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Woke this morning in a haze because Jim was talking up a blue streak in the apartment below me at 4AM. Tossed and turned to shut him out, but couldn’t, so the Bean and I just got up. We went for a walk while it was pitch dark outside and the fog was loosely woven. Stopped in the LaLa to retrieve light bulbs that don’t work in the fancy shmancy fans. Then as we crossed the Magnolia Bridge, we passed H with Lulu – she said, “it’s magical out here isn’t it?” – got to love an art teacher.

On the way home, we (read: Arlene and I, we’re of one mind) started seeing the world differently – we’ll live in this house that we are building and it will be magnificent. My work will change next year, but will be satisfying at the same time as challenging. My focus will have shifted from the negative – marriage ending, heart break, floods, evacuation, held hostage by spiraling costs of a house – to the positive – living in my LaLa watching my garden grow, the front porch the Bean’s point of debarKation, a community of friends at my beck and call, all loved ones healthy, a home to come home to, and hopefully peace on earth.

When I see the future, it has all those magical qualities.

The other day when I was with the J-man walking down Magazine, we ran into Tommy Malone who called me Red Riding Hood – I said no, it’s actually Rachel – he said no, I remember you as Red Riding Hood.

Begs the question – am I everything that a big bad wolf could want?

It’s night four and so far Hanukkah Harry has not appeared – I guess I still have to replenish my karma since my badness spilled over into this year.

Not even socks – the ultimate Hanukkah gift – practical and affordable.

Maybe Hanukkah Harry just doesn’t know where to find me since I’m scattered all over the place with no real home. Lesson learned – next time you move into a “temporary” situation – take the art out and put it on the wall, paint the wall for that matter, unpack everything even if you have to pack it again – this gypsy life is a shadow of my former self.

A friend sent this video and unfortunately it has such a darn catchy tune:

My friend, Dr Music, says he saw this on Saturday Night Live and believes Justine Timberlake is destined to break out of his pop bubble and actually become something real.

I was speaking to a girlfriend last night about growing up boy crazy. We were laughing about a time I remembered when my father told me to back away from the window when I was 5 years old and watching with fascination as the boy across the street played war with his green plastic soldiers.

Which brings me to this morning – I met with Joe Pieri to measure my cabinets for the slab counter tops. My house was buzzing with men. Dave and Steve were there talking about how to shore up the cabinets to hold the weight of the marble. Brian, who works for Earl, was there putting in the electrical. Michael and Peter were painting inside and out. Giovanni was cutting marble and putting in the baseboards in the master bathroom.

Then Earl walked in – wow, that man is smoking hot!

They’re everywhere – fluttering and flitting about – and then dying right before your eyes – delicate wings on chubby black bellies.

I walked Arlene before it was light this morning, cloaked by dense fog, and I felt a sense of urgency to slow down.

The holiday season is here – I’ve barely listened to my Christmas music, although I’ve been lighting the menorah every night. I didn’t go to the lighting in Jackson Square. I missed the carroling at the Cavalry Church on Saturday evening.

This next week promises to be busy with reports coming in and preparation for the new year. My office is closed from the 22nd till the 2nd, but it seems like that time always flies by since it is chocked full of catching up on personal and social agenda items. I’m just looking forward to not having to check email at 6AM or 10PM and every time in between. Or make sure I have my cellphone embedded in my ear. I need a consumer electronic vacation.

There are so many movies I want to see – I still haven’t seen hunky Denzel in Deja Vu, there is also The Queen, The History Boys, Babel – all sorts of movies I’d love to see on the big screen. Then there are several hundred I want to rent and even one that L lent me that I want to see again, and haven’t.

I envision a year where my DVR is working and I can have TV night – as it is right now, the TV hasn’t been on in a month. Also, I want to take a two-hour bath in my oversized tub, with bubbles and candles and music, and I want to come out looking like a prune. At some point, I want to plant a seedling in my yard and start nurturing it along the seasons. Then I want my friends over to eat food I’ve prepared and to sit on one of the porches and lolly gag away the evening. All this I want the New Year to bring – I want to put an end to house terrors, bad mojo, and chasing my tail.

The fog was so thick this morning, just like pea soup. Janet, my neighbor at the Can, came by walking Sunny, the big white dog she rescued post-K. I was feeling otherworldly as I negotiated the bayou without actually seeing it. She said, “I hate this weather.” I told her it makes for beautiful days. She said, “But the mornings are awful with this fog, and it’s wet.”

