Okay, that was more of a drug-related thing than a fashion statement but it didn't seem to bother their audiences at all. 

So...where am I going with this? 

What occurred to me last night watching these seriously elder men playing rock and roll in front of I don't know how many screaming, dancing, joyful people of ALL ages, was that they look no more bizarre now in what could be their dodderhood than they've ever looked and that they have always pushed the envelope as to what a performer should look like and now they're pushing it even further in a very different and profound way. They look like what they are, which is men in their late sixties and early seventies and yet, they very much do not resemble in the least what we visualize when we think about men of that age. Not when they're onstage. And with the exception of some hair dye being used in the case of both Mick and Ron, they almost certainly are not availing themselves of artificial cosmetic or surgical enhancements. Mick and Ron are both so thin that they could easily model for med students tracing the musculoskeletal anatomy of the human male, Charlie Watts looks perfectly fit (and he has to be, as do they all) and dear, dear Keith has gotten himself a belly which says to me that he's not doing drugs and makes him somehow even more adorable. 

So yeah. That was my epiphany. That even now they are changing our perceptions of what Rock and Roll is and looks like and perhaps more importantly, what aging is and looks like. 

Or maybe this is all bullshit and I'm just old and there you go.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching the film tremendously and I did enough small-dancing in the living room to possibly give myself a chiropractic treatment and I am in almost no pain at all today. I am thinking that this should be a daily event. 

The weather is turning as I write this, huge gusts of wind coming through and turning the leaves inside out and slamming doors shut and scattering the newspaper in the kitchen. The party I was looking forward to going to this afternoon has been canceled due to illness. Mr. Moon's temporary crown has popped off once again. Why do these things happen on the Saturday before Christmas? I don't know but almost the exact same thing happened to me some years back and I recall my dentist meeting me in his office after hours, the night before Christmas Eve and putting my real crown on. That was enough of a Christmas miracle to last me for years. 

Now we shall see if Mr. Moon's dentist is as accommodating as mine was. I am not putting my money on that one but one never knows. 

I guess that's what I'm saying here overall- one never does know. I don't, anyway. 

I never would have guessed that so many of the Rolling Stones would still be alive, much less still playing fantastic music and still one of the most lucrative acts on the planet, that half the Beatles would be dead, that I'd still be alive, that I would have grandchildren, that the wind would be coming in like this today, that the party would be canceled, that I'd look in the mirror and see what I see when I look in the mirror, that SAME-SEX COUPLES IN UTAH ARE BEING LEGALLY WED, that I'd be twenty-nine years married to a former basketball player who sells cars for a living, that I'd be living back in Lloyd again after having left thirty-two years ago, that I would be a chicken-tender (haha!), and that I would still be dancing, occasionally, at least in the privacy of my own home under the influence of...The Rolling Stones. 

And so much more, some of it which I cannot even discuss here. But trust me- I never would have guessed and this is life. 

You just never know. 

It is best not to accept the preconceived notions of how anything is supposed to happen or look or feel or be. Instead perhaps, we should just take what we have and joyfully trudge on or dance on or shuffle on or stumble on or however we can manage to keep going on with whatever powers we may still possess under whatever circumstances we find ourselves. 

As the Stones have so famously said over and over again- you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. 

Here's a clip from that film, beautifully shot, saying it better than I could, those old men doing it with love after all these years, redefining what they invented so many years ago. 

Happy Saturday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Celebration

I feel like with the exception of the light-up Woody boots I bought for Gibson, every freaking present I've gotten this year is going to be the wrong thing in some way.
Every one of them. Except for those boots and they're sweet.
And Mr. Moon's giant bag of pistachios. That'll be okay.
Sigh...
How do people on tight budgets DO Christmas? I don't think of us as fabulously wealthy but I think we're fairly comfortable and it makes me feel slightly woozy, all the money that we spend this time of year. It's to the point now in stores, and you can see this, where people are just throwing shit into carts, getting it done. It's a frantic attempt to fulfill...something.
I don't know.
I did have a good time at a nursery in Tallahassee today. I bought a present for some friends which is silly and ridiculous and I think they will like it and it made me happy. They're having a little get-together tomorrow and we're actually going and I'll be seeing some of my Monticello friends whom I haven't seen in awhile and that will be very fine. I also bought myself some pansies and violas which I will plant in the rusted red wagon beside the kitchen porch.
So that was good.

But that's not what I came here to talk about. No, what I came here to talk about is the fact that this is going to be on Showtime tonight.

Just in time to save me from my despair and the gloom of the last of the shortest days of the year.

I am not kidding, I am not joking, I am serious as Phil Robertson standing up there on the pulpit with a Bible. I am going to visit the Church of The Rolling Stones and I am just as happy as an old hippy grandma can be. Last year around this time we got the Pay Per View of a Stones concert and in my heart of hearts, I cherish that night as one of the best of my entire life.

Old Duck Dynasty Phil may have given up sex, drugs, and rock and roll but some of us still honor the theory of it all, even if we're not nearly as participatory and wild as we once were and long ago became far more discriminatory about all three of those elements, speaking on a personal level.

