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1. Time to think – a relative wrote that she is having a mini breakdown and I sympathized as I’ve spent a lot of my alone time thinking a lot about a lot of life events. The conclusion is that too much time to think has the potential to lead to a breakdown.

2. Reinterpreting history – a neighbor who is becoming friendlier every passing moment was in a deep conversation with me about her three marriages and her children and their fathers and her relationships. She knew some of my history but not all and asked how Steve was doing. I said he is happy in love and has two young children in his life. Her eyes opened wide and she said, “Steve with children?” And I just nodded. She said without hesitation, “That means you weren’t the one.”

3. Nuns, popes, and religion – I watched the nun take chip shots at three golf balls on the bayou and thought about her life. She is always flying somewhere putting out fires in her order and seems to be someone who has a take charge attitude even now nearing her retirement. I cut out the Maureen Dowd article from Sunday’s NYT and gave it to her. She said that Ireland (where’s she’s from) is up in arms about the whole affair, but she was reluctant to actually weigh in. While nuns continue to do their work in silence popes and bishops fuck up left and right.

4. Solace – the soul needs to be alone sometimes to string together grief and joy and to find your own way through your thoughts. I’ve thought more about the Sabbath and how taking a day away from consuming, away from doing, away from electronics is good for your soul not for your religion. I’ve thought too that religion has passed down some incredible life lessons – such as observing the Sabbath – but also about doing unto others as you would want them to do unto you, about love and kindness, about redemption, about humility. These are messages that have been obscured by modern religion’s perversion. Things fall apart in the translation after a while. It would be nice if someone went through all the religions and cull out the best parts and put them together in a book so that Tin could read about the gems that have been turned over and over for the last thousands of years.

The weather has been so gorgeous that it is hard to resist being outside. Tin and Loca and I walked to City Park this morning and Tin ran around like a mad man and then I packed him back in and Loca and I got some walking in. There was a wedding on the bridge yesterday and a wedding in the Peristyle today and lots of little ducklings everywhere!

I was sitting on the front porch giving Tin his noon bottle watching the nun take chip shots on the grass and my other neighbor plant her garden when I thought we’d attempt the Super Sunday Mardi Gras Indians that had now been transferred over to Taylor Park. So last minute, we jumped in the truck and when we got to Toledano and Claiborne it was a traffic nightmare so we pulled into the fast food parking lot and did the rest on foot. We caught one circle of Indians doing their thing and Tin got into the groove immediately.

Then we walked back to the truck and two girls in a car stopped and shouted out to me, “Is that your baby?” And I laughed, and said yes, thinking to myself, what goes on?

We were back on the bayou and I saw my other neighbor pulling out and asked if they were going to see the Indians and they said no, they didn’t want to go anywhere but had to do errands. So Tin and I came inside and took a Sunday nap. I saw a van pull up on the grass and get out an entire living room – same guy from last week – he lit a campfire and had several lounge chairs and even a large trash can. I walked out on the porch and my neighbor said, “Why here?” And I shrugged.

NIMBY

Not in my ba-you!

Cokie Roberts was praising the Ursuline nuns who were sent here to New Orleans by the French in the early 18th century to open a military hospital and tend to the men on the battlefield. Instead the nuns came and took one look around and decided there was more work to be done than that and so they opened up a school and began educating not only the Creole children, but the Indian and African American ones as well. To the heads of state back home and the church fathers they said pishaw, we know what needs to be done here. Cokie also said the nuns even in the fifties believed women should be educated and treated their students as if they might become the next presidents of the United States instead of preparing them for housework and child rearing.

Today Maureen Dowd writes about the need for a Nope – a pope who is a woman – one who would not turn her back on 200 young deaf boys getting raped by a Bishop. Similarly, while the church fathers have opposed Health Care reform, the nuns said “Pishaw” back at them and took a stand on their own to endorse reform.

I’m raising a boy here, but I have to say, patriarchy sucks. But most likely a matriarchal society would as well. We need both. One to balance the other. Yin and Yang. There is clear evidence that in third world countries when women have stable incomes, education and health care improve. Yay to nuns, hiss to the pope.

My dog whisperer friend found a scared and skinny German Shepherd on Orleans and because he looked like he was a drifter, she called him Huckleberry Finn. She said he is the best dog she has ever had. We talked about Shepherd and our missing Wolfie and she said these dogs see inside your soul.

I must admit that Samm had that capacity too – my Pembroke Corgi – a wise old man he was even as a young pup.

