Sunday Morning Batshit Crazy Worship Services, 9/20/09

We just finished breakfast here at the Church of the Batshit Crazy.
Omelets and venison sausage and toast. Now you can't beat that, especially when the eggs came from your chickens and the venison from your man's hunting.
The omelets had red pepper and tomato and spinach and red onion in them. Also some cheddar and a little goat cheese. Gourmet, gourmet, gourmet.

You bet.

I could have made biscuits but I didn't feel like it.

We ate on the back porch and boy, that was like going to church, eating that good food in the white clean brightness. No music but the birds and the crickets, which is all the music I care to hear at this very moment.

Damn. I should have taken pictures. I guess I was too hungry to get out the camera.

Those hens are laying us some eggs all right. Two, three a day now. Feels like a gift package, every time I find one, all that protein wrapped in blue or green or brown. The shells are so strong I can put those eggs in my pocket and forget about them until I get back to the house.

Mr. Moon is in there washing the dishes, which is true love. I guess I'm going to rake up the chicken coop and put all that poop on the garden and the garden could use some weeding and the okra needs cutting. That's my plan for the day. Perhaps I should go to the store before I get completely filthy, though. We're out of orange juice and also bananas. And grapes. The chickens are suffering from lack of grapes although Harley came over and shared some of his yesterday.

Kathleen and Vicky also dropped by with two gorgeous bromeliads sent over by Katie, the woman in Monticello who did my facial back in July. She said she had some for me and there they are. I think one of them is a pineapple. There are some very, very fine and nice people in Monticello and by golly, I'm so lucky to know them.


Since it's Sunday, I took the camera outside to get a few pictures, which has become sort of a ritual here at the Sunday Services of the Church of the Batshit Crazy.

As I said the other day, the Confederate Rose is blooming. This is not a good picture but the blossoms are big, ruffly, many-layered confections of pink. Doesn't matter how often you cut that sucker back, it always grow up over the top of the porch every year and then gives us those flowers in fall. Can't beat that.


I am not sure what this is. I think someone said it was a clematis but I am not sure about that. Anyone know for sure? It grows on my front fence. It doesn't get enough sun but it takes what it can get and does its best for glory.


The lady banana spider is still on the front porch in her tidy web. I don't see her babies or her man. She seems lonely to me, but maybe she likes things this way. I understand if she does. After a busy life of raising children and dealing with the menfolk, it's good to have break in the fall of life to just meditate and wait for flies.


And here's the firespike I rooted all last winter. I'm going to root more this winter and in oh, ten years or so, it'll be growing everywhere in the yard.


There's something extremely gratifying about taking a yard and adding and giving and making it more than how you found it.
Well, let's face it- growing things is my favorite thing to do, whether chickens or children or flowers.

And speaking of, no news from Lily this morning so I guess Owen's still content to be inside. Today would be a mighty good day for him to be born in my opinion but obviously, he's not too worried about my opinion.

Well, it's Sunday and the Methodists next door are gathering to worship.

Over here we are doing the same. We are doing the same.

This Too Is Love. Part 2

So when I signed off today to go clean the spider webs that were annoying Mr. Moon, I decided to just clean the whole damn porch. The idea had occurred to me last night around 1:30 a.m. so I was up for the task.

It took about fifty clean buckets full of water and vinegar, half a bottle of Fabuloso, an entire episode of Prairie Home Companion, three tapes of Dead Man's Walk and hours and hours but I did it. I scrubbed hard enough to reveal the whiteness my porch can be underneath the black dirt of Lloyd.




I washed the mermaid


and I Liquid Golded the wooden stuff



and I cleaned the tarpon that our friend Chip found in the garage of a house he either rented or bought. I can't remember.


I killed hundreds of spiders.
Sorry about that. I hated doing it, but really, the line had been crossed. It was time.

I washed the face of the Spanish doll who lives on the porch.


I set plants to root and hung them up.


I washed my hula girl.



I am blinded by the white.





It's rather nice.




And surely, Mr. Moon will know that this too, is love.

Comment Enabling

Several people have told me that they are having trouble commenting. Therefore, I am switching the comment form thingee again.
Let's face it- there is no perfect way to do this but I WANT EVERY COMMENT I CAN GET.
Yeah, yeah, I'm a comment whore.

If you're having trouble with this format, please just email me and let me know.

Thank-you very much and please call again.

Broody Hens

Damn blogger. The icon to click on to download pictures is hazy and won't work. I see in the help section that I'm not the only person having this problem so maybe they'll fix it or maybe they won't and I'll have to change blog hosts. I hope not. I'm way too lazy for that shit.

It's Saturday morning and something on the other side of the train tracks is beeping. Beep-beep-beep-pause. Beep-beep-beep-pause. It is driving me insane because it's a beautiful day and there are birds and sun and yet, that beeping will not stop. I may have to find my machete, go out and find the source and cut it down. I hope not. I'm way too lazy for THAT shit, too.

