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I dont know if you have ever heard the song beachcombing by Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler but it’s a great duet between two good vocalists. Well dear readers, I’m headed out for some beachcombing and while I’m out there I’m going to make every attempt to shut out the noise that occupies 90% of my brain and try to enlarge the canvas of the other parts of my brain by inaction, by not doing. As usual, Yahoo was able to provide me with the very appropriate following horoscope:

July 14, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   No one can truly appreciates earthy pleasures quite like you, and right now, your heightened senses are even sharper! Head outside and wander through the grass, take an extra-long swim or stop to build the optimal sandcastle at a local beach. Connections to nature ground you in a really good way, and make you more capable of dealing life’s little stresses.

Officers were recently charged with the brutal and utterly irrational killing of family members on the Danzinger bridge during the levee failure of 2005. Sort of shows the worst side of the truth. In a city that learned human beings are capable of such incredible generosity and kindness (witness the outpouring of support from the entire globe, the unprecedented number of volunteers that continue to show up to rebuild the remaining 50,000 houses that are still destroyed here, and the resiliency of a people to get up again when they’ve been cut down at the knees), it belies a few humans gone wrong like these police officers who showed base, psychotic and irresponsible behavior that day on that bridge.

I had written earlier about all the wonderful international outfits Tin has – from the pants from Ecuador to the vest from Shanghai that friends have given him, well one of my readers/cyber friends was to visit India this summer and she had hinted she would be bringing back a proper Indian outfit for Tin, only she got derailed from her plans, which you can read about on her blog, and instead her daughters went and did the shopping for Tin. This is the outfit that was captured on my phone’s camera so not great shots but you get the idea how handsome he looks in them. A colleague of Tatjana’s saw the outfit when she opened it at school and said, “Tin will look smart in that.” And boy does he, he looks like a poster boy for Tin Dangermond – International Boy Wonder.

Even though our thoughts have turned to foreign shores, last night we sat and talked about our plans on the front porch. We rocked and looked at the bayou, the golden glow of lights from the houses softly falling on the water. There were streaks of gold, streaks of purple, streaks of white as no one has the same light or bulb on their front porch so the striations in the water were all different. There was a nice breeze blowing and other than the mosquitos, you might believe this a picture perfect paradise.

Strangers were sitting at my neighbor’s table that is left on the bayou for anyone to enjoy.

Then this morning, I rode my bike through City Park and along the bayou towards Lake Ponchartrain. The bayou expands past the I-10 and grows more wild while the houses get larger and larger and newer and newer. I don’t know the history of why once passed DeSaix the houses are not historic anymore. I do know that this area flooded during Katrina and perhaps that is the reason, that people long ago figured out what was high land and what was low land and that’s why Mayor Pitot built his house right across the Magnolia Bridge, where they did not take on water during the levee failure of 2005.

There was a gentle breeze in the air this July morning and the air was cool. There were plenty of runners and bikers along the path. A man had pulled over his company truck and stood in his nice work clothes feeding bread crumbs to about thirty ducks who had gathered from the bayou. Another man had cast his rod and reel off the Filmore Avenue Bridge. People having figured out their own path to happiness.

Cruising back through the park and popping out at Esplanade Avenue, I heard the trolley coming to a stop in front of P.G.T. Beauregard’s statue and had sense of peace about this place I call home … how breezy it is to live in the Big Easy … the words haunting me from Goodnight NOLA being read one too many times as it is Tin’s new favorite.

You’ll notice the postings have grown thinner, the content less original, as the final countdown begins for vacation and let me tell you one thing, this girl deserves a vacation. I’ve got so many things on my to do list and my mental to do list is crushing me under its weight and all I want to do is eradicate to do from my vocabulary and think more about ta da’s rather than to do’s.

The ta da will come when I’m in my bathing suit, on the coast of Spain, Tin playing with his bucket and shovel, T sitting near me drinking her ice cold caña and the waves splish splashing to the shore. At the moment I will think back to the hectic life that got me there and say WTF, and then I’ll take a sip from my cold caña and stare at the endless blue sky and sea and take a deep, long, exhale.

We Americans live for our vacation — well, so be it, now bring it on is all I have to say. I earned it.

I think the Saints should be applauded for being such responsible local citizens. They’ve raised $500,000 so far raffling off one of the great raffle items I’ve ever heard of — a genuine Super Bowl ring, the exact same ring every player and coach will get for winning the Super Bowl. “It allows the individuals, families and small businesses that are dealing with the fallout of the largest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States to once again have the promise that people care about them and their futures,” owner Tom Benson said. If you’ve been in New Orleans recently, you know how valuable the Saints are to the community, and the thing I appreciate is how they don’t shirk the responsibility. In many ways, they’re more important to greater New Orleans and to the entire Gulf Coast than any team is to its community, because of the battering the region has taken from natural and economic disasters in recent years. To buy raffle tickets ($2 per tickets, minimum purchase of five, deadline 11 a.m. EDT Sept. 9), visit here.

Way to go Spain.

July 12, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   If you thought that yesterday was sweet and magical, expect more action today — your agenda has even crazier business in store. As fond as you are of romance and the heart-thumping that goes along with it, you can see how you’re getting even more than that right now. Your job is to be thoughtful toward your friends, and to let them know that you’re heading out for a while.

Essence Festival came and went this year over the 4th of July, but it could have been on planet Pluto for all we knew, since I had just returned from my last of four business trips, sick, and was just looking for my bed and couch more than anything else. Yesterday, was the Bastille Day festival over on Ponce de Leon, and though we had every intention of going, we never made it out of the house due to some of that lingering laziness that has beset my returning to a more normal schedule here at the house.

The other thing is Tin of course – his schedule is so fragmented that in reality we have two windows of opportunity to do anything and those are a morning two hour frame and a late afternoon two hour frame – but within those frames a snack is needed so that has to be included in any plan we pursue. Which means that it is pretty difficult to much of anything when one of those frames gets filled by a planned something – like swim lessons.

But while all these big events are going on outside of the house, some big ones are occurring within as well. Tin is talking up a storm, words just falling out of his mouth in no particular order – he wants to communicate on the highest level. It goes something like gi ga da ma DUCK … he ta gu ma ma GOOD GIRL … ba ba ba ba ba … then a shrill scream.

The other day, big old molar broke through in the back of his mouth without much fanfare making we wonder once again about his pain tolerance being too high. He seems to withstand pain, but not feeling crummy, pretty well.

But the singular new and big event was the last bottle on Friday night so last night when we went to sit on the porch, I had boiled some milk with cinnamon and nutmeg and he was on my hip for the whole process, watching and waiting, and after I tasted it, he tasted it. He seemed to be for it until we went outside on the rocking chair in our usual perch for the gloaming and he realized this was his bottle replacement then he wanted to throw it. I explained that we had given up the bottle because his teeth are coming in strong and we want them to keep growing strong. He threw the sippy cup of warm milk to the ground. I explained that he was a big boy now and we had moved passed the time of the bottle. He threw the sippy cup once more to the ground.

We continued along the line of him trying to knock it over, knock it out of my hand, and generally his overall disgust with this new reality. At last, he did take maybe four or five sips of the warm milk and we went inside and read his new favorite book, Goodnight NOLA and then we read from Mother Goose and we brushed his teeth (all nine of them – eight in front and the one big molar in back) and then he took some long pulls of ice water (his refreshment of choice) and miraculously he slept through the night without the full bottle of formula in his belly.

So while everyone was getting down to the sounds of music and eating good food and having a cocktail over there at Bastille Day, we walked through another threshold, another new new event, here at the LaLa with Tin.