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Last night, late, we ended up at Wit’s Inn for pizza, and T said that Bush was his man, his boy, his homie. G kept saying, no he’s not. And he kept saying, yes, he is. So T said that he thought Bush would go down as the best president the U.S. had ever had. Was I aghast? Yes, but I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion and if you give me a good reason for your beliefs, I won’t dismiss them. I told T that Bush was the wrong man for a challenging time in the U.S. My personal belief is that when he took office there were three issues that the U.S. needed to address: education, health care, and poverty. Our president turned his back on all three of these domestic issues and instead led us into a foreign war that we knew going in we could not win.

The girls debated whether they could have a relationship with a man who loved George Bush.

T said even though Bush was his man, he’d give him up for G.

Why can’t a man and woman be in a relationship and have different political views? Does every relationship require a complete obedience to the same same everything? What of debate or spark or the other? – if we’re all the same – then what makes us different?

I celebrated the milenium at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco listening to Super Diamond. Last night, G had a date with T and I went over to have cocktails with them at G’s house. After a martini, we put on Neil Diamond’s Kentucky Woman and I don’t know – we just started dancing. Girl, you’ll be a woman now. Cracklin Rosie. And then Bonnie Raitt came own singing “I can’t make you love me,” and G said “wait, wait, we have to hear this,” – she played it over and over and then she brought the laptop in the kitchen and turned it really loud and we three huddled by the kitchen table and listened to every word:

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
Turn down these voices inside my head
Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don’t patronize – don’t patronize me

Chorus: cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
Here in the dark, in these lonely hours
I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t
cause I can’t make you love me, if you don’t

I’ll close my eyes, then I won’t see
The love you don’t feel when you’re holding me
Morning will come and I’ll do what’s right
Just give me till then to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight

Chorus: cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t
Here in the dark, in these lonely hours
I will lay down my heart and I’ll feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t
cause I can’t make you love me, if you don’t

As I walked the Bean around the bayou this morning – a glorious morning I might add – I noticed a cat stalking a squirrel. Then the cat took off and the squirrel took off up an old oak tree that is on the corner of Harding and Moss. The cat came down after climbing a few feet. Then it looked around for another diversion.

In back of the LaLa, my neighbor had removed my fence boundary flag and the concrete block that protected it (which I put the day before after he ran over the flag) and run his tires over and over the markings.

I said to myself, self I said, why would a person be such an ass? And then it occurred to me. It’s all for sport. The Martins have nothing else to do but fuck around with the new neighbor – in a way, I’m the curled up mouse that S or M wants to paw around with. What puts me in the curled position is that I’m wanting to have harmony and at times needing access to their driveway to paint that side or the like.

When I uncurl – I’m going to have a little sporting fun myself. I wonder if they have ever heard Opeth full blast? Something makes me think not. Oh, but they will. And this little mouse will run around in glee – perhaps even naked.

Or I can see clearly now? Which is it? I got a lot of my ducks in a row today – talked to the stained glass people about getting colored glass for my pantry doors, the ceramic people about the LALA for the front walkway, went by and measured the living room for my furniture, talked to Peter who was there painting the blue ceiling in the den. Then I went by Swirl and Beth asked how the house was going and I told her what the week had been like and I said, when it’s done, it will be good though. And she said, “No Rachel, it will be awesome!” And maybe that helped another monkey or two to jump off my back.

K, my carpenter, called from Atlanta, where he went for Thanksgiving. He said he was standing in the midst of a forest and wanted to cut down a big old Christmas tree for me and bring it back to New Orleans for me to put in the LaLa. I said that’s very nice of you, but I’m Jewish, I’ve never had a Christmas tree.

A week ago when I was speaking to my mom I said well the baby naming is at 6:15PM so you don’t have to worry about getting off of work. She said, “I am hoping I can be there.” I said, what?, you better be there. We’re having a double baby naming for my two great nieces that were born within five weeks of each other. In the equal opportunity new Jewish life, girl’s get namings since they don’t get a bris (I think just being thankful you’re not getting a bris is enough).

