Let's Make Pickles!

I started canning food just about the same time I started attending home births and I came to find there are common threads.

Both are serious business and not to be taken lightly. This seems more obvious when it comes to birth than to canning but there are boiling hot liquids involved in canning and also, if you don't do it right, just as in childbirth, someone can die.

Things have to be done correctly, things have to be sterilized. And if you ever need to know how to sterilize things at home in preparation for a home birth, I can tell you how.

But that's not today's subject. Today's subject is the fourteen day pickle and how you make it.

First disclaimer: The making of pickles, especially the canning part of the process, must be undertaken seriously and soberly. This is not the time to be drinking beer or smokin' a big fattie. (Can you believe I said that? I'm cracking myself up tonight.) But really, it's not. Not only do you not want to spill boiling liquid on yourself or anyone else, you do not want to give anyone Botulism. Honestly, I have never personally met anyone who got sick from eating home-canned food but why risk it? As with birthing babies, safety and health first.
Always. No exceptions.



Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 gallons cucumbers sliced into chunks
2 cups salt, non-iodized (like pickling salt)
2 Tablespoons Alum (powdered)
5 pints Apple Cider Vinegar, boiling hot
9 cups sugar (not kidding, yeah, nine)
1/2 oz. celery seed
2 cinnamon sticks
5 Tablespoons pickling spice

Directions:

In a clean stone (glass or ceramic) jar (And I use a crock that my grandmother left me or else one I bought in an antique store and when I say clean, I mean CLEAN. Use bleach if necessary to get that sucker clean) put 2 gallons of cucumbers, washed and sliced into chunks. They must be sliced or else they will shrivel and please- who wants shriveled pickles? Shrinkage is going to occur but let's try and keep it to a minimum.
Dissolve the salt in one gallon of boiling water. Pour this over the cucumbers in their crock. Cover the pickles and weight the cover down. I use a plate over the cukes with a pyrex bowl on top with a big can of tomatoes in it. Cover that, after it has cooled a bit, with saran wrap or something to keep the flies out.
Let stand for one week. Mark it on the calendar because you're going to forget.

On the eighth day, drain the pickles. (Please note- whenever I say "drain" I mean, take your very clean hands and pick up the pickles, letting the juice run back into the crock between your fingers. That crock is heavy and this seems the easiest way to me. I put the drained pickles into a huge bowl while I am finishing the rest of the process.) If you see some mold, do not worry and do not throw the whole thing out. I believe this is part of the process. Come on- grow up. A little mold never hurt anyone. Think sauerkraut and blue cheese.
Pour one gallon of boiling water over the drained pickles which you have put back into the crock. Let stand for twenty-four hours.

On the ninth day (and it only took God six days to create the universe, but he's God and We're not), drain the pickles again. Dissolve the alum (and I do not know what alum is and I do not want to because it can't be good. This is what perks up the pickles and makes them crispy- think pickle Viagra) in one gallon of boiling water and pour that over the pickles. Let stand for another twenty-four hours.

On the tenth day, prepare the magic pickling elixir. Combine the boiling vinegar with six cups of the sugar. Only six! You have to add the sugar gradually or something terrible will happen. I don't know what. But you don't want to fuck it up at this point, right? When dissolved, add the celery seed and cinnamon sticks and pickling spice. Some people bag all that stuff up so it doesn't go into the final product but I like to see all my spices floating around. If you don't, tie them up in cheesecloth.



Drain the pickles and pour the boiling elixir over them.

On the twelfth and thirteenth days, drain the pickles, saving the liquid. Heat the liquid up again, dissolving one cup of sugar in it both days. Pour back over the pickles.

On the fourteenth day, drain the pickles, saving the liquid. Pack the pickles into sterilized jars. Heat the liquid and dissolve one more cup of sugar (yes, these are not really pickles, they are cucumber candy- let's face it) in it. Pour the sweetened liquid over the pickles and seal jars.

Now. I actually process my pickles, due to my paranoia about Botulism. And let's talk about sterilization here.
To can food, you really need a canning kettle. Here is mine with some freshly sterilized jars in the rack which comes with the kettle:


And the canning kettle is only good for high-acid foods like tomatoes and pickles. If you are going to can something like green beans, you need a pressure canner.

You are also going to need a jar-lifter too. It looks like this:



And in action, it looks like this:


Note: Although the jar lifter looks like something you might use at a birth, IT IS NOT! It is only used for jar lifting.

So to sterilize your jars, you need to wash them in clean soapy water and rinse them well. Then put them in the canning kettle in their neat little wire slots and fill the kettle with water to a level about two inches over the jars. If you put the jars in with water already in them, you will eliminate that floating-jars problem.
Put the canning kettle on the biggest burner you have, put the cover on it, and turn that sucker up to high. When the water comes to a boil, time it for ten minutes and then turn the burner off, carefully lift up the wire rack, drain the jars (using the jar lifter!) and put the jars on a piece of newspaper. While you are doing this, wash the jar lids and rings and put them in a pan with water to cover. Bring to a boil, turn the burner off and leave them in the pan until ready to use.



