Saturday

Saturday mornings are almost as good as Sunday mornings. There's a little more bustle from the neighbors and a little more traffic...but Mojo and I are still the only ones awake at our house (the joys of 20-year old house guests!) and have time to experience the morning hours in the garden the way we don't when I have to head to work.

For instance, 8 o'clock-ish is a good time to examine the Mexican Petunia. It's a slow waker in the morning...and it goes to bed pretty early. But at 8 AM all its flowers are open and it's quite stunning. My sister tells me that two or three of these made a massive hedge at her former Florida abode. I've no idea how big it will get here (in Clearwater they make hedges out of hibiscus and I am jealous every time I think about that) but even smallish, I think it's striking.

Also, we have a new friend in the garden. I admit it. I have a weakness for funky animals scattered about. Also for chickens and tall skinny birds. Yesterday, my mama gave me this perfectly perfect tall, skinny chicken. His name might be Roger...but maybe not. It's early yet. Watch for him in new places, too, because I also like to rearrange things.

Tantrum In My Head

Here's something you might have guessed: some days, I am very angry. Pissed off, perturbed beyond all reason, beyond annoyed with absolutely every one and every thing. Inside my head, I am a three year-old in full blown tantrum mode and I want to scream and hurl myself to the floor and kick things. I want to say out loud all the angry, hurtful, hateful things I am thinking and smash things into a million little pieces.

Of course, I don't do any of those things. I get snappy and snippy and start fights with Dave over what's for dinner or the current temperature of the air indoors as opposed the air outside. I mow the grass at a breakneck speed in the face of an approaching storm and ponder, abstractly, the odds of being struck by lightning. I do laundry until there isn't a single thing left in the house that needs washing. Then I wash things that aren't dirty. And I cry. A lot. Because it has to come out somehow and that full blown tantrum isn't going to cut it.

People will forgive a lot, I know. But there are lines that really cannot be crossed, words you cannot say because you can never unsay them, things you cannot put together after they've been broken; and so there are times, and places in my head, where I'll always be alone. And that is just one more thing that pisses me off.

On a cheerier note, here's a picture of Re-bar Chicken. I bought him at a roadside junk store about a dozen years ago. I saw him and just had to have him. Britt was the only person who ever understood the attraction. I miss how she really got me.