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Hump day, wake up and at my desk before Tin wakes up, so I don’t get to see his smiling face in the morning. At one point I found myself curled in a ball from being on the phone and staring at my computer and so I just got up and started pacing and pacing and pacing and realized I have cabin fever. I had about an hour in the mix that I could maybe get outside when my brother called and an opportunity to see him and have lunch presented itself. Two birds in one. We went over to Parkway and it was Cuban sandwich day – which was a great segue from a day where Cuba seemed to be top of mind, a friend had stopped by earlier to talk about what to do about replanting the yard and he is off to Cuba in Spring.

One word on the Parkway Cuban sandwiches – yum. My brother and I caught up and were talking about a wide assortment of check lists – how is this one and how is that one – at one point we were talking about my mom and tears welled in my eyes but I looked outside for a moment – we had just switched seats as the guy manning the grill outside the window was distracting and I looked up at a telephone pole across the street where someone had nailed a 3 inch by 3 inch wood block painted turquoise with a red happy face drawn on it.

Postscript: I kept a sign on my desk for years when I was writing fiction that said “The habit of art” which is a quote from Flannery O’Connor about making your art a habit otherwise the inspiration might come when you aren’t sitting there with your tools in hand. In a similar vein, keeping your eyes open and looking around is another habit I try to keep in my practice. When I saw the happy face, it was a moment I remembered that life is full of joy but you have to be aware to receive it.

I have a friend who I met in college who used to refer to me before she met me as that “tappy foot bitch who sits in the front row” of classes that we shared. My entire family has happy feet and shakes their leg and definitely knows how to get up on the dance floor – it’s in our blood. I was looking at my iPod the other day and thought to myself that I haven’t danced in too long a time and so when Tin woke from his nap yesterday evening I put on my dance playlist and Usher was first up – Tin got so excited he grabbed Leonardo (his sock cat) and started busting a move, but note how he runs to the mirror to check his reflection. He’s got it going on.

As we have no time for our friends, Tin’s friends list is growing. Today the girls visiting from D.C. had to stop by for another Tin fix bearing Elmo books and ducks and race cars. Tin was running around like a crazy man with his new found shrill scream of excitement. Never a dull moment.

I brought out the measuring tape and found out that the two inches I’ve gained in my bust, my waist and my hips with this last two years of weight gain has not budged. But just two days ago a friend said she could see in my face that I’d lost something. So I got on the scale this morning, two weeks from the day Lent started, and I saw two and a half pounds lost – yee ha – but the question now is was it two and a half pounds of face? How much face do I want to lose? How much does the average face weigh? A head weighs about 11 pounds. I found this out on the internet. There was no answer to how much a face weighs. Perhaps it starts with the face then works it’s way down to the bust and waist then hips – perhaps. Four more weeks to go.

It’s cold and I want to kill Phil, the ground hog that saw his shadow – here we are stuck with another cold and overcast day. We were spoiled and teased on Sunday by a gorgeous day. A day we could sit on our front porch. A day we wanted to be taking a walk. Yesterday huge storm – today huge cold. Blech. Who needs it?

I was reading the NYT article about Scott Brown and how he came to be elected in Massachusetts and honestly, after reading the article I felt like I knew less about the man than when I started reading. It had zero meat to it and basically was describing a person who resembled more Sarah Palin as a candidate – more about maverick and attractive rather than thinker, knower, doer – a lot of soundbyte, a lot of shticky irreverence, attractive and not much more by way of substance. Then I was listening to Warren Buffet on CNBC’s Squawk Box and here is a man who I would read about and listen to – not because he has made millions hand over fist but because he has invested in companies and industries with sound long-term judgment and has not whiplashed when the market juked and jived. Warren is a very attractive man to me because he is a thinker. Scott Brown – attractive to me? – was Nagin attractive? We got rid of our lame mayor after way too many years here in New Orleans. Massachusetts will see the end result of their vote only after Brown has had time to either do something or not. I’ll withhold my judgment of who he is until he proves who he is.

The wind picked up today and the sky grew dark and ominous then the rain came pouring down, but that didn’t stop Monday from being Monday – it just added to the overall feeling that I’d rather have stayed in bed.

Since Wolfie died, T has signed up for every German Shepherd group known on the planet and she has read stories to me about a tripod Shepherd in need of a home (can’t have stairs), a puppy born to a dog that was ditched after being bred as the owners decided they didn’t want to be breeders, a puppy bought by a woman who realized she couldn’t have a puppy because it was too much work, and on and on.

The list is endless of how people abuse animals. WTF! It makes me want to go out and lasso these animal idiots up and corral them into a pen where they will be abandoned, left without food, exterminated if no one wants to adopt them, or forced to live in a cage, on a rope, etc.

We watched A Serious Man by the Coen brothers on Saturday night after learning that most of the Academy Nominees are on On Demand now. It was certainly a departure for these guys but nevertheless an entertaining story that borrows from the Book of Job to tell the plight of  a man trying to be good against an onslaught of tribulations coming his way. It’s an interesting premise man against everyone/thing else and trying hard to stay sane.

I was listening to Frances McDormand the other day talking about how she thinks her husband does not write good enough roles for women. Although she has played some marvelous roles in his films, most definitely as the pregnant police woman in Fargo. [as an aside, Frances was adopted] But more importantly, I was trying to think of how equally funny it would be to have a woman protagonist with her husband leaving her for another, adolescent kids, career struggles, coping with a sibling who has lost her mind and as I tried to work out how that would go script-wise all I could think is that it would be just another day in the woman’s life whereas for the man – this is all “a lot” a la Job. Interesting.

Tin’s little friend across the bayou has handed down some cute clothes – like the outfit from Argentina – and it’s so nice to know that they will grow up together.