Assumptions And Faith And Just Complete Assholiness

I have a terrible, horrible habit of assuming for no reason whatsoever that everyone I meet, if they seem reasonably intelligent, feels the same way I do about things.
Which would be oh, you know- politics, religion, the basics.
And it can be a mistake to think that way. A grave mistake.

No, I didn't make any major faux pas today but boy, I could have. It's so odd to have a group of people, many of them complete strangers, in my house. It's stressful, I have to tell you. First off, my damn dogs keep shitting in the house which is not only embarrassing, but it stinks. Damn fucking dogs. I mean, really. Really? Really.

Secondly, I feel like I have to apologize for everything. The stink, the dogs, the traffic in Lloyd when there's filming going on outside,

the electrical outlets which are non-functioning...you name it, I'm apologizing for it.

And it's also stressful because I'm afraid I might say or do something that would offend someone. I'm not as bad about this as I used to be but I'm still pretty worried about it. Luckily, there was a fifteen-year old girl here and so I kept my profane mouth in check for the most part which I was glad of later when one of the actors, a gentleman approximately my age, said that he dislikes profanity.

I did tell him that I love profanity and use it as much as possible but I hadn't actually been DOING that so it didn't seem as bad somehow. And he probably thought that I dislike profanity too, being surrounded in my house by about fifty images of the Virgin in every room. It's so easy to make assumptions. I could completely understand how someone could make quite a few about me from all those Virgins and also the little kid toys and the dog shit and the industrial-sized bottle of Tito's vodka in the kitchen, not to mention the chickens on the porch.
I am not sure what those assumptions would be, but there could BE some assumptions made.

The father of the fifteen year old stayed around for awhile to make sure his daughter wasn't in the hands of axe murders and child pornographers, I suppose, and then he took off to go to a meeting so I assume he assumed we were all right and that she would be relatively safe here. Then I came to find out that he's the husband of a fairly famous writer and now I'm REALLY wondering what he thought of my house and oh, boy. I don't know that I really care, but I do wonder.

But it was a pretty good day. I haven't been a corpse yet. That'll be tomorrow. Or Sunday. Two of the actors were talking and they had never worked with Freddy. They were asking why he did this and why he did that and I said, "Look. I've learned two things about Freddy. One, he is always behind schedule. Two, don't bother to question what he's doing. He always works it out."
And he does.
And whenever I'd get tense today, I'd just remember that and also remember that it's not my fault that there's traffic in Lloyd and I am not the center of the universe and I am just lending my house for this effort and no, it's not a perfect house in any way, but Freddy will use it beautifully and it will work out. I have faith in that. And having faith in that, I can just step back and go collect eggs or hang out and hold something or do whatever it is that needs doing and it's all okay. It's even sort of funny when Freddy says, "Quiet on the set!" and the dogs start barking frantically.
Probably not to Freddy but sort of to me.
When they left today they were on their way to film at the animal shelter and I begged Freddy to take the dogs with him. He refused. So if they shit and bark tomorrow it is HIS FAULT!

And I guess that's all I have to say about that. And I will try for two more days to not assume that people think like me or believe as I do and I will keep my mouth as clean as possible and I will also do the best job I can do pretending I am dead. I did pretend I was dead in Disconnected, but my head was down on a table and so my eyes were not involved.
We'll see. Freddy's a good director and he'll help me be a corpse. I don't just assume that, I have faith in it.

And once again, life has pulled me out of my despair and set me relatively to rights as I assumed it would, or at least distracted me enough for me to get my head out of my ass.

And then has nothing to do with anything but if Rick Santorum and the people who booed the soldier in the video here ever cross my path, you may have perfect faith that I will gladly inform them that they are not even remotely reasonably intelligent. If I was Rick Santorum's mother, I would whip his ass with a hairbrush and cut him out of my will. And those homophobic assholes who cheered him when he made that insane little speech should be ashamed of themselves.

Okay. That's all.

Have a good Friday night, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Blahg Post (Thanks, May)

I'm not sure I've ever felt as reticent about posting as I have the past two days.

Not that there's anything big going on at all. Everything is rolling along as life does here in Lloyd. Jessie made it in safely, Owen completely abandoned all pretense at wanting to have anything to do with me or his Bop and Jessie is now his Golden Girl, his Love, his Reason For Living. He sobbed when he left last night because Jessie would not "come on " with him.
I wonder what he'll do on Monday and Tuesday when he is in the presence of both of his Golden Aunts- Jessie AND May. The world may explode.

So yeah, there's that.
And Freddy and the gang of actors and crew will be here in two hours to begin filming and and I am playing a corpse. A corpse. I will probably suck at being a corpse. But who knows?

