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My horoscope was right on the money again – uncanny how that happens. I’ve been sort of in an anti-social mood, preferring instead my solitude and the company of Tin. It’s not like I don’t want to see anyone, because we go out and walk and run into people and I stop and chat, but I’ve been enjoying my solitude. For the 16 years I was married to Steve, he and I both traveled quite a bit and he went into an office every day while I worked from home. I got used to the alone time as a matter of course. Some of my fondest memories were sitting on the back steps of my apartment on General Pershing and drinking a cup of coffee and looking at the sunlight dappled through the large pecan tree in back, or lying on the porch swing on my grandmother’s front porch, and even walking as I’ve always been an avid walker combing the entire Bay Area whenever possible.

I’m a lover of people and crowds and noise and all that jazz. I grew up the baby of six kids and mostly have never known a stranger. So it’s sort of a schizophrenia in me that while I love people and love being a couple, I craze solitude and solitary acts – matinees, drives, and walks.

March 27, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   You’re dealing with a mixed bag of astrological energies and some even more confusing feelings. On the one hand, you’re craving privacy, but not necessarily to be completely alone. On the other, you’re feeling radical and extreme — enough to put you in the mood to try anything at least once. Of course, being as clever as you are, you’ll probably manage to do both at the same time!

I’ve been watching CSpan and the Weather Channel in the morning and have been hyper conscious of the local advertisements on television. My favorite is this one about a planned real estate development across the lake, where the narrator says “Great for the family, there is space to roam, and trees, and even horseback riding!” Right at that moment they cut to a little girl petting a donkey.

Cracks me up every time I see it.

Ruby brought Tin another hand me down, this time it was a monkey pj complete with little monkey feet. After waking up a number of times last night, possibly because he was cold, I was anxious to get him in the jammies for the first time. Here he is – Mama you haven’t seen these but they are SUPER cute and so is he. Everyone keeps commenting on how much he has grown! It’s nutty.

He saw the doctor for his one year exam and is now in the 50 percentile for height and 25th for weight which the doc said is good as he is on a good growth curve (he was in the 5th percentile in both when we met) and his height to weight ratio is ideal.

He’s ideal, my little monkey butt – look at these cute little monkey feet – could eat him with a spoon.

When Margarete left today, it was another beautiful day and time to get Loca out of the house so I suited up Tin and we walked the length of the bayou from Desais to Orleans and around. My neighbors were having a beautiful picnic on the bayou composed of lettuce from their garden, fresh tomatoes, hummus and Stacy’s Pita Chips. And M had her pogo stick. Tin fell in love with the Stacy’s chips and remained preoccupied with them until I brought the Boomwhackers out. Then we were doing Boomwhackers for the rest of the evening until it was bathtime and bottletime and booktime and bedtime.

We were going to go to Three Ring Circus for the kid music project but after all it was much easier to just chill out here on the bayou and stay close to home.

For years television writers have been trying to capture the spirit of New Orleans in a drama and have failed. Not because their efforts weren’t good, but because the world just couldn’t understand the message. New Orleans is perhaps one of the more unique places in this world and knowing the city is something that comes viscerally and no other way. So I read in the New York Times magazine the excellent review of the effort David Simon is undertaking to create Treme for HBO and I have to say it will be worth checking out. But my favorite part of the review was the quote that New Orleans is made of moments and of those I know many. One of which is on repeat, as I mosey down Orleans Avenue most every day to go to NOAC and I pass the Be For Real Lounge, I always smile.

Another writer captured the spirit of New Orleans and this weekend is the celebration of his life with the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in full regalia. There are a plethora of writers in town gathering and speaking. I heard Cokie Roberts speaking about her wonderful books and life but the best was when she spoke of her mother Lindy Boggs, who lived on Bourbon Street, not but a block from the Royal Sonesta where Cokie was speaking and when Ms. Boggs was 81 years she became an ambassador to the Vatican. Cokie said the children told their mother she should feel right at home as the costumes were the same – men running around in dresses.

And another New Orleans son, Michael Lewis, spoke as well at the conference, from his own particular slant and talked about how he could not write or see the stories no one else does without having come from New Orleans and having learned how to see from the margins.

I wish Simon luck with his drama, Treme, and hope that it is well received as he is trying to capture something that is almost incommunicable to those who don’t know what it means to miss New Orleans.

March 26, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   You just love peace, quiet and quality time alone with your favorite people. Today, you’ll whittle down that small and discriminating guest list even further until it only accommodates a party of two, which will suit you just fine. It’s Friday, that’s the good news — so you two can legitimately retreat from the rest of the world without fear of being discovered, finally. Enjoy every minute.

