Thursday, April 20, 2017

Babies, Lizards, Soup, Samurais

By the time Jason got home this afternoon, Maggie needed to be run through a car wash and I was not far behind. She had been eating peanut butter on apples and when Gibson said that he wanted some too, I told him to just lick his sister.

Ah, but it was fun and Maggie absolutely slays me with her ways, her curls, her language, her smiles, her dancing and clapping and kissing. She is like the definition of a cherub baby, happy and curious and cuddly and loving. It would have been so fine if Lily had had a boy as her third child but I am as happy as I could be that she got this little woman baby to love on, to dress, to play with, to share with big brothers and sweet daddy.

After we picked Owen up at the bus stop, I was changing Magnolia's diaper in her room and suddenly, I heard Owen yelling, "MER! HELP!"
It sounded quite serious and so I grabbed up the girl and ran into the living room to find Owen and Gibson standing at both ends of the couch with it tipped up on its front edge. I thought that perhaps they were about to drop it on themselves, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was a fairly large striped lizard, fat and still as a bird on the ground with a hawk circling overhead. It wasn't one of our regular anole lizards and I just looked it up. It was an Eastern Six-Lined Racerunner and it looked like this, only larger.

"Is it poison?" Owen yelled, still holding up his end of the couch.
"No, no. It's just a lizard," I said, and I set Maggie down and we chased the lizard towards the door but he ran behind the TV and I suspect it is still there.
After we'd settled that problem, sort of, we put the couch back down and all was well. Owen had found the toy he'd been looking for and then he sat down to do his homework and I finished pulling Maggie's britches up and then Daddy came home and I passed the peanut butter confection to her father and kissed everyone good-bye and came home where I did some ironing.

Gawd. I'm a damn housewife.

So, Hank told me about a show on Netflix called Samurai Gourmet and he said it was sweet and funny and each episode was only 22 minutes long and so about a week ago, Mr. Moon and I watched an episode. It's all in Japanese with English subtitles and it's delightful. It's about a 60-year old man who has recently retired from his job. He has been a company man his entire life, following all of the rules, doing exactly as a company man should do, and now he has freedom and he isn't quite sure what to do about it but (and this part is a little forced, if you ask me but whatever) a Samurai begins to show up who shows him the way of being his own man, specifically through food.
He has a beer at lunch!
He spends the night away from home and has a beautiful breakfast with smoked mackerel which sends him straight back to his boyhood.
And he eats amazing noodle soup.
That soup looked so good that I have determined to try and make some. Simplicity in itself and I have a broth simmering with chicken stock and a bit of kale to substitute for seaweed, of which I have none, a little soy sauce, grated fresh ginger and a garlic clove. I have tofu and mushrooms and green shallots from the garden as well as sugar snap peas, a bit immature in their sweet pods. And a package of rice Udon noodles from the Costco.
I really have no idea what I'm doing and I should have miso but I don't and none of the recipes I find online really seem to be what I want so I will just go about it as I will and hopefully, however it turns out, it will be fun to eat the noodles with chopsticks and slurp the soup from our bowls.
I will also make the simplest of salads with sliced cucumbers and Tamari and rice vinegar to go with the soup.
And that shall be our supper tonight.

My anger has dissipated as the day has gone on although the pictures going around online of Trump in the Oval Office, posed with Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent and his wife, and Kid Rock and his girlfriend do actually enrage me. This, however, is a time to try and be as Zen about things as possible, I suppose. Perhaps there is some balance as Bill O'Reilly is forced off of Fox, albeit with a shit ton of money in his pocket proving once again that racism and lying and sexual harassment pay well in the United States of America.
I don't know. I don't know shit.
All I know is that the world has turned upside down since last November and yet, here I am with the prettiest garden of my life and 21 chickens and four grandchildren and another one coming and everyone I see is just doing the best they can.

Let's keep on doing that while at the same time, staying in touch with our inner Samurais, whatever that may mean to you.

Love...Ms. Moon


  1. I'm intrigued with this ironing - what do you iron? I've been back for three years and work in a fancy office but I haven't once used an iron (we used to iron in Liberia to help dry clothes because the laundry was all by hand and it's wicked hard to dry things when it's so rainy). I usually hang my clothes on the line, but they just get hung up and it's fine for me.

    What am I supposed to be ironing?

    1. Oh, I just iron my husband's shirts mostly. Linen and cotton. It makes him so happy and I sort of enjoy the meditation of it.

    2. Ah, that's cool. I thought maybe I was supposed to ironing sheets or something.

  2. I'm glad the soup worked out. It certainly LOOKS good! The Trump thing is so crazy. What president has four hours of free time to show those people around the White House? When Ted Nugent and Kid Rock are our cultural icons, surely the end is near. (Jackie O invited Pablo Casals to the White House. Quite a difference!) That poor terrified lizard. I hope he figured out how to get outside.

  3. Fifteen years ago when I was in Mexico my friend and I stopped at a quaint little restaurant in a town very near the border with Guatemala. I hadn't been seated long before I saw the geckos on the walls. Over the restaurant, which was very clean BTW, there were perhaps a dozen geckos and interestingly no flies or spiders.

  4. There is a gorgeous Japanese film called Tampopo all about food your show reminds me of. I have to recommend it. Yours sounds so sweet though, and is making me think of an Ang Lee one I loved. Eat Drink Man Woman?

  5. When my daughter was about 8 she needed her kilt ironed. I went into the closet and pulled out the iron to press it. She asked me what it was. She had never seen me iron before! 😂


Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.