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Giovanni didn’t show up this morning but he called me several times and then he showed up at the LaLa drunk as Cooter Brown – I told him to come back when he is sober. He wanted money and I said, come back sober. My contractor Steve said that these men treat me this way because I’m a woman. Rosa, one of my neighbors at the Can said she has two women friends right now dealing with the same shit and the men treat them horribly.

I told Steve I’m done with this bullshit. Giovanni can sober up and do what he said he was going to do and then he’ll get paid or he can fuck off.

Meanwhile, Joe came and did four dump runs and cleared out most of the stuff in the yard. When he was driving away there was a skywriter spelling the word LOVE in cloud stencils in the sky – he pointed it out and said, that’s about you and me. Right.

The washer and dryer were supposed to arrive at 11am – instead they got here at 5 – and the washer looked like it had been hit by a MACK truck – so back up, start all over again. The best was when they brought the dryer back to the laundry and asked where the gas pipe is – another minor oversight by Louie – my favorite plumber. By the time I finish correcting all of Louie’s oversights, the laundry room walls and floor will look like Swiss cheese.

Tomorrow Julio comes to put the final finish on the floors. Monday James is showing up to start the fence. Louie – the plumber has been a no show for the past four days.

But I’m this * close.

In my last weeks of getting the LaLa ready I keep muttering under my breath – it never ends – because I have been inundated with minutiae – and I feel like I am swimming through jello – and so the other day when it was all crashing down around me and I was muttering, it never ends, I realized yes, it does. You die, it ends. There it is.

So today when David was installing the last of the splash on the counter tops and there were a couple of unresolved issues – he said “it never ends” – and I said, oh yes it does, but I’m not ready for the end yet.

Later, I thought you know if I just got up in the morning and realized that the day would be hijacked, that people would be obstinate and obscure, and my “to do” list would go unfulfilled, that my day would be good because I am approaching each of these days with too high expectations and I am approaching people with too high expectations and I need to settle into what is the reality and that is everything disappoints and delights and you can never put your finger on which is about to happen.

Therein lies the mystery of life. Who knew?

Ran over to Metairie to see the doctor for a post-op on my foot surgery I am having in March. On the way, I stopped at my mom’s and brought her the chocolates and flowers I had gotten for her and didn’t bring on Valentine’s Day because that day was so hijacked by other agendas.

She said – I dreamed you came over and had flowers and chocolates and when you arrived just now it was weird.

In a day, that had the usual disappointments, it was nice to know I made someone’s dreams come true.

If any krewe comes close to the creativity and design of Muses – I’d like to know who. The lit up shoes, the butterflies, and then the SUPER UBER MUSES SHOE float that changes colors – good god – it was gorgeous. Went to a party on Jena and from there made our way to the parade – got there right as St. Aug was cranking and coming down the street – someone in our party was here from Portland, Oregon and said WOW – and I said, uh, yeah, do you think you would ever see the likes of this in Portland Oregon?

The reluctant Pacific Northwesterner became a bead whore overnight. And I caught – my favorite ever – catch – a Wonder Woman emblem! Well the first one was caught by B who brought it over for me, but then I caught a couple myself.

Meanwhile G called me and I said, I can’t hear you I am at the parade – what goes on? He wants to make up?

Back to the party where the disco ball was in full throttle and we danced like it was 1999 – awesome – K was on the floor and people were spinning her – and it was fun fun fun.

I love Mardi Gras!

The LaLa is starting to look like the computer generated rendering Steve did in April 2005. Hard to believe.

I got to the LaLa this morning and Giovanni basically had brought Jesus in to “help” him. I said no, I am not the Bank of Rachel, much as everyone believes I am around here. He got very insulted and said that he wasn’t trying to rip me off and that Jesus was going to help him. I said no, I am not paying him.

I did pay Jesus for two hours of work and then at noon when I was headed back to the house to check on the counter tops – I saw Giovanni and Jesus walking down the bayou – on their way to get lunch, G said.

G didn’t show up all afternoon. Somewhere in his dimunitive thoughts, he was thinking, “I’ll show her.”

The Cox cable man who showed up at 9:30AM left at 4:30 PM – at the end of the day I had internet, phone and television hooked up.

Jesus managed to clean out the entire underneath of the house and backyard and pile it up in front. Provides work for Joe now.

Giovanni managed to stay as far away from me as he could as he could sense my mood.

David showed up from Pieri and said he was hoping he could install tomorrow.