Yes it's Saturday morning and we went to the Opera House last night to see Fiddler on the Roof and it was an amazing production. Forty-six people in that cast, including a bunch of young'uns and I have to give credit where credit is due to the woman who directed. Here's part of her bio:

"XXXXXXX was a professional actor/singer/dancer/musician/choreographer/model in theater, TV, radio, and print."

This woman is also a professional anything you might imagine including crocheter. Just ask her. She'll tell you. She pissed me off one time concerning a piece I wrote at her request for a newsletter and I, in my shriveled little soul, have never forgiven her. This is my problem, not hers, and I give her full props for everything she did with that production. It was amazing. The acting was great, the music was terrific, the staging was awesome and somehow she managed to wrangle all those people into their places, dancing singing, in great costumes and with some awesome special effects. What can I say? It was a smash hit. And THERE IS ONLY ONE BATHROOM BACKSTAGE AT THE OPERA HOUSE!
Really, it was miraculously good.

Kathleen had resisted and resisted being onstage. She, like me, loves the whole camaraderie which springs up during a production and the whole creative process but the actual performances are not her favorite part. But dammit, she was GREAT! Whenever you try to praise her, though, she puts her fingers in her ears and goes, "Lalalalala."
Too bad. Kathleen, you were GREAT!
And Herb was wonderful and so was Rich and the whole cast, which included people from the age of eight to eighty-eight was just brilliant.

Now, having said all of that, let me say that I don't really like musical theater, the play lasted three and a half hours and those seats are not very comfortable. I sat between Mr. Moon and Kathleen's best friend of fifty years (I am not making that up) who was in town from Indiana (I think) just for performances this weekend. Every time Kathleen came onstage, we both made little squeals of pleasure and when she was done with each bit of dialogue, we silently clapped our hands.

That beeping is still going on, by the way. And obviously I figured out the image thing. I had to click a box that said I agreed to the new terms of service.

Click. I have no idea what I agreed to.

Anyway, it's Saturday, like I said, and there's a picture of Mabel in the nesting box with two eggs. I feel certain she only laid one of them. I think she may be a broody hen, which means she likes to sit on eggs.

I feel like a broody hen myself. Not that I want to sit on eggs but I am brooding. It struck me this morning that perhaps Mr. Moon has a girlfriend. As evidence, I offer the fact that he is tall, handsome and sane and I, on the other hand, am short, round and getting crazier by the moment.

(Beep-beep-beep.)

Mr. Moon can't hear the beeps because his hearing is shot from years working in a tire store and hunting so it's not bothering him.

I am bothering him, though. I can tell.

Marriage is funny. One minute you're feeling like there has never been a love greater than yours and the next minute you're taking the fact that your husband keeps asking you to get rid of the spiders that keep making webs where he walks as evidence of him having a girlfriend.

I wouldn't blame him. Besides being short and round, I have a lame foot. Listen- Mr. Moon is sentimental about some things, but if he had a horse with a lame foot, he'd put that animal DOWN.

I am not an animal, though.
Wait a minute, I am an animal.

I guess I better get rid of those spiders. It's not so much to ask, really. And maybe if I do he'll break up with his girlfriend.

Beep-beep-beep-pause.

Happy Saturday.

And The Earth Is Slowly Moving

No news, no news, no news.
Okay, Lily's having a few little things going on which indicate she is farther on down the exit ramp than she was.
I just talked to Lon and Lis on the phone and broke down and cried because they're so sweet and so loving and I think I'm holding a lot in, emotionally-speaking, right now.
It's just...
My baby is having a baby. Lily is about to be reborn herself as a mother and my grandson is about to be born and I feel like the earth with a mountain moving over me, a sea with an island arising from its blue, blue depths.
That's how I feel right now.
I'll keep you updated.

This And That, None Of It Earthshaking

If ever there was a movie made from a book that got it right, it was Lonesome Dove.
And if ever there was an actor who took on a role and made it flesh and blood, it was Robert Duvall when he played Gus McCrae.

I've just finished reading (with my ears- thank you, Miss May for that one) a recording of Lonesome Dove. All four million hours of it. Larry McMurtry's cowboys traveled from the Texas border to Montana while I weeded the garden and mucked out the chicken coop and walked my miles and made our suppers.
And Angelica Houston was the most incredibly perfect Clara- the woman Gus had been in love with his entire life.
Oh just let me tell you how much I love Robert Duvall and Angelica Houston.
Oh please let me tell you how much I love Gus McCrae and Clara.

The first book I ever read by McMurtry was a book called Moving On. It starts out with a scene where a woman is in her car, reading, in the parking lot of a rodeo when a drunk cowboy suddenly pulls out his pecker and pees on her car, not realizing she's in it.

