Thursday is the dog parade starting at Cabrini and headed to Swirl. Friday is Halloween. We’re thinking Loca will be Obama and mom suggested that Arlene be Toots, his grandmother. But in the meantime, we were trying some costumes a friend dropped off. The spider did not fit Loca at all. And the lobster, well, Arlene just was too sad of a lobster to take her out like that:
The water temperature during the summer promotes barnacles and since I had taken the canoe out mid summer and hadn’t checked, when we went to put it in the bayou I noticed the entire bottom was thick and encrusted with barnacles. My neighbor says when the water temp cools the barnacles can’t live – thank god – because scraping them is like trying to remove concrete.
We rowed down the bayou with Loca today and had us a good old time watching the crowds head inside City Park in early costumes. Four ghosts looked down on us from the Esplanade bridge.
It’s late now, Voodoo Experience is closing down, and I believe Irma Thomas is the last one singing. For those of you who don’t know the Queen of New Orleans soul – check this out:
I found a way to put my IPOD in my bra so I can hula hoop with music on the bayou. It has made such a difference in my moves. Mid November I’m taking a hooping class behind the NOMA and hope to pick up some hand skills. I get good at this and might try to hula with fire, seeings how I couldn’t manage to do the fire poi.
We were headed uptown to Casamento’s to take mom to lunch and were driving down Napoleon when we saw a big mansion burned down to the foundation – the firemen still had the hose on the remains. The adjacent mansion had been left a shell as if a firebomb exploded.
Later, I learned a house on St. John Court had burned down many years ago. Ms. Marie said everyone came out to watch the old house burn. It was a big, beautiful antebellum house with a gallery all around. Since I’ve been in the neighborhood, there is only a bare lot that the owner is selling and asking way too much for – $500K – the lot is used primarily for parking by the residents on the Court up until recently when someone put a bunch of fence posts up to block cars during Jazz Fest.
Apparently, the large house had two spinsters living it who used to put real candles on their enormous Christmas tree. That wasn’t what burned down the house. But it made me think that when my uncle did our genealogy a while back it was very curious how many women had died in house fires. My mother’s people were land poor and came to the country very early, working the land all the way till they got to Louisiana.
My lament is for the beautiful houses that can never be rebuilt.
Pickle the dog is going to be on Japanese television singing along with his master’s harmonica.
I was speaking to the 95 year old woman across the bayou and she said she walks two miles around the bayou every morning and then takes another walk in the afternoon. Certainly, she has found the fountain of youth – movement.
Someone was saying the other day that marriage is hard work and I said, not hard, but it is certainly not effortless. Great love starts with a spark, long love requires the flames to be fanned. If you call that work, then yes maybe it’s hard, but if you fanning is all wrapped up in that love groove thing than it ain’t work at all.
I remember when I was having a midlife crisis meltdown in Marin County and my housekeeper, this gorgeous young Brazilian wrote me a note saying “I CAN FIND YOU NO COMFORT” – seeing how she was looking for the duvet and I was looking for a whole new lease on life, it ended up being my mantra. Friday night at Abby’s memorial, we were lounging towards the end and a friend threw herself on the comfy sofa and said, “How come I can’t get comfortable on my own sofa like this?” And I said, I’ve never been comfortable on my own sofa, chair, or in my garden – I always have ants in my pants, but some people’s house I can just sink in – Jer’s sofa, L’s sofa, I seem to be able to relax. I watch T finding all these lounge places around the LaLa and think this woman knows how to find her some comfort alright and man, I’m getting there too, albeit slowly.
I was walking Loca behind this guy on a cellphone in the park the other day and he said and I quote verbatim, “No lie, no, she’s 42, eh, old broad, how come you didn’t say that?”
Mañana por la mañana
llena tu casa de flores
de seguro que te visita
la virgen de los dolores
Today, I got a visit from the J-man who wanted to put his motor boat in the bayou. The misty, overcast, winterish day suddenly gave rise to a gorgeous sunshining fall day and the bayou had a few little white caps to provide enough adventure for the boat. While he maneuvered the boat back and forth and round about, a horse driven carriage went by on the other side of the bayou. And rock and roll wafted out of City Park from the Voodoo Experience festival going on.
Everything looks different in the morning.