Crazy

He said do you have any Keebler Elves or peanut butter crackers or Kellogg items in the clappboards  you’d better throw them away. Yes I said then I asked why from the deep down of my bed the fog and deep deep down. Because he said salmonella poisoning in every one with a secret hidden hiccup in his voice but I lied I have nothing of the sort in my clappboards  and never have but I was immediately Tipi Hedren on the set of an Alfred Hitchcock movie with a ladder in my stocking and something weird inside my hair I have forgotten my lines and I’m going to be in trouble. Come here come here roll on top of me he said let's build a fort of our bodies your peanut butter crackers are safe as milk which is never safe not for me or the cow or Captain Beefheart or Tipi Hedren who knows better now with her animal preserve and perfectly coiffed hair. The fog is thick enough I could throw a ball into it and it would not accept its trajectory. It would simply hover like a bad prop from a janitor’s closet at Universal Studios. Good morning. I've been planting poppies radishes and cucumbers in pearls and my sky blue dress. I have recently cut my benzodiazepine intake by half and it makes me sick to my stomach and shaky and even weirder than usual. What are you up to on this truly Saturnday morning Darklings?

pee.ess.

there is a family of red-wing black birds living here and the males are so stunning that I gasp every time I see them even though they like to peck at my ripe strawberries my ex-mother-in-law Fay once told me that the birds were just telling me how to pick the sweetest fruit

winding sheets

yesterday I planted Marylinn Magnolia it is not the largest tree I've ever planted but it was huge and my yard aka The Forest is full of rocks and roots and rich loamy soil and it took me hours to dig the hole resting in between shoveling but she is happy and thriving this photo is crap as are most of my photos this one especially because I took it from the deck before I walked down the hill to water her thus the arrow

I spend my days outside gardening watching the birds and deer and bunnies and butterflies and bees or inside in bed wrapped as tightly as possible in my blankets crying I eat the same thing everyday hummus on a single serving friend pita for breakfast an apple peeled and cut into slices then sprinkled with kosher salt then dipped into low sodium peanut butter (yes I think it's funny too) and black bean huevos rancheros for dinner in fact I'm cooking black beans right now since I ran out last night I did however start up the grill and cooked some fresh corn and later maybe tonight I'm going to make some fry bread and then put some rocket and olive oil and red pepper flakes on it and heat it in the oven then heat up the corn and eat it all with a ripe burrata a meal I have been craving since I had it on my first day in NY last August the rest of the time I play with Jupiter our play includes me running through the house with Jupiter winding in and out between my legs trying to trip me up so I fall and break my neck then she can eat my body in her tidy killer way or we play hide and seek she is a good hider as you can see 

sometimes she hides in plain sight

she likes to drink from the faucet the one in the master bathroom and the kitchen faucet as well I turn on the spigot and she dips her dainty paw in then licks the water off her paw

it's probably a good thing I don't have grandchildren the photo bombling would never end which reminds me The Surfer is in Montana and he doesn't know that I cut up the tree that was fallen in the front yard aka The Forest when I bought the house and a fallen tree in your yard might seem odd but this is The Forest and this is not the first fallen tree I've slaughtered here ain't that a beautiful stack of wood? 

this morning I watered the garden and Figgy Pudding and Marylinn Magnolia and the bower which now looks like this then I assembled an on-the-fly clothes line and washed my bedclothes including the duvet cover and hung them outside in the honest to bog sun and this all of this is why I'm not writing here much it's all so pedestrian and boring but I am pure inside it though I may or may not have broken my wedding ringless toe this morning while running through the house with Jupiter it hurts like a son of a bitch and is quickly turning purple

oh and I got a haircut here I am in B/W and look! I finally ditched my Christmas nightgown and put on a summer dress I made the photo B/W so you can't easily see the capillaries that have exploded on my face from puking which I haven't done in at least a week (my high fiber diet likes to stay in even the eggs for dinner good farm fresh eggs that I buy from Sharran the lady with the sick horse $3 for a dozen)

that's it for now Darklings I think I need to put my foot up love and kisses from Summer's End