Now find a way to put THAT book down.

The woman turned out to be named Patsy who, in Moving On, had her own entire book and who then showed up in Terms of Endearment as a best friend and McMurtry may not create fiction so much as he just taps into some parallel universe and watches the lives of the people who he writes about. He reports in on their doings, their thoughts, their joys and frustrations and births and deaths and travels and troubles. His women cry and yet, are so strong, his men don't know what they're doing but the best ones bumble on and fall in love with these strong women and they don't know what to do when the women cry and no one saves anyone but everyone is part of the salvation of everyone.

Sort of like life, I think.

McMurtry reminds me of the finest actors- the ones you never catch "acting." You never catch McMurtry "writing." There is only the story and the characters and the world he creates, whether it's a big world or a small one. Even the smallest ones are huge in and of themselves.
I read his book charming story, Desert Rose out loud to Mr. Moon when we were on our trip out west, as Mr. Moon drove and we crossed those crazy plains and the alien deserts with carved out red mountains and when we got to Las Vegas, where the main character in that book lived, we felt as if we would find her, sitting in a coffee shop, her chin in her elbow, thinking about her cruel, beautiful daughter. McMurtry wrote that one while he was trying to get his cowboys from Texas to Montana. Just took a break and wrote about a Las Vegas showgirl.

Well. Here we are. It's Friday. It's been raining forever. That's okay. I can't hang the clothes on the line, but the garden is happy. It will need sun eventually, though.

We're going to go see Fiddler On The Roof tonight in Monticello. This is a performance I've had absolutely nothing to do with for various reasons, not the least of which is that Lily's baby is coming and the timing was all wrong. Kathleen is in the play and I can't wait to see her play Yenta. It feels so strange to me to go to the Opera House for a performance I've not been involved in. I think the main feeling is how could they have done this without me? which is ridiculous but there you go. The world is a stage and WHY AREN'T I ON IT?

It's raining softly, the elephant ears have water beads shining like mercury and running off of them. Lily is still cradling Owen inside of her. Every time the phone rings I jump and so does Mr. Moon. I'm sure Hank and May and Jessie do too.

I've finished listening to Lonesome Dove but it's okay because I have Dead Man's Walk on tape to listen to now which is the story of Gus and his buddy Call meet up and are Texas Rangers in their youth. I am grateful to McMurtry for going back in time and finding those two boys and telling us their story.

It's Friday, y'all. Let me leave you with this one very important piece of wisdom:

You may say you'll never eat Chex Mix again, but you will.
Oh yes. You will.

Love...Ms. Moon

Chickens Are Soothing.

This is my chicken, Helen. I think Helen is a girl. She hasn't started crowing so I'm thinking she's a girl. But you know what I always say- I don't know shit. Or else I say, "Fuck if I know." Or sometimes I say, "I don't know a damn thing."

Well, anyway, there's a head-on picture of Helen and as you can see, a chicken's head is quite narrow, viewed from the front. People claim that chickens aren't very smart and I don't know about that. I know they're smart enough to get in out of the rain and rearrange the hay in the coop the way they like it and they're smart enough to gently peck on my arm to see if it tastes good.

Okay, maybe that last one isn't an example of brilliance but I don't care. My chickens just soothe the hell out of me.

I needed soothing when I got back from town so I went out to see the girls and the boys. They were glad to see me but not very happy about the fact I only brought my camera and not a nice bowl of cantaloupe. Here's a picture of Henry giving me the evil eye due to my lack of fruit offerings:

Isn't he cute? His crow is still all screechy and scratchy because he's just learning. Unlike Sam's crow which is full and proud. Here's Sam and some of his ladies. I just have to love Sam, even if he does feel less affectionate towards me and even if he does chase down the hens and force himself on them. He can't help it. He's a man bird.


So a few minutes with the chickens and I was soothed, especially after Penny let me stroke her. That chicken just loves me. Maybe for saving her life. I don't know.