But hellfire, Martha. If Mick and Keith and Charlie and Ron can still get up there and do it, if Mick can still hit the high notes and wiggle his great-grandpa hips and jut his chin up in the air and if Keith can still play the chords to Satisfaction with his fingers, crooked and bent from all the years they've spent on fret and keyboard and if Charlie can still hit those drums and if Ron can still do those leads, well, I'm going to sit in the pews and I might even get up and dance.
Gotta have faith in something.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Love...Ms. Moon, Church of the Batshit Crazy Where Keith Richards Is A Constant And Abiding Miracle Of Our Times

Another Topical Post

So, Phil, the Patriarch of Duck Dynasty has shown his true belief about homosexuals (sinners, going to hell) and African Americans pre-Civil Rights (happy, happy, happy) and has been fired by the A&E Network and the world has exploded.
EXPLODED!
Jesus Christ. Oh shit. I'm a sinner. Taking the Lord's name in vain, etc.
Why is anyone surprised? The man is weird. The man self-proclaims as Godly. The man shows small children how to remove the guts of a duck for a school (Christian school, of course) demonstration. The man talks about sex way too much. The man is obsessed with sex and has used the Bible to underscore his belief that God wants man to have sex with his wife and that it's her duty to go along with this plan whenever it should suit the man.

The man is also richer than fucking Midas. Or at least I would assume so as you can't go to a damn gas station without seeing a display of fine Duck Dynasty shit to buy including Chia Pets and socks and when I was in the fabric store, I noticed a display of official Duck Dynasty camo fabric.
I mean- it's a perfect American success story. Phil invented a duck call that was obviously unlike any duck call ever made before in the history of the universe and the whole family got into the duck call business and then they made a TV show about them which led to the Duck Dynasty Chia Pet and there you go. And yes, I enjoyed the first few seasons of the show. There were definitely elements of it I could relate to being married to a hunter. But then it got sort of weird and over-scripted and Phil became more and more stern and judgmental about everything from Yuppies (anyone who doesn't live in the Louisiana woods and who doesn't know how to remove the guts from a duck, basically) to modern technology.
And the show is one of the highest rated shows on television today which, when you think about it, is odd because it's not about anything and it "stars" some extremely bearded men who live in Louisiana and who supposedly sit around and make duck calls by hand (haha!) and who love to hunt and who all live in mansions (except for Phil who still lives in what I would call a double-wide) with their beautiful wives to whom they've all been married since high school and their children. And one of the sons has an adopted child who is of mixed race and that's sort of cool, especially since they named that child the Junior of the family. Simple people doing simple things in their simple mansions, buying their simple wineries and ending each and every episode with everyone sitting around a table groaning with giant platters and bowls of rustic foods and Phil says the blessing which usually carries the message that God has made Man the boss of all of the animals and the woods and Everything and how cool is that? And then they all fork in to the giant platters of roasted game and other tasty treats, supposedly cooked by the ladies of the family while there's a voice-over by one of the sons proclaiming the eternal goodness of family and the Simple Life.

But here's the thing- fans of the show are up in arms (quite literally, probably) about the firing of Phil and the family is threatening to just stop the filming entirely because they can't go on without their patriarch. So good for them. They've already all got their mansions and Miss Kay, the long-suffering matriarch has already had her plastic surgery and the kids all have their own massive American pick-up trucks. They have every right to believe that homosexuality is akin to bestiality and that before Civil Rights, black Americans were godly and happy as can be, chopping cotton from dawn to dark and they even have every right to say that shit but the network has the right to fire them too. So there's that. But what freaks me out is that so many people are staunchly on the side of Phil who admits his life at one time was all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll but who now completely encapsulates God, Guns, and Guts, and it's like all of these people suddenly have a mouthpiece saying exactly what they believe which is some vile and evil stuff and they are crying Free Speech! Free Speech! Phil for President! etc.

Which makes me feel sort of sick.

Moving on.

Did you read about the Target credit card debacle?

Well, that's my debit card. I was affected. My bank called me at six-thirty last night.

Life goes on.
Life does go on until it doesn't and I can get a new debit card and the world will probably survive without Duck Dynasty if it comes to that. The family can get back to their Godly Simple Lives ways although I do admit that I will miss Jase who is cuter than a damn bug and also Crazy Uncle Si, the guy who was in Viet Nam and who, despite everything, seems to be relatively untouched by the madness of the success, his own madness being the stronger force and who seems to take a childlike delight in everything.
Of course I haven't read his book so I don't really know.

And if you want to get the bad taste out of your mouth about this whole stupid situation which I don't know why I even wrote about except that it's a distraction from my own madness, please go here and be reminded that although we have some extremely sad and weird stuff going on in our culture, light and love are indeed making progress throughout the world.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

The Promise

I'm cold and I can't even remember the last time I wrote anything worth reading and I can't remember the last time I felt like I had something to look forward to.

It's the season, it's the weather, it's the expectations I put on myself, it's my age, it's hormones, it's the moon, it's the tides, it's the depression, it's the anxiety.

Whatever. I'm tired of feeling this way. I KNOW it will pass, I know things will get better, I know I won't always have this crapfuzz going on in my head. I know I will enjoy things again. I know that there are people who are so much worse off than I am (and that only makes me sadder, more depressed, to contemplate the sorrows of humanity). I know this is a sort of brain-illness, I know the Buddha says that suffering is life, or is it vice versa? I know that the days will very soon start to become longer, I know that it will warm up, I know all of this and I know more even than all of this, and I have experienced it over and over in my life and I know that I wish I never had.

I had the boys again today and that was good because I can't fucking lose it when they are here. But Owen said I sounded "tired" and there is no doubt they can tell the difference in me when I am in this place and I hate it that depression affects not only me but my family, my friends. My grandchildren, for god's sake! I try so hard to be the grandmother they deserve- to play ball with Owen on the stairs, to take them outside to feed the goats and chickens and the mule, to explore in the bamboo jungle, to play games, to be cheerful and always mindful of the loving and right reaction and it's so hard when I feel this way. And I did all of those things today along with making sure they had food to eat and something to drink and jackets on and shoes kept up with and Gibson's diapers changed. But.

Everything is hard. And that exhausts me. It is better, I think though, to keep trying, or at least that's what I've always done, perhaps because I've had to, I don't know.
I do not know.

