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Last night, my oldest niece who has an issue with me ever since she found out about the affair called to tell me not to bring the Bean to the Thanksgiving meal – she said there were too many dogs there already and the babies. “No hard feelings, right?”

“Right,” Rachel responded through thin lips.

So this morning I walked the Bean a good long walk and ran into Gomez and told him about my 19th nervous breakdown and he said – “just think, this time next year, these will not be your concerns” and then he went on to descibe how lucky I am and I looked at him and said, wait, aren’t you Gomez?

Along the walk I noticed that my neighbors had run over my boundary line flag in the backyard. We ran into E walking Mabel and she was wearing the chicest sunglasses I’ve ever seen, which she said she bought for $2. I said best $2 you ever spent.

Then we kept seeing L, man of mystery, across the bayou from us, and I tried to whistle but my mouth was too dry so Les whistled, no response. I tried waving and L tried waving, but no response.

Then when we were at the Dumaine Bridge, parting, L walked by with her two dogs – as always as if she has a rod stuck up her back – we said happy thanksgiving in unison and she barely grunted back. I whispered “prima donna” under my breath and then tried to stand like she does, with a rod down my back, and told Gomez – don’t you think if I walked around like this all the time people would think I was trying to add emphasis to my breasts – we laughed.

I came home and got my bike and drove by the LaLa and put a concrete block through the survey flag and went in to find M there painting the gray on the entertainment wall – it looks fabulous. I stood in the sunlit room on this gorgeous – uber gorgeous – day and felt good about the house – I’ll pull through this – just have to breathe.

Then I took my bike to the track and watched the horses – it’s opening day at the Fair Grounds – lot of folk headed there today for the races and Thanksgiving meal. Lucky folk. The horses were prancing about in this weather – and the jockeys looked so tiny on top of those big creatures.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone – say a prayer for the turkeys who gave their lives for your enjoyment and tradition – and if you are in New Orleans – GO OUTSIDE – it is the most beautiful day of the year!!!!

So last night G and I went to Le Petite Grocery because Martha makes the best damn cosmopolitan in this city. We ran into G and J, a handsome couple obviously in love. I told G that I had had my nineteenth nervous breakdown about the LaLa and had called my mother – who responded like a mother for a change and calmed my nerves. And G entertained me with men stories.

Then we went to St Joe’s and decided it was way too smokey and headed to Monkey Hill where we ran into C (who named his baby after G) – it’s the first I met him, but I’ve heard about him, great guy and then we went to the Kingpin where we ran into the Czech and his band of merry men from Russia and thereabouts. One is a fine furniture maker so I took his card as at some point I will need furniture for the LaLa.

There was a festive atmosphere everywhere we went and I thought about Richman’s article – about how we are partying our way to the grave – and I thought “and this is a bad thing?” Then it was time to make our way back to Midcity, where we thought about stopping at Ralph’s, but instead chose our respective beds.

If you haven’t read Alan Richman’s article in GQ about New Orleans and our cuisine, then maybe you should, simply so you can laugh in the face of the pompous man who wrote it.

Here is an excerpt:

New Orleans has always been about food and music, with parades added to the mix. (In the North, where I come from, we like to think we’re about jobs and education, with sports thrown in.)

Puhlease – over the last two weeks, I was in Boston once and New York twice, dining out, having cocktails, attending parties, and I came away with not one standout award for food or cocktails. Reading Richman’s comments, you’d think that New Orleans is a bastion of ne’erdewell chefs cooking for a pedestrian audience. What? He gets it right on John Besh, the best chef in this city, and Jacques-Imo’s being the most over-rated restaurant in town, but he puts a crushing spin on everything that is tradition here.

His overarching smugness that he matters somehow in the scheme of New Orleans, that his take on Spicer’s Bayona or the “other” Liuzza’s carries any weight at all, is laughable.

Alan Richman, really honey, such poor form coming from the descendant of carpet baggers – darling, no one cares what you think. Now you stay up there in the freezing cold and eat your Yankee beans and don’t come ’round here no more.

It’s just possible that getting enough sleep, not having any cocktails, and catching up on all your reading may be bad for you – because when all the rushing stops, all of those little players in your mind that you have benched for the time being suddenly all want to be the starring quarterback in your show. It’s exhausting – the battle royal waged in one’s own mind.

I saw E this afternoon and she said my pendulum was still stuck on the other side – having swung so far away from where I began. In her soothing way, she said, it will find its way back to middle in time.

I felt more peaceful when I left her office and I came home and worked out for an hour, even though I had worked out this morning. I just had more in me to get rid of, peaceful or not. Then I came upstairs and turned my IPOD to the Christmas playlist and wrapped all the kiddies’ presents.