I needed soothing because my poor Lily cried today. The ultrasound Doctor has obviously given up on us. He was nice and smiling and didn't insist on anything although he did say that if Lily hasn't delivered by next week and needs another appointment, Dr. Brickler HIMSELF better call and make it.
Ha!
Then we trudged over to the midwife practice and the midwife-in-training stripped Lily's membranes without asking her which I think is RUDE. Just damn rude. She said, "I'm going to try and help you out here," and then proceeded to get in there and tug around the cervix. It hurt, I know it did. The cervix feels as it did last week- still thick and about 1.5 centimeters so that hurt Lily even more, thinking she hasn't made any progress this week. She cried a little bit before Donna came in and I don't blame her. No exciting news AND pain. Please.
But Donna was her reassuring self. She was wearing a crown today. A children's plastic crown with a big pink jewel in it. The reason she was wearing it was because one of her adopted children is "mentally ill" as she said, and he keeps claiming that the family is beating him up while in actuality, he is beating on them and DCF came over for a visit. Donna said it occurred to her that if all her crack mamas get to keep their babies and they're crazy, then maybe she should be as crazy as she can, too. So she wore the crown for the meeting and everything went fine and then she decided to be crazy at work, too.
And yet, I have complete confidence in this woman. She reassured Lily that all is well. She went over a few non-invasive (or at least non-chemical) things that we'll probably be trying by next week but nothing that sounded horrible.
I told Lily she needs to drink a big cup of coffee to shock her system. I'm sure by the end of the week, she'll probably try anything.
Donna warned her that she'll be unavailable on Monday because another one of her adopted daughters is having surgery and she is not going to leave her side. I understand that. But that if NO midwife can get there, she will not let a resident take care of things and if there is no other choice, she'll come.
How can you not love this woman?

Anyway, seeing my baby cry, knowing that Owen isn't just trembling over a dilated and thinned out cervix, and just the whole situation of not being in control of one damn thing in this whole world when it comes to this most important event in my daughter's life had me in need of soothing.

Thus the chicken visit.
And they did- they soothed me. The clucked and pecked and like I said, Penny let me stroke her. Have you ever stroked a chicken? Golly, they are soft.

And then the electricity went out and I laid down on the bed with all the dogs and we had a little nap and then the electricity came back on and here I am, telling you this story about Owen and Lily and Donna the midwife. And chickens.
Only one egg today. That's all right. Six eggs in three days is good enough for me.

Now I better go take the trash. I hope no one needs a damn ride to Chaire's Crossroad. And if that old prejudiced son of a bitch is there, I might just tell him a thing or two. I'd send you back to the link where I wrote the story explaining all of this but I'm just not in the mood to get any more pro-life comments. Pro-life. As if I'm not. As if all us pro-choice people are anti-life.

Okay. I'll shut up.

And really, all is well. All is very well and I think when I get back I'm going to make an apple gingerbread cake with some very fresh eggs. With molasses and raisins and pecans and maybe even a caramel icing. We shall see.

Thank all of you for caring about Lily so much. I'll let you know what happens just as quick as I can.

Meanwhile, let's all go do something soothing.

No, Not Yet

No, no, no, no, no. No baby yet.

I'm going with Lily and Jason to the two appointments this morning- the ultrasound doctor and the midwife. The ultrasound doctor is going to be all kinds of warning and worry. He's going to want to do a non-stress test, I'm betting. He didn't even have Lily make an appointment for this week when we left last week because he was so certain that she would deliver by now.
And her "due date" was only Tuesday.
So I'm trying to gird up my loins and remember my manners and be the best mother/grandmother/representative of sane I can manage.
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time being assertive with people wearing white coats. I mean I have a REALLY hard time with it.
But knowing they have a pamphlet in the office with the title of something like "3-D Fun Ultrasound!" gives me a bit more spine. I mean- they haven't even proven this technology to be safe! And here they are advertising it as a way to have FUN because obviously someone has to pay for that equipment.

And then the midwife's office will be different. That office is so chill and laid back. "Here, hold this baby," says a nurse walking by. Mrs. Murphy runs the desk. She could run the world, I suspect. Donna, the midwife, always looks like she needs more sleep but she also looks like she could deliver babies under the sea with one hand tied behind her back without batting an eye if she had to. I have seen two women come into that office with a total of ten children accompanying them.
They have pretty good magazines, too.

All right. I'll report in when I come home.

And thank-you, every one of you, for checking in and caring.

It'll happen. It'll happen soon.

We'll have a baby. We can hold.

Just not yet.

Bless Their Little Egg-Laying Hearts

Today's nest offerings.

Three. Three eggs. And none of them as big as the one from yesterday so I think I may have four hens laying.

See how they're all different colors? Aren't they beautiful?

Oh my.

Until Lily's baby is born, this is just about as much excitement as I can handle.

It's Not Just Me

Weighty Issue

No baby news. Just wanted to say that right up front.

I've got a full day ahead of me what with yoga and then going to town to do some of that fabulous data entry for Mr. Moon and then an entire chicken in the refrigerator (not one of mine) that must be cooked but I've got a problem on my hands and here it is:

I'm a jeans snob. I don't like lycra in jeans. You can wear jeans made entirely of lycra for all I care but I have my jeans-for-life and they are men's Levi's in a hard-to-find style and I have been wearing them for approximately ten years except for the years I was fat and this is looking like one of those and I am WORRIED because winter is coming up.

I love my jeans. After all these years of wear they are getting to that good point in jeanery. Soft and the color blue that no other jeans but Levis will fade into. The color blue of the eyes of a sweet old cowboy, a newborn babe, a mean old woman who looks at you sharply when your cell phone rings in the library.
You know that blue.