Here's what saved me today- Owen and Gibson. They wanted to put make-up on me and do my hair and I let them paint my entire face as dark blue as any woad-painted Celt. They touched me so gently, my face, and my hair that I felt as if angel wings were brushing me.

My friend Judy who came by. Judy is as prone to suffer visits from the black dog as I am and there is no need to try and pretend around her. She does not need me to be cheerful, she sits and we talk and she makes the boys laugh and that woman has been through hell and if she weren't a warrior, she would not be here and she does not make me feel like a fucking jerk for having the dark days and she can talk about her own without shame. We can talk about it but do not wallow, we laugh, we talk about other things, plenty of other things and when she left, my spirits had risen a bit. When she was getting ready to leave Owen said right out of the blue, "It's a big world out there. Be careful of monsters. If a monster gets you, you call me."

That little boy. My skinny little man who puts on the Rolling Stones and break dances for me. He twirls on his butt on the floor and holds on to the vanity in the hallway and kicks his legs and does 180 degree turns. He tells me that we are going to a party and that I look beautiful. Of course he also tells me I am old but I already knew that.

And then Mr. Moon came home and he played with those boys and there is nothing like watching that. Gibson has him so wrapped around his little finger that it's heartbreakingly beautiful. That tiny little man, leading his giant Boppy through the house to go play whatever Gibson wants to play. His grandfather changes his diaper and Gibson stands up on the bed and hugs him so hard, pats him on the back and says, "Game, Boppy?" And they walk to the Glen Den and play Wii swordfighting, the man and the little boys and it's all so damn precious and this is all so damn precious. Precious in the sense that it is priceless which was a better word before that stupid credit card advertising campaign.
And by god, I want to be able to laugh along with it. To not just witness it and cry because of this stupid fucked-up brain of mine.

I know all of the reasons not to be sad. I can list them until you nod off from boredom.
They help and they do not help. This is not a problem of circumstance, it is a problem of the brain and body. And I feel loathe to even write about it these days. I have written about it so many times and was chastised so recently and yet...this is my life. This is the way it is for me and by god, I am not going to pretend that all is well when it most decidedly is not.

It will pass. All things must pass.

All things must pass away. And I take heart in the fact that when that happens, when this particular bout of madness passes, I will write about how that feels too.

I promise.

I'm too tired. I'm too tired to comment or answer comments or write.
But here are some pictures. It was a full day.

All Good Wishes

Goodness gracious here we are and Mr. Moon came home sick last night, a tummy upset but he got in his chair and didn't move until it was time for bed and he's feeling a little better this morning and of course he HAD TO GO TO WORK because he has a car to deliver and that's how he is.
It's probably a little bug but of course my mind goes way too many places and if I went to nursing school in order to help dispel my medical neurosis, it only did the opposite and I know just enough to scare the bejesus out of me.
What is a bejesus?

I'm insane. But we knew that.

The boys are coming over soon. A full day with them. It looks to be a beautiful day. Clear and very cool but it should warm up here in a little while.

It's Keith Richard's 70th birthday today and the 30th anniversary of his marriage to the eternally beautiful Patti Hanson. We sure didn't see that one coming forty years ago, now did we? Saved by love and music to this salty age, and may they have many more years together, may we all have many more years of his music.

Good morning. Stay warm, stay well.
Stay alive.

Love....Ms. Moon

Faking It

Bone-crushed tired. I went everywhere plus I took a walk today. I hurt, I hurt, I hurt- so what? Life. It's life. I used to pretend to be an actress, now I pretend to not hurt. I walk, head-up, I make my stride into something not hurtful-looking. But oh, that first getting-up, out of the car- that I cannot fake. I roll-walk until I can pull it all together, that old-woman hip roll walk, the bob, the weave, the sway.
Stop it, I tell myself. Don't give in. 
I sat in the car in the parking lot of the mall for a good fifteen minutes listening to Billy Collins read his poetry on the radio. The sun baked me through the glass of the windows. It was good. Finally, during his rendition of The Lanyard, which I have heard so many times before, I deemed my loins sufficiently girded and and grabbed my purse and shut off the car and weave-rolled-swayed until I caught the rhythm of it again, the walking, and I strode into the mall like I belonged there and indeed I do as much as anyone with a few bucks and WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO THE GAP and honestly, everyone was as nice as they could be and compared to Bass Pro Hell World, it was a joy, as soothing as an interlude with Bach Quartets and creme brulee and a tiny glass of sherry.
I swear to you.
Okay, one woman did ask me if I was making faces at her but when I explained that no, I was not, I was just admiring the make-over she was getting she turned on a dime and told me that I had beautiful hair and that perhaps I should get a make-over too to go with it.
She has a point, at least about wearing some damn make-up once in awhile.
I did put on lipstick before I went to the library. If anyone noticed, they did not say a word.

Here's Billy Collins reading his poem, The Lanyard. 
I'm sure you've heard it but if you haven't, it's sort of lovely and true and it's worth your time.

Overwhelmed

Gleaming new pavement shining in the morning sun. I mean- how lovely is that? I'm not sure what those tab parts are but they go all up the road. Something to do with the coming sidewalk? I have no idea.

It's cold. My spirits have dipped again. I want to run away. I don't even know where.
I suppose I could. New pavement and all. Life is full of choices. Five bazillion of them approximately every seven seconds.
Five bazillion opportunities every seven seconds to make the wrong choice.
That's what it feels like today.

Even with the new pavement leading east and west. See what I mean? East or west?

It never ends.

As Owen Would Say, "I Did It!"