Pack your pickles (that sounds rather racy, doesn't it?) into the clean, hot jars. Pour your hot liquid (in this case, the elixir) to cover the pickles. Wipe off the tops of the jars with a clean cloth. Put the sterilized lids on the jars and screw your bands on.
Put the jars back into the canning kettle, bring back to a boil, and let boil for ten more minutes.

There. You are done. You will bring those jars out of the kettle and back onto the newspaper and you will hear the lids pop, which is the sound of success. If a lid does not pop- no worries. Put that jar into the refrigerator and that will be the first jar you eat.


This recipe made me eleven pints of beautiful pickles. There they are. I can't tell you how happy I am to have them.

One more bit of advice: for all things canned, consult your Ball Blue Book.


This was your great grandmother's canning bible and it will not fail you.

And one more disclaimer: Do not eat one of these pickles if you are diabetic. Seriously. Nine cups of sugar in one gallon of vinegar? Need I say more?

And I know this sounds like a lot of work but if you get your canning kettle and your jar lifter and your jars, you will be all set for the rest of your life.
Also, the canning kettle can double as a little play pool if filled with water for your toddler.

Enjoy. I know I will.

Tell Me, Please.

I am having a blog problem, y'all.
It's a problem of time.
Like right now, this very second, I am just back from town where I did several things including buying a duplex (long story) and finding a bathing suit. I did it! I found my second bathing suit! And I was so used to hitting my head with that brick that it hardly hurt at all.
Found this one at TJ Maxx and it is black and it is fine except that it's missing the optional strap thingee and since it won't be optional for me, I have to go out and find one but May says if I go to Victoria's Secret and tell them that I lost the strap to my strapless bra, they'll give me one.

Anyway, la-di-dah and so forth. It is now four o'clock in the afternoon, I have been running around since seven thirty this morning, Mr. Moon has left to go out of town, I need to muck out the chicken coops, plant some okra (no, I still haven't done that), finish tidying up a few more cabinets in the kitchen, do something about that mess on top of the refrigerator, and today is the day I jar up the fourteen day sweet pickles. I have the jars in the water bath right now for the sterilization process. I have been taking pictures as I've gone along with this whole pickle-making exercise and will be posting a how-to thing on it later. Maybe even tonight! Who knows?

But here's the deal- there are eighteen unread blog posts in my google reader, I have not responded to one of the comments I've been left today and you KNOW I always respond to every one of them and if I forget one, please forgive me, it was out of error, not intent.
I am behind! Very much behind!

But if I don't do the things I need to do around here because I'm always blogging and reading blogs, I'll be out of a job because what would I have to blog about if I didn't have a life? Well, that's assuming I do have a life, which I sort of do, but if I don't get out there and take care of things I won't. You know what I mean.

So that's my dilemma- how do you take care of your blog-life while maintaining your "real life" or RL as they say in the blog biz? Like- Aunt Becky, how do you do this? AND YOU HAVE THREE KIDS, ONE OF WHOM IS AN INFANT! You must read about five thousand blogs a day and you always leave such sweet comments. And you blog every day! Despite the name of your blog, I sincerely doubt you are drinking much of anything except for Red Bulls in order to get all of this done. Do you eat? Do you sleep?

So okay. I have to go now. I forgot to mention the trash needs taking to the trash place which means I have to put on a bra. Yes, I wear a bra to go to the DUMP because the last time I went and decided that no, that old man who hangs out as the dump caretaker doesn't care whether or not I wear a bra, I ran into a guy I know and he hugged me! and I wasn't wearing a bra and OMG!!!! (It was Brad, Kids. Remember Brad? "We cut your grass, we trim your bush?" He is now the daddy of a one-year old girl whom he is raising on his own with the help of his grandma, the preacher, and his twin brother! Brad has a twin brother!)
Well. Life in Lloyd.

But seriously- any answers on how to maintain a blog and a polite and mannerly response and comment life while still doing things like mucking chicken pens and planting okra?
Helpful hints appreciated.

Love you truly....Ms. Moon

P.S. Please don't stop leaving comments in order to free up my time. I live and die by the comments. Really.

And If Only Bon-Bons Were Involved, It Would Be Perfect

Kathleen was telling me the other day about a woman she'd known who, around the age of retirement, told her husband that she was retiring, which meant that there would no longer be any cooking going on and no housecleaning either, so he might as well face the fact that all meals would be taken in restaurants from here on out and there would be a maid.

I've been thinking about that. Thinking about how the work I do is never going to be something I retire from. If I told my husband what that woman told hers, Mr. Moon would look at me as if I'd lost my mind and then go on to discuss something else entirely like tires or hunting land or HD video cameras. He just wouldn't take me seriously. He does sometimes ask if I'll still cook for him when we get old, but not as much as he used to when the kids still lived here, fearing then that when they left, I wouldn't bother any more. I think he's pretty much accepted the fact that I will indeed cook and of course I will because hey! I get hungry. And going to a restaurant involves putting on a bra which we all know is not something I care to do unless the experience is going to prove worth it and most meals out do not.
Plus, I like to cook.