I've spent all summer in these baggy linen men's cargo shorts from Old Navy and of course, the overalls and it's been easy to tell myself I'm not really gaining weight, especially since I don't get on scales.
I don't need scales.
My Levis will tell the truth and they don't waffle and they aren't subtle and they don't say, "Oh but honey, we'll stretch once you wear us for an hour."

I can get them on but it's not pretty and besides, it would cause gastric distress to wear them.

I could blame the menopause and I could blame the antidepressant but that would be a lie because I know it's me and what I do and don't do. Sure, I can tell that menopause with its powerful heat-inducing hormone shifts is changing the very shape and essence of my body but really- let's face it- you're either carrying around too much adipose or you're not.

I am.

Okay. That's all I have to say today. I'm certainly not a hugely obese woman, I'm just a woman whose life-time jeans are not fitting and that means, well, you know what it means- I'm going to bitch about it.

This is not earth-shaking stuff, this not-fitting-into-my-jeans but let me tell you- it can mean the difference between a good winter and a bad one. On that very, very personal and egotistical level, at least.

Which is where I'm operating from right now.

Gotta go!

I hope YOUR jeans fit.

Because He Said I Could

Two of my very most favorite boys in the world.
Hank and Billy. Friends forever.

I'll Be Darned

Either Miss Red's eggs have suddenly and inexplicably doubled in size, or we have a brand new egg-layer in our midst.

Excellent!

We Wait

It's raining and the sun is shining. The devil, as we say, is beating his wife.

Why did we laugh at that as children? And what does it mean that those domestic abuse hotline signs they put up in doctor's office's bathrooms have all the little number tabs torn off these days?

I don't know. It worries me, though.

Today is September 15, 2009. It is Lily's due date. Back in January, when she told me she was pregnant, September seemed so far away as to be unimaginable. And here we are, the middle of the month and we know there's a boy in there and his name is Owen, and Lily is ready to have him. Now whether he's ready to be born or not is another question entirely and isn't it always this way? Out of my four pregnancies, not one of my babies was born on his or her due date. They were all "late." Back when I had Hank, in the olden, olden times, the doctor told me at the end of April that he could come any day.

His birthday is June 10.

These days they would have snatched him out sometime in May and it would have been too early. He was born perfect, eight pounds, a tidy weight and ready in every way to take on the world as an infant should. He laughed out loud the night he was born when a little girl named Annie came over to visit him and did something that tickled his funny bone.

I went to Publix yesterday to buy ingredients for my middle-eastern feast and mostly to see Lily. She is still working. She finally and at last, looked tired. She's trying to work as long as possible because the more time she takes off now, the less time she can take off after her baby is born. I think this is so cruel. She should be able to finish up all her nesting, to lay on the couch and doze, to take little walks and gather her strength for what is about to happen. She's young and she's strong, but a woman needs that time, especially with her first, to prepare her mind as well as her body.

"You're on the exit ramp," I tell her. "I swear you are." I bought her a little stuffed turtle when I was in the store and gave it to her. She looked at me like, "What the fuck?"
"Slow and steady wins the race," I said.
"Mom, this is a dog toy," she said, squeaking it to demonstrate.
"Huh," I said. "I didn't notice. It was on the sale rack. Sorry."
"That's okay," she said.
She knows what I mean.

And so we wait. I hope we're allowed to wait. I hope they don't hook her up to Pitocin which is a mean drug and yes, it can get that uterus to contract but not in the way nature intended. I've written so many words about how we've taken something which has worked quite nicely for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and turned it into a medical event with beeping technology, invasive procedures and theories which remain untested but are used nonetheless. I don't need to say any more right now about all of that. I just pray we get to wait.

The chickens have finally come out of the hen house. Nope. Wait. They're walking back in. They are lazy birds, those chickens of mine. They like being inside where it's cozy on rainy days with the straw they've arranged all by themselves on the floor, the classical music, the tiny Christmas lights.

I think Owen likes being inside too. It's cozy in there, in his mama's belly with her heartbeat to listen to, his fingers and toes to count. I wonder what he's thinking about. It won't be long until it's not so cozy in there any more. There will be no more room to stretch and the little cramps that Lily is having now will become more serious, more urgent with purpose.

And then he'll be born.

If I could talk to him I would say this: "Owen, we are ready. We are so ready to see your pretty face, to see what the love your parents have for each other has made. You have a mama and a daddy and grandparents and an uncle and aunts and two great-grandmothers and you have a bed and diapers and clothes and butt paste and a swing and a sling and your mama's titties. They are all ready. So come on now. Don't be lazy. We have waited long enough."

I wonder what he would answer.
"Go away, I'm napping," perhaps.