Here is what I learned today: the Tractor Supply Store in Monticello is perhaps the best place in the entire world to Christmas shop. Well, sure, maybe not the entire world but my world.

I walked in and I just felt so at home. They had tractor supplies of course but they also had poultry waterers and chicken party mix made with raisins and broccoli and peas and sunflower seeds and meal worms

and they had pig feed and all kinds of farm animal toys and little farm sets and miniature trucks to haul your little farm animals around in and everyone there was so kind.
They did have just the boots I wanted, real leather and reasonably priced but they did not have Owen's size. I asked one of the guys working there if maybe they had more in the back. He said that no, they did not, but he could call Valdosta or Tallahassee to see if they had any. And the Tallahassee store did and Mr. Moon has already picked them up and so Owen shall get his boots. And this same guy was singing along to the Christmas carols and a little bit out of tune but he was so unself-conscious and innocent about it, just singing along, and his name tag said, "Moon".
"Is your last name Moon? I asked him.
"Yes," he said.
"So is mine!"
And we bonded and it was lovely.

There was a lady shopping with a little pointy-eared dog in her cart and a kindly older gent shopping for gun cabinets with a large boxer/bulldog mix fellow and that was the prettiest dog and I patted him and it was sweet. Although I wish with all of my heart that I was not a dog owner, I do not dislike dogs at all and can appreciate a friendly encounter with one as well as the next person. Whenever the man would open up one of the gun cabinets, the dog would poke his snout in to see if it met his approval as if perhaps they were shopping for a new apartment just for him. It was jolly.
Another man was looking for directions to Washington Road and none of us knew where Washington Road was but then a man who was wearing a Monticello Utilities Services uniform told him that Washington Road is also Highway 90 and he told him how to get there and we all went, "Really? Really? I didn't know that!" and we were so amazed. Every one of us in the store.
And I bought Owen and Gibson camo overalls and if you had told me even ten years ago that I would be buying my grandsons camo overalls I would have laughed and laughed and told you that you were insane.
Oh well. Life happens.
I bought Mr. Moon and Hank little presents and all-in-all, it was just a joyful holiday shopping experience.

I went into Monticello proper and ran into Kathleen and her husband. Kathleen was sending packages off in the mail. I do believe she makes and sends presents to everyone she knows. She is so good, that woman. So very, very good. I shopped in a few antique stores but found nothing of great interest and then I came home and finished Owen's quilt.

I hope he likes it. It is very soft.

And I packed Mr. Moon's snack bag and made his coffee drink and sent him off to Orlando and then...I put up the nativity. I cleared the mantel in the dining room and I picked magnolia branches to place around it as is my ritual and I did it.

I put Buddha behind the baby, I draped the lights.

Can you see the happy Buddha? I think that he is saying, "Yes! I am God too! We are all god, including you, you sweet donkey and you, you precious cow and of course you, you newborn baby, be you boy or be you girl. Let us all be joyful in our god and monkey souls!"

Or something like that. 

I have realized that none of the Christmas shenanigans is going to occur at my house so every bit of decorating I do is for me and Mr. Moon who could not care less and so whatever it is I do must make me happy and that, that tiny nativity that I bought so long ago when Hank and May were little children, with the magnolia branches around it, with the tacky lights draped through and over it all- that makes me happy.

And so I have come back to the world or at least in as far as I can come, healed by the off-tune singing of a man named Moon at the Monticello Tractor Supply, by the finding of boots for my grandson, by the generous pouring of the sunlight over the part of the planet I live on. Also by the generous gift a friend sent for Owen and Gibson- a book so large that I staggered home from the post office with it under my arm, by the conversation I had on the phone with Hank, by the hug of a friend, by the kiss of a husband, by the warm attention of a dog whose fur was as soft as could be, whose eyes were as intelligent as any human's, by the fact that there are packages of Garden Delight in the world for chickens.

Let us all have sweet and good dreams tonight wherein we are all at home and where we are happy to be. 

Love...Ms. Moon

And Elizabeth Was Right. There Is Light

It is as bright today as if clouds had never been invented. Not one tiny wisp of a mare's tail in the sky and it was cold this morning when I got up but it is warming now and I've had a walk and taken trash and gone to the Post Office and they are paving the road in front of my house with beeps and trucks and giant rollers and tar and all of the things paving requires.

I feel myself open up a bit to it all but as if after an illness, I am not quite well. Not quite there. It is a physical thing when these dark moods come upon me. I feel it in my eyes, in my body.
It is a sickness and one I sorely wish I lived without.

But. Here we are. And I took that picture of the planted pines from the woods where I walk and also, the camellias. They are on a huge bush in front of what is now an abandoned house but which used to be, I hear, the doctor's house. The first house in Lloyd with a phone. Or so goes the lore.

I dreamed of a house last night. It was one I had lived in before, although in my waking moments, I realized it was an amalgam of many houses I have lived in. I felt glad to be back in it, comforted, at ease. There was much work to be done but I was happy to have the job of it, to re-nest. I made my husband a piece of toast and spread butter on it and then jam and was happy to be doing that, too, the simplest thing- a piece of toast made for someone I love.
I suppose I was comforting myself in my sleep.

I need to find boots for a boy. That is my job today.
And it is not such a bad one.