Now housekeeping is another matter. Parts of it I like. I don't mind doing laundry and or the dishes so much, or bedmaking. It's the actual cleaning that I hate. I have no idea why, but I do. Perhaps it's because it's so constant and endless and the result, although lovely, is so very transient. I clean and mop and within minutes the dogs have brought in some piece of wood and chewed it to slivers on the rug and there you go. Things just PILE UP, old catalogs and magazines and coupons for 20% off Bed, Bath, and Beyond. How many rain forests have been destroyed for those coupons? And the cabinets, no matter how fine my intentions, become avalanches waiting to happen when the doors are opened- cooking sheets and pyrex baking ware and muffin tins and bread pans all pouring out to bruise my feet or that cabinet where I keep the leftover containers, the plastic yogurt containers, the tupperware, the rubbermaid stuff- all of it seems to lose its lids, to take up too much space for what it's all worth.
Chaos theory in action.

Ah yah. I've strayed from my subject.

This is not a manifesto, believe me, about housekeeping or the work I do. I feel lucky beyond lucky to be able to have a life where I can grow a garden and make pickles and hang my clothes on the line and make what is now trendily called "slow food" but which I just call "food." And I doubt I'll ever want to give all of that up because that IS my life- not just my work.

But I think about the fact that there will never be a day when I don't do this sort of work unless I become like my grandmother when she got dementia and immediately forgot how to do any sort of cleaning or cooking or bedmaking or laundry. I mean Granny FORGOT and was UNABLE and so my grandfather, bless his old heart, had to learn to do those things which she had always done for him. And he did. Sort of.

What I'm trying to say here is that what I do is not really work. If it were, there would be a salary and a retirement from it, eventually. Not work in the definition of work that we use today. Work is going to an office or a kitchen in a restaurant or a hospital or a studio or a field. Work is not doing what needs to be done to keep a family healthy, happy, fed, and living in a state of semi-grace and order. Everyone does these things, mostly women, probably, but we all have to deal with the garbage and the filling of the refrigerator and the scrubbing of the toilets and the keeping some semblance of order in the household.

There used to be books on the Domestic Arts and there are still classes and schools for the Culinary Arts, but those are for people looking to be employed as chefs or cooks. There used to be Home Economic classes where girls (always girls) were taught to cook basic things and to sew a little bit and to set a table and to do the things that needed to be done to run a home. This is no longer true, as if everyone were just born knowing how to make a white sauce, how to sew on a button, that the forks go on the left, the knives and spoons on the right.

Meanwhile, magazines like Martha Stewart's thrive. Why? Because we all long for homes where things are not just "kept" but where there is a grace to it, an art, if you will. If our homes are fairly serene and well-run, parts of our souls can be serene and free to deal with life on a much clearer basis. Or so it seems to me, anyway.

But these ideas, like the idea of honoring the mother and what she does are more ideals than reality, I think.
We give lip service to mothers and their sacrifices and how important they are and then we send them off to work because they have to because mothers do not get paid for doing the most important work in the world- raising sane and happy and healthy children- and children can't live off love alone. We give lip service and pay good money for magazines promoting the idea that our homes can be beautiful and the keeping of them can be creative and satisfying while ignoring the fact that this takes actual work and money and that it's a lot easier to read and dream about such than it is to do it and no one has time anyway.

Well. It's Sunday. I have clothes to hang on the line and pickles to put away. I made seven pints of dills yesterday and the kitchen looks like a pickle factory with the canning kettle and the little jars of dill seed and the crock of sweet pickles working their way to perfection and the jars and lids and jar-lifter. The refrigerator is filled with cucumbers waiting their turn and half-gallons of vinegar stand in wait on the counter. Chaos. Barely controlled chaos.
But it is such a beautiful thing and so very satisfying to gather all the equipment and ingredients and sterilize jars and pack them with vegetables and make the brine and add the spices and twist all the lids and put them in the boiling water bath and time them and then lift them out to sit on a piece of newspaper and listen for the POP as the lids suck down and the process is completed.
That makes my heart happy.
As it does to see the sheets on the line and to know how they'll feel when we lay down on them tonight.
As it does to water the porch plants (Riley said yesterday, "You have plants EVERYWHERE!") and to check the progress of rooting begonias and sprouting new leaves on the mango.

No. I will never retire. Thank god I have Mr. Moon to provide for me.
I hope he thanks his lucky stars he has me to provide for him what I do. I think he does.
And in that way, I do certainly get paid to do what I do.
Which makes me feel guilty somehow, as if I am getting away with something that very few get away with these days, which is the practice of the Domestic Arts which makes my soul happy, my days busy and filled, and somehow myself satisfied.

Yes, I have to scrub toilets. No, I don't get social security. Yes, I get to can food that I grow. No, I don't earn my living. No, I am not Martha Stewart.
But I am me and I am happy, usually, doing these things that I do and yes, sometimes I need a vacation from it and YES! I am so lucky to be able to do so.

And there you have it. I am an anachronism in a modern world. I live in a house that is one hundred and fifty year old and I do things here that women would have done when it was built. My circumstances are different and my work is made much easier by my modern conveniences but I think I take the same pride in the result which is nothing more than doing the work that needs to be done, while having the luxury of being able to do it.