But maybe he'd think about it.
"Hmmmm. Doesn't sound so bad."

Maybe he's dreaming of titties. Lily, I'm sorry to be speaking of your titties but really- it's okay. Just like you used to tell me. "It's okay, Mama. Really."

You were right then and I am right now.

It's okay, Owen. Really. Wake up. Time to be born. We can't hold this love in forever.

It's raining today but the sun is shining too.

Come on towards the light, little boy. It's shining for you.

Lemon, Garlic and Chick Peas

Mr. Moon is out of town on his weekly business trip to Orlando. He buys cars down there at the auction to sell to his customers. People trust Mr. Moon to buy them the best cars for the money that he can find. It's been hard lately because he specializes in newer, low-mileage, well-cared-for cars and people just aren't buying new cars and trading the old ones in. He has customers but he can't buy the cars at auction for a good deal and so the car business has been thin. I just talked to him on the phone and as we do almost every day, we agreed that no matter what is happening in the business world we are blessed.

Anyway, here I am and it's drizzling. I hope we get some rain because it's so still and warm and humid and the rain would bring sweet relief. I imagine that everyone who has broken a bone is suffering right now. I know May is and that breaks my heart. I wish I could take that suffering on. I am old and suffering is natural for the old, not the young.

Usually, when Mr. Moon is out of town I eat leftovers but this week there are none. And for some reason, I got the cravings for some middle-eastern food. The lemon, the olive oil, the garlic, the chickpeas. Or baby-butts, as my kids always called them. So I have made tobouli with red bulgar wheat and lemon juice and olive oil, garlic, parsley, mint, olives, salt, pepper, tomatoes and green pepper. I have also made humus with chick peas and tahini and lemon juice and garlic (are you seeing a trend here?) and soy sauce and more olives. And I cheated and bought a box of falafel mix and it is waiting for me to cook it in small patties in the skillet with olive oil spray. I have also made the taziki sauce with yogurt and cucumbers and oh yes, garlic and lemon juice.

The rain is coming down and my falafels are cooking in the iron skillet now. I have the smell of curry and lemon juice on my hands.

Life is sweet and lemony. Life is garlicky and spicy.
Life is good in Lloyd tonight. Life is good.

I Am So Confused

Went out to feed my chickens some fruit and some scratch corn this morning and as always, it was just a joy although Sam will no longer eat out of my hand. He looks at whatever I'm holding out to him with his fierce rooster eye and will not take whatever I'm offering.

It is as if he is saying, "Human! I will not deign to take food from your hand! Don't you know? I am Rooster, all powerful and never humbled!"

Okay, dude, I tell him. No problem. Just more for the hens.
He's not mean or anything and he certainly likes to examine what I'm holding out up close and personal but he just can't bring himself to accept my charity.

Anyway, I checked the laying boxes where I found another egg. I have been getting approximately one egg a day and they all look just like each other. They are glorious eggs with whites as thick as glue. The meringues I will make when I have an abundance of eggs!

Anyway, as you know, I have decided that Miss Red is my one and only layer. I have seen her on the nest and then I have seen eggs there. I have not caught her in the act and don't really want to invade her privacy like that anyway.
But here's the thing- there was a lovely little tail downy feather (see above) along with my egg this morning. And there is not one shred of red in it. At all. I took it out to the coop and compared it with Red's feathers and I can't see anything on her little red body that resembles this feather in color.

So hmmmm.

Do I have two chickens laying on alternate days? Is Miss Red really not the deliverer of these eggs?

Gosh. So many questions arise in raising chickens.

It is, I have to say, just a fascinating experience.

For those easily fascinated, anyway.

No RSVP needed.

I know I've already mentioned this, but if you haven't been over to Down Town Guy's new blog, I've Had Dreams Like That, you really should. He's been finding and posting the most wonderful images and the comments are hysterical. It's like a fun little party over there every day. And as much as I love to read blogs, it's kind of a joy to go to a place where there are only pictures. Interesting, thought-provoking, silly, sexy, artistic, crazy pictures.

Join the party. Comment away.

All I Know Is What I Think I Know and God Knows I Could Be Wrong

It's been a day, but a good one. Strange in some ways with unexpected turns of events. Now in my life, an unexpected turn of event could be finding an Ensure bottle amongst the beer cans by the side of the road when I pick up trash, which I did today, making me wonder if some nutritionally deficient elder delinquent is riding around and tossing his Ensure bottles out the window as he finishes them. If so, it's sort of funny but not really. It's only a half mile piece of road and I filled up two tall kitchen garbage bags and left some trash behind. There are things even I won't touch and I'll touch almost anything, including dead roaches to take to my chickens.

Note: Chickens prefer cockroaches to cashews. Yet another reason to love them.

I also found this:



I think we could entitle this one, She Don't Love Bubba Anymore.