We decided to get out of the house and I even put on make-up and earrings and we drove even farther out into the country and passed fields and shacks and mansions and tiny roads with names like Lick Skillet Lane and Bold God Street. We passed churches and horse farms, one with a stable built of one million bricks and I'm sure it has a Jacuzzi in it for horses with sore legs. We drove to Bradley's Country Store which isn't really quite a store and it's not quite a tourist attraction and it's not quite a cafe and it's not quite a butcher shop and it's not quite a gift shop but it's sort of all of those things. You can purchase laundry detergent there and aspirin and Cokes and beer and handmade soap and nice little bags of beans and stone-ground grits and pickled quail eggs and books by local authors, self-published. You can buy Christmas ornament earrings and you can buy sausage. Lots and lots of sausage and almost all things pork including ribs and smoked pork chops and hams. You can buy a sausage sandwich there too, and eat it on the porch or at a table inside. The man who runs the meat shop in the back was glowing with cheer and good humor, his black skin radiated contentment, his face was one you would trust anywhere with anything from your meat order to your first-born child and he seemed to be in charge of the entire store. When we asked him how spicy the spicy pickled eggs were, he said, "I don't know! Let's open a jar!" and he did and they weren't that spicy but they were okay.
I bought grits and pickled eggs. Not quail, chicken. I did not buy: jam or preserves or a cookbook or sausage, cooked or un. I did not buy candy or Cokes or beer or laundry detergent or earrings of any sort.
We left Bradley's and drove through the country into town and we went to Sports Academy where Mr. Moon bought corn for a deer feeder and I looked for boots for Owen. They had a pair but they were cheap and vinyl and I didn't want those. We went and ate lunch, then we went to Bass Pro World. Have you ever been to a Bass Pro World?
It's like a cross between Disney World and Walmart for hunters and fishermen and all sorts of sporty types and I can't even describe it but there are every sort of taxidermied animals and aquariums and Santa was there and a bloodhound who is trained to sniff out human remains (no, I am not making this up- there was a sign) and a woman whose job it seemed to be to constantly wipe the drool from the bloodhound's mouth with a cloth and there were hundreds of people in there and I almost passed out and my mind shot out of my body and hovered up above the store in the sky somewhere and we looked at the little boys' boots and then we had to get out of there, or I had to get out of there. I think Mr. Moon spends half his time in Bass Pro World. Maybe not. But possibly.
I was trying to get out and a man was in my way and there was no where I could go and he seemed intent on not steeping back the one step it would take to allow me to pass and thus, for him to get where he was going and it was so weird. So weird. So weird.

Anyway, I survived and we went to see the boys for a few minutes but Owen had a friend over and he didn't care about seeing me and Gibson had his Boppy and he didn't care about seeing me and they're probably tired of seeing me. We came home and I am making the oddest soup in the world and I'm not even going to describe it but trust me.

I just want this day to be over. To be done. There is no soothing me today, there is no place of calm in my soul. It is just one foot in front of the other, chop this, cook this, wash this, fold this, eat this, go to bed.

I have tucked up my plants as it may freeze again tonight and tomorrow perhaps the sun will shine.

Oh let there be light tomorrow. Let there be some light.

Lead gray sky, Sunday blues in full dark force, the world has that heavy quality as if any moment something horrible may happen, a palpable sense of ponderous waiting.

The wind whispers through the leaves of coming trial and tribulation.

I am glad not to know that language.

I Went Christmas Shopping And The World Did Not Come To An End And Neither Did I

Unbelievably, I have Christmas shopped today. A little online, a little in town. So no, I didn't get much but I stabbed that attempt. I went to the New Leaf where I mostly just hugged Billy and chatted with him and also with Matt who is May's boyfriend. Whenever you ask Matt how he likes working at the New Leaf he says, "I work with beer and wine and cheese and Billy. What's not to like?"
Or something like that. It is sort of a dream job if you ask me.
I went to a new "beauty" store. I walked around it in a dream. Products galore! Body butters and creams and eye shadows and face powder and tinctures promising miracles and hair clips and brushes and lipsticks and nail polish and oh, just everything a gal could want. I bought hair pins. The regular old-fashioned big ones that you can't find anymore. Bobbi Pins? And a lipstick. Not an expensive one. And I sprayed some Chanel No. 5 on my left wrist and you know what? I think I have finally reached the age of being able to wear it.
Yep. I think maybe I have.

I was in the Bed, Bath, and Beyond buying a non-disposable coffee filter and it began to pour. The sort of rain that was loud that it was like an army of horses, their hooves thundering across the roof, and the windows in the front of the store showed a sky as black as night. I got anxious. But I got over it. And I got drenched getting back to the car but so what? It's not cold.

I bought Gibson a pair of cowboy boots. They have Woody from Toy Story on them and I have a fondness for Woody. How can you not? He is so sincere and so earnest and he loses his patience with that pompous Buzz Lightyear so easily. Now I have to find Owen a pair of cowboy boots. They didn't have any in his size at that store but I will find some. I am the MerMer of a boy who needs cowboy boots and he shall have them. I got him some last year but they are slap worn out and he's just about grown out of them too. But he still loves them.

I got home to find all of the chickens huddled up on the kitchen porch, keeping out of the rain. Also, a husband, sitting in his chair and drowsing and playing poker on his phone. It feels good to have him back and he called me beautiful. It feels good to be home after going out into the world. Bread is rising and Prairie Home Companion is on and I feel cheerful about life at this very second. This could change within the next five minutes but for right now, it's good and I am wearing red lipstick and my left wrist smells like Chanel No. 5.which I am truly old enough to wear and I suppose that is one fine thing about becoming an older woman and the good Lord knows there aren't that many fine things about becoming an older woman so I'll take what I can get and I'll sniff my wrist until the scent fades and that is good enough for now.

What Are You Doing Today? and Read Any Good Books Lately?

100% chance of rain today and the man is coming home as it is raining in Georgia too and the coming-on-full moon is discouraging the deer from moving about. Also, he forgot to take his pillows. He told me that he wasn't rushing home and I knew what that meant- he's going to stop in every roadside junk/antique place to try and find me Christmas presents and that only added another dump truck load of guilt on my already crushed shoulders. I told him not to do that, that I don't need anything. He said, "You read my mind."
"Well don't do it," I said.
He's going to do it anyway.