Perhaps I am just living in a dream world. Well, so be it.
It's a good dream and I take comfort in the fact that even as I feel guilty, I work hard and I do my best.

There is very little more one can ask of life than that.

The Rest Of The Story

So Kian and Riley have gone home with their dad although Riley pretty much decided that she wanted to live here. They love my house and who wouldn't? There are chickens to feed and a kid next door to play with who has a ton of toys and who loves to share them and a giant bathtub to float around in with the duckies and lots of Little Bear books their Aunt Mary will read to them before bed and Uncle Glen who can turn them upside down to walk on the ceiling and there are always pancakes (plain for Riley, with blueberries, peaches and pecans for Kian) and all the dogs to play with who will handily eat up anything you drop on the floor and frogs and bugs and a garden to pick actual vegetables out of and stairs to climb and hats to try on and well, frankly it's better than Disney World and I need a nap.
I mean really. I need a nap. And I didn't even get up when they did. Uncle Glen did. And they were awake when I went to sleep. Oh sure, they were in bed but after we'd read the stories and everyone had gotten water and then peed and then been tucked in for the third time with dire warnings about getting out of bed ONE MORE TIME, I went to sleep. They're the best kids in the world and I sincerely doubted they were going to get up and set the house on fire.
Plus, it was almost midnight. Right?
When I got up this morning they were like, "Aunt Mary! Aunt Mary! Will you cook us pancakes and sausage?!!!" and I was still about ten feet away from the coffee pot. I said, "Yes. I will. But it's going to take a little while."
And it did.
They can't believe how long it takes Aunt Mary to cook things but that's because their family has two working parents and most of their meals involved freezers and microwaves, I believe. My meals involve stringing beans and making macaroni and cheese from scratch and the same with the pancakes. But I believe they think it's worth it.
I know their pictures make them look like they're way too sweet and good for words but honest to god, they just are. I never have to say, "Now y'all hug each other for the picture." They just do it. And everything is so new and swell to them.




"Look! Rocks!" and "Wow! This is tall grass!" and "The chickens are eating the collard greens!" and "This cucumber is HUGE!" and so forth. You can't help but get excited with them.




"I want to live in a house just like this when I grow up," says Riley and I smile from my toes to the top of my head.
"Me too," I say. "Me too."
So I sort of feel like I got some grandmama practice in today and it felt good.
"I can't wait until the chickens lay eggs," Kian said as they were leaving.
"I'll call you when they do," I told him, and I kissed his buzzy little head, so filled with facts and thoughts and Big Ideas. He can read now and I'm just amazed. And Riley can cut her pancakes up all by herself. And eat her weight in macaroni and cheese.
They're growing up. They're five and seven now and before I know it, they'll be graduating from high school. I need to have them over more while they're still so enthralled with chickens and frogs and finding a penny at the post office. These days won't last forever and while they're still so enchanted with life in Lloyd, I need to get them out here to enjoy it. Because how can I not enjoy two young'uns so happy to be in the place that makes me happiest?
Besides, I get to read them books which is one of my biggest pleasures in life- reading books to kids. And they pay attention and don't jump around while I'm doing it.
And then they go home with Daddy.
And then I take a nap because all this love and wonder wears my ass out.
I feel like I've been working on the railroad, all the livelong day.
With the two sweetest children in the world who really like macaroni and cheese, even the kind that Aunt Mary makes that doesn't come out of the blue box. And takes a really long time to make.

What We Are Doing Today

My niece and nephew, Riley and Kian, are visiting today. They spent the night and we've had a very lovely morning, eating pancakes, walking to the post office where there was a frog, and visiting with Harley next door.
Now we're off to pick the garden and visit with the chickens.
The fun never ends at Aunt Mary and Uncle Glen's.

Under The Heading Of What The Fucking Fuck?

Someone remind Bill O'Reilley that he's an asshat.

Home. By Jessie.

When Jessie was out yesterday, she had her new camera with her and snapped many pictures.
She took pictures of the post office box and the porches and spiders and dirt dauber structures and our house and the dogs and me and her daddy.
She's on her way to Miami now to catch the plane for Jamaica and I'm thinking about her. I'm also thinking about how really, I need to pour a little water over the flames of my ego and realize that trying to protect and shelter my children even when they are adults is mostly evidence of a vast over-fed sense of my abilities. And it also implies that I don't trust their abilities which I very much do so what's the deal here?
I'm here if they need me. They know it and that's that.
Or that's what I'm trying to learn now and it's about damn time.
On to the pictures. Click on them to see them in their full-sized glory.



Here's me and Mr. Moon. He's eating the last of the blackberry cobbler I made last weekend. With ice cream on it. Mr. Moon loves ice cream. I love Mr. Moon.


This is where I get my mail every day. The boxes are just like the ones in the Roseland post office when I was a child. I think our number there was 174 but I'm not sure. Our post mistress in Roseland was a woman named Nelly. Our post mistresses here is a woman named Joanne. I have grown up to come home.


Our house. It's a very, very, very fine house. And there indeed two cats in the yard. Check out the live oak on the left. It's huge. I read a thing the other day that said live oaks live 600 years. Two hundred to grow, two hundred to live, two hundred to die. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I think that tree is at least two hundred years old.



