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I went to see my mom today and it was the typical day of visiting then doctor then nurses then this and that. I watched for two hours as the nurses came in and bathed and changed my mom, and then when they had everything perfect, they had to do it all over again. I told them they make it look easy and that they make me happy I have my job and not theirs. Sheesh.

Then I went and met my brother for lunch that extended for five hours of reminiscing and talking about the future. We sat at Live Bait because R&O’s was packed.

We talked about how it was weird to hear one of us remember something we have no recollection over, how raising kids is very different than what we expect it to be, and how life is fundamentally not fair – albeit, we are pretty happy with our lot. He had just been fishing and taking some time to look at the lake and I had been to spin class before mom. We’re sort of doing what we do and hoping to be making the right decisions and praying along the way that most of them are the right ones.

I left the house early to meet a friend before the opera – he was here with his guy friends who every year go to a Florida college game and this time it was playing LSU. On the way out of the door of the house, flowers arrived – not just any flowers – but beautiful bouquet of flowers – and a note that read “SO GLAD YOU ARE OUR NEIGHBORS” from people who live next door. Interestingly enough this month’s calendar picture is about Neighbors who are Friends and features Jerri and Roy & Andree.

When I got to the Tonique – the boys were well on their way to having a typical New Orleans indulgence and I just jumped in for a moment to catch up with R and see how married life was treating him.

Life’s rolling by as fast as you please – but when I called to thank my neighbor for the beautiful bouquet she said, “You’re always taking care of other people so I thought I’d do something nice for you.”

Some are taking time to notice.

We went to see Tosca last night at the Mahalia Jackson theater and Mary Elizabeth Williams was fabulous – a must see. New Orleans had one of the first opera houses even thought that burned down and it now resides in the Mahalia Jackson theater in Louis Armstrong Park. But Tosca itself is filled with everything an opera should have – one twist and turn on top of another. Tosca’s love, a painter, harbors a prisoner, and sacrifices his life to save him, while Napoleon battles in the periphery, and then Tosca takes a life to save herself and her love, and then everyone at the end dies. There you have it – an opera in the making.

We were exhausted from traveling and all else, but it was a great respite to get out and see this.

I had a heart to heart with someone who has reached the same age as me and the same time as me when parents are ill and everyone seems to be dropping like flies. She said, I don’t know what’s going on, I can remember laying around and watching the Food Channel and having time.

I said welcome to my world – the world where every friend gets short shrift, where the question of the day is not should I call my mother but what time will I visit her in the hospital, and slice and dice the rest of it down to a warp speed world spinning out of control.

Another friend had suggested it is the coming of the Age of Aquarius and that if you buy into these things on December 2012 this will all wrap up and turn positive but in advance the world will spin, faster and faster.

I think it is more just the Age – my age – I have more friends both old and new, I have ailing family, I have my own health concerns, I have my own mental and physical limitations that I’ve yet to completely digest – and frankly, it’s all too much sometimes.

Today, I went to see my mom, who is doing better after her code blue situation the other day. She looked at me and told me to lie down. So I just got in the bed with her and watched Dr. Phil. She was talking a blue streak but I could only understand every other word. She said she was making a list of things she had to do. I said, I wouldn’t worry about your list mom. She fell sound asleep and I then snuck out and drove back to my chaotic world to wrap up the day of work, getting ready to see a friend in town from Chicago, and then go to the opera, Tosca.

Sometime in the middle of the night, someone stole Roy’s table and chairs, painted over our hand painted Love the Bayou signs with KILL COPS and spray painted Peggy Bishop’s pottery that graces the ugly street signs.

The mayor of the neighborhood saw the table floating in the bayou and came over and Tatjana and he pulled it out.

Meanwhile, Roy was at Home Depot buying our annual harvest decorations for the bayou and lamenting that the theft of his table killed his spirit – so good save!

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Jagland said.

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

The U.S. president Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Nobel Foundation said in Sweden on Friday.

I left my truck in the parking lot at the airport and someone removed my Obama bumpersticker. Idiot.

We’ve experienced the elements today – walking out onto the Embarcadero this morning in the fog, arriving in Denver for the snow, and landing in New Orleans for that old familiar heat and humidity.

Sitting in the Denver airport with a long layover and a grand desire to be home. It’s 40 degrees here and 92 in New Orleans. Where would you rather be?

Meanwhile, my old high school pal who contacted me on Facebook sends me good cheer from Atlanta. She writes:

I don’t know if you remember this joke you told me in high school but it went something like this….

ONE DAY I WAS FEELING DOWN & OUT WHEN A LITTLE BIRDY LANDED ON MY SHOULDER AND SAID……….CHEER UP THINGS COULD GET WORSE………SO I CHEERED UP & WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT THINGS GOT WORSE!

It was right after you ran into the back of a car on Oak Grove where wouldn’t you know it we were skipping school, had gone to eat & were on out way back to Lakeside High School!