the day before yesterday Jupiter killed a wee mouse and I found it dashed in front of my very ancient very heavy round mirror which I have yet to hang and I buried the mouse in THE KILLING FIELDS of my forest then thanked Jupiter with my whole heart this morning she was singing her kill song and I went to the kitchen (no more bare feet when it's dark) and Jupiter was staring intently into my Wizard of Oz™ cookie jar in which I keep my cooking utensils the mouse was still alive and I carried the cookie jar to the deck and let her run away wee mouse #2 will probably come right back in tonight but it is so good to have a forest smart kitty who is proud to keep this house mouse-free and she has no interest in leaving mouse heads in my bed or anywhere for that matter

this morning I bought two fans because it's supposed to get hot
my snap dragons have sprung
I watched this deer and she watched me as I drank tea on the deck after the cookie jar caper

here is my fig tree named Figgy Pudding it just seems a miracle that such proud leaves could appear at the end of a stick

I puked so hard two nights ago that I broke a blood vessel under my right eye a big one hideous

I am so happy that I can't even believe it

hello Darklings I hope spring shines her savage face away from you and hurry summer

depressed and happy at the same time
I planted the bower in mid-April right before I went to the hospital and now it looks glorious in its rich mink collar
I'm cooking even more black beans they are happy to live in me in spite of me farting so much my nightgown balloons out in back like a circus trick when I get up or run etc

I built this thing using the directions for about six seconds I do much better intuitively I still don't understand the "cup holder" which is simply a piece of bent wire and I mantled then dismantled the warming rack which I think is where you are supposed to let your "meat rest" which my bean burgers do not require

I planted my sedums and some other stuff and stuck it in front of The Surfer's window because the rain would not stop though it has now and I'm typing this on the deck in a sweatshirt and my men's pajama bottoms from Sears

I also planted three of my tomato starts which were getting so big they almost have flowers they're not interesting enough for a photo yet

I locked myself out of the house this morning and had to remember under which tree I had planted my spare key it was this one

this is what my kitchen table looked like after I went to the farmers market I bought the fruit at the Duck Blood store in the city this photo makes me want to cry it is so full of riches including the table itself

it's hard to write and my stomach still bothers and aches and hurts though I take zofran every day now for nausea

I am utterly happy and also depressed and probably skimming the edge of mania I wish you could all hear the birds out here

Love

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE COME HERE AND CARRY ME TO MY BEDROOM THANK YOU

I just bent over to get the plastic wrap out of the bottom clappboard and I literally yelped and Jupiter came running in and skidded on her butt so quick was she to see if I had finally caught a mouse then I bent over to put the dishes in the dishwasher and yelped in pain again (this is good pain the kind you get from lifting manly trees into and out of your car then carrying manly trees into the back forty etc)

I forgot to write about watching Jupiter catch a mouse in the house I woke to a soft batting sound and turned on my little bedside light and there was Jupiter playing with a tiny mouse batting it around flipping it up in the air then catching mouse on the way down and Jupiter was in full joy mode and mouse made a sound that an extremely sharp #2 Ticonderoga pencil tip might make had it a voice

I ran for the friendly mouse trap and put it in the bathroom and shut the door and mouse climbed right in and I released her into the wild (across the street where it is so wild you'll sink in a pond if you aren't careful have I mentioned that this entire island is a protected water land?) I probably wrote that incorrectly but be careful where you step!

after which I rewarded Jupiter by letting her sleep on my face and kiss me with her mousy breath she was spectacular

Island Citizen

I had a very big day
I took myself out to breakfast and ordered a swiss cheese and mushroom omelette and roasted potatoes had one bite of each while watching the low tide on the Saratoga Passage and managed to keep both bites down then took the rest home in a box

then I took a big bag of clothes and shoes and books to CASA (the animal shelter where Jupiter and I discovered one another) for their flea market next weekend and perused their bake sale with the bites of egg and potato fighting each other in my belly

then I drove to Orchard's Nursery (come on that is the funniest name for a business EVER and it truly is their name) and bought myself my magnolia finally FINALLY!!! it is formally named a Marilyn Magnolia but I have named it Marylinn here it is not yet planted (you would have laughed at me had you seen me wrestle the beast into Sweet Lime I know because several burly men stood around and laughed at me as I thought it through (I put the front passenger seat of Sweet Lime all the way back then put Marylinn in the front seat and put her top through the open back window behind the driver's seat) I envisioned it I saw it spatially goddamn it and it worked perfectly then those burly men (none of whom offered to help because they could see I did not welcome their help and would not have let them help had they offered) welcomed me into their sweaty-balled ham-fisted manly club with an actual round of applause then I drove home and wrangled her out of Sweet Lime and carried her to the back yard and stuck her where she's going to live though I did not plant her because by then my back was screaming at me and I felt muscles that are not even actually muscles

