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This morning the Breast Cancer run/walk went right by our house. We’re were watching our 8 year old neighbor while her mother ran in the race. When I looked up I saw a friend walking who had been through her own bout with breast cancer. The color pink has never been so wonderfully adopted for a cause then breast cancer awareness.

However, minutes after the pink runners and walkers passed the house, T took Wolfie to the bayou and found a baby blue pacifier lying on the grass. We took it as a sign and hung it on the window.

It seems like every beefcake gym instructor I’ve taken over the last ten years hooks up with a skin and bone girlfriend. What is up with that?

I’m having a girl’s get together tonight – a group of us that normally get together around our birthdays since we are one after another but because two of us were turning 50 this year and had other celebrations, we are only now getting back around to the four of us – actually there will be six of us – and thank goodness. I decided to make Peter’s Margaritas and seviche from James Peterson’s Fish & Shellfish cookbook and what is supposed to be an appetizer for 8 looks like dinner for King Kong – so a fishy we will go.

I was catching up with friends, actually neighbors, yesterday evening and went to sit on the porch with some and chit chat, and then while walking Loca and Wolfie caught up with another. Another neighbor had left a little package on our doorstep – a basket with a gourd wrapped in a sheet that looked like a ghost and two little eggs that were supposed to be ghost eggs. It had a paper cut out ghost and the instructions said to place it on our front door and to give to other neighbors a boo gift too. So I did.

Last year, someone kept stealing our pumpkins off the front porch and carving jack o lanterns out of them. This year, it’s the gift of book while the pumpkins go untouched.

Dusk and dawn across the bayou – to the east – have taken on details you would find in an oil painting because of colors and textures and light. Quite amazing.

I was speaking with my mom today about back in August when on the 20th she had a code blue and after she kept saying José, José – my father’s name. My father died on August 20, 1985. I asked her today if she remembered that and if she had seen him and she said she didn’t remember it at all.

I said, “Well, when you get to the other side could you send me a sign that you are okay?”

And she said, “Sure.”

And I said, “What would it be?”

And she said, “You decide.”

And I said, “No you tell me.”

She said, “A dog.”

I reminded her that when I got Samm in 1989 that we were all convinced he was my father come back to life – charming curmudgeon with wicked eyes.

A friend was telling me that when her mother was dying, they used to sit in the garden and look at the hummingbirds around the feeder. Then after her mother had died, she was coming back from the hospital in a snow storm and bringing her newborn home and a hummingbird landed on her car. She knew her mother’s spirit was near.

Today, I was wondering how to approach my day with a good attitude and a clear head. In my email inbox, my mother in law had sent me a note from Croatia that just said ooommmmmm with a this butterfly attached to it.

The difference between a good day and a bad day is attitude. And that is certainly the case here. We played hooky from Tai Chi last night and watched instead two episodes of Mad Men, and I read (engrossed) more of The Girl Who Played With Fire (both were great entertainment and a good way to take my mind off of things).

I woke this morning before the bells of Our Lady of the Cross were clanging and stared at the darkness. Anxiety started to raise its ugly head and I just sat there thinking and calming myself down. It would all be okay.

Loca and I walked towards the park with dawn breaking on the other side of the bayou and as we made our turn around Big Lake we noticed that they had hung about four big wind chimes in the large oak that were making a wonderful sound in the breeze and then I noticed they had planted satsuma trees around this structure by the lake.

The true essence of yoga is mind over matter. Your mind tells you you are old. It tells you your body is incapable of doing these bends, these poses, these flights. But you tell your mind you are in yoga class and you are going to do a crow’s pose, and a head stand, and turn into an impossible bend and you suddenly start believing it.

It’s the darnedest thing!

Let’s recap where we are now. It’s pouring down rain in New Orleans, a state I usually welcome when it is not compounding my mood. I’ve turned myself into a workaholic because it is the only holic that is getting me through these times. Mom’s prognosis turned more dour today as her likelihood of getting off the vent is now unlikely even by her most ardent supporter – the lung doctor. At the same time, she is the most alert I’ve seen her but then again her vent is upped to a level that signifies he has given up hope she will get off of it.

My darling sibling has issued a “shofa” on me if I don’t return a wicker table, jewelry mom had given me, as well as other trinkets. I’m not even sure what a shofa is – is it a pogrom? – it sounds like some vaguely Jewish word that might have come into being through some sort of Born Again Christian Hebrew wantabes. Not sure. It is a very suspicious word.

The adoption proceedings are here today, gone tomorrow, and we’re hopeful but cautious and who knows, we could have our lives turned upside down in as few as six weeks or this could go on forever.

I got on the scale this morning – 14 pounds heavier than I was nearly two years ago when I was just fine, and could stand to gain no more weight. Sigh.

I refuse to buy clothes that fit me and so I’m relegated to a very select few articles of clothing and a closet full of others that I’d like to be wearing.

But let’s not think disturbing thoughts – let’s flip those thoughts – I’m loving the rain (true), loving myself (true), loving my life (true) even though I’m sad about my mom (true), excited about a baby (true), and able to transcend freaks with pogroms on their minds (true).

The pope is asking Anglicans who are sick and tired of female priests and gay rights to come join their cause, he’s so desperate for people, he’s even going to take in Anglican priests who are married. I say what a fab idea – everyone with prejudice in your heart, line up over here and that way, when the world passes them by, which it will, we can all point to the pope for bringing together a group of like minded bigots.