Tonight I went to Temple Sinai on St. Charles Avenue with all my family to give the girls their Hebrew names. It’s a reform synagogue, my nephew who converted feels more comfortable there – reform means it is woman friendly and gay friendly – you read the books from left to right, mostly in English – and all around different than the synagogues I grew up in. It’s not that the gender equality is bothersome, it’s more the organ jamming in the background which is a little off putting and not nostalgic. The whole concept is kind of like your parents smoking pot. You just don’t want to experience it.

Meanwhile, we were two or three segments into the service when I noticed mom was a no show. I went out and called her and she said that she couldn’t make it. She had thought she’d catch a cab and then have me drive her home, but the cabs were running late so she opted not to catch one.

There is something odd about a woman who will leave her house at 4AM and drive through sugar cane fields and Cypress dense bayous to care for 115 drooling, depends clad people she knows hardly at all and yet, she fails miserably with her primary group. She missed my high school graduation, my college graduation, and countless other events in my life, not to mention her grandchildren, and now great grandchildren’s lives. It is by far one of the most perplexing behaviors I have come to know.

Mom won a bike in a raffle. Since she’s not going to ride it and I wanted a spare for visitors, I told her I’d take it. The hitch was I had to drive to Raceland to get it. When mom evacuated with her patients during Katrina, she slept on a floor with 20 of the 120 rerouted to a facility in Houma. The nursing home was in Harahan and it was destroyed. So the patients were parcelled out to different homes. A lot of hers wound up in Raceland, so when they asked her to be Director of Nursing there, ney, they begged her, she took the job. That means she drives every day 45 minutes into the middle of nowhere.

I arrived there flipping back and forth on both sides of the bayou trying to find out which side the nursing home was on. The entire staff at the nursing home was on the phone with me at any given time guiding me in. To say I was a little shell shocked is an understatement – my mom is going to be 71 years old in December. Why she chooses to drive 45 minutes to get to a home where 115 drooling nutty as a fruit cake elderly people troll the halls in wheel chairs or cling to the rails that go down the halls is something I will never understand.

Ms. Pat. Ms. Pat. We love Ms. Pat – the choir sang.

Woke up to that Eli’s Coming feeling and so laid in the bed with the pillow over my head. The house, the house, the house. Here it is the last few miles of the house marathon and I’m starting to limp. I want to get in the truck and head straight to Guadalajara and don cut offs and open beer bottles with my key ring. And start smoking again. So I tossed and turned and Arlene started making noises like she had to go out.

So I got up and walked the Bean around the bayou and the water was still as glass. We walked up the ramp to the LaLa and peered inside at the colors that have been newly painted on the walls. We circled around and crossed over the Friendship bridge and made our way home. I paced around. I went and worked out.

I called Steve, my contractor, and said we need to talk. He came to meet me and we went to CC’s – my conference room – and sat outside and I pulled out spreadsheets and lists and calendars. I told him I am not one to have a balance on my credit card. I love savings. I hate this process – the constant hemorrhaging of mo’ money, mo’ money, and no end in sight.

He said he wished all his clients were like me.

And then we went through the list – and picked out the priorities – and still it is triple what it was supposed to be just two months ago. That’s why I don’t trust that it is two months from now that I’m moving in or that it is X amount to finish. But still Steve has a way of calming me down and making me feel like it’s all going to work out.

So I took a deep breath and went on with the day.

I had an inner debate going on after sort of embarrassing myself the other night – I wanted to apologize to the person I was with because I felt a little, well, untoward. E suggested I apologize to myself instead. So I thought about what I really was feeling and decided I have nothing to apologize to anyone for, but I would forgive myself for not behaving as I would have liked to under the circumstances. After all in the scheme of embarrassing situations, the other night pales in comparison to my most embarrassing moment. Which I’ll save for another telling.

