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I’ve often had people ask me how I could live in New Orleans, a backwater, a crime ridden, debauchery laden, hurricane target? And I say, easy.

Right now I could make a list for you about the people, events, culture, music, food, landscape, but let’s just focus here on what’s important.

As I write this, there are pelicans skirting the bayou and birds playing on a wire and it is 65 degrees. Yes, that’s write 65 and tomorrow it will be 70. You know what it is in NY? 30 something and tonight 20 something and in Boston, forgetaboutit, it is going to be in the low 20s.

When my friend was here soaking up the rays and at the hula hoop workshop with me, she said it was snowing where she lived. I said, and why do you live there again?

TV viewership is on the rise.

Why the increase in TV viewing? The answer is simple: unhappiness. The study says the happier TV viewers are, the more time they spend reading newspaper and books and socializing. Oh, yeah — they also have more sex.

Getting ready to head to NY and Boston on a business trip and was gathering stuff together to pack and take. I saw an image on the news of snow storms and it made me cringe. Checked the weather – snow on Friday in NY, 26 degrees in Boston this morning – GADZOOKS!

It was 60 degrees here in New Orleans and about 64 degrees inside the LaLa, on the nippy side for us. When I walked Loca this morning, we picked up our pace just to warm up.

Later, while I was taking out the trash, a large brown Louisiana pelican soared by, having come here to thrive for the winter. Birds of a feather, I thought to myself.

Saw a billboard advertising A Little Bit Gaudy. It’s like eating at a place called Fatso or having you’re hair done at Bad Hair Day. Makes no sense.

My friend and I got in a long discussion about how opposites attract and people who are like you are better suited for friendships than for relationships. The fun part is when we were speaking about our foibles – OCD, fast moving, impatient, overscheduled – we both looked at each other and laughed and said, damn, I wouldn’t want to live with you!

More importantly, it made us both realize how lucky we are to have partners who are calm and patient, who put up with our insanity. I’ve met a lot of head scratchers in my time – people who scratch their head about my choice in a partner and me scratching my own head about other’s choices. But as I told a close friend the other day, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors, no one.

I heard on Terry Gross that there is an electronic nose being developed to smell diseases and conditions in sick people. Apparently, Hippocrates was able to smell diabetes by the juicy fruit breath of his patients and dogs have been known to smell seizures coming on. There are doctors today who use scent as diagnosis.

My mom called her doctor because she has a neurological condition that makes her feet burn and flutter and basically feel like rats are biting her toes off – the doctor’s office said he could not see her till December 24th and they wouldn’t refill her prescription till then either. She hasn’t been able to sleep for the last week.

I’m amazed that there are doctors who are so attuned to illness that they can smell disease when most doctors I have encountered that have anything to do with my mother’s care have been indifferent and downright rude. Except one, I will never forget him. In the emergency room having stabbed herself by falling off the couch and impaling the coffee table in her throat, this older gentlemen of a doctor came in and his bedside manner was so calming and so comforting that I, even as I smelled the familiar scent of alcohol of my mother’s breath, was lulled into believing everything was going to be alright too.

Confessions of a stress junkie, overachiever, perfectionist, control freak, doer:

I do not thrive on stress much to my chagrin and the disappointment of everyone around me who thoroughly believes that stress is what makes me tick. I am stressed because I believe I can accomplish the impossible in the most efficient way in a minimal amount of time and I set out to prove that every single day. My own to do list is overwhelming and yet when someone says, “You know, you don’t have to be Wonder Woman,” I cringe. Why not?

I had a long talk with a fellow “doer” and realized she is insane. Like me. And that our insanity is not necessarily working for us or for our loved ones. So it is up to us to figure out a way to undo.

And along comes T-Bone, my superhero, my mentor in the art of monotasking, relaxing, enjoying, and pleasure seeking. Hail to the horizontal way of life.

Driving back to New Orleans from Houston on the I-10, I crossed over the Henderson Swamp, which around late afternoon, was intensely beautiful. The water was so glassy it mirrored the setting sun, and the cypress trees looked like prehistoric human forms rising from the water.

I have issues with victimhood, thoroughly believing that if you think you are a victim you become one. I realize that because I proceed in life as if everyone likes me, I don’t encounter too many bad exchanges out and about. I notice with people who are paranoid, a lot of times, people are out to get them.

I was driving home from Houston yesterday, after attending the Madonna Sticky and Sweet concert with Flower and friends and listening to NPR when a story came on about a man who dresses like Superman.

A week ago, when I was getting a massage to take care of my back ache I told L that things had been so hectic lately, I was in the mood to channel Wonder Woman and imagine myself in wonderous circumstances where having a lasso and some power bracelets could magically transport me to flights of fancy rather than a shrinking financial market.

Turns out the man who dresses impeccably as Superman lost his wife two years ago. He said he had a hard time understanding how a person who was so beautiful and full of life suddenly had no tomorrows and so he decided to live fully today for her.

I kept thinking his original intent was most likely to spin around like Superman and go back to the past where he might be able to save her.