I feel as if I am blocked. Not just a "writer's block" but an everything-block. Every step I take has to be considered. It's not like the usual anxiety/depression. It's a different thing but related. It's scaring me. I sat on the porch for a few moments last night and thought about it. Somehow my thoughts got to the place where if, as a child, people tell you they love you but all around you are lies then how do you ever grow up to know the truth? How do you grow up to trust, not only other people but yourself, your own feelings?

If the Buddhists say that all is illusion, is this just a head start on enlightenment?
It certainly doesn't feel that way.

This should be the best time of my life. Everything is full and not only full, but full of love, of joy.

Well, you know me. I go through these times. The world whirls around me and I sit still, even as it appears I am moving, too. I sit still and I give the appearance of participation. I am not Buddha in the flowers. I am not the flowers, either.

I am just a lump of clay, imperfect and lumpy and I peer out of my lumpishness with eyes hooded against the brightness as well as the dark. I can only retreat so far. My life will not allow me to disappear. Eventually, I will be pulled out again. This is the way of it, the tides and the moons and the greening and the dimming and the brightening and the flowing and the never-ending beginning and ending and beginning again and I must merely trust in it all.
The process.

Be well, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

Words Fail Me

Believe it or not, I just do not feel like writing.
So. Pictures.
Jessie's here. Owen is enchanted.
All is well.

Gray Skies

It's raining. Finally and at last. It rained a little yesterday but not enough to fill the bird bath so this is good.

Oh lord. I feel so weary today. Didn't get to sleep until almost two. Twitchy hips and a new book by Brady Udall. The Lonely Polygamist. This is going to be a treat, this book. If you've never read his The Miracle Life Of Edgar Mint you've missed a good one. And in the library I found this new one and oh boy.

Georgia executed a man who may have been innocent. The bottom line for the death penalty for me is this- if it's wrong to kill, it's wrong to kill.

Period.

The end.

(I think it's wrong to kill.)

One of the reasons I am so weary is that in my dreams I had to clean an entire house and plan and present a play. Don't bother to try and figure that one out-I already have. But in the dream the house was one that hadn't been lived in for awhile and there was junk everywhere, just junk and more junk and old hamburger buns for god's sake and I couldn't find any detergent to wash the sheets or lightbulbs and people were coming to stay and the refrigerator was CAST IRON and there was an entire wardrobe of beautiful clothes that did not fit me because they were not mine and oh, no, we don't need to consult our Meanings Of Dreams for this one.

It's raining. I should be joyful.

I guess I am.

Jessie is coming home. I can hardly believe that. Birthdays are coming up. Time flies so quickly. There are hurricane lilies blooming everywhere. I helped kill a guy in Georgia with my tax dollars.

You know what? I get scared. So do you. Sometimes it all feels so heavy and so hard that it takes the strength of forty men and four hundred elephants just to get out of bed and do it and some people open their Bibles and try to find reason to live there and some people go to work and help one person at a time and find reason to live that way and some people get up because there is no alternative at all and there's a reason, good as any. Besides, eventually you have to pee.

I have no ending. There is no ending. It ends. Eventually. It ends.

Blue Eggs and Mice and Other Assorted Topics

This is the picture of something that is not there but which had been there the very microsecond before I snapped.
A little gray mouse, cowering and being very still in my presence after I had just gently swept it out of the mud room. He was still as...a mouse. Until Buster came up to investigate. At which point the mouse risked life and limb by jumping off the side of the deck onto the ground below and scurrying away.

I swear. It happened so fast that when I looked to see the image I had taken, I was surprised that no mouse was in the frame.
He was rather darling, I have to say. But I did not want him in my house. I am sure that his entire village lives in my house and he will probably scoot back in to rejoin them when my back is turned, but for now, he is outside. Probably still trembling.

Ah lah. Country life.

We heard that Baby's heartbeat again. Little Olive, or Beanette or Whoever he or she is. The heartbeat is on the faster side of normal which can indicate a girl but not always. Everything went fine with the appointment and I played with Owen because he is having NONE of this midwife stuff at the moment. He does not wish to discuss The Baby.
"Come on!" he says to me, waving his hand and arm in a beckoning motion. "Come on!" And he takes me back to his room to show me his lion, his fish, his puzzles. Meanwhile, I try to eavesdrop as Lily and the midwife talk.
It's quite odd, being the grandmother and not the mother or the midwife assistant. Odd, I tell you. But, well, there it is. Odd or not, I am the grandmother.
I do not think about childbirth that often these days. And yet, as soon as things start going along, I remember everything. For so many years, childbirth was my focus. And now....
Well.

Life goes on.

I am cleaning a bit tonight. Not that it needed it around here! Hahahahahahahahahaha!