Earl – who I have been wonderful with got a taste of the other side and hopefully he will show up and get it right this time.

Mike promised Louie would come tomorrow and finish the plumbing.

I didn’t see mom or bring her the box of chocolates I bought for her from San Francisco – See’s nuts and chews – it’s still in Blue and thankfully it’s cold enough outside that they can sit there.

I sat on the floor in my office on my computer and got my first taste of having a real office – one that is removed from where I live – and that was a sweet taste of things to come.

Flowers arrived with a sweet note, a couple of nice Valentine wishes were telephoned in, and at the end of the day – mountains were scaled or gone around and I can safely say I see light at the end of the tunnel.

So since both of these personalities live and vy for attention inside of me and apparently, according to E, don’t have a bridge, I am trying to reconcile why they don’t live in harmony. But maybe they do, the more I think about it. Possibly the best example of this was living with Steve – he dealt easily with my flirty-ness and my needing to go hogwild (read: dance on the table) as well as my ability to manage our entire life from A to Z handily. So what is the issue now – the issue is that I play as hard as I work. Call it manic or bipolar or whatever fancy title you need to give it – I just have a nonstop button that says this is work, do it 200%, this is play do it 200%, and then I have a shut off button, which says sleep.

What I guess is missing is the button that says relax.

But my capital R responsible side – the domestic side – the side that cleans, cooks, balances the checkbook, manages life versus the capital W wild side that dances on tables, dances and dances, wants to scream at the top of my lungs, can’t get enough of people and music and life – you tell me – is all fair in love? is all game?

I don’t have an answer here – I just keep falling back on this is who I am, this is what I know – impulses are not always followed through – my own limitations come into play – my overarching energy is part and parcel of the extremes on both sides.

End of the day – is it broke? does it need to be fixed?

So the Cox guy who I spent the better part of the day with runs over to his office to get another modem for my TV and he’s gone a while – he tells me later that he got totally run down by the cops at the circle in front of the museum – he went through a yellow light and the cop stops him and says it was red, he says no it wasn’t it was yellow and you were right behind me so why would I run it red? Cop says explain that to the court. The cop then says give me your insurance card – the Cox dude can’t find it but knows it is in the truck somewhere so while he is searching the cop goes in back of the van and rips off the license plate and posts a sticker on it that says the car is in violation.

WHAT?

We are living in a city that is the Number One Murder Capital of the World – and two police cars, one following behind him that goes through the yellow light with him, and another sitting off to the side have not a goddamn thing to do but run this guy through the mill – an innocent man while he is minding his own business. He is in a Cox van. He is a clean cut guy. And what?

This kind of shit makes me want to take up personal arms and become a vigilante – police can’t do jack for us – so we need to find our own way out here in the wild wild not so west.

I’ve heard this sprinkled in every conversation I’ve had in the last couple of weeks – a high class problem. But as I round the bend to get into the LaLa a lot of high class problems arise. The counter tops are still not in and as I type I hear them trying to salvage the backsplashes because they don’t have enough material for that – I hear this because I am coming to you live and plugged in from my office at the LaLa. The reason why I am here is that the Cox guy has been here since bright and early – and he has been a time vampire – I’ve had lots of work to do and have been having to answer and cater to his not knowing how to set up this house with internet, phone and cable. Everything that was promised is now undeliverable. A high class problem coming from my lofty office.

Meanwhile, the lights began to flicker today and as I had to call the electrician repeatedly because Cox guy couldn’t find the box, I reminded him that while in San Francisco I asked him if I could get the necessary items while there and he said he would handle it. Much in the same way that “I will handle it” has come down to me over the years – nothing was handled and my frustration with it not being done when I could have done it myself is viewed as being – well – how shall I say in English – bitchy. The electrician tells me that the problem is Entergy’s issue. I call him back and say funny how I got the appropriate dimmer switch for the 1000 watts of bulbs that this switch goes to but oddly there is another dimmer on it too and since there was only one 1000 watt dimmer that might be causing the problem. Ah, yes, he says. Again another high class problem.

Giovanni brought Jesus (not THE Jesus) over to clean out from under the house the myriad lumber and building debris that has been accumulating there – it is 40 something degrees outside and miserable – and Giovanni is out there helping him. I called Giovanni in and said I pay you to paint – not haul lumber. Okay. Next thing I find him up in the closet painting the inside of the closet way at the top – I’m like dude, what are you doing? So again another list is made for him to follow.

Again – a high class problem.