It comes down to this – we view the world through our own distorted lens – fog is either beautiful or awful – it all depends on who is doing the looking.

That’s what my tea bag said this evening. So on that note – I must say that Eli’s Coming has been pervasive not just with me, G said she feels it too. I have an overwhelming amount of stuff to do – today I took my long bike ride, riding back over to West End to see how it has progressed. It has, although the boat houses are all hammered. But the park has been cleaned up and some small houses were demolished and they are preparing to build the third huge high rise where those small cottages were.

I drove by H&T’s new house on Hagan Street – it’s really large – the rooms are enormous. T was on a ladder and H in the kitchen painting and cleaning and listening to the Saints lose.

I left for the LaLa armed and prepared to clean up the mess that the workers have made – empty pop bottles, bags of Chinese food, empty cigarette packs – it’s like the world is their trash can. I picked up all around the outside of the house and then put most of what I could in bags for the trash man on Thursday and the rest I threw in the back of Blue. Then I went inside and sorted through the wood stuff – pairing each case with sets of shelves.

Then I swept up all the sawdust from Ken’s cabinet setting and unwrapped the range I picked up from Lowes yesterday so we can just roll it into where the cabinets are for Pieri tomorrow.

While I worked, I had the radio tuned to a country station, and a guy sang if you are in the midst of hell, walk a little faster and you’ll be out soon, and if you get out fast enough the devil might not even know you were there.

Well, I’m in the midst of hell, but I can’t walk any faster than I am. So the damn devil is shadowing me 24/7. Jews don’t believe in the devil or hell or any such blackness, but I just might be convinced otherwise – there are modern devils who appear in many guises, all trying to get me to linger a while in hell – Murphy is my main squeeze, the devil sprite who makes things go wrong and rewrong in the LaLa – Murphy has helped to focus my attention away from a tall redheaded devil who learned my Achilles’ heel only to seduce me with it – and while that devil has been banished to the hell from whence he came, a more recent sprite, with beguiling green eyes pierced my indifference and scared me – in these parts lives a fair weather devil, a preppy who uses his gift of gab to get me to pay attention but each time poof, he never fully materializes – too close to home might be the devil who came on so fast and furious it made me wind my Wonder Woman invisible cloak tight tight tight.

I’m proud I am starting to see the devil for who he is – but hell, it doesn’t mean I know what to do about him.

I was chatting with a friend about mutual friends we have and who he is close to and who I am close with. He mentioned a friend of ours and shook his head – said he felt for her because she seems to have lost her inner compass. I agreed, but don’t know what the reason is for that. How come some people possess a fine inner compass and some don’t, while others need lots of help finding guideposts for living?

For us, the living, there are no answers in the back of the book. This is for certain. My list of life’s questions grows rather than shrinks with time. My inner compass leads me forward with conviction and certainty, and yet, I look at how vulnerable I allow myself to be and it gives me pause. It’s almost like I am a dumb beast of burden, I let people climb on board and I’ll go for miles and miles carrying that weight without entertaining alternatives – endurance being the singular skill. Now without a rider, I gallop, speed is my friend, yet I am still unsure of where I am going, just headlong into that next day, next moment, next something something? North, south, east or west?

It is so beautiful outside, I can’t begin to tell you. Of course, my lens on the world is cloudy today after having stayed up late last night and then waking up at 3:30AM with house terrors – I thought G was still asleep on my couch but she had snuck out. I got up and finally took an Atavan as I could not shake the terrors which seemed more virulent than the ones that I have had before. When I finally got up again at 7, it was because Arlene could not be still.

So we went for a walk around the bayou, which was so peaceful and beautiful this morning. I saw Ms. Marie in front of her house, so we walked over to say hello. She was telling me how she visited her son and it was strange because you look out his front door and all you see are houses – with no people. She said the people drive into their driveways and pull around in back of the houses and so you never actually see anybody.

We both sighed at the thought as we stared across the bayou to my house. She said when she was younger the levees along the bayou were built higher with board forms to prevent wakes from coming over the levees since there were no locks controlling it from the lake.

I begged off to come home and get my bike – the day being so utterly gorgeous that only a bike ride would do it justice – and she said she wished she could get on her bike. Her doctors told her she couldn’t ride anymore because she’s too old. I told her to enjoy her day nonetheless and she said she would even though she is alone.

I said, I’m alone too after having been married my whole life, and sometimes it’s good and sometimes not, but it’s much better than feeling alone when you’re with someone, that’s for sure.