I made a chicken salad last night with my new knife and it went so well that I have to admit that my children did have a point (no pun intended) about my lack of a proper chopping knife. When I bought the knife, the woman at the restaurant supply place assured me that this knife is the one Rachel Ray uses for everything.
"Well, I'm not Rachel Ray," I told her. Owen was hiding in the racks of kitchen wares and Gibson was fussing for his nap and I just wanted to get out of there and get home and take a nap myself.
"You could be," the woman said.
I had no reply to this. Why would I want to be Rachel Ray? I'm a little fuzzy on who she is, exactly, beyond being a woman who cooks on the TV.
But I will say that this knife (which appears to have no connection to Rachel Ray or any TV chef at all) is a fine tool that I will be using, probably for the rest of my life.

In another, completely non-related topic, there's a thing going around the Facebook and I believe I was even "tagged" for it in which you're supposed to list ten books that "have stayed with you in some way."
I'm not even doing this and I'll tell you why. That list would have to include the book Faye Grant probably found at the dump in the fourth grade and shared with me and it was WEIRD, WEIRD, WEIRD and fourth-graders should not have been reading it as it included a scene where a pregnant woman was killed and her breasts cut off and her unborn baby cut from her and...
See what I'm saying here? You think a book like that, read in the fourth grade wouldn't "stay with you"?
So any list I made would necessarily have to include this horrorshow of a book and I don't remember the name of it.
Plus, my list would probably include at least three books by Louisa May Alcott because I read Little Women, Little Men, and Eight Cousins so many times that they became part of my very DNA, twisting around the strands of it and part of me will always be in the attic with Jo, eating an apple and writing and blotting up ink stains. Of course I wanted my own school where boys worked and played and learned Good Lessons about life and philosophy and all fell deeply in love with me and my darling professor husband. And oh, GOD, how I wanted an uncle like Rose's Uncle Alec, a father-figure for the ages and what girl wouldn't want seven male cousins to do her bidding and take her on adventures and then there was Phoebe, the maid who could sing like a bird and who was Rose's best friend and confidant whom Rose took under her wing and taught to read and thus changed her life forever and ever, AMEN? A fucking codependant's dream!
And there's four books right there.
Everyone else is listing books by people like John Irving who makes me profoundly uncomfortable and oh, I don't know. I don't actually read the lists.
I'm not a good person to tag on Facebook concerning lists of things. Sorry.

Have you seen the video here? 
Can you stand it? There's some really fucked-up people in the world and a lot of them are on TV and I am so grateful for Jon Stewart.

Well, I guess that's all I want to talk about right now. They're doing something in front of my house and maybe it's that repaving of the road they've been talking about.

I don't know why they're repaving the road. The road appears fine to me. Next they're going to lay the 1/8th of a mile of sidewalk, I suppose, which goes from nowhere to nowhere but which will pass in front of my house and require the removal of some azaleas. Big doin's in Lloyd. At least the sidewalk will give my grandkids a place to use sidewalk chalk on other than my porch floor. And they can ride their tricycles up and down it even though I'll have to stand there and guard them every second because I don't trust people not to run off the road and hit them.
"Here comes a car!" I'll scream and they'll have to scramble to safety although where safety will be, I do not know.

God. I've wasted half the day. I need to go to the store and buy food to chop with my new knife. I should go Christmas shopping. Do you suppose that Rachel Ray does her own Christmas shopping? If she has an assistant to do that shit maybe I WOULD like to be her.

Not gonna happen.

Happy Saturday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Addendum Part 2

I forgot to mention the part of today where the boys did my make-up.

Avatar? 

Gibson kept pointing to my face saying, "Pretty!"

Feel totally free to laugh. I am. 

Addendum

I get e-mails informing me of comments like this all the time.
But this one truly made me laugh.


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Good Lord I Am Tired

That is not the order in which events happened. But the events did happen.
I was quite shocked at how well Owen rolled out dough and cut out cookies. I had no idea he would have the knack but he did. The boy may have the touch for pastry.
My favorite part was when I let him decorate one cookie before we cleared the space to do all of them and he covered the tiny thing so thoroughly in every color of frosting we had that it was like an island in a lake of goo and then he sprinkled it all with every variety of sprinkle.
"Mmmm..." he said as he dipped the cookie over and over into the frosting.
Gibson just gloried in it all and quite frankly, we pretty much ate cookie dough and cookies for lunch.
This ain't no daycare, y'all. This is Mermer's house.

It ended up being a pretty long day. Jason got off work late. He works so hard and when it's time to clock out, they don't always want him to let him go. And because this is NOT a daycare facility, he can stay. It's good for him, career-wise, and I can sleep as late as I want tomorrow. I will never get over the way he is when he gets here to pick up his boys. I know he's as tired as can be but he smiles that beautiful Jason smile at them and they run to him for hugs and he picks up Gibson and, well...
Lily chose well when she chose that man to be her babies' daddy.
As a woman, as a mother, as a grandmother, I am blown away by the way he fathers his sons. I'll never forget how when Lily was in labor with Owen and her labor was so very, very long and no one thought she was going to deliver vaginally, how he hung in for every contraction, how he was there for her every moment.
And he's been that way since.
And when Gibson was born, Diana the midwife let him be the one to receive his son.
Righteousness. Amen.