Finally, I made my way to the couch to read – Arlene snuggling as close to me as she can get – following me around, under my heels, jumping in my lap as I read the backlogged newspapers. Eager for love. Eager to be touched – isn’t that a fear of fears? I recall going to M for a massage around July and when she touched me, I smiled and said, thankfully, I was worried I wasn’t ever going to be touched again. She laughed.

So in the flannel pjs that my friend in California (L) bought me many Christmases ago, and with Silent Night playing on the IPOD, and all the papers read, and all the presents wrapped, I thought of all the wonder I have known and feel grateful for this life.

Gomez text me this morning to walk the dogs with him. After a chilling bayou walk yesterday with the wind cutting through my clothes, I went out with my rubber coat this morning, along with gloves, hat, scarf, etc. He said that yesterday morning he had run into D in her car with a bucket filled with water and a duckling who had gotten lost from the group. They searched in vain for the mother duck and the rest of the ducklings [my last spotting was near the Esplanade bridge], but it was too late, the little duckling died in the bucket.

Who would have a duck right now? I asked him. Who gives birth to little ducks in cold weather? I thought ducks were spring deliveries!

For this, for everything, it moves us not…….

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent–what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness–
between you, there is nothing to forgive–
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is now a thing only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

Jane Hirschfield

For a woman who has seemed in life to be hell bent on repeating past behavior a la Sisyphus – in the past few days, I was able to recognize a dilemma I found myself in – I still have one foot rooted in the old me and one foot barely grounded in the new me, and without being fully formed, I was growing increasingly confused about just exactly who I am and/or want to be.

In typical old me fashion, I was waiting to go see E tomorrow afternoon and have her tell me who I am, when I thought, huh, I’m a big girl, I can figure this one out of my own, right? Just be honest with yourself and with whomever this affects.

So I thought about what feels right, and what doesn’t and decided, so maybe some of this is right, but some isn’t, and maybe it’s timing and maybe it’s me, but you know what, the end result is that it is not right for me right now.

And so I communicated this to the person it affects and the wonderful human being at the other end of the phone said, “ditto” (more eloquently, of course).

So in figuring out what I want, and not superseding that with what the other might want, I’m on my way to being a grown up. I’m slow, but not stupid.

I spoke to a friend last night who started crying on the phone – she was in self-loathing mode and was beating herself up for recent behaviour that seemed to involve alcohol and men. Hmm, I said, well, welcome to the club of women older than a teenager and younger than an AARP card, who can’t seem to act right. Another girlfriend told me Saturday night that she overindulges in alcohol, the social lubricant, particularly around men she is most attracted to and so she was most concerned when a recent beau sent a text that said “don’t drink 2 much 2nite.” Of course, her problem is she falls asleep when she drinks 2 much, the first one simply goes hog wild at high octane levels.

There is some lethal combination about men we woman want and the need to self-medicate that doesn’t seem to have an answer except maybe, okay I’ll give you this one, don’t drink when around them?

In the meantime, men are tricky creatures too – they use alcohol in the same way – to embolden themselves in situations they find intimidating.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just walk into a room and sniff each other’s butts and hold our nose snug in each other’s crotch the way dogs do – without a care in the world?

Fox has cancelled the OJ book and television program about how he could have killed his wife. Yes, I know, so absurd that this even got past the door in idea gen, but thankfully the network did the right thing in the end so we should give them credit.

A visit to the LaLa today and K told me that I picked the wrong paint because the red shows every handprint. M showed up semi-drunk, upset that he couldn’t get his license after having it taken away for drunk driving – which is why the delay in getting my house painted. G was under the house sculpting my pillars into pieces of artwork. (Two neighbors have stopped to tell me how great my pillars look.) J was there seeking a check for an invoice that included $300 to cover the floors. Tired of the money drain, I said, what goes on J? You couldn’t come do the floors after M finished the painting, so now I have to pay you $300 to cover the floors since you had to do them before the painting?

S, my contractor, said don’t worry about it – I won’t get charged. Somehow I already feel that $300 slipping into some other invoice, not my wallet.

With the debate about getting my eyes done – L weighed in from California because T had alerted her to my ramblings on the subject. She said – don’t do it. On Thursday night, at a client event my company was sponsoring, I met a man (S) and was speaking to him about the companies I cover – Yahoo, Lamar, Aquantive, Pepsi, Hansen – and he said his colleague A had told him that they need to speak to me more about these names and need to pay us more. And I said good, that’s a good thing. Then S and I were suddenly alone, and he smiled and put his hand over his heart and said “can I tell you something? Your eyes, you have the most beautiful eyes and with that red hair, oh oh oh.” He then hugged me close – it was a brief moment in a busy and business atmosphere – but it stuck with me.

My dreams that night were of eyes – a lover’s eyes that no longer focused on me, a husband’s eyes that cannot see me, a current man whose gaze is unforgiving of me, a friend’s eyes that can no longer meet my gaze, my mother’s eyes that do not want to see her own mortality in mine.

Windows to our soul.