Dangermond.org

A coworker and friend IM’d me today saying:

coworker (9:38:26 AM): funny (or not i guess) – last night built gingerbread houses w/ the kids….daughter had too much frosting on one of the roof tops and it eventually slid off when we were almost done. she said it was fine, hers was just a house hit by a hurricane but it was still beautiful.
coworker (9:38:42 AM): i said you bet…let’s leave as is
rachel (9:40:50 AM): that is so cute – she remembers sending that pic to wade I bet
coworker (9:51:01 AM): y

Okay, it’s really like a dream because I don’t live by an ocean, I live by a bayou, but it seemed like an ocean last night with the windows open and the dense moist breeze flapping the venetian blinds. It was all quite comforting until the breeze picked up around 3AM and the blinds were violently slapped against the window sill and then it was all quite alarming and I had to get up and raise the blinds.

But I got back in bed an wondered how come this moist air is so easy to breathe?

Walking the Bean this morning around the bayou, I had to almost take off my light jacket because it was so damp and warm at 6:30 AM – in a good way, because there was still and still is a faint chill to the humid air, which makes this perfect weather. [Except for the hair.]

Hanukkah starts this Friday night and ends next Friday. I can’t have my usual Hanukkah party so I am taking all my menorahs to Swirl and lighting them there – but that means no latkes and applesauce and beef tenderloin which have become my traditional fare. You serve latkes or fried food because it represents the oil that miraculously burned for 8 days when it was only enough for one day. One year, I decided to just fry tater tots and they were delicious! As we know so well down here in New Orleans, fry most anything, even pickles, and they are so good. But I can’t transport fried food to Swirl, so instead I’ll bring other traditional foods that are portable.

Then Saturday is the Ponce de Leon merchants street festival and there will be snow – since I witnessed it in the making. Santa is supposed to show up as well. And later at around 6 there will be caroling at the church.

Christmas eve is hot on the heels of the last day of Hanukkah and I hope to go see the bonfires this year since I’ve missed them for many years now having not been here on Christmas Eve.

Then Christmas day, I’ll do volunteer work – which right now is undefined, waiting on my assignment to come via email.

My mom turns 71 on the 28th too and so there is yet another event to celebrate. Juanita is coming in so L and I will take our mothers to dinner, which we’ve done for the past two years.

New Year’s eve G wants to go out to dinner – I told her I’ve never had a good dinner out in a restaurant on New Year’s – Steve and I got married on New Year’s Eve and for years we had a big blow out party in North Beach in our apartment and up on the roof. Then I got tired of washing dishes at 4AM every year on my anniversary so we started trying to go to fancy restaurants but I felt as if we were eating food that had been doled out on a conveyor belt, so we gave that up after a few years. And then every year became a “what to do?” conundrum until the millenium when we joined two other couples to go see Super Diamond – a cover band that played Neil Diamond songs. It was fun but Steve didn’t dance so in the end it was kind of stand around and move and watch the other couples dance.

So maybe we’ll do dinner. I called August but they are booked – and I am jonesing to go to August since I haven’t been in a long time now. Whatever we do, there will be champagne, and there will be fun – I wish the LaLa was ready, we’d have a party there. If only the LaLa knew how many parties await it!

My brothers and nieces and families are all coming in for my oldest brother’s 60th birthday as well – good lord – can’t believe Bob is turning 60 on January 8. But we all decided to celebrate his birthday on New Year’s weekend because it just works with everyone’s schedule.

Then you kind of wake up and it is 2007 – what are you doing for the rest of your life?

K has finally figured out how to do the pantry doors. And he was able to cut back the cabinet over the fridge that was too tall. As well he cut back the cabinet for the sink that was too wide. All the bathroom cabinets are set. We are now waiting on Pieri to show up and measure for the Carrara slabs for these cabinets.

Before he leaves, I asked K to make sure he does the threshold and the bottom board up in the terrace, which still needs to be sided.

Vic came by today from Twickler’s and said he did use galvanized nails even though Ken had said he didn’t because there was rust. He also found that Bejamin and his crew had not caulked properly up on the roof, which might be where the leak that hasn’t leaked since was coming from – so Peter will get up there to caulk and paint what he calls the “dollhouse” or the dormer that sticks up from the addition.