She also said that Tin would need a Shepherd puppy not a full grown and that I should even in these times consider a pure bred as you couldn’t take chances with a child. I told her we were waiting till he was 5 before we even considered another puppy as my cup runneth over with animals and child right now.

I must admit I’ve been having a Loca issue lately. She was very mellow after the string of deaths in this house – two dogs and a mother – and then was doing pretty good about Tin’s arrival, but then lately she has become super psychotic. Her walks are being usurped by nanny timing and other issues and though every day she does get a walk, sometimes it comes very late in the afternoon and by that time, she is attacking every dog she encounters to the point where there is no place safe to walk.

Yesterday, I walked her and Tin, then I came back and walked just with Tin and then later in the afternoon I opted to take the entire family out yet one more time (I, like everyone else in this city, can’t get enough of the good weather having wintered over long) and we ran into the true Dog Whisperer – her original trainer. She saw Loca in action, lunging after another. And she said, give me that leash and she said here’s what you do, you put her in a heel when you see a dog approach and you grab the leash down low and you yank her all the way to a stand if she gets out of her heel as you pass.

I confessed to her my innermost thoughts – I wanted to hang Loca by her paws or sell her down the river. Another mom told me it is common, that she was going to put both her cat and her long time trusted dog on Craig’s List after having her child, but that two years later, she is starting to like them again.

“Loca is too smart to be being bad. She used to protect just you, now she has a family to protect. Don’t underestimate this dog, she would kill for you and she is protecting you and Tin every time you go out in the world. She doesn’t have the ability to know when a threat is not a threat, and that is where you have to take control and tell her.”

I kept saying Good Girl to Loca as we went through the exercise of walking around the bayou and putting her in a heel by other dogs. She performed beautifully. I said it so many times that Tin started saying it – Goo Gur, Goo Gur, Goo Gur.

I turned down a list of invitations to do things today and opted to take care of stuff here at the house. And then one by one, 7 people showed up and I looked up at one point and saw Tin leading two grown women out of his room marching with his Boomwhackers and each carrying a set.

Whatyagonnado?

My brother and I were corresponding about an old friend of ours who passed. She died in a car accident when her life was exactly how she wanted it – she was with an old lover but happy this time, she had just been shopping and she was headed home. I remember the first time I met her I was dazzled by her – she was a bookie and she had slightly bucked teeth and incredibly large eyes and a wavy mane of hair. Her entire house was covered with plants. And there were always interesting people dropping by.

Oh my dear friend, I think of you often.

Since quitting smoking nearly two decades ago (except for a digression during Katrina), I have been a major gum chewer. Turns out Dr. Dov Glazier, who will be Tin’s dentist, said recently in an article that chewing gum actually prevents cavities. Wow, now if you could only chew gum and not look like a cow chewing cud, you’re golden.

Tin is cutting a tooth and right now air molecules are enough to make him cry. He drools. He sticks his entire hand in is mouth. And basically he’s miserable. Last time we were at the doctor she had said to give him two drops of infant Tylenol, but when I saw the other doctor he said just one drop. Mothers have recommended the hi line pills but the first doc didn’t like them because they have belladonna. Then I was at the pharmacy getting more baby orajel and he said he doesn’t like orajel but instead prefers to take a little of the Tylenol and rub on his gums. The pharmacist said he is not crazy about Tylenol but it works and he has no desire to give his kids benzocaine the active ingredient in orajel. So he recommends two drop when they are in pain and then rub a little on the gums.

A friend with two adopted children told me that studies show that the girls tend to be very curious about their biological families but that the boys aren’t. The boys tend to be angry. Whether this is a universal response is hard to know as everyone has their own individual reactions to their life circumstances. My friend was saying the boys feel that they weren’t loved and that is why they were put up for adoption. Yet, I would say it takes an inordinate act of love to offer him a better life than you could give.

I know that is what I would want Tin to know, that he was and is plenty loved. His biological mother and his biological aunt and her partner all thought this little boy deserved a better life than the one that was there for him, and so it was with love that they asked us to adopt him.

I got another batch of medical records that the attorneys sent over last week and when I brought them to the doctor, he told me that most of it was irrelevant. Really? I have read every page of the three reams I’ve received. And way down in this stack I saw something that still strikes me, on 3/7/08, the nurse went in to check on the mother and child and wrote “Remains out with mom without distress. Loving response from mom.”