And here's me, standing in the little yard of my office, surveying my pinecone lillies, my phlox, my ferns. Buster is surveying with me.

And finally, because they are so pretty and photogenic, two pictures of the chickens.


Yes. Suzie is really that big and Miss Betty is really that small.


And the little ones. See Elmira way in the back with her little head poking up? She must be related to Miss Betty. But she's a plucky, healthy chick. Aren't the teenager chickens funny looking with their feathers all coming in and sticking out everywhere as if they hadn't figured out quite where to go yet? I think they are.

And looking at these pictures, I realize that I have plenty to worry about and take care of right here where I live. And that the children, my grown-up, very capable, very smart and amazing children, know where they can find me if they need me.

Right here, maybe in my garden. They can just fly right over here on their own strong wings.


Amen.
Happy Friday.

Love...Ms. Moon

Fly, Babies. Spread Your Wings And Fly.

I am so agitato today. Agitato is a word that Kinky Friedman uses in his books. Mr. Moon and I use it a lot, especially to describe when we've had too much coffee.

I am agitato today, not because of too much coffee, but because Jessie is going off to Jamaica where I can't protect her. I am agitato because Lily is pregnant and I can't protect her on that journey. I am agitato because May is in pain and because there is so much she has to bear and I can't make it all better. I am agitato because Hank, although very much a grown-up man will face things in his life that I can't imagine and I can't help him with.

I am agitato because I am me, and I can't help but want to control everything, while at the same time, knowing I can't even control what goes on inside me.

And all of this agitation makes me think that if I don't finish cleaning my house and make a good, healthy supper for my husband that the world will fall apart. That I will have failed, failed, failed. I know I am displacing my agitation. I know I am taking things I can't control and trying to force control on something I can. My house. My dinner.

I bought two candles at the Winn Dixie the other day. One a Virgin of Guadalupe candle and one a plain red one. I wish I had bought a white one to burn for clarity, for soothing. I don't pray, I don't believe, but I light candles to make wishes visible.

I drain the pickles. I boil water and pour it over them in the crock. Tomorrow I will make the pickling solution- the vinegar, so much sugar, spices. The real magic will begin. I mop the floors, I dust the furniture, I oil my grandfather's rocking chair. I pot two plants to put on a porch.

I touch totems- my grandfather's rocking chair, the crock I make my pickles in, my skillets, my pictures, my computer, the dirt.

When Hank and May were little and they had to go (GOT to go!) to their father's every Monday and Tuesday nights, I had to learn to separate from them by pretending I did not have children two days a week. It was the only way. Otherwise I would have lost my mind.
Guess what? It didn't work. I did lose my mind.
I still do that- when they leave to go off, whether for a week or a month or time I don't know the number of minutes, hours, days, months, years in, I lose my shit for a time. I think, "I can't bear this," and then I do.

But something inside of me goes a little crazy.
I clean. I make supper. I cry. I berate myself for such foolishness.

Why did I give them wings if I didn't want them to fly?

I want them to fly. All of my children. I want them to fly as high and as far as they can go. I know I can't protect them forever. I know that. I even know they can protect themselves because they are so strong, so amazing, so smart. I know that.

But that part of me that reached for them at the moment of their birth doesn't know it. That part of me that drew them to my breast doesn't know it. That part of me that watched them as they slept to make sure they were breathing doesn't know it.

Is this normal?

It is for me. Obviously, it is for me.

The Mind On Not Enough Sleep Journeys Into Shallow Pools Of Nothingness

I have to stop getting up in the middle of the night. It would be fine if I didn't eat half a bag of Chex Mix at one a.m. I don't even like Chex Mix unless it's the kind that Billy makes. There is no excuse for eating half a bag of Chex Mix because it's not my food.

A lot of foods are not my food, although sometimes I wish they were. Like the other morning after Lily and Jason's ultrasound appointment and I was hungry and wishing I was one of the people who could just cheerfully drive through a fast-food joint and say, "One bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, please."
Not only are bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits delicious, they save you so much time and money because one of those bad boys and you've had all the fat and calories you need for at least a day.

Maybe a day and a half.
Sigh.
But I'm not.

And Chex Mix is not my food either so why am I eating it at one a.m.?
Yeah. You tell me.

I'm just sitting there waiting for the aspirin to kick in, so tired I can barely understand what I'm reading, eating Chex Mix out of the bag thinking, I don't like this Chex Mix. Why am I eating it?
Well, at least I'm not nursing a tumbler full of vodka, I guess. As if that makes it any better.

We leave for Mexico in two weeks. TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY!

Am I ready? No.

I did go buy new underwear yesterday. For everyone's information my underwear is the Jockey cotton string bikini. It's cotton. Those panties last forever. They are comfortable. Why would I wear anything else? I wore them when I was pregnant because they fit right under the tummy area. Plus, they were cotton. Did I mention they were cotton?

I have about fifteen skirts to take. They're lovely skirts. Many of them are cotton. Some of them are linen. I wear fabrics for the absorbancy factor. Doesn't everyone? They do if they have about fifty hotflashes a day.