This is going to be such a full weekend. Jessie is coming home tomorrow, I have Owen all afternoon and into the evening tomorrow and then Lily is coming out to get him and we'll have supper together. And there is fishing planned for Mr. Moon and daughters. And Freddy is going to be here filming all weekend and I think I have a part. I am not nearly as worried about that as I am ashamed to let people see the depths into which I have sunk, housekeeping-wise.

I mean. I swept a mouse out of the mudroom today.

Again- ah-lah. I believe this is some dark film and so perhaps the spider webs and dust will fit right in. I am hoping.

And I realize that I have not yet bought Owen's birthday presents. Oh my. I am the world's worst grandmother.
No I'm not.
When Kathleen and I went to Target last Friday, I looked at the tricycles but there are so many! Did you know you can buy a trike with a cupholder? God forbid your little one get thirsty while triking about the yard. I couldn't decide. I couldn't figure it out. I left the store with nothing more than a gym towel for Mr. Moon and a new lunch bag for him as well.

Poor Owen. Poor, pitiful child.
He did get a present at the Dollar Store today. A plastic horse. "Good boy," he tells the horse, just like he tells his riding horse in the library. "Good boy."

I suppose the floors are dry now and I should go put things back in their place. I have no idea where Mr. Moon is. He should be home by now. I am cooking him fish for his supper. And broccoli.

I better go get it started.

It's been a full day. It's been a good one.

And I got a blue egg. And the little mouse is under the house and all is very, very well.

A Mission, A Joy, A Purpose

I'm going to Lily's this morning because she has a midwife appointment at nine and I'm pretty excited. The appointment was actually supposed to be yesterday but there was a birth and Jason couldn't be there today for the rescheduled appointment and so I get to go and help with Owen and that means I get to hear The Baby's heartbeat again and nothing could make me happier.

Oh baby, baby!

It's not yet full light and the chickens are making a ruckus out there. They're still in the coop and I think I'm going to make them stay there today. My hens who lay blue eggs have not been laying in the hen house and dammit! I can't find the eggs and I want those blue eggs! Not that there's anything wrong with green and brown eggs but why should the 'coons get the blue ones? No reason at all. I have searched through the wooded areas and under the old van and under the old photo lab, lying on my belly with a flashlight but I can't swear they're not there. It's hard to see. Wily hens.
So today they're staying in. Hens are funny. There are six nests in that hen house and yet, they'll wait in line for the nest they want, impatient and pacing while another hen sits on the preferred nest, calm as a lotus flower, taking her own sweet time.

I love my hens.

Well, that's all the news I got today. The world shifted somewhat yesterday as Don't Ask, Don't Tell got rescinded. I am proud as hell of Obama for making that happen. I actually wish that no one joined the military, that we didn't even have a military at all, but you know me- old hippie tree hugger, peace and love lady. And dammit, if a person wants to serve the country they should be able to whether they love people of the opposite or same sex. I watched a video of a guy calling his old daddy in Alabama from Germany where he's stationed and he told his daddy he was gay. It was the hardest thing he'd ever done.
"Do you still love me?"
"Yes, son, I do. And I'm proud of you."

Damn.

The world shifts and the truth comes out and it's okay and the less lies, the better.

I better go get ready to drive to town. Speaking of 'coons, I think one must have dragged the garbage off the kitchen porch where it was waiting to go to the dump place and I have to deal with that. Damn 'coons. Getting in my garbage, stealing my blue eggs.

Well, raccoons are critters who have a mission in life and a purpose and a need and sometimes that all gets in the way of my mission, purpose and need, or at least they annoy the shit out of me. It annoys the chickens when I won't let them out into the world, too.

We shall all persevere.

And I will get to hear The Baby's heartbeat and remember what exactly IS important and that will be grand.

Home Birth

I am having one of those emotional days. I talked to Lis on the phone and cried. I heard an interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross talking to Maurice Sendak and I cried and cried and cried.
I feel so tender and I am not sure why.
ANYWAY.
Jo, our Infantasia Woman, posted a video of a home birth today. The gist of it is that Daddy is far away in Afghanistan when the baby is born and that breaks my heart. But, the pictures are so beautiful and if you've never been to a home birth and wondered what one is like, here you go. The faces the woman wears throughout her labor and afterwards are the faces that I have seen hundreds of women wear as they went through their labors and then held their babies in their arms.
I have worn them myself. I am sure that an experienced nurse or midwife could look at just the mother's face and know almost exactly where in her labor she was.

In my tender state of mind, I am wishing fervently that all women could give birth so simply with so much love surrounding them and I wish that all of those women's partners could be with them as they deliver life onto this planet instead of being somewhere far away where their lives and others are threatened by war.

Home is a beautiful place to be and sometimes the very best place to be and war never, ever is.

Thanks, Jo.



