Yep. There it was, up over the crags of the mountain, set pale and half-faced into the cool powder blue sky.
It’s strange to so clearly see the moon in daylight. It’s like looking out at an alien landscape. It moves ordinary days into dreamtime.
Tomorrow I drive up to Albany for an all-girls weekend — pizza and a gab fest on Saturday and a sinfully fattening brunch on Sunday. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my friends.
I’m also looking forward to NOT being on the same premises with my mother. I’m OK with her in the mornings, but by mid-afternoon I have no patience left….to show her for the fifth time where she has the small amount of cash we let her keep on hand….to look, again, for her glasses, her comb, her favorite photo of my father….to repeat at least three times, each time louder, everything I say……
I’m getting away. Even though it’s only one night, it will be enough to reset my frame of mind, give me hours of quiet driving time to meditate on seeing the moon at noon.

He did it. Can you believe it? John Hall, original front man for the 70s rock band “Orleans” has been elected to Congress. He represents the district just south of here — still not far from Woodstock. He sang as part of his acceptance speech.
Watch it here.
He’s balding and middle-aged. And he still rocks.
We need more musicians and other artists in our government. They know how to think with both sides of their brains. And they listen to their human hearts.

I blogged before about exploring essential oils for whatever use they might be in helping my mother, both with her mental as well as physical states. She has very bad arthritis in her hands and has painful synovial cysts on her finger joints. I had one and had to have it surgically removed. It was painful to hold a pen.
But this time, I combined lavender and eucalyptus essential oils with almond oil and rubbed it on her fingers. Believe it or not, the swelling and redness has subsided and she says the pain is going away. We’ll see.
There are dozens and dozens or essential oils, and if I went by the reference books that explain how to combine and use them for specific purposes, I would have to buy them all. However, I have found that lavender and eucalyptus oils are ingredients in many of the formulas. So I’m experimenting with them, especially since I love the scent of lavender.
I know that lots of people don’t like Autumn. I guess because it’s a season of endings. But I love the scent of that season — the mix of drying leaves and damp earth, the air adrift with the crisp scent of apples, the late night whiff of woodsmoke from a neighbor’s fireplace. Autumn is a season that opens to loneliness — a feeling that I embrace because I have always been able to center myself in that loneliness.
Where I live now, there is not much time and space for being alone. Just late at night. Like now. When in the silent darkness I spray my sheets with lavender and wait for Autumn dreams.