Or maybe, "Percival, You Have Broken My Heart In Two."

Hard to say but it's safe to say that someone has torn this gentleman right out of the picture.

Then later on, when I went and took the trash I'd collected down to the trash place, the man who works there sometimes asked me if I was going to Chaires Crossroad. Well, I was not. Chaires Crossroad is about ten miles away. However, there was a young lady who was at the garbage place who needed a ride to Chaires Crossroad and I just felt so sorry for her that I said I'd take her.

She got in the car and I apologized for being dirty (I was, having been on garbage patrol and then doing some yardwork) but she said that was fine and we chatted a little as I drove and she told me that the man at the garbage place had told her it was too dangerous for her to walk down that road as a lot of black people lived there.

Being my usual calm and diplomatic self I said, "That old prejudiced son-of-a-bitch!" Okay. The term "mother-fucker" may have also been in there somewhere.

Turns out the girl herself was from Turkey and had been adopted by a black father and a white mother and she was mad at her father with whom she lives and was walking to her grandparent's house near Chaires Crossroad and I don't know if they are black or white but their name is White and I know this because it said so on their house. "The Whites."

Could I make this stuff up?

I told her I'd walked down that road many times and the only time I'd ever felt in danger was when I went down a dirt road where obviously insane white people live with their insane dogs and yes, I felt I could have been in danger when a rottweiler lunged at me and the man who owned it just stood there and looked at me with his beady eyes and did nothing while I was peeing in my pants and telling the dog to GO HOME!

Okay.

I got myself so worked up over the old guy at the dump I almost went and told him off but I didn't and I don't know if I should be proud of myself or ashamed.

Sometimes you just don't know what the right thing to do is. Can I get an amen on that?

Which leads us to the fact that in my over two years of blogging I think I've gotten one negative comment before the great Twitter Incident this past week and I've gotten a few since then. The last one is a woman who desperately wants to know when I think Lily's baby became a human and not just an "inconvenient blob of tissue."

Well, you know, I can't answer that question and I keep telling her that in the comments but she won't buy it. Obviously, she wants me to admit that Lily's baby has always been a human, from the moment the sperm hit the egg until now. Well, I just don't know. Like I told her, I don't think an acorn is a tree and I don't think a fertilized egg is a chicken, although there is certainly the potential there. I also told her that my opinion about abortion is that if you don't believe in them, you should not have one.

Otherwise, let each and every woman decide for herself.

But the question is a good one. When does an embryo or a fetus become a human being? And is it a sin to stop one from becoming a human being?

What I really think is that the potential for being a human isn't a human being. And I also think that either I don't really believe life is sacred or else I believe it's so sacred that to allow a human embryo to become a real-live baby human is such a huge and sacred thing that it should be considered carefully. Bringing a child into a world where there will not be enough to eat for it to develop properly or where there is no health care or where the mother knows she is not fit to raise a child because of emotional, psychological or other reasons doesn't seem like honoring life to me. Mother Nature always errs on the side of too much. You should see the number of acorns that drop out of the trees some years. If every one of those grew up to be an oak tree, I wouldn't have ground to walk on and let's face it- the ground couldn't support such a growth of trees.

Now I'm not equating oak trees with babies, exactly, although maybe I am. The acorns which manage to sprout and thrive and grow into trees are tough and persistent and the trees they grow into are sacred in my opinion.

What I'm saying here is that I believe that every baby born deserves the best life possible. That doesn't mean his or her parents need a fine house to live in and an entire wardrobe from Baby Gap, either. When my oldest ones were born we had squat and yet, they had plenty of everything they really needed, most of which was love.
And ideally, every child born would have enough of that to make anything else adequate.

But that's not the case. And if a woman knows that she is not able to raise a baby in the way a baby deserves to be raised, I believe she has the right to acknowledge that and terminate the pregnancy if she wants to.
That's that.

There are too many children on this earth who are not being raised in love or with enough food or attention to let them grow up to be normal human beings with normal problems. They grow up knowing nothing but anger and neglect and hunger and sexual and emotional and physical abuse and by the time they're adults they're probably either in jail, addicted, or raising another child the same way they were raised. Is this what we would call humanity?

Listen- I've heard plenty of survivors of sexual abuse say they wish they'd never been born and these were often professional white women. They wished they'd never been born because what they'd endured as children had so profoundly affected them that they knew they would never be happy or okay or even content. And that's just survivors of sexual abuse that I have happened to know.

What is humanity? What makes us human? Our DNA? Yeah. Sure.
But what else? Compassion and the ability to love. I think so. The right to be loved.

I think in a perfect world all children who have the tenacity and strength to make it through conception and development and birth would be born to a mother who recognized the Christ child in her baby, the Buddha she had birthed.