I told Giovanni I want the baseboards to meet perfectly not just almost like he had laid out in two bathrooms.

Earl was a no show even though he was due in last Friday and at the latest today to start putting the light fixtures in.

Ken leaves for Michigan at the end of this week and doesn’t return until the 8th of January – want to make a bet nothing happens while he is gone? SIGH.

BUT – it is getting so close I can almost feel the hot bubbly water as I sink down into my tub. End of February? Perhaps. Maybe this time, that is a date to mark in my calendar. Mardi Gras is the 20th of Feburary – maybe in by then?

My coworker Laura fled the scene last year to go work at an orphanage in South Africa – wow! She has kept us current with the goings on there, where she oversees many children who are HIV positive. We had spoken earlier about setting up some fund to get enough diapers to these kids – because of a lack of funds, they were forced to wear the diapers longer than was comfortable. But the year escaped and we never did get that going even though it has been hanging over my head.

I contacted her to see what she needed now that I can pick my head above the misty grey cloud it has been in and she asked me – do you want to sponsor a child who I just got into the English speaking school? – I said, do I? Are you kidding?

So Zandile is going to school and she is tall and lithe and Laura calls her Bones because she is so skinny. And now I want nothing more than to go to South Africa before Laura leaves to visit her orphanage and meet Zandile in person.

I had this client, Nick, who I grew very fond of over the years. We had a great meeting of the mind. One day, three years ago, I received a call that Nick had taken his life. It hit me like a dull ache in my soul.

Later, I received notice a memoriam had been set up in his name with St Ignatius Loyola Academy in Baltimore, which is where Nick’s brother worked for at time. They have a program where they help inner city young boys prepare for college.

The day I was writing out the check to send in a donation, I happened upon an entry in my notebook from six months prior – I record all my phone calls – the top of the page said Nick, and then I had written in large lettering – SUNSHINE! That is what Nick was in my workaday life – a real bright spot. I told St. Ignatius in my letter about the notebook entry and Nick’s father called me up and we became friends.

I was sending in my donation this year and thinking about Nick – how great a guy he was, and how the world has a hole in it since he left. I was thinking about Jim, his father, who I haven’t called since Katrina because I’ve been so involved in my own drama. And I was thinking about those boys, who are lucky enough to participate in this program, especially in light of having finished The Blind Side where there seems to be this black hole and I mean that pun intentionally, where a lot of bright boys seem to be waiting for only a chance.

I am planning on doing all my counter tops – bathrooms and kitchen with Carrara and there is an awful lot of noise out there that would dissuade the use of this stone. Too pourous, not stain resistant. But I love the look and feel and it fits the period of the LaLa house more than any other material except cypress. Then I came across this when I was looking for tips on how to clean and whether to use it in your house:

My Cuban mom’s original home as a child in Havana, (before Castro took it) had white marble floors. They loved to lie on the cool stone after school. If it’s good enough for Cuban floors, it’s good enough for the kitchen counter.

You can do it!!!! GO MARBLE!

We like it hot down here. People say they couldn’t take the heat we have, but I’ll take it any day over the cold. It’s so beautiful outside today that it makes it all worthwhile. And to think I am taking off for Chicago tomorrow – oh well, I’ll have to eat a big steak while there to keep me warm.

Last week I told K that if he couldn’t figure out how to hang the doors in the pantry then we needed to find someone who could. This was after being frustrated that C wasn’t calling him or I back to tell us what was intended and there is no drawing conceptual or otherwise. So K didn’t show up all weekend, and I knew and even said it at Pilates this morning, I was going to have to say something to him to get him back in the game.

And so I went over and asked him what was wrong and he said, well you told me you were going to hire someone else, and I said K, the reality is that if this becomes a bottleneck – figuring out the doors – and you can’t get to the myriad other things that only you have in your head, then once again you are holding me hostage on those things because I can’t go hire another carpenter to complete them – whereas I can hire another carpenter to hang these pantry doors – and I also told him that he wouldn’t last a day in my company where feelings are not a currency at all and you have to buck up to harsh reality that you got to be right or you’re wrong and you’ve got to be on time or you’re wrong.

Could you imagine if after everything New Orleans went through because of Katrina that there right now remains the possibility that the Saints could be in the Superbowl – kind of gives you chills.