From YouTube:

Uploaded by TheLizaiza on Sep 16, 2011

Thank you to my husband and all the soldiers missing such important things as the birth of your baby while deployed. Thank you to Jessica Strom Photography http://jessicastrom.net for the beautiful pictures that enabled me to share these moments with him. And thank you to my wonderful family for being there for me. I couldn't have done it without you.

For Real

If you click on that picture you will go to the current issue of Far Away Literary Magazine.
I am in it and so is our dear Maggie May.

Silverfinofhope found me and asked if she could reprint a post of mine in the magazine and of course, I said yes. I was a bit surprised. I didn't think it was my best post by any means but it fit in with the theme, I suppose, which is "For Real" and I am honored.

So. There is that this morning and there is a gray sky overhead with 50% chance of rain and oh, make it rain, please. For real.

I can think of one million things I should do today. Or at least ten. I don't know. It's one of those days when I feel like I'm holding on to the edge of the dock, afraid to let go and really, the water is only up to my knees if I'd just stand up and realize that. Know what I mean?
I'm drowning!
Oh wait. No I'm not. Just out of bananas.

I talked to Jessie last night. She's coming home on Thursday. Hurray, hurray, hurray! We had a good talk and giggled about lots of things including men and sex and babies and bands who come and stay at your house. I highly recommend fourth children. By the time you have your fourth, you're pretty much okay with not pretending to be a Mother Goddess, you are just an old woman who is comfortable in her skin.

I also talked to Mr. Moon. The car biz, for the moment, has picked up. Owen woke up just in time from a nap yesterday to say good-bye to his grandfather who was leaving to to go auction. Owen was in an excellent mood and as Mr. Moon explained that he was going out of town to buy cars, Owen nodded vigorously and said, "Nice!" He loves the idea of cars. He loves cars. He frequently wants to just go sit in my car and pretend to drive. He turns on all the switches he can find to turn on and tells me where we're going. I do not find this as enchanting an activity as he does and sometimes I just read a magazine while he drives me. The chickens sometimes try to get in the car as we are on our imaginary journey. Sometimes they do.

Wait. What was I talking about? Oh yes. Mr. Moon called me. He says he wants to take me somewhere. He knows that means Cozumel for me. I spent hours on the internet, looking at flights, hotels.
This morning I woke up and thought, Shit, we should go someplace else. Everybody says so.
I don't know. I do not know. Being the kind of woman who finds it difficult to go fifteen miles away to buy bananas, the thought of crossing an actual ocean to visit a place where I know nothing or no one is, well, not pleasing. Terrifying.
My feet know the sidewalks of Cozumel. My feet. My heart does too.
All I really want to do is be with that man someplace beautiful and far-enough-away where the food is good and there are balconies to watch sunsets over water.

Well.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell ends today.
Thank-you, Obama. I am very, very happy about this. We have far to go, but we have come far. When I was a kid, no one admitted to being homosexual in any aspect of life except, oh, maybe the baths but I didn't know about them. Now you can put a picture of your true love, even if he or she is of the same sex, out in the open for all to see.

For real.

The more ways love can show its true face, the better. I think that's how I am going to think today.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon

Who Knew? Not Me.

Quiet. Shhh. Do you hear it?
Mr. Moon is off to the auction and Owen is off to home with his daddy.
And I am here alone.

Shhh.

Owen has learned to say this with his finger on his lips. We started it the other day when we were checking for eggs from the trap doors which Mr. Moon cleverly built behind the nests. "Let's not scare the hen," I said, and demonstrated the shhhh. He had never seen the nests from that vantage point and was enchanted. We could spy on the hens without them knowing we were there. It was, oh, you know, amaiging.

So much is amazing in Owen's world at the age of almost-two. Painting, of course, and eggs and the mule next door which he now insists is a horse and he neighs passionately to demonstrate. We gave her a carrot today, the mule, and it is hard to explain that a mule, although she may look a great deal like a horse, is actually not one. Entirely.

He asked for Pearl again today. We were outside and he said, "Pearl?"
"She's gone, honey," I said sadly. "She is gone."
He said, "Trees?" and he pointed up.
"Do you think she's in a tree?" I asked.
"Uh-huh. Eggs. Nest."
Pearl has a nest in the trees now and she has eggs?"
"Uh-huh!"

Well. Who knows? Not me.
Maybe.

He's very into pretending now. And also, he is vastly interested in animals. Of all sorts. He told me this afternoon that he'd heard a lion on the back porch. We went out to investigate. He changed his story, though, to tell me that there had been an elephant and he wanted to go into the back yard to find it. "Where at?" he asked me. We went out to look but sadly, did not find it. I'm sure we must have just missed it, though.