But as the day lengthened, Owen got tired and at one point, he had a little melt-down because I wouldn't go upstairs with him and turn on the lights so that the monsters would not get him. I did not want to go upstairs. I would have had to carry Gibson on my hip and I was tired and there was no reason for Owen to be up there but he cried piteously and declared that he no longer needed a grandmother AT ALL. He got over it and moved on to sifting seeds in my old flour sifter in the kitchen and drawing some pictures and when he was buckled into his car seat I held him and crooned about all the sweet, good things we'd done today from pretending to be a farmer digging in the garden, to pretending to be Tarzan and climbing trees, to making the cookies, to me giving him a backpack and letting him fill it with things from my house that he could keep forever, to petting the sweet old mule next door and feeding her carrots.

He held on to me and kissed me and told me he loved me and all was well.

So very, very well.

And dear Lord. I am tired.

Night, y'all.

Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Time To Get The Aprons Out

Last night while I was moaning and whining and failing at Christmas the temperature dropped and it froze. I mean- why did I not know this was going to happen? Who knows how many porch plants I've lost because I didn't wrap those fuckers?
Had no idea until I went out this morning to feed the cat, get the paper and let the chickens out into the coop and realized that the chicken waterer was iced over.

I just suck.

Oh well. La-di-dah, it is Friday, the boys are coming soon. Last night I made up a batch of sugar cookie dough from the old cookbook that I learned to cook from which my mother gave me a copy of- best gift she ever gave me aside from the old Underwood typewriter which weighed like 75 pounds and which I loved.

I still use this cookbook. It has everything in it that you need for good, basic cooking.

And pictures. Awesome pictures. From the 1930's. 

And boys AND girls are represented. How cool is that? I'm pretty sure that's a boy on the right although there is a good possibility that a few years after that picture was taken he changed his name to Henrietta and moved to Chicago.
That looks about like my kitchen but I don't own any saddle shoes. I did back when I was a cheerleader in the 9th grade but like the typewriter, they have disappeared. 

Anyway, I made up the cookie dough and it's in the refrigerator and my plan is to have the boys help me roll it out and cut it and bake it and then decorate the cookies and HAVE I LOST MY MIND? 

Yes. Yes. I have. 

You know this is going to be the biggest mess ever. 

If I had the sense god gave a june bug I'd bake those cookies by myself before they got here and just let them throw sprinkles on them but where's the fun in that? 

So to sum up, it's freezing here, the flour is about to fly everywhere, the sun is shining, and Mr. Moon is sitting in a deer stand in Georgia so that he can kill a deer, cut the head off, stick it on the wall and we can have the body for dinner. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon  

God DAMN, I'm trying. I went shopping with Lily today and actually bought Gibson a present at Target.
"I think he'd like this," she said, pointing at some Elmo train thing and I said, "Fine," and threw it in the bottom of the cart.
There. I've started.
I bought myself stuff. How's that? I bought a shirt, an eye shadow (cheap, turquoise, waterproof), and a rug for my bathroom that I needed at the Target. I bought myself a chopping knife at the restaurant supply place after we ate lunch at the Chinese place next to it because the kids have informed me that I have crappy and inferior knives which is news to me. I thought I did okay with the ones I have, plus, I keep them sharp but now I have a restaurant-quality, ergonomic, blue-and-black-handled one.
Yay me.

I got home from my outing with Lily and the boys so exhausted I could barely make it to the bedroom. I slept for two hours, got up, tidied the house, did some laundry, washed some dishes, made the bed, took the trash, etc.

After all of that I thought, okay, I can do this. 
I went upstairs and found my nativity scene, Bad Santa and the wreath. I put the wreath out front and I plugged in Bad Santa and his light bulb doesn't work.
I went into the library with the nativity scene and looked at the mantel which is cluttered with sacred detritus already and which has the boys' riding horse in front of it which blocks access anyway and then at a table in the library, also cluttered. I sobbed internally and set the nativity down in the hallway, overwhelmed by my lack of desire to do a damn thing with it.
Jesus.
Oh, poor baby Jesus.

It's the Virgin of Guadalupe's Saint Day. That I can almost handle. I went out and picked fresh camellias, I set them in vases around her. I lit candles. I even went and found some lights to put around the mirror behind her.

There you go. Here's some more.

That's my hallway altar with my carved Virgin, my turtle shells, seashells, black coral I found washed up on the beach of Cozumel and which was probably illegal to bring home. There's pictures of my kids, a vase of sea glass, also from Cozumel, a bottle of water, stones, a pinecone. 

Keith Richards. My totem animal. 

Can you see him? 

Our Rebecca, the poet, the Madame Radish King, the Queen of Bees, the worshipper and believer in The Animal Gods, wrote a post last week about how she had tried to deny Christmas this year but that it is in her heart and so she cannot deny it and I thought about how the opposite is also true- if it is not in your heart, you cannot deny that either. I want with all of my grinchy tiny heart to embrace the good things about this season. Every year I try and every year it gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. 

Daddy never came for Christmas and Mama always got sick for Christmas and one year I played the Virgin in the church nativity, a blue yard of fabric draped over my head,  and one year I sang, "What Shall I Give Him, Poor As I Am?" and read from St. Luke and the words which stuck with me, which rang true in my then-still bell of a heart with sweet tones was "And Mary took these words and she pondered them in her heart." I still think that is one of the most feminist lines in the Bible. 

And it was okay for a long time, it was. I gave huge parties with great bowls of rich creamy eggnog and cookies I'd been baking for months and homemade rum-wrapped fruit cakes stuffed with candied everything and turkey and ham, sliced and juicy and huge buds of home-grown sensimilla wreathing the punch bowl with papers for your rolling pleasure and made flannel pajamas for my children and Hank sat on the back of the couch and recited "Twas The Night Before Christmas" from memory when he was a tiny thing and I had no idea he had that in his head but he did. 

