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The other day we were chatting with friends and someone asked T about her basketball career. She said she had a horrible left hand dribble and they wouldn’t let her in camp one year so she spent the entire summer practicing till she excelled at left hand dribbling.

That part of her personality, tenacity, which comes through in a range of interactions is more appreciated when you understand that she, by all her efforts, will do something over and over till she gets it right.

We were having lunch with mom today and so far it seems consensus is that she is physically challenged right now but appears pretty lucid. Seeing her from different eyes helped assuage all the outrage I constantly experience when I stand near and witness her slow slide. Their opinions do not make my interpretation go away, but they do help balance my view.

Last night, Snappy came up to the grass and laid there and caused the entire neighborhood to go into a panic about him. We thought he had died – rumor was he either ate or was bit by a nutria that had been poisoned. All of this flew around the bayou in a matter of minutes.

The good news is that he is back, on the hunt, and alive and well.

And through it all the same neighborhood group talk went from Snappy support to Snappy be damned. It doesn’t matter if it is Swirl or an alligator – you got your nay’s and you got your yay’s.

I, for one, live in the world of yay and, oh what a difference to me!

A friend stopped by today for lunch who I haven’t caught up with in a long time. She’s someone who always makes me laugh out loud. I am not quite sure why my schedule doesn’t afford time with friends enough, time to sit and lunch and laugh, or even time in general – but I’m sure I’m not the only one afflicted by this phenomenon.

The other day, I confirmed I was going on my girl’s trip again this year – at first, I didn’t think we could a) afford it, b) have time for it, or c) it was necessary. But you know what, I love that trip and I need it – I love chatting and laughing about shoes/clothes/weight/hair/life with a bunch of women who I only see once or twice a year – I love sitting on the deck with a bunch of gossip magazines and fashion magazines – it is all good for the soul. I have not come away from one of these girl’s trips without feeling like I learned something about myself and others even if we are mostly talking about the banal.

The other day, another girlfriend stopped by and she said it was good for her to have girlfriends because she was driving her man crazy with her nonstop talking. She said she actually felt like she could see in his eyes a need to flee her as if she was stalking him asking him where he was going, what he was thinking, what he was doing. We found ourselves around the kitchen counter talking with a few other women about how teenagers take the joy out of parenting, how men don’t listen, and how wanting to have a baby was both insane and sane simultaneously.

We took the family last night to hear Gal Holiday at the Rivershack, last of the great honky tonks. The Rivershack on River Road used to be what was called a colored bar, but unfortunately, last night, there was not one person of color in there, although I hear that that is usually not the case.

Anyway, the band was enjoying an early gig – they started at 7PM – and there were a lot of new people there who hadn’t heard them before who were digging the hell out of them.

All in all, a night of fun.

Today is Miracle Baby’s 21st birthday – that would be my niece, who was born 1 lb 9 oz 21 years ago today and was barely hanging on. Today she is a thriving, beautiful, young adult – Happy Birthday Miracle Baby!

Then today is also the new birthday of my new great nephew Liam, born almost 9 lbs! at 1:00 AM.

And it’s also a good friend’s birthday on the West Coast – so Happy Birthday all of you born on June 19th:

Recession 101:

No one can repossess your future.

I’ve always loved out of home ads and when they’re good they’re good. Okay, granted you don’t know what is being advertised there but it did make me look.

Extreme eels take their American napkins and tear them in half to use one half at a time.

Extreme eels offer their sympathy by saying things like, “we all die alone.”

Extreme eels despite their hyper national identities remain curious about the lives of others.

I’ve written a lot about my yoga class and instructor, Michelle, at NOAC but I have to say it is uncanny how whatever is weighing heavy on my mind seems to be the theme of the month. This month it’s addiction. Dig?

We were talking this morning about what it means to be bound by happiness and some felt that it means to be attached to happy, some felt that it was about not seeing happiness when it presented itself, and some thought happiness was sometimes sought in things or people that actually do not bring happiness.

My thoughts to the class were a) I carry around this impending joy that I want my loved ones to feel as well, but I am sad when I see their struggles and it makes my happiness at once precious and isolating, and b) when I am wanting my friends to be happy, I have my own perceived notion of what the terms are, take for example my friend who cannot find happiness in love and who chooses relationships that have short lives. I feel like she is caught on the same rung of life. But Tatjana pointed out to me I should be happy for her happiness even if it is short-term and not going to lead to a pattern change.

So we move from this discussion to breathing practice – breathe in “I am not ______” and breathe out “I am” and in that breath I accept my happiness lives in the same world where others struggle and I make a point to try to find joy in other’s version of happiness.

Which is why when I spoke with one of the Nicaraguan men who live downstairs from my mother and learned they had a party on Saturday night and mom wanted him to help her downstairs to dance, instead he brought up carne asada and a cocktail while she sat on the stairs and smoked and drank and joined the fiesta from her perch.

My lessons from Wolfie: I prefer walking Loca in the mornings, she has the same cadence as me and I can spend my mornings organizing my waking thoughts before getting to my desk. Wolfie is another story – Wolfie is a sniff-aholic, she moves right to left and left to right with no rhyme or reason, and she doesn’t move fast if she moves at all.

In the park, I was trying to teach Wolfie to walk on my left and she kept dropping on her belly and sniffing intensely blades of grass. And when I tugged on her leash she would just look at me with her big brown eyes as if to say, “Huh?”

A fellow walker came by and he said, “Looks like you have two this morning.”

And I said, yes, I want to get Wolfie to get with the program but I’m frustrated because she’s not as fun to walk as Loca and yet, I don’t want to yield to her because then she won’t get her exercise.

He said, “Hmmm. You can tell she didn’t sign up for this tour.”

I said, “Yeah, whatyagonnado?”

He said, “Well, you’ve got two now, so what you want needs to give way to what they want.”

Sigh, I said and thought.

In the larger scope of things, Joseph Campbell said you have to be prepared to put aside the life you had planned for the one that presents itself. The mother I want is replaced with the mother I have – and I just ask grace to grant me appreciation and acceptance of her. And to give me strength to be a witness to these days with her and not a judge.

Wolfie and Loca on the other hand, they have two different needs and I have yet my own. But if we are going to find harmony, if everyone is going to get something, then there has to be compromise and that means accommodating everyone’s style and not being frustrated when one of us is headed in a completely different direction.

Someone once said they should have an Addy Camp (a camp for adolescents) where you send them when they hit 13 and don’t let out until they are 17. This is to save all the adults from the pure terror of dealing with them.

Having seen my own nieces and nephews transformed from loving human beings into alien creatures you want to play wack a mole with, I do understand.

Having a 14 year old in my house makes Addy Camp sound like not just the humanitarian thing to do but the only real option to dealing with a child making the transition from childhood into adulthood and in that interstitial space becoming an unrecognizable life form.