here is where she'll live tomorrow or next week whenever I take enough hot baths to ease the sore out of my back I took this photo from my deck so she looks smaller than she is

here is what her fragrant blooms will look like probably next spring

after all that wrestling I realized I had broken two fingernails not in a tragic way just in the kind of way that if I touched a child he'd scream in fear thinking a raggy-ass finger monster was after him so I went to the Bait and Tackle shop to get a manicure from Anna who always calls me Mary and she is so adorable and quiet and our conversations are so funny that I won't ever correct her and after she cleaned me up and started painting my nails she said are you going to prom tonight? which made me laugh so hard I almost puked (actually almost puked and yes prom is tonight) and when I get laughing it's horrifying like a tortured farm animal I COULD.NOT.STOP. and the rest of the women in the tiny salon started laughing so I described my pink dress and how I had to go get my hair put up and how I was going to walk around prom telling dancing children to make sure they left enough space between their bodies for the holy spirit and I just had so much fun because even though I am no good among people I am very good among people for an extremely short amount of time

after that I went to the Boy Scout car wash where they made a mess of Sweet Lime and all the fathers were yelling at the boys which made me kind of sad which reminds me I lost control of the cart I was moving Marylinn on and got my first scratch on Sweet Lime and I'm relieved because when you have a new car you keep waiting for that first ding or scratch and once it's over you can kind of relax at least that's how it's always been for me

after that I followed a sign reading BARN SALE which took me to a brand new part of the island and I don't know what I thought I'd find in that BARN SALE but it was no regulation garage sale they had saddles and tack and fishing rods and reels and bicycles and I found those blocks up top and the Barn Lady said they were $5 and very old (I mentioned the two missing blocks whose holes were filled with blocks from another smaller puzzle) and I told her I really wanted them but I only had $1.43 in my pocket and she let me have it for $1.43 even though I had a twenty dollar bill also in my pocket which pleased the Used Car Salesman's Daughter in me no end and it is beautiful and will look stunning in the library and I think Henry would have loved it and there are four nursery rhymes on this block set

on the way home from the BARN SALE I saw this very sad goat I have raised goats from babies up and rams too and no way should a goat EVER have a chain around its neck no way never I parked a little bit down the road in a thicket of blackberry bushes thinking I could free the goat from his chain but the place was surrounded in barbed wire also sad poor little goat also there were a whole pile of free alpacas and llamas in the field behind the sad goat they have no chains not one

Oh! I have strawberries

after all this excitement I went to the grocery store to buy all the things I need to make a Raspberry Galette Bretonne with Honey Vanilla Pastry Cream but I was so hungry by the time that I got home I had eaten an entire box of raspberries so I'm just going to make the pastry which has sour cream in it and refrigerate it overnight fruit is easy on my stomach as long as it doesn't have skin so raspberries and diet Sprite for dinner I'll get more raspberries tomorrow

I've come to the end of my very long tale

Love to you Darklings who keep coming back I want you to know that even when I'm puking my guts out I am soaking in happiness all the time which is why I haven't been writing much I am filling my well tomorrow I plan on driving to Seattle to the first farmer's market of the season if I can and if I can

This morning the sun shone on Summer's End
I got up got out all the ingredients I needed to make pierogies
Then I put all the ingredients back in the refrigerator
Then I went back to bed still in my Christmas nightgown
And cried the rest of the day while craving strawberry ice cream with cheapo chocolate syrup the kind that comes in a tin from Pennsylvania but I lacked the petunias to drag my weepy butt out of bed and drive to the Bait and Tackle shop close to me so the ice cream and chocolate became naught

I would make a terrible shrink but I'll be your life coach for money and if this doesn't suit you then skip on down skip on down the road

