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I have a tendency to absorb stress and overwhelming demands and then later, much later after the fact, I have my meltdown. I’ve got a slow slow trigger and like a pot of water trying to boil at a million feet, it takes a long time to see the bubbles on the surface. But I think lately I snapped. The stress of the summer finally added up to bubbles. Sure, Portugal helped relieve the pressure. And yes, Nantucket, was a godsend in reconnecting with a piece of my network. But after all the stress blew out and the facts remained, that is when I got sad, and basically a little blue about the whole everything.

But I decided when I was walking back home today to start focusing on the positive, instead of the negative. Yes, most people could care less that I have a blog, but I have over a 1,000 new readers coming to my blog a month (not bad)! Yes, the mortgage is still high, but I get to live in the LaLa and that is worth far more than fretting about what I owe vs what the bank owes. The adoption kicks into high gear on October 11th when we begin advertising, and while this isn’t how we pictured having our baby, it is the opportunity that has opened for us. Since I haven’t been happy with my spare tire and my exercise routine, I changed it recently and I’m already seeing the results – ommm, a drop of water exerts the most force.

So what is fabulous about your life – if you could name two things that are wonderful, than you too have a lot to be happy about. Happy Monday, Happy Week, Happy First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

I was talking about my mom and her condition to a good friend, and my friend said, “She’s doing better now, right?” And I said, “Yeah, well but then what? What’s happens now?” And my friend said, “Well, the hardest part of this is not having any control over that answer.” And there you have it.

It’s the question I’ve been asking on a time loop that has become like a rutted groove in my brain – what happens now? when it comes to all things about my mother, it always seem to set me up as having to answer that question.

Now is not the time to fall on old habits, it’s the time to find new directions and new ways of handling. Stress be damned.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions. ~ Ellen Glasgow

Loca was a perfect angel this morning, having spent the better part of her day sulking in her bed yesterday after having lunged after a poor innocent dog who just happened to be walking by her house. She did hop all the way to the park, but it wasn’t because she wanted to run and lunge on a dog. And she greeted a few dogs in the park very politely almost making me smile because it reminded me of what my friend was telling me yesterday about overhearing two eight year old girls talking “Would you like something to drink?” “No, I wouldn’t want to be a bother.” “No, really it’s no bother.” That was exactly what Loca was saying to her fellow dogs in the park this morning.

The first thing that greeted me in the park was a large blue heron gliding by and landing in the thick of the lagoon. The park is sinking under the weight of water water everywhere after days and days of monsoon rain. We passed the pavilion where the men are working on the new outdoor ampitheater – they seem to be progressing despite the mammoth puddles and rains. Toadstools were about eight inches high.

It’s Monday, the beginning of a new week, and so far the omens are pointing towards change for the better – Loca well behaved, pelicans returning to the bayou, AND the sun is out.

The pelicans are back on the bayou! I was walking Wolfie this morning and saw one big Louisiana brown pelican soar by me and land in the bayou. This is the first one I’ve seen and it means that fall is here. Although I was sweating when I saw the bird and the thick, humid air outside did not inform me it was fall, rather a continuation of summer. But the joy that fills my heart when I see the pelicans in the bayou knows no bounds. Maybe I should put a sign up – a hand painted one – that says I LOVE PELICANS – and they’re native!

Usually the pelicans return around November, but they’re early this year. Does that have anything to do with the drought in Mexico? Possibly.

Behold the native beauty of a Louisiana Brown Pelican:

It was raining so hard today that we batten down the hatches and decided that it was a day to be inside. The other night, T had asked if I wanted to watch another Bergman film she had ordered from Netflix – Cries and Whispers – when I asked her what it was about she said it was about sisters, one of them dying of cancer. I said, “Say what? No thanks.”

But today, given the tenor of the grey skies, rain streaked windows, my soul feeling like raw meat (given the compounding strains to my normal joie de vivre), we popped in Bergman and opened a cold beer, and watched, and watched, and watched.

The central theme of the film is pain – the language is female – the action seen in the utter dysfunction of a family of three sisters – frightening in its stark portrayal of everything from genital mutilation to the one sister’s harrowing cries of pain from the cancer that is eating her from within.

Well, afterwards, I did almost feel as if my own pain and suffering had taken a backseat to those who, ahem, might be suffering a tad more than me. Good grief.

This morning, we slept in late because at 4:30AM some mysterious cellphone caller woke us up for no good reason other than he had misdialed. So I reordered my Sunday morning and decided to have my tea and New York Times first before walking Loca and heading out for my long bike ride. I went to take Wolfie out for a quickie and Loca was bouncing off the walls from the get go, so I walked outside pulling Wolfie on her leash who didn’t want to go, and ordering Loca to stay with me who had already started bounding down the street without a leash.