And then came the year I was fresh separated from my first husband and the children went with him on Christmas day and I spent the whole damn day (it was so cold that day) crying and cleaning the house all by myself and maybe that was when it all began to be too hard. 

I don't know. 

Maybe it was because John Lennon got shot in December. Any fragment, any sliver of belief I had in a benevolent god probably got murdered when John Lennon took his last breath. 

Again I say- I do not know. Maybe I am just incredibly jealous of anyone who can feel Christmas in her heart. Maybe I am just missing all of the people I have loved who have loved Christmas. 

Maybe I am just wishing that every baby born could be perceived as the possible Messiah whether in December or March or August. 

I am trying but I am about done trying. 

I have lit candles for the designated mother of God, for The Mother. 

And for tonight, this cold, crisp, December night, that is all I can do. 

Stream Of Semi-Consciousness

Mr. Moon has already left out for the Georgia hunting camp and it is cool and beautiful and I'm going to go to town and I woke up thinking about this show, these people

and how much I loved it/ them. When it first came on I hated it because I was thirty-something and I already had half-grown kids AND babies and so the frustrations of young yuppies with children and marriages and relationships and blah, blah, blah seemed so trite and precious but then I got hooked and I fell in love with almost all of the characters and now- where ARE they? Okay, sure, they've all done a little acting here and there but mostly not. 

Oh god. When Gary died I almost lost my mind. I loved Melissa so much, that red-headed mess of a girl, the way her face would crumple when she cried.  

This all got me to thinking of this show and these people

and yes, we know about Janine Turner and Christoga  and sure, Chris In The Morning has gone on to good and beautiful things and Joel, yeah, he was on that weird show called Numbers but with some of the letters backwards, but where are Maurice and Marilyn and Holling and Shelly? And where the hell is ED CHIGLIAK? God, Ed, I miss you so much. 

Rest in peace, Peg.

Did all of these people sign a deal with the devil to allow them to be in some of the best television ever made but that would prevent them from ever getting good roles again?

It's like you got invited into these wonderful little universes and you fell in love and you became fully invested and then, BOOM! gone and there's not even a funeral, a ritual to allow us to let go and move on. 

Well, shit. Good morning. I'm going to town today to go shopping with Lily and the boys. I forget what we're shopping for. Something Lily needs. And I need to drop a few things off at the library...

Here's what Owen said yesterday when Mr. Moon told him he was going hunting this weekend:

"Boppy, I hope you shoot a deer and then you can cut off his head and put it on the wall and eat the body for you dinner. But don't eat the hooves!"

And that pretty much sums it up. 

Good morning, good morning, I am rushing and it is cold and clear and the camellias are blooming to beat the band and I miss my imaginary friends and maybe the library has a few seasons of one of those shows I could check out and wouldn't it be wonderful, wouldn't it be a sweet, sweet miracle if we could check out episodes of our lives to watch, go back and see ourselves and our sweethearts and friends and family when we were all younger and prettier when we were just getting started or would it make us so sad that we would be like Emily in Our Town and beg to make it stop because we just had no idea how beautiful it was, even a cup of coffee, a first kiss, a baby's first cry, the way the light makes bright jewels of fallen leaves on the ground, our faces unlined and our eyes so clear, not having the slightest idea what all lays before us, what all our eyes will behold as we live this miraculous life which goes by so fast and then we disappear, one by one and how can we bear it? as Emily asks.

I don't know, I don't know. 

I just know that it is a beautiful day and I want to gather it all up in my arms and pull it towards me and hold it as long as I can, all of the glittering crazy beauty of it, even the parts that cut and burn with their sharpness, with their heat. 

Good morning. 

When It's Good, It's Good

You know what? I don't feel the need to discuss one darn thing tonight. It's been a good day, even the part where I went to the library to take back some materials and went to get out of the car and realized I'd left the stuff to return AT HOME and I said, out loud, "You fucking idiot," but it didn't really bother me and I backed up and went to the grocery store and so it goes.
It was just the branch library and not so far out of my way.
But I am an idiot and that's all there is to it.

I don't care. At least today I'm a happy fucking idiot.

When The Sun Comes Out

It's cold today and my joints creak and ache but it's clear and the backyard has a new carpet of gold and ruby leaves and I feel like yesterday I made a small but very important leap of growth in my heart about something, an awareness and acknowledgement of sorts which seems to have opened some windows therein, let a little more light shine through its chambers. A letting go of something that I have held on to so fiercely for too long when it did me no good and probably harm and it wasn't helping anyone at all.
I have said it before and I will say it again- it's all about light and love- but I will freely admit that as simple as that is, it is not easy for some of us. Most of us, I think.
To turn away wrath, as it were.
Wrath can feel so good. It can feel so righteous. It can fuel and propel us but do we want to go where it leads us?

Sometimes I think that all of science and all of religion and all of poetry is nothing but our way of trying to figure out our own hearts and its desires. To try and train and chain them, to try and let them fly and flee.

I know. I'm not making any sense.

The boys are coming back today as I said yesterday and I need to figure out some fun stuff to do with them that doesn't involve Tom and Jerry cartoons or Sponge Bob either. What interests Owen doesn't have much charm for Gibson and vice versa. Well, exploring the bamboo jungle does and hitting trees with big sticks makes them both happy. What IS it about boys hitting trees with sticks? Big sticks, twigs. Doesn't matter.
I don't know. It is just a thing. A basic, primal thing and today I feel as if doing only the most basic primal things is what I'd like to do. Not hitting trees with sticks but things like cooking and loving and letting the sunlight fill my eyes and leak into my heart and bones.

I think I'll go take a walk into this light-filled day. I feel at peace, I feel blessed. I do not take that for granted.