Oops!
Time to puke

All energy flows according to the whims of the great magnet. ~ Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

it's been weird hasn't it?
weirdness every-fucking-where
online (bickering whining terror honest to bog terror) or simplistic FB memes that seem ridiculous in the face of these times
outside too yesterday in the parking lot of the one big supermarket here in Island County they held a community-wide prayer meeting and although I didn't attend I can tell you for a fact that they weren't praying for the disenfranchised the poor the ill the wide Latino population here who work the fields and farms and bag our groceries and cook our restaurant meals no this prayer meeting was for he-who-shall-not-be-named

I have never before wished a grave illness on anyone but I have wanted someone dead and I do now again

it's been really fucking weird and while I am happy in my corner of the forest I am shutting the world at large out as much as I can and I think everyday of writing here but I am loathe to turn on my computer and let the vile leak all over me

in other news I bought some raspberry plants from the lady who owns the buffalos(bison) who I have named Brenda and Kevin though I didn't tell her that I didn't even really want the raspberry plants I just wanted to get close to the bison and I did and they are amazing

yesterday the sun came out and I got outside and prepared one of the raised garden beds I pulled weeds and plants and tugged on roots and shoveled the dirt turned every inch of it over then I spread some good organic compost then I spread a layer of eggshells on that then I put some rich top soil on top of that then I added some manure then I added some more top soil then I added mulch and by then I felt amazing and it was 73 degrees and I raked all the pinecones off the path (the hill) that leads to my mailbox then I went to Dari-Delite for a veggie burger then I came home and promptly puked it all up and today not only am I sick my shoulders hurt my armpits hurt and my back hurts

here is the first box or part of it as soon as I went to take the photo it started raining and we had a four hour thunderstorm so I had to take the photo from the kitchen window you can see all the weeds I pulled and about 1/4 of the bed sorry it's all reflectivey once it stops raining this afternoon (if it stops) I'll put the green stuff I pulled out into the green recycling bin

yesterday while I was working three deer came into the yard and one gigantic jack rabbit also appeared they wanted to know what I was planting and when was dinner I told them I had tomatoes and cucumber seeds and three different kinds of radish seeds and carrots and peppers ready to go and that they were welcome to eat my son's roses instead

I have been cooking enchilada sauce all morning
I mopped the kitchen floor
my armpits hurt from pulling out stubborn roots and I thought of Mary the entire time I was getting the first bed ready I have three more to go and I will continue to think of Mary as I plant and weed and dig and make the soil loamy and rich

I am reading a cookbook called The Gefilte Manifesto by Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern which is amazing with a huge entire section on making pickles RECOMMENDED!!! and Patricia Lockwood's memoir Priestdaddy and I'm watching Neil Gaiman's American Gods also recommended very violent but beautiful magical realism and I read the book ten years ago so I'm prepared for the awful parts none of which are as bad as the so-called-real-world and listening to Joni Mitchell the rest of the time Court and Spark and Blue

well the oven just beeped at me begging for enchiladas the cats continue to parallel play I bought a small charcoal grill and the seed catalogs finally arrove smelling like Christmas and peonies



ps. I've had those frog candle sticks since 1970 I had to light candles around the house last night because we lost power during the storm and I cannot yet afford a generator

xo

psps. I met the woman who owns the foal that I saw being born apparently the foal has a tortured intestine (it turns out so do I) they are not sure the foal will live but she is chestnut with a blond mane and tiny and also PYGMY GOATS! oh bog they make me laugh like crazy they live with the colt and his owner named Sharran I really liked Sharran and she just hugged me after we talked and giggled I'm not the only old hippie on this island thank bog

Is it for such I agitate my heart?

May 1

Sun worship

Lilacs and frogs

Now it's raining again

I have been sick

For instance three days ago I fainted on the toilet and ended up naked on the bathroom floor after cracking my head on my beautiful slate wall

My whole body feels like it was in a car crash

I have about 5 good minutes a day where I can sit up without nausea so stop whining even in a passive aggressive way about me not answering your comments or not being there to fix you or whatever imagined slight you shoved on me pretty easy to see it's me since you removed my name from your blog roll if you think I'm your savior you're not paying attention

I am too sick to fix you

Or me

Two days ago a hummingbird flew through my hair

This morning a bunnie hopped up on my deck 

Jupiter and Orlando are already friends