The weather woman was wrong – it was beautiful today and ugly yesterday, they had predicted the reverse. So when it was time for Margarete to go, even though she had just brought Tin back from a stroller walk, I hooked up Loca and Tin and off we went around the bayou. But first we stopped to speak to Jerri and Loca took off after another dog and pulled Tin and the stroller right over. Mom hysterical, Tin so so, everyone else nonplussed.

Then we ran into friends and Tin was mesmerized by the daughter who was making sounds that Tin mimicked like a little monkey (makes me nervous about when the real mimicking starts). Then another neighbor came up just as Loca was going nuts about another dog and she pushed the stroller so I could walk Crazy.

Loca is getting short changed on her walks with T away. There just doesn’t seem to be a way to get it done in the morning and by afternoon she gets a much reduced version of our morning walk, which means by afternoon she is PSYCHO.

But I digress, back to pretty baby, we went over to the Green Market and everyone thought he was a girl. Then we went to the grocery store and everyone thought he was a girl. He’s pretty, they all say, that’s why. Pretty baby.

Then we got home and after getting all greased up and having his bottle and reading Opposites, I carried him into his room and he said Night Night.

OMG!

In the last twenty to thirty years waterfront property has become all the rage. With the newfound wealth that a lot of Americans created, everyone was looking to own a second home and it had to be on the water. Now, of course, those times are a changing, to be sure. But I was reading about Destin and other places where there is a war going on for who controls the public space between the resident and the water and in Destin the government is actually blowing sand back onto the beach to stop the constant erosion and the residents don’t want any of it. Why? Because they don’t want anyone on the beach in front of them and the water.

So after reading this, I was sitting at my dining room table and a large white van pulled up and blocked my view of the bayou. The man took out a veritable living room replete with a burning pit and set up an entire situation and then the rest of the evening entertained right there in front of me. Now I love seeing people using the bayou, because that is what it is there for, but what gets me is why don’t they position their chairs to be looking at the water, why are they facing me, and watching me chew my food?

It’s odd is all I got to say.

The last two nights I have had a restless sleep, waking up to sounds Tin is making on the video camera, or from nightmares about my family. Most of these weird dreams have centered on my mother appearing, coming over, being front and center but already dead, almost like a zombie in the midst. It’s probably because I’m finishing up unfinished business that relates to her and so her afterlife state is every present on my mind.

When my dad passed, I headed across the Lake from my home in Covington and sat with my mother and brothers and my father dead in the bed waiting on my other siblings to arrive from out of town. He was grey and life-less and that image of him took a long time to burn out of my mind. Similarly, the image of my mother so sick – the emergency calls over the year leading up to her going into the hospital, the profusion of bruises as nearly her entire body was covered with purple and black, the night I took her when her heart was racing out of control and she was jumping all over the place, the look on her face when the drip started and it was then 4 AM and she turned and said to me slumped over in a chair in the emergency room “thank you” while I could hear the woman behind the curtain speaking softly to her mother who was dying of cancer, the smile in mom’s eyes when I’d walk in the hospital room, the crazy talk about her father leaving a wad of cash under the bed for her and for me to scooch down and get it, and her constant rubbing the bed beside her telling me she was “making room for the baby” while the nurses thought she was nuts, but when I told them about the adoptions, they went “oh, that’s what that is”, and her always telling me no matter what time I walked in, “I was just thinking about you, where have you been?” – I want to remember my mom when she was upright, handsome, laughing with that ever present twinkle in her eye – but that too will take a long time to burn back into my mind as being the first images that appear.

For now, mom appears as a zombie, the undead, sitting at the table waiting for the business she left behind to be finished.

My neighbor’s partner is out of the country and I asked how their daughter is communicating and she said by Skype. Today Tin and I Skyped with T1 who is still in Madrid. She said give me five and he threw his hand up.

Tin knows Skype – he was introduced to his grandma in Croatia via Skype when he was only 9 months old and he has been Skyping with her almost every day.

But what he doesn’t know is his Mama being gone. He has been ultra clingy the past few days and I suspect he is missing his Mama a great deal. Today on Skype it was confirmed. He visibly frowned when we hung up and looked sad.

Maybe Skype doesn’t bridge the gap, maybe it emphasizes the distance more than anything.

I’ve felt that way when T and I have had to rely on cellphone and emails to communicate. Skype gives you the feeling of being right there in the room, but punctuates the inability to actually reach out and touch the person you love.