Last night I ended up making a sort of fish pie/quiche thing with the leftover grilled grouper. It turned out rather well and I was even proud of my pie crust, which I do not usually make because I suck at it. But this one was good and I filled it with leftover spinach and rice and red peppers and the grouper and a little cheese and some eggs mixed up with milk and a few other things. I baked it and it was just about perfect. The grouper ended up tasting almost like crab- sweet and smokey and just fine. I gave Jason a bite to try before he left today and Owen wanted some. I gave him a little. He ate it and wanted more. He ended up eating almost half an entire piece and I gave Jason another piece to take home for Owen's supper if he wants it. Now what sort of a child that age likes fish pie?
Owen does.
It made me giggle. What a strange and wonderful little boy, sitting at the kitchen counter, eating fish pie with spinach and red peppers and saying, "More!"

Oh, it's so quiet. Well, the squirrels are chasing each other around the pecan tree next to the porch, rattling the bark with their toenails. Owen and I watched them today, too. "There are a lot of animals at Mer-Mer's house, aren't there?" I asked him.
"Uh-huh!" he agreed.
I keep thinking about determined I was to buy this house and what an uphill slog it was, trying to convince Mr. Moon. I had no ideas about chickens or grandchildren either one at that point, but I sure knew I wanted the house. It was like when I bought a rocking chair and brought it home and showed it to my husband. "You know what you bought, don't you?" he asked me. "What?" "A grandmother chair."
It wasn't long after that that Lily became pregnant with Owen.

It's all like a dream, somehow. You walk into a house on a cold, rainy winter day and it calls to you and you don't have the slightest idea why except, well, it's beautiful, and you fall in love so hard that there's no way to deny your want which has become like a need.
Do grandmothers nest?
I wonder.

It feels like it. Like to everything there is a season, you know? And it was my season to create some sort of magical place for grandchildren with giant trees and bamboo and flowers and a garden and all sorts of animals, both wild and domestic. With porches and closets and stairs that go up to heaven (Jessie's room) and an entire room full of books, many at child's reach, to pull out and look at. With a kitchen with shelves built seemingly just for toys. With a bedroom where naps are taken and stories are told and there is always a grandparent within reach. With rocking chairs everywhere, inside and out. Where lions roar on the porch and elephants slip into the backyard and there are trees just the right size to climb and enough quiet to allow for all of this to occur in. And to make it just that much more exciting when the train goes by, right behind the chicken coop where the train can safely be watched from a grandmother's hip. With a garage filled with man-things. Boats and four-wheelers and tools and all of the things that a grandfather knows how to use.

My god. I am lucky. And if I can share this luck, this incredible fortune, with small people who are the direct result of my life and my love, then I am truly the luckiest woman in the world.
And I fucking know it.

And I even have the time and quiet (shhhh) and solitude to revel in it all.

If this is what it means to grow old, I will gladly take it. Even with the wrinkles and pains and aches and worries and cares. I will take it. Because all of it is the direct result of my life and my love.

Amen, y'all. That's what's in my heart tonight. Amen.

Everybody Must Get Stoned

It's just too beautiful this morning and my dreams (oh shit- these dreams) were so wearying and I found myself unable to sleep for hours at a time (or was it moments?) the negative thoughts just racing through my head telling me you're bad, you're bad, you're so bad. You're no good, etc. I kept thinking about this scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm in which Larry gets some pot for his father for medicinal reasons and then in true Larry fashion, somehow picks up a hooker on the way and then they all get stoned and well...this is why I don't get stoned. The four a.m. thoughts are bad enough, please- don't ask me to throw weed in the mix.
But enough about me. Spend two minutes watching this and let's all get over it and realize that we're human, we're human, we're funny little critters.

Done And Dirty

I am done. I weeded all fucking day. It was a chore. Not fun, but a chore. I got nothing spiritually rewarding from it AT ALL. All I got was dirty. And I didn't even finish it. And I haven't planted one damn thing.
So what?
Who cares?
Not me.

My knees hurt and so does my right-hand index finger from poking it into the dirt, even with gloves on. My hips hurt too. Right now, I feel that the garden does not love me and I am not completely in love with it either. I wish I had a garden with gnomes hiding behind rocks and a small pond in it for the toads. One time I made a tiny pond from a buried half-whiskey barrel in a garden. It was awesome. I had like one water lily in it. My neighbor caught a crawfish and came over and put it in my whiskey-barrel pond. Maybe I need another one of those. And some gnomes. And some Buddha heads and a bath-tub madonna and enough stuff so that no weeds would grow. Okay, no plants would grow either, besides the one water lily but so what? I could drag a lounge chair out there and put up an umbrella beside the pond with the water lily in it and the toads and I could hang with the Buddha and the gnomes and the madonna.

Fuck weeding.

And yes. I fucking mulch.