Jessie leaves tomorrow for Jamaica where she's going to work in a very rural clinic. I keep asking her questions like "Will there be air-conditioning where you sleep?" She doesn't think so. She thinks the "running water" may be a creek.

Oh boy.

She's here right now, still asleep up in her bedroom. I sort of wish she'd stay there forever. I can understand Rapunzel's parents keeping her locked up in her tower bedroom. I used to love that story. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. If I kept Jessie locked up, she would just smile sweetly and then, when I wasn't looking, she'd throw her long legs over the window sill and climb down, arm over strong arm, then come in the kitchen and offer to wash the dishes. She's that kind of girl. You can't keep these kids locked up in their towers anymore. I swear, no matter how hard you try, you just can't.

This time last year Jason and Lily AND Jessie were all moving out of the house where they'd all been living for a while. It shocked me into craziness. I WANTED them to all move out, have lives of their own. My better-mommy self did. But my lizard mommy wanted them all right here, safe and sound where thunderstorms couldn't hurt them and I could feed them and I could touch them whenever I wanted to. The perfect flesh of my children I could take into my arms and hold.

The first time I ever went to Mexico Lily was two weeks shy of being two. I had never left a child of that age before, even for two nights in a row. And I was about to go off for a week to a foreign country! Lily kept putting her toothbrush in my suitcase. And when we left, I felt so guilty to be leaving her and her sister and brother, even though they were staying in the care of my in-laws, the most loving, sweet people in the world. Lily was crying and then her Paw-Paw said, "Come on Lily. We'll go buy ice cream."

"Okay," she said. "Bye, Mama."

And that was that.

This time I'm leaving her thirty-two weeks pregnant. Jason can buy her ice cream, I suppose.

Oh well. As you can see, my mind is all too tangled up by sleeplessness to write anything decent. What I am saying here? Nothing. I eat Chex Mix in the middle of the night. I need to make a list of things to do before I leave for Mexico. (Buy books, Find inner sex goddess, figure out what happened to Michelle and Adrienne).

And really, what you need to do is go over to Roll Up The Rugs and read what May said about Lily. That's what this whole post is leading up to. Go read what May wrote.
Now there's a post. There is writing. There is love. There is beauty.

I can relax. May's got it covered. I can write about Chex Mix and Jockey string bikinis. And Jessie can go to Jamaica with her long legs. And Lily can gestate and become more beautiful. And Hank can keep the flame going and the chickens alive.
And I can go to Mexico and my food there will look like this:


But I sort of want to put Lily's toothbrush in my suitcase. And Hank's and May's and Jessie's too.

Some things never change.

Go buy some ice cream, babies.

Here are my highlights, Ms. Hope or Ms. Lucy, whoever you are today.

Where are you Adrienne and Michelle? Are you okay? What's going on?

I'm never eating Chex Mix again.

As Promised

Okay. So Lily didn't send me the pee-pee one. This is the one with his pretty little face and I believe that's his fist there, looking like a thought bubble.
Or maybe it is a thought bubble and he's saying, "Get that damn weird ultrasound machine offa my face!"
And as Jason pointed out, we could see him but he couldn't see us.
Not fair.
Oh well. Life isn't fair.
And here's my grandson, floating in his world of the mama's bedwomb (thanks, Xbox and I told you I was stealing it and I meant it.)

It's all a little hazy but it's beautiful to me.

Wonderings

My soul is somewhat soothed today, even if the house is not entirely cleaned. This old house is so rambling. It goes on for days. There's the original four rooms downstairs with a hallway in the middle and upstairs (where I almost never go) and then another, newer room which is now my guest room which then leads to a sort of nothingness room which was once a laundry room (I can tell from the plumbing in it) and which we call the mud room, to Mr. Moon's bathroom which needs to be ripped out and done over and then into our bedroom and finally, it ends up in my bathroom which I call the Bathroom That Oprah Built.

That's because the woman who used to be married to the man whom we bought the house from is a rather famous writer who sold the rights to one of her books to Oprah to make a movie of. Figure it out and it's not Toni Morrison. Sometimes I wish Oprah had paid for some foundation work but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway, all I got cleaned yesterday was that bathroom, our bedroom and Mr. Moon's bathroom because that part of the house takes a long, long time to clean and also, I called a lady in Monticello who does hair to see if she could trim mine (it's been seven months) and give me a few highlights to help with the glamorization of Ms. Moon in Mexico.
She had a cancellation and could fit me in at one forty-five and so off to Monticello I sped and she has her shop in the back of her house and I don't know if my hair looks much better but I had a great time. She has something like fifty-five sons and they were all coming in to check on Mama and see if they could take a walk and that involved a lot of details and so there I was, hair foiled and looking like an alien, sitting under an alien light and one of the youngest boys looked into the little room where I was with eyes like saucers because honestly, I looked ridiculous.
I wasn't embarrassed though. God knows he's seen women in foil hair before.
I waved but he didn't wave back. I think the word to describe what he did would be "fled."

So anyway, I only got the three rooms cleaned and the dogs got a package of venison cube steak I'd set out on the counter to thaw and that's okay because by the time Mr. Moon got home from Orlando, I was too exhausted to cook cube steak and mash any potatoes anyway. Instead I made a salad and that was good enough.