A woman was approaching with a large Golden Retriever around the bend and I ordered Loca to sit. The woman asked if it was okay to pass and I said yes, I’ll hold her and gently took Loca’s collar. In that one instant, Loca winded out of my grasp, ran and lunged on the Golden Retriever, and to the hysteria of both the woman and myself proceeded to attack the dog. I instantly dropped the leash of Wolfie and ran to grab Loca off of the dog.

She was savagely going for the dog’s neck. And when I had her back in my control, I did what I never do, I slapped her bottom and told her she was a bad, bad, horrible dog.

The woman who was now crying and her dog, scared but not hurt, went running, I mean sprinting, as far away from us as they could get.

I was so disgusted by Loca’s behavior and by my own stupidity in yet again, trusting that Loca could manage without a leash, and for swatting her, that I just wanted to scream. I pulled Loca by the collar back towards the house, and of course, Wolfie, who wanted to run back home to begin with, was ambling in her zig zaggy way straight for the front yard, so I stooped and grabbed her leash, still holding Loca’s collar, and out of the corner of my eye, saw across the bayou, a woman feeding all of the white Disney ducks.

And so it is.

We went to see Julie and Julia last night. T hadn’t seen it yet, and neither had a friend. It was good again – in other words, great to see Meryl Streep play Julia Childs. How awesome is she, really. And I had the same criticisms of the other part of the story – the blogger who gets famous and finds success in imitating the one and only Julia Childs.

At least last night, I did learn something. The reason this Julie became famous was because she appeared on the scene when the viewers and readers and editors and publishers were more interested in a balm, something to soothe them against the wear and tear of the daily grind of living in the years 2000, where we have known terrorism, war, economic failure, and FLOODS, and hurricanes and so much uncertainty that who would want to turn to a reality play or a story of loss, wouldn’t cooking and blogging and having a saint for a husband and a fond memory of an American icon really sell more books, more movies? Of course it would.

To be in California for five straight years in a drought without a single drop of rain is to know what it means to miss New Orleans. When the rain started it would be a drizzle that would cause everyone to rejoice. This is rain?

When I came to housesit in 2004 in New Orleans at my friend’s already dark cozy nest of a house, I would lounge in their bed, reading to a low lamp, and listening to the thunder rock the walls of the house. Pouring, torrential rains coming to wash us away. My then husband would call me from Marin County, sitting on our back deck in the splendor of the rolling Marin Hills that can only be compared to Tuscany or some other beautiful Mediterranean locale. He would say, “Don’t you miss it here?”

And me in my cozy dark nest of a cocoon, would think of Marin with the same abject fear as the elderly have of words like retirement community and nursing home, and would answer him with a resounding no.

I wanted to the drama of a torrential downpour, I wanted to feel like here in this world a house was a shelter, I wanted a slower pace to calm my racing mind, I wanted roots as thick and deep as a live oak, I wanted to get old and watch moss hang from my hair and I wanted to warm my bones against the chill of a foggy night in San Francisco.

I love the rain and only in New Orleans can you get rain like this – like today – this darkened sky, this crack then rolling din of thunder, the flash of lightning in the grey distance. There is no place like home.

I opened my eyes

And looked up at the rain,

And it dripped in my head

And flowed into my brain,

And all that I hear as I lie in my bed

Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,

I walk very slow,

I can’t do a handstand–

I might overflow,

So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said–

I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.

Shel Silverstein

It’s raining outside and I mean cats and dogs. If you have never experienced New Orleans in the rain, you haven’t experienced rain. Someone from out of town asked how long it could go on like this – and everyone turned and looked as if to say, uh, forever. The Cabrini bells are ringing that it is 6PM and there are toadstools in the garden that are almost high enough for me to sit on. Despite all this wetness, Joe managed to get over here and mow down this weedy grass and help me transplant the banana trees and a rose bush. I was hoping for a big rain after to soak the new plants in place.

Loca and I got out for a break and walked to the ATM to get some money but as we were getting the cash out of the machine, the sky grew black, and the winds whipped up, and monsoon. Lucky for me, I had money, so we sat and had a hot cup of mint tea and waited and waited.

We’re making up for a pretty dry summer by getting all our averages up for rainfall. And for me, it’s contributing to my less than sunny mood. The good news – E to the rescue. I made an appointment to see her next week telling her I needed some talking things through time.