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I saw some satire a million years ago, maybe on Saturday Night Live and it was a woman saying, “I’m a doer,” and perhaps she was Italian, perhaps it was a movie and not TV, but I remember thinking, ack, that’s me, I’m a doer! I’ve been taking care of business all my life – rushing from here to there, deadset on getting whatever project I started done and undertaking projects when there is really no reason to be so energetic. I told someone the other day that my new mantra is “delay, delay, delay” and I’m trying to follow through on it because in the delay, the nondoing, other things rush to fill the void, and the game changes, so had I been doing and doing and doing, I would have just had to do some more.

But since I woke this morning I’ve been thinking about what needs to be done, the yard is all winterized, but the inside plants needed watering, the cactus needed feeding, the laundry needs to be done and the front porch needs a good scrubbing. Meanwhile, the entire family except Bam Bam who is lying in the spare front yard in the warming sunshine went for a walk through City Park. What a lovely day! Still I came home and feel hell bent on getting projects done – change over to new tennis shoes, and new walking shoes, and throw the old, worn heeled ones out. Date them with a Perma Marker. Next, change the bedspread to the lighter summer one, we’re in the throes of the last days of winter here and today is living proof that the cold is for the most part behind us.

My horoscope today – again – uncanny:

February 20, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   No one ever accused you of being lazy — no one in their right mind, at least. Those who know and love you have also seen how you get when you’re really intent on finishing something. So your willingness to keep on working until that project’s done, even though it’s the weekend and everyone else just wants to eat, drink and be merry, won’t surprise them. Any newcomers to your circle may be taken aback, though.

I got up this morning and hit the ground running – Loca and I fled out the house to take a run in the park, still cold although it is supposed to warm up tomorrow, back home huffing and puffing, get ready for a slew of calls, and then bing bang, get Tin, feed bottle, prepared breakfast, nanny early, this that, bing bang. Then I just took a breather and was looking at something online when I see my horoscope pop up that says:

February 19, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   It’s the perfect astrological and emotional weather for your sign. You really couldn’t do much better, and you knew it as soon as you set your feet on the floor this morning. For once, everyone around you will be feeling everything just as intensely as you do all the time. You’ll also notice they’re operating a little more from their gut and a lot less from their desire to seek approval. See? Lovely weather, huh?

In Rouse’s tonight at the deli counter getting sliced Muenster cheese, the girls behind the counter were oogling Tin who looked so damn cute in his striped zip up sweater and he was flirting right back, I just couldn’t believe he was my son!

A friend from Croatia writes of the cold, another in the Midwest complains bitterly of the cold, and we down here unaccustomed to cold are waiting impatiently to complain about the heat.

I’ve been in this swirling multitasking mini vortex for the past couple of days and I was running to go to yoga and ended up driving over to the Earhart Expressway. I was headed to my mother’s house. Good grief. I caught myself before turning on Earhart and quickly turned around to make my yoga class. When I got there we had a sub for Michele, but it’s Erin and I like him so it was all good. He talked about the high we are all coming off of here in New Orleans – the Saints going to the Superbowl, the Saints winning the Superbowl, Mardi Gras, and finally, a deep breath. He said he wanted to talk about sacrifice because a lot of people choose to give up something during Lent like drinking or chocolate or whatever your vice is.

Sacrifice it seems in India means something else, it means to hold something dear, to make it sacred, to grow more aware. So as I enter my own Jewish form of Lent here by deciding to abstain from alcohol and sweets (compounded suffering), I thought about what I am sacrificing or in Indian terms gaining and that is awareness. On Fat Tuesday with Tin in tow my indulgences were far fewer and I found myself enjoying immensely the immersion and stepping to the side of the excess as in our picnic in Jackson Square and seeing everything in all its glorious technicolor. Sometimes it is better to observe the spectacle than to be one.

So today, on this day that has tried to run faster than me, I got up and walked Loca and we hit the pause button when we saw a pelican spread its wings and fly across the lagoon in City Park with the moss draped live oaks as a backdrop. We breathed deeply the still cool air and contemplated the coming of summer and the end of cold. We noticed the dogs and their owners and the little bits of green starting to appear on the bushes.

When I walked in the door, time seemed plenty.

At my desk, the races were on, and my head was swirling between tasks, hence losing myself in thought and driving towards my mom’s place in Metairie where I longed to go again. I’m sacrificing alcohol and sweets so that I will gain awareness of what’s in my mind, in my sight, and what my body is telling me it needs.