But really what I sort of wanted to talk about was how weird modern life is. I was reading the paper and they're taking the phones out of the offices of the teachers in the history department of FSU as a cost-saving measure. That seems rather dire, doesn't it? But they still have their cell phones and their e-mails and Skype (I don't even know what that is. Wait. I just went and looked. It's an "internet-based teleconference program" but it sounds more like a budget-minded airline to me) so the students CAN get in touch with their professors if they need to.
Or, you know, I suppose they could walk over to the office during office hours and knock on the door.
I'm not saying that professors shouldn't have phones. This seems self-evident.
It's just that sometimes I wonder what would happen if all our modern conveniences were taken away by the push of a button and we were bombed back into the stone age.

Frankly, I think we'd all die. I could probably create a wheel out of something but could I make a battery? Hell no and I wouldn't know what to do with one if I did.
Mr. Moon could kill something for us to eat but we'd die of starvation before I could figure out how to get a fire lit without matches, a lighter or a butane torch to cook the animal on.
Sure, I can grow things but where would I get seeds? And honey, it takes a long time to grow some greens, much less corn which we'd have to grind into grits and there is no waterwheel around here.

Let's face it- the human race would look a lot different a thousand years after being bombed back into the stone age. The people who survived would probably be the people who were already living in the stone age like those Amazonian tribes who wear a string around their waists and know damn well how to start a fire without matches. Who can scrabble together decent meals out of the jungle and who can have their babies without the aid of technology.

When Lily went to get her ultrasound the other day, the tech was amazed that she's somehow managed to get to the point of being 29 weeks pregnant without getting an ultrasound.
"Why?" she asked.
And Lily, whom I am so proud of, said, "We didn't want to unless it was medically necessary."
The tech gave us a funny look as if she'd never heard of such foolishness. Obviously, she's drunk the Kool Aid.
We have all this technology and so we have to use it but the funny thing is- the more technology we have, the less we rely on the way things have worked out for eons and really, a lot of that technology isn't making our outcomes any bit better at all and some are causing a lot of problems but we continue to use them anyway.
Leeches were high-tech at one point and someday we'll look back on the ultrasound with the same humorous disdain that we now look upon the medical use of leeches.

So the history department won't have landlines and neither will any of us in fifty years although they better improve cell phone reception if the people who live in this house want to communicate with others. Our cell phones don't work in this old house and it may be the tin room or it may be the spirits of the people who lived here back when it was built, playfully blocking the signal because they can.

Ha-ha-ha, they say, every time we bolt outside when our cell phones ring.

Well, we humans are clever monkeys. Too clever by half, I would think. I just hope all this stuff we need more and more of keeps working because without it, where would we be?

I'm in the process of making fourteen day pickles and let me tell you this- that is a low-tech operation. I'm taking pictures as I go and I'm sure I'll do a whole post with pictures and a recipe and I know you can't wait for that because sure, everyone has two gallons of cucumbers they don't know what to do with and a crock. I've been making pickles since the donkey was invented and when I started, there were no cell phones, no internet and the only computers in the world had to live in basements where the temperature with a controlled temperature and no dust. So I couldn't show the world how I made them but I gave a lot of them away and shared recipes with other hippie pickle-makers and that was fun.

Fun enough.

I'd call people on my land-line (which we merely called The Phone) and say, "Hey! I made pickles. Come and get some!" and they would and we'd sit around and smoke dope and drink tea and eat pickles and go look at the garden and it was awesome.
I didn't have chickens then but I had children. They ran around naked and played in the Mr. Turtle Pool and made cities in the camellia bushes and somehow, they thought that was fun.

Well, life goes on and I planned on getting the rest of the house cleaned today but Mr. Moon needs me to come do data-entry, which is another thing no one had ever heard of thirty years ago. Well, I hadn't, anyway and sort of wish I hadn't now either.

Excuse me. I have to check on my chickens now.

Sometimes I get confused about what time-period I'm living in. I am just back from yoga now, which is a practice which goes back thousands of years and I was reminded as I breathed and stretched and concentrated on my body in such a slow, intense way of how we are all these corporal beings with something inside we like to call a soul or spirit and how funny it is that we keep pushing the boundaries of what we do to amuse ourselves and how far we've come from the days of having to spend most of our time hunting and gathering. How we have our cars to get us places and our cell phones and televisions and computers to connect and amuse us and there are entire magazines and industries devoted to the simplification of life but really? Who has time to read that stuff, to practice simplification?

I think that just as we all have within us all the ages we've been, the human race does too which is why we love chickens and homegrown food and why we get such pleasure out of the simplest things we do with our hands but we also love the newest gadgets and toys, integrating them into our lives until they seem as necessary as food and water and exercise and love.

But they are not.

And we'd do best to remember that, even as we enjoy them. I think we'd all be better off if we remembered and practiced a few of the things that make us humans, that make us part of this whole cycle of life. The growing of food, the fact that eating animal protein requires killing, birthing our babies in the simplest way possible, trusting all the processes that have gotten us here so far.

And then we can get on our computers and write about it.

