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We’re watching The Wire and honestly don’t feel compelled to ever watch another episode of Treme after many episodes from Season One of The Wire – totally captivating. I do feel though that the lesbian make-out scenes are so gratuitous and unimaginable. Yes, one of the main characters is a lesbian, but does she always need to be groping or sucking face with her partner? Not really.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of criticism right now of Obama – people LOVE to criticize the president – I say give the guy a break for godsakes! Yes he is overwhelmed, he inherited an overwhelming agenda not to mention the crisis that have popped up in the meantime. And yes Republicans have shown time and time again that they will vote party rather than for the good of the country. But take a step back right now and look at a few of the victory laps that Obama has earned: Health Care Reform, Financial Reform and repealing don’t ask don’t tell and now taking one more step forward by allowing gay partners to care for their sick child.

In the New York Times this morning, there is an article about a law that allows gay workers being able to take leave to take care of their partner’s child, even if they have not adopted the child. Let me ask you a question, despite whatever you think about homosexuality, could you find any reason why a loving adult should not be allowed to care for a sick child? Though Obama is not pro-anyone particularly pro-gay-marriage, he is showing the law should not be against anyone either, which is more to the point. Bravo Obama.

Under a 1993 law, people who work for a company with 50 or more employees are generally entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn or for a spouse, son or daughter with “a serious health condition.”

The new ruling indicates that an employee in a same-sex relationship can qualify for leave to care for the child of his or her partner, even if the worker has not legally adopted the child.

The ruling, in a formal opinion letter, tackles a question not explicitly addressed in the 1993 law. It is one of many actions taken by the Obama administration to respond to the concerns of gay men and lesbians within the constraints of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman as husband and wife.

In April, Mr. Obama announced plans to grant hospital visiting rights to same-sex partners, and the Justice Department concluded that the Violence Against Women Act protects same-sex partners.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama plans to welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights advocates to a White House reception celebrating June as “LGBT Pride Month.”

For just one moment, ending this Monday madness, we will got sit on the porch and look at the dying light and once again be grateful that we are living the dream (as I told a guy who was sitting at the table in front of my house – he said great renovation on the LaLa, and I said, we’re living the dream). And so it is.

My neighbors have chickens in their backyard for their son to raise and learn about – sort of like 4H here on Moss Street. I forget all about those chickens except the one that got caught in a cat’s mouth and wound up dead on the front lawn, but otherwise the chickens are in the backyard pretty much to themselves. But my neighbors were going out of town and we ended up taking over chicken duty. Well, Tatjana volunteered her mother for chicken duty that is and small dog walking among other things.

Tin and I were getting out of the trampoline while the chickens were allowed to roam free, I happened to catch this little clip of Tatjana and her mother wrestling the chickens back into the coup. Definitely a sight to behold.

In another life I am the owner of a Bed and Breakfast on Esplanade Avenue and an Ambassador for this wonderful city of New Orleans. I’m making sure that my guests sleep on crisp clean linens and hear rich wonderful music and eat fabulous food and guide them to all sorts of places tailored for their own peculiar tastes.

However, on a completely different front I’m a nutritionist, helping people make the right choices, particularly lower income people who don’t have a lot of choice. I work with adults and children alike to choose fresh ingredients, cook more, and give up bad habits such as soft drinks, processed food, and fast food meals. To this end, I’ve been a huge huge fan of Michael Pollan. His open letter to the President, when Obama was elected to rethink the Food Industry was so dear to my heart, it brought tears to my eyes. And look what happen – how can Obama even think about the food industry when there are two wars going on, Health Care Reform, Financial Reform, and of course, the BP oil spill mess.

I picked up Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food, at the airport because I’ve been having trouble sticking with Isherwood’s Berlin Stories that I am only halfway through, and I love it. I also picked up his compendium, Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual, which has wonderful pearls of wisdom such as eat in this priority: one foot (mushroom), two feet (fowl), then four feet (pig, cow). Or this one – Eat White Bread End Up Dead.

More importantly, Pollan begins In Defense with a general explanation of why we/I am so obsessed with nutrition, I’m a cliche. Once more I’ve learned that what goes top of my mind is top of everyone’s mind because either a) we have been brainwashed, or b) we have shared experiences that bring us to the same conclusions.

