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On Monday, when the conference that I’m attending here in New Orleans opened – Rita Benson LeBlanc was the keynote speaker. Rita is the owner of the New Orleans Saints (thankfully she waited till the end of her presentation to play a video, which is a clip from a documentary about the Saints in the last five years – it started with the levee failure and segued into the re-opening of the dome on Monday night football; I was in the dome that Monday night as U2 played The Saints are Coming courtesy of Man of Mystery who happened to have tickets when I happened to say “I wish I could be there” – what an unbelievable night [thanks MoM!]); Rita quoted her grandfather as saying “Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.”

She also talked about our resilience as a people, as a city, as a culture – tough times passed and we’re home again – and how our commitment to excellence and community is what got us here.

This morning I read the 2012 milestone on the calendar may be meaningless (well, we had a clue about this