As I have just done while somewhere, on another continent, a man leads his cattle out to a place where the grass is sweeter and he knows them all by name and he loves them because they sustain him and his family with their meat, their milk, their blood. I like to think about that. I like to think that as I battle traffic and worry about things like cell phone reception, there are still places on earth where people know how to live with what they can find in the place where they are, whether jungle or plains or desert or beside an ocean or on a mountain so far up that the mist never leaves, the trees never grow very tall and you can see so far that it is impossible to tell whether it is the past you are looking or the future, and the stones underneath the feet have been smoothed by the trodding of hundreds and thousands of generations but are not as smoothed as they will be after another thousand generations have passed.

Or at least, that is what I like to think as I sit in my old house which has seen a few generations itself and the sweet rain begins to trickle down from the sky on my garden, my flowers, my chickens, this ground I have been so blessed to live on in this month of July, this year of 2009, with the very most original communications of my foremothers in my RNA, passed on again and now again by nothing at all but love.

Housekeeping

Okay, so I've been fooling around with the way you get to my comment page. Ms. Fleur says that she could not comment when it went to a page and to please change it so I am now trying the pop-up comment version. If this doesn't work for someone, let me know. My email address is right there on the sidebar because if you can't comment you can't...comment.

Like when you call your wireless provider because your wireless isn't working and they tell you to go the web site, right? Don't you love that?

Anyway, that's that. No big deal.

Hey! It's really raining here!
Mmmmmm....

Yes, There Is Poop. Clean It Up And Sing.

There are spiders everywhere. Everywhere. I go to water the porch plants and walk through a web or pull thorn vines from a tree and end up with banana spiders perched on the brim of my cap. Thank goodness I do not suffer from arachnophobia. I mean, I don't want them crawling on me but I'm not going to go into hysterics if one does.

Lis suggested a long time ago that I write a post entitled Spiders In The Southern Home: Where Do We Draw The Line?

It's hard to know where to draw that line. The one that's making a web that I punch through every time I turn on the porch light has got to go. Meanwhile, the banana spiders on the front porch stay because (a) they trap and eat many mosquitoes, and (b) they're sort of awesome.

I feel sort of like I'm walking through webs these days. Awesomeness and uckiness both at the same time. I am so blessed with so many joys in my life right now that there is more than a whiff of ungratefulness in even saying the word "depression" but there it is. The beautiful spider makes her impossible web and invites our wonder and yet below her is a pile of poop because yes, my darlings, spiders poop. A lot.

Sometimes I think that the more I have to be joyful about, the more depressed I get. And I'm sure a qualified therapist would point out the connection. "You don't feel you have a right to happiness. You feel the NEED to suffer and so if there is nothing to suffer about, you concoct a few on your own."

Okay. That was about five hundred dollars worth of therapy, right there.

Still, there it is.

And when I woke up this morning, my whole soul was drowning in the unbearable honor of what all I've been given and screaming at the obvious injustice of it and yelling that I need to GET MY SHIT TOGETHER YOU WORTHLESS ANIMAL, GOD, CLEAN THE HOUSE AT LEAST! IT'S A PIT! GO TAKE A WALK, DO SOME FUCKING PUSH-UPS, STOP COMPLAINING, LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE! YOU'RE GOING TO BE A GRANDMOTHER AND YOU'RE GOING TO MEXICO IN TWO WEEKS AND TWO DAYS! TAKE THE TRASH TO THE DUMP! CLEAN OFF YOUR HUSBAND'S DRESSER!

Yeah. Phew. Too much happiness sends me right down the tubes.

Okay, okay. I hear you. Some days are meant for action, not inward reflection. And I know it.

I just made the very best smoothie ever. Yogurt, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, flax, prunes (they make it sweet AND add fiber), almonds and banana. I am going to take a walk. I am going to bust my ass over this house today. I am going to make it pretty and clean and smelling of Fabuloso, white vinegar and Murphy's Oil soap. I am going to cherish this old house with my sweat and pick fresh flowers to put in vases in it.

I am going to be grateful for my blessings and I am going to cherish them. Go read HoneyLuna's post and see how much I have to be grateful for- and she is just one quarter of my children. If you are new to this blog, two of my other children have blogs, too. They are Downtown Guy and Miss Maybelle. The other child, Lily, is too busy working and creating life in her womb to blog. She is writing her life with action.

All right. I feel better. Spider poop and dust and need-to-suffer and all. I'll go take my walk and that should take care of the rest of that need, although it's not supposed to get over 85 degrees today which will feel like a vacation on the Swiss Alps, I'm sure.

And also let me say that I am thinking of Lon and Lis today who are celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary. THIRTY YEARS of sweetness and hard work and music together. Here is a picture I snagged off the internet of them onstage. Another major blessing in my life is their friendship.


They both have their eyes closed and have smiles on their faces. I think they are singing a love song, their voices dipping and blending and sweetening each other with the harmony that only two people who have been loving and playing together for over thirty years can create.

Happy anniversary, you two. I love and adore you.

And happy day to all of us.
Now. Let's fight our ways out of all the many webs we manage to get tangled in.
Let's get moving.