Okay. I'll feel differently later.

It's been an odd Sunday all the way around. I did not make pancakes this morning. Mr. Moon said something like, "I think I'll get out in the garden before it gets hot," and looked at me rather expectantly.
"Well," I said, "I do not feel like either making a big breakfast or eating one." And so I did not. Mr. Moon had to eat Cheerios. He does not like any cereal that doesn't have an "o" in it. I had yogurt and a peach and some almonds. That was fine. I did make him a nice chicken sandwich later though so I guess I won't go to hell.

Lily called me. She was crying. "Baby, what's wrong?"
Turns out that she and Jason and Owen were about a mile from their house and a Florida Highway Patrol Officer of an age approximately old enough to buy a legal beer pulled them over. They were mystified. Jason had broken no rules of the road at all. The officer proceed to give Jason a citation for not having his seat belt on. The crazy thing was- he did have it on. Not only when the FHP dude got to the car but the entire time he'd been driving. And the officer wouldn't even discuss the possibility that he could have been wrong and he didn't give Jason a warning, no, he gave Jason a ticket for $115 and said that his job was not to argue with them on the side of the road and if they didn't agree with the ticket, he would explain it in court.
Like Lily and Jason have either the money to pay the ticket or the time to go to court to fight something which was a blatant misuse of stupid-cop power. They drive a minivan for god's sake! Dark green!
Oh for christ's sake. Don't upset or piss off my pregnant daughter! Do not do it! She called her daddy too and he was in the woods and it was a bad connection and all he could hear was her crying and he thought...well, you know where the mind can go when you have a pregnant daughter and a grandson and the daughter is wailing.

So when he got home from the woods I was in the kitchen, and I told him that I was DONE gardening for the day and that was that and that I'd just come in and he looked at me and said, "Well, what did you DO?" because I was doing that tiny picky weeding and it takes forever and it doesn't look like I did shit even though it took me hours and hours to do that which does not look like I did shit and he said, "So you didn't mulch as you weeded?"
And I just looked at him with that look and he said, "Do you love me?"
And I said, "Yes."

That's how it goes when you're old. You don't get into fights, you just go straight for the forgiveness because by the time you're our age you know it ain't worth it and the other one knows that when you say you've done all you can do, it's the truth, plus, she might be washing a knife there, standing at the sink and who knows? Women are odd creatures. They cry and they wail and they give you that look and they are good with knives and they keep them sharp.
So he asked me if he could kiss me and I said yes and he did and then he went off to work in the garden.

Sometimes this is how it is on a Sunday. It is neither sunny nor particularly cloudy, it is not hot and yet not really cool either. Sometimes there are neither pancakes nor bacon. Sometimes you're driving along with your sleeping son in the back seat of your mommy-van and a man with a gun on his hip gives you a ticket for something you did not do. Or gives you a ticket for not-doing something which you DID do.

I have leftover fish in the refrigerator and I have to come up with an idea for our supper which incorporates that. I do not have a lot of hope for grand success. I should have made Anne-Helene teach me to make Norwegian Fish Dish but I did not and I have a feeling it contained more cream and cheese than I would feel comfortable using.
But damn, it was good.
I mean really, really good.

Oh well.

None of this is earth-shattering in the least and I have enjoyed watching Elvis today as he ran to the hen house every time one of the sister-wives laid an egg and I could almost imagine him thinking as he ran, "Damn! Can't I get ONE MOMENT'S PEACE AROUND HERE?" I also saw him get some off Ms. Mabel, that poor old favorite. At least he doesn't ignore the old wives in favor of the new, although Mabel probably wishes he would.

But that's what's happened today on a Sunday at the Church of the Batshit Crazy and I expect the death gases to start arising from under the floor again at any moment. I think the Emmy's are on tonight. Do I care? I'm not sure. Probably not. But it's better than football.

If you just started reading this blog, please forgive me because you're probably clueless. If you have been reading for awhile, forgive me because you've surely heard all of this before.

Either way, I'm just glad you're here and lucky you, I am done.

Sunday

The clothes are hanging on the line like prayer flags and I had the strangest and most realistic dream that a woman and her family came to help me out when the new grandbaby was born but I ended up taking care of the family and I finally told the mother, "Look, you are not helping me and it was so sweet of you to come but honestly, you need to go home now."

I was assertive, not aggressive. I know this because back when I did my clinicals at Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, I attended one of the staff-run classes every week on assertiveness versus aggression and I know the difference.

Oh my god. Those classes were a joke. They must have been state-mandated or something.
Cuckoo's Nest had nothing on this place except that there was no chance, no chance at all for escape once you were in there. Still, I have fond memories of some of the patients. "My" patient, for example. "Mawee," she would say, "I have pwobwems."