Loca and I went for a walk run through City Park this morning but before we got off the front porch I turned to look at the bayou because I heard what sounded like a human being jumping in the water – instead it was two large Louisiana pelicans juking and diving and a merry band of cormorants swimming around them. Not a human was stirring as it is the day after Mardi Gras here and everyone is just shaking off the excess and dressing for normal today. In the park, the geese, cormorants, ducks and swans were all in full action mode trying to shake off the cold – Loca and I ran just to get our blood pumping.

As I walked back with the sun climbing the bright blue sky, I took a long deep breath and squinted at the sunlight reflected off the bayou and said to myself, what a life!

Yesterday, was the biggest spectacle on the planet right here in our fair city – Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras – and ain’t we got fun – WHO DAT? It was Tin’s first Mardi Gras and our first as a family and I know next year, Tin is not got to fit in a pack (big resounding sigh). I walked from 9AM till 3PM with 20 pounds strapped on my chest and wondered why when we got home I took a nap like I was in a coma. But this morning, on lean Wednesday – as the rest of the town runs to a priest to get some ashes on their forehead, I’m starting lent to get rid of the 16 pounds that have accreted around my middle, making it more than a spare tire but an entire SUV that I have been huffing and puffing and carrying around.

So begins the spare 40 to end the spare tire – no alcohol, no sweets, and say hello to your jeans mama!

We saw a lot of families out in costume yesterday on Fat Tuesday – the family of monkeys, skunks, a pink family and a blue family and you name it sort of family. Everyone thought that I was carrying around a fake baby in my pack because when Tin was napping, I’d have the flap pulled over his head. Yes, this is a real baby, is what I said countless times. And sometimes I have to pinch myself to understand that he’s for real. The cutest Tin man on the planet.

We woke this morning on Mardi Gras day and we had our MG plan intact. I sewed the hay in the costume last night so that I could be the Scarecrow instead of sexy Dorothy because it was frigid cold (50s – ha!) and then we set about getting the TinMan ready for his first Mardi Gras. We were outfitted with bottles, wipes, diapers, sandwiches, extra clothes, water, sippy cup, you name it, we were ready. And it turned out to be a glorious day. We parked at Doerr’s on Elysian Fields paying the $25, what the hell, it’s Mardi Gras right? And then we suited up and headed to Mimi’s to catch St. Ann.

In front of Mimi’s as always was the best group of costumes you’ll see anywhere in town. There was Studio 504 on wheels and we all lined danced to disco tunes as we waited for St. Ann to come. We caught up with our Real Wives of the Who Dat Nation following St. Ann into the Quarter:

We got ahead of the parade and stopped in front of R Bar and watched St. Ann come down the street and posed for our now celebratory Mardi Gras day kiss photo – it is after all our anniversary and third Mardi Gras together – first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes T&R with the baby carriage:

Then we meandered to Jackson Square and gave Tin his noon bottle and had ourselves a nice picnic lunch. The theme for most everyone was Black and Gold for sure this year but there was every costume imaginable:

We ran into Roy and Andree with their tribe. Every year they make some of the most irreverent inspired costumes around – this year they were the Gratefully Dead and all were dead celebrities. The coffin on wheels was Roy’s cart this year – last year the cart was a drugstore, the year before a plane. You never know what is going to roll out of the garage Mardi Gras day – it’s all top secret:

And then we made our way back to the Marigny and stopped for a beer at the Brasserie, as I sat there in the window drinking an ice cold Peroni on tap, I looked outside to see a bed being wheeled by with Senator Mary Landrieu written on the headboard and a woman curled up under the sheets, two hillbillies with real chickens on their shoulders sat at the table right outside the window, and a group of horse people galloped by, and Tin was sound asleep in his Ergobaby and T and I looked at each other and said, “We passed us a good time.”

Today was colder than yesterday, and today I started out looking at my Dorothy costume and decided I would take those flame platform shoes for a twirl and then I happened upon my neighbor building his coffin on a shopping cart – his group is going as celebrity deaths and a friend had stopped by his house who said she had red glitter so I and Loca followed her to her house down on the other side of the bayou.

Right before we got to the house with the glitter, I blew a wheel. Meaning my shoe broke. What to do – it was FREEZING outside and we discussed the ramifications of a naughty Dorothy outfit that required skin and decided I would be a scarecrow.

Now what?

Well let’s see – improvise! Borrow a shirt from Roy, borrow some pants from Jerri, find a hat, get the dead sawgrass in Roy’s yard, stitch it to the pants and shirt and then tear up a bandana and stitch that into the pants, go to the new Walgreens get black eyeliner to paint triangle on nose.

Okay, here I was bragging about the easy life – the one where you go in and drop $50 for a costume and call it a day and now in reality, I am making a new suit, so hello Mardi Gras, here I come. The scarecrow – now if I only had a brain!