Anyway, I haven’t given up on either of these alternative career goals – perhaps my B&B is also a nutrition retreat with some manifestos of my own pasted in every room. Right now, I’m just grooving on Pollan’s writings and thoughts of what I could do if I were doing something else.

Our neighbors are out of town and we’re watching their dog, their chickens, and Tin is using their trampoline every day. It’s hard to slow life down, but getting on a trampoline is one way to do it. There are little kids that live inside all of us and there are certain triggers that can burrow down through the adult crap and get to the heart of the matter – jumping on a trampoline is one of them. It was a great way to end the weekend that went by in a dreamy lightning pace – if that is even possible.

And no this is not photoshopped, Tin does have bluish colored eyes just like his Mommy:

Tin and I were walking along and he saw his shadow and stood in amazement at the discovery. Then I showed him my shadow. And then I showed him shadow birds and dogs and other animated gestures that shadows can make.

When I was in LA, T kept telling me that Tin was learning something new every day. He was jumping on our neighbors’ kids trampoline. He is kicking his ball like a soccer ball. He is learning to point to all the body parts in Croatian.

We were walking today and I thought Tin was asleep in the ErgoBaby, but couldn’t tell through his hat and sunglasses and someone passed on a bike and I said hi and then Tin said hi.

I woke this morning thinking of my brother in prison as it is Father’s Day and I’d have to say the one thing that my brother would say with certainty is his child is the best thing that has every happened to him. I took a minute to wish him out of his circumstances so that next Father’s Day might be different.

As I prepared breakfast a friend Skyped from Germany, and our lively conversation distracted Tin from his breakfast and made him a breath away from a tantrum with every turn, so I decided to take him for a walk to get him back to center.

As soon as we started walking he fell sound asleep in the Ergobaby. So we walked and walked some more and I decided to just head over to Dizzy’s and see about getting him some pancakes when he woke up. It was hot as Hades outside and we were both sweating. When we got to Dizzy’s, I had forgot it was Father’s Day and they were doing brunch, so he woke up in this bustling restaurant and had salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, green beans and gravy instead. And he ate it down like a champ.

On the way out, an elderly African American woman said to her table folks, “She should put a shirt on that boy,” as Tin was wearing only a wife beater. But I was wearing a matching one in pink and no one commented about my tank top. Walking home on Esplanade, once past Claiborne, I put Tin down so he could walk off his big meal. He was centered again, and so was I.

I got in bed around 4AM on Saturday morning, having finally arrived from my much delayed flight out of L.A. We had a birthday party to go to at 10AM but I had barely crawled out of bed by 9AM. Then I just wanted to hang out with T1 and T2 and the dogs (and the cat of course). We went to Ruby’s birthday and James Singleton was playing with a friend and kids were roaming here and there and Tin was up close and enthralled with the musicians and was dancing as usual, and I felt like I was sleepwalking through the morning.

We all came home, hot and tired and ate lunch and then napped the sleep of the dead. Then I barely could shake off the out of body experience I had been having when it was time to sneak over to my friend’s house after Tin went down to watch episode six and seven of Treme. My friend was out of town as her mother passed.

By the time we got in bed last night, I felt as if I had lived life as a different person, a shadow of myself, because my mind hadn’t transitioned to home, and was left floating in the ether with other thoughts and ruminations that happen when you find yourself stuck at an airport for too many hours and suddenly you have seen such diverse people and had such random thoughts that you are not quite sure what you are focused on.

While at the Terranea resort last week, we encountered a guy with some interesting birds. He was trying to get certified I forgot as what but he needed to train a hawk and he had one, a beautiful female Harris Hawk:

He also had American Kestrel that had been born in captivity. Their life span in the wild is three years, whereas his was already two and the life span in captivity is almost dog years, about 14. He was a beauty:

He had an Asian owl as well – one that he was using to drive off the pigeons and ocean pigeons (seagulls) from the property. This one was so gorgeous, you got the impression he had put make up on that morning:

Nora Zeale Hurston said there are years that bring questions and years that bring answers. It is definitely feeling like a year of answers for me. Small ones. Just sort of nudges in certain directions. My horoscope today felt right on as well:

June 19, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   Life is looking great right now! You’ve got your friends and your sweetie (or crush, anyway), plus all the invites that keep coming and, of course, your immediate surroundings. It all just looks so wonderful! You might fear that you have rose-colored glasses on, but life really is this good. Take advantage of your enhanced view and visit a museum to check out some art.