She did. Oh, she did indeed and I reported some of them to the Powers That Be. The staff-induced problems, but I doubt seriously anything was ever done about them and she's no doubt dead by now or at least in the brain.

Sunday morning. Time to get in the garden. Winter's garden is a good one and we shall start it today. The lettuces!


Oh, I love the lettuces. It will be good to get in the dirt because I am wavering this morning between the me of the weary, maddening heart and the me of the I'm-not-so-bad and perhaps the dirt will tip the balance in my brain.

One can only hope.

It May Have Been...

George Carlin.
And if so, this just goes to show you how highly I think of myself.

Correction

Okay. I just googled "religion is like a penis" and I think I may not have written that. I must have just read it somewhere.
Damn. I wish I had written it, though.
And if I DID- I should be rich.

According To Owen

Painting is amaging!

Paint water tastes pretty good too. And it's fun to spit.

Snapshot, Saturday Morning In Lloyd, Florida

So Mr. Moon made it home with grouper.

The dead thing seems to have cooled off a little, thus not emitting noxious gasses.

I made my own chocolate.

Yeah. I can do that.
When you live in Lloyd, you better be able to make your own lots-of-stuff.

So the paper this morning from Tallahassee has a headline in font about two inches tall proclaiming Game On! Good lord but I live in Football World. I think Tallahassee is playing Oklahoma and if I know that, then there is no way not to know it. Hank just told me yesterday that there is a stained glass of Bobby Bowden (the former and very famous FSU football coach) hanging at the stadium which is the largest secular piece of stained glass in the country. I was amazed. How could I not know this?
"How big is it?" I asked him.
"Huge."
"As big as that wall?"
"Significantly larger."

Holy Bobby!

They've even brought in Larry The Cable Guy for entertainment this weekend. ("Larry the Cable Guy Gits-R-Done at Civic Center")

Need I say more?

Well, if I stay in Lloyd, which I plan to do, this will not affect me at all. I'd rather eat acorns than go to Tallahassee, fight the traffic and try to get a table at a restaurant this weekend. I'd rather dig a ditch than have to get in that mess.

I told Mr. Moon that I had written a very sweet poem about him yesterday on the blog. He said something completely profane and hysterical which I threatened to put on today's post. Man, I would quote him but I'm pretty sure he really would not like that. I made him a huge egg and cheese sandwich for his breakfast. All he ate yesterday was oatmeal cookies (that I MADE for him- okay?) and a half of a sandwich and he battled a shark on the line in an epic battle of man vs. shark and he needed some protein this morning. He's about to go out there and clean the boat and Jason's coming to help and bringing Owen. Yay! Owen's coming!

Okay. Saturday morning. It's cooler today. Twenty miles west of here, chaos is ensuing and people are marinating ribs and filling coolers and praying to The Football Gods and driving around with little whipping flags on their cars and I dreamed last night that I was having a party here and there were literally HUNDREDS of people standing around and I had not served them any food or drink and I HAD no food or drink, and Mr. Moon was watching a FOOTBALL GAME on the TV and it was just a mess. Just a big ol' mess and I couldn't figure out what to wear, either.

I just talked to Lis on the phone and told her about the dream. She said, "That was a nightmare!" It was, too. But it sure was fun talking to Lis. We reminisced about the fabulous things we used to do in St. Augustine- get Mr. Randy haircuts and even manicures and shop and have drinks and dinner out and buy gorgeous garb of velvet and wear make-up and oh, oh, oh!
Oh my.
We agreed to do another trip like that soon. We are going to call it the We Have A Dream tour. I don't know if we'll actually do it but just talking about it was almost as good.

Okay. One more thing. On Mr. Shife's blog, which is here, he linked to a web site here, and he quoted a few of the things he'd found there and one of them was this:

Religion is like a penis. It's fine to have one and it's fine to be proud of it, but please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around... and PLEASE don't try to shove it down my child's throat.

Didn't I fucking write that? Do any of you remember? I swear, I think I wrote that.

Oh well. Whatever.

Happy Saturday, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon

And Yet, Another Problem

GFD.
Something has now died in or under my library.
Are you effing kidding me?


(Translation: God fucking damn. Something has now died in or under my library. Are you fucking kidding me?)

A Big Problem

G. D. I have no chocolate in this house.
WTF?

Widow's Walk

Like last night at this time, the sky to the west is dark and ominous and I expect no more out of it than we got yesterday- thunder and early dark and enough rain to wet the ground and smell like rain, tempting us to believe that maybe...oh, maybe.

