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Even though I love the fact that an airplane will just get you where you are going real quick and that usually I am flying to someplace I want to go, the truth is airline travel is really sucky these days. Maybe Jet Blue has the best experience but now they don’t fly too many places that I need to go.

Last night we went into a tailspin because T’s flight got changed and she wouldn’t make her connection in Amsterdam and not that getting stuck in Amsterdam would be that bad, but it would delay her getting to her conference in Madrid and so the big scramble ensued and she ended up leaving way earlier than planned so so much that was going to happen in those 12 hours got chucked.

I can always smell New Orleans before we land – the fecund moist air. I was sitting next to a couple in their late fifties – New York snotty types, she with too much botox and hair color and he with a clothing style that made me want to bust out of my clothes and run naked through the plane.

I was sitting there wondering how it is possible that I sit at my desk in my office all day and force myself to drink a glass of water and the bathroom is right by me. Then I get in this plane crammed between people, wedged between seats and down two liters of water instantly and fear running out. Then I have to go to the bathroom 1,100 times. Why? Meanwhile the state of the bathroom gets progressively worse over the flight.

I got home 55 minutes early, raced to my truck, and got home just in time to see T feeding T2 – oh joy – home at last – and yes, I overlooked Loca but she was bouncing up and down so I finally saw her too. Happy Day – we have the most beautiful son on the planet.

We went out for a family walk around the bayou. We ran into a friend taking photos of the St. Joseph’s altar at the Rectory, then we ran into Ruby and Amelie pushing their babydolls in their carriage and their moms, and then we ran into our neighbors with their kids and both had old pogo sticks. I tried the pogo stick a couple of times and was out of breath with two hops. Me and it need oil.

Oh happy day – home where the nutria roam.

Sitting in Cafe Gitane on Mott Street having breakfast, I noticed 16 other people sitting, couples, friends, soon to be couples, all engaged in talking nonstop but also engaged in their iPhones. A couple across from me in their thirties, him wearing the type of hat my father would have worn, looking into their iPhones. The men in front of me, in their thirties, friends or going to be a couple, hard to say, nonstop talking, then one goes to the bathroom and the other instantly whips out iPhone and begins furiously writing something. Two girls, Asian eyes, talk, iPhone, talk, iPhone, talk, iPhone.

Two other people were sitting there reading the New York Times. Me and a grey haired man with glasses.

I received a lot of compliments on my red wrap sweater that I picked up when I was in the French Quarter with my girls from out of town shopping. Except that by the end of the evening the cheap red sweater had bled red dye onto my dress and my white watch strap.

But I digress – the trends in NY – enamel bracelets, thin headbands worn at the crown with hair pulled back and up in a pony bun, boots with low heels, messy hair, black eyeliner.

The Bowery has been a nice change. I stayed in midtown for a decade @ the Muse, which got hipper and hipper over the decade, while the neighborhood’s ogling tourists got less hip. The Bowery is uber post modern hip – where the legacies of Stonewall, CBGB, etc have been transformed to a Varvatos concept stop or a pricey store selling designer tee shirts at $100.

There is something odd but satisfying about staying in the Bowery. You could walk to China Town to the Village to Washington Square to Union Square – Soho, Noho – Nolita. It’s all right here and the people don’t resemble ogling tourists at all – as a matter of fact they are youngish and punked out minus the hair spikes  as if that era hadn’t passed either.

I fell asleep last night to the roar of St. Patrick’s day continuing into the wee hours of the night. I woke to a call from T that two people we know with cancer had lumps reappear after thinking it was done. I read in the NYT yesterday about a cancer patient calling for a new language that does not call a person a victim, that does not denote the therapy as fighting cancer, battling cancer, who was looking for a way to speak about this that puts some truth around the disease.

I lay in bed afterwards and thought again how health is a gift.

It is quite amazing to walk the streets of New York and see the many varieties of people this town holds. Quite amazing. I’ve seen more ethnic varieties and cross overs than any place I’ve ever been, I’ve seen types, I’ve seen many variations on pairings, I’ve seen racial mixes and old with young all in more configurations than you’d think one place would sport.

And that is why you gotta love New York. It is truly the only melting pot in the world of this nature.

After a very long day we opted not to return to the hotel before dinner which meant I needed lipstick but there was a big old Irish parade going down 5th Avenue where the MAC store is, so I had to detour down to Bloomingdales to get it. From point A to point B I ran into more drunk people in the street than at Mardi Gras and it is amazing how that continued into the evening when I was finally returning from the restaurant – only the people were drunker and there was the couple fighting in the street, the drunks sitting on stoops and fire hydrants, and there was the twenty deep crowds in front of each and every Irish pub between midtown and downtown.

I saw one woman with lipstick smeared across her face and was happy that I had taken the extra time to go get my long wearing lipstick from MAC that not even make-up remover can remove – ha! And I was equally glad that I was observing Lent and my appetite for even a glass of wine has been greatly diminished by my will to stay on this program. Nobody I saw out in the street today looked pretty – let me tell you.

Someone is doing something about the nutria erosion on the bayou other than saying, “Look at that, ain’t it ashame.” A friend has called a hunter out to eradicate these pests who are chewing away the sides of the bayou and it’s a big guy with a little dog.

If we had kept Esmeralda the alligator in the bayou instead of relocating her, we might not have had to call the hunter, but that’s another story.

I woke this morning to the sound of the door knock – wake up, time to eat. Soggy oatmeal (steel cut being a misnomer) and over-steeped tea. I was making my way through Tuesday’s New York Times when I paused to go get in the shower and get ready for the day. Then I came back to the little stool and the mirror I had taken from the bathroom to put on the scant make-up I wear these days. I looked at my reflection and thought, who dat?

Staring back at me was a halo of grey clearly visible with my hair pulled back. Wrinkles so deep around my eyes and nose and mouth that I was shocked I hadn’t seen them so clearly before. Crinkled lips. Oh my, I thought, I aged last night.

Then I noticed I was looking at the magnifying side of the mirror and I caught my breath. I looked up to the mirror that was above the desk where I was sitting and from afar, in natural light, with no magnification, the wrinkles were more subtle, the grey less visible.

Lighting. Distance. Action.