My niece, N, who is very artistic and who had coping issues at college in Savannah while studying art, came home with a Xanax addiction. The doctor there prescribed them to her for her anxiety and depression and then she couldn’t function without the magic pills. She ended up in rehab after a year long battle. She’s a beautiful girl, always has been, looks exotic like Eartha Kitt. She has a thing for butterflies. At the Thanksgiving meal today, I went outside with Abby Lane to rock her by the pool and N came out to talk to me. I asked her how she was doing and she told me she had a couple of friends pass when she was in the 9th grade and then one thing led to another and by the time she had started college she just didn’t want to feel any of the feelings she was having. I said you need to feel them, because when you stuff those feelings down they grow into larger than life bogies that come after you when you least suspect.

On the phone, early this week, a friend said she knows that she went out with one guy to not miss the other guy and that what was really going on is that she cared about yet another guy and in order to not feel anything for any of these men, she was playing Russian -man- Roulette. I said what if you just allowed yourself to feel the loss of the one man you truly wanted. She said, “oh no, wouldn’t want to do that.”

Feet of Clay – we’re all so human aren’t we? – and yet there’s something about the pace of the modern world that allows us to dissociate ourselves from feeling.

I feel scared I won’t be able to complete the LaLa because I will have run out of every available resource. And then I feel fear that my vision, living in the LaLa, walking out to get my rolled up newspaper and seeing the bayou every morning, will evaporate because like everyone else who remodels or builds, life throws a curve ball and a lot of people don’t end up living in what they create and all this pain and suffering will have been for naught. I feel sad for having chosen the coward’s way out of my marriage. I feel deep regret for not speaking up for want I wanted in my marriage. I feel angry for having allowed another man’s confusion to string me along for so long. I feel terrified my mother might die any day now. I feel guilty about work in general – not doing enough, not smart enough, not risky enough. I feel disgusted with myself that I can’t seem to lose these seven pounds I have put on in the last six months. I feel anxiety constantly over being a girl who just wants to have fun and a woman who wants to do something meaningful.

And yet, most days, what my focus revolves around are all warm fuzzy feelings. I feel love. I feel joy. I feel happy. I feel elated. I feel comfort. I feel beautiful. I feel loved. I feel passion. I feel pride. I feel……….

I had the BEST day with my family! My oldest brother and his five daughters and six grandchildren and my youngest brother and his entire family were in town and we had the most awesome time together. My sister-in-law, Kim and I took the new great nieces, Abby Lane and Rease, out in their strollers and walked up and down the front porch, back and forth, a million times, because there are no sidewalks in Riverridge.

My brother deep fried a huge turkey with the most delicious rub on it – garlic, pepper, cumin and stuff he wouldn’t tell me. There were sweet potatoes, green beans, sinful potatoes (my nephew, Shane, makes these), challah, stuffed mirltons, oyster dressing, apple pie, pecan pie, sundried tomato and pesto torta, Merlot and Pinot Noir. Yum yum yum.

Then we braided everyone’s hair – I braided Justin’s hair, baby Sara braided baby Rachel’s hair, baby Rachel braided Sara’s hair. Then Nicole gave Sara a long back rub. Then she gave me one that sent shivers down my spine. Then I rubbed her hands and feet. And then rubbed David’s hands. Then baby Sara and baby Rachel punked out Justin’s hair with big spikes. Michael put Rylee’s hair up in pigtails. We’re a very touchy family and obviously should have opened up a family hair salon some years ago.

The BIGGEST and best news of the day is I learned my brother Rafael (along with his wife Kim and daughters, Nicole and Sara) is moving back to New Orleans after 10+ years of living in Atlanta – YIPPEEEEEE!!!!!! – so psyched.

I drove home right before the last bit of light leaked from the sky and saw the grey wall and the buttercup color on the kitchen wall and it looks fabulous!!

So a day of superlatives and gratitude that I belong to this very large tribe of people, family and friends, here in New Orleans that I love to pieces.