We don't live in a perfect world. There are women who give birth not through love but through a haze of despair, through the smoke of the crack pipe, through the inability to even know the huge responsibility that bearing a child entails.

That's what I think. That each and every child deserves a parent who wants it and who will welcome it and who will take care of it. And don't talk to me about adoption. I've yet to meet the mother who gave a baby away who is at peace with that decision to the point where she doesn't dream of that baby all the time, who doesn't mark birthdays with tears, who doesn't wonder in her heart what it would have been like if she could have kept her baby.

Look- this topic is too big for me. And who gives a shit what Ms. Moon thinks about it? Really. My opinion doesn't mean a damn thing. I have known women who were adamantly pro-choice who, finding themselves inconveniently pregnant, could not bring themselves to get an abortion and I have known women who were as adamantly pro-life who have had abortions.

This is the most private, most serious decision a woman can make and it is not up to me, or to you or to a law-maker to make it for her.

And finally, let me say that the cozy little blog world I have inhabited for over two years now suited me fine. I can deal with people who read my words and disagree with them. What I cannot deal with is people who read my words and want to change me.

I am fifty-five years old. I have done a few things. I have lived through some things. And I know what I believe. This is not to say I am closed-minded. I cherish other opinions. I have readers who have vastly different opinions than I do on religion and politics but they read me and I read them because I know they are thoughtful people who base their opinions on their own realities and who are not afraid to speak the truths they have come to learn.

That's what I'm thinking about tonight, September 13, 2009. I am not here to make you think the way I do and you are not there to make me think the way you do.

But bless all our hearts because we are all at least thinking. And that is part of what a human does. A part of what makes a human being.

At least to my mind. Which is the one guiding the fingers which write these words on a quiet night in Lloyd, Florida.

Shameless Plug For Local Business

Do you remember the whole story of when we thought we were going to open a pool hall? My God, the stress and sturm and drang and WORK. I would backlink to the whole story but hell if I can find it. That's sad.

But the very short story is that we own some property and Mr. Moon, a couple of years ago, built a small retail space and when the economy crashed, no one was renting and so he decided to build a pool hall there with the idea of the family running it. He got the idea from a guy who had approached him about renting space to open a pool hall but who never called back to follow up.

Mr. Moon, being Mr. Moon, used his frustration and anxiety about ending up in the poor house and started making plans and oh, you know, tearing out walls, getting permits, and so forth.

Then the guy came back and said, "You stole my idea!" and Mr. Moon said, "You never called."

And then the guy said he did want to do the project and Mr. Moon metaphorically handed him his sledge hammer and said, "You have my blessings."

So the bar is opened now and it's called Geo's. We stopped by there last night on our way home from the shower, Lily, Jason, Jessie, Mr. Moon and I. They've done a good job of it and especially with the tables which are the really nice expensive ones. It's non-smoking so you can bring your young'uns if you want. Lily and Jason live right down the road and they're excited to think about taking young Owen up in his stroller and playing a game of pool and drinking a beer and then walking home.

I think Lily is just really looking forward to drinking a beer.

Since Geo's success will mean continued rent payments to us and will keep me out of the pool hall business, I encourage you to go visit if you like to play pool.

It's in Moon Plaza which is on Mahan Drive about a half mile east of Capital Circle. On the left, if you're heading east.

Family friendly, the restrooms still smell of brand new paint, and gorgeous tables. And a jukebox. Don't forget the jukebox. And lots of TV's, of course.


Stop in. Maybe the Moons will be there. You never know. I'll be the one sitting in the corner with a draft, laughing at my kids.

Pictures From The Shower

First off, let me just say that that is a picture of Pig Candy. Bacon, brown sugar and other outrageously good stuff. If you want more info, just ask. I've been waiting for years for an excuse to make Pig Candy. I found it today. It shoudn't be legal. I'll probably never make it again.
It was that good.


Billy's Paw-Paw. I get a little butterfly-ey in the stomach when I talk to him. He's one hell of a handsome man. And he calls me May-re.
Sigh.


Billy's Maw-Maw. She has kept Paw-Paw happy and in line for about sixty thousand years. She's precious. Her favorite drink is rum and coke. The lady behind her is very, very pregnant.


Adda-Badda, unside down. She's Billy's sister's daughter and gave Billy the name Unca B. I love her wardrobe choice. Don't you?


Billy and Shayla opening presents with help. They're going to need a storage shed to keep all these presents in. Too many people love them.
Wait. That's not possible.


My son, Downtown Guy with a friend he's known since birth. Well, the little guy's birth, anyway.



Three of my babies. May had to work. We missed her tremendously.

But it was a good day. It was a delicious day.
And babies- babies here and babies to come.
My goodness but we're lucky here in North Florida.


P.S. Billy said that Shi-Shi is now at the top of the short list for a girl's name. I think he was just trying to make me happy.