Mr. Moon is out fishing and I do not know when to expect him in. It is always a bit of a worry when he is in the woods or on the water. He is not alone, though. Jason and our across the street neighbor are with him and I hope they come home with grouper- more precious than gold and as delicious as any fish in the sea.
I am thinking though, of how wives of old handled it- that letting go of their men, sometimes for months and even years, as they set sail or took off across continents, seeking new lands, whales, cargo, the Fountain of Youth, whatever it is that men have always taken off to search for.
Adventure, money, treasure, fame, fortune, bounty, food, gold, silver, souls to save, peoples to conquer.
Themselves.

In Apalachicola, the old houses are stately and fine and they all have widow's walks and I do not know if women actually went up those steps through the Florida heat to search the bay for signs of ships coming in. Maybe they did, or maybe the ocean-going husbands just thought they did, and so built those places for their dream wives to constantly scan the horizon for their particular vessels, their own fantasies intact as they went away and left their women behind to be too busy tending children and home and worrying themselves to the bone to go stand and look at the damn ocean.

Who knows?
Not me.

Now we have cell phones and no need for widow's walks but it is a romantic idea.

I feel disoriented this evening. Very unsettled and strange. I took Mother to another doctor. I told him, in her presence, the signs of dementia I have seen in her. "How awkward," I said, as I gingerly began to list the repeating, forgetting, inability to cook or pay bills or read or play bridge or do needlework or, or, or...
The disorientation. Hers, not mine. It was her appointment, after all.
Mother nodded in agreement at everything I said and she said, "It's a natural part of aging," and the doctor (his name is Joe) agreed. He said, "You have very good insight," over and over to her.
I hope that made her feel better. I felt like Judas but the insurance company will not pay for her care if she doesn't need it. Officially. With forms filled out. Officially. And he asked me. Joe asked me. I told him.

Kathleen and I went to a nursery and it was so fine on a fall day to walk around and fall in love with this plant, with that one. To say, "What the fuck?" and take a chance on another tomato, half price, or a cucumber. To buy mustard greens and broccoli plants and cabbage and and more collards to replace the ones my chickens ate. To look through seed packets, to laugh at all the silly different mixes of lettuces (gourmet this and micro that and spicy this and baby that). I bought two types of arugula seeds. Wild and, well, I guess not wild.
"Rocket," it is also called. We shall be eating rocket. That I am almost sure of.

We went to lunch with Hank, we saw May. It was good, it was great, it was wonderful and all the while, I felt as if I were someone else. I didn't want to feel that way. I wanted to be THERE with people I love, doing things I love, which is what I was doing. Why does my mind go off like that, this disassociation? Because that is what it is. Disassociation.
I am no shrink but I know a thing or two.

Kathleen and I went to Target. She needed a yoga mat and we got that and we mourned the passing of the Target Garden Center and I bought Mr. Moon a new lunchbox and new soap and I bought Owen the cheapest set of watercolors and a pad of paper and I can't wait to show him the magic of dip-brush-in-water, then-in-paint, stroke-paper-with-color. We looked at finger paint but somehow, I am not ready for that. He probably is, but I am not.

We parted in the parking lot and I hope that I was there enough for that girl, that dear friend of mine, Kathleen, whom I love so much but I know she knew I wasn't all there. I hope she can understand that it wasn't about her, it wasn't even about anything that I can understand. Maybe tomorrow I'll get it. Today I am not sure. It is almost as if my essence has taken off for worlds unknown and left me here behind.

I came home and got in the dirt but I could not find myself even there.

Well. Perhaps I need a widow's walk of my own to pace and scan the horizon but I don't think so. I don't think the strongest telescope or the highest vantage point could help me sometimes.

I just have to be patient, like a woman with children clinging to her skirts, crying and asking for their daddy.
I just have to have faith that like that old sea merchant, my consciousness will come sailing back. "Hey," I'll say, "What do you have for me? What have you seen? What have you learned?"

"Come here," my consciousness will say. "Lay down with me and let me tell you."

And hopefully tomorrow, I (all of me) will cook grouper. And it will be good.

Friday Morning Poem About Marriage

Marry the one who is happy.
Marry the one who is gay.
Marry the one who knows how to work
Marry the one who can play.

Marry the one who can look at you
And see the heart you hide deep inside
Show that one the heart you have
Open it fully and wide.

Marry the one who is strong for you.
Marry the one who can cry.
Marry the one will not give up.
Marry the one who will try.

Marry the one with a safe boat
Don't worry so much 'bout the flash.
Give your heart to the one who knows richness
Doesn't always involve lots of cash.

Marry the one who can fix things
Whether houses or cars or pie shells.
Marry the one who with a tool belt
Holding hammer and flowers and nails.

Marry the one who loves children
Marry the one with sweet eyes.
Marry the one who is gentle.
Marry the one who lives without lies.

Marry the one you never dreamed
Would be the one to show up at your door.
Marry a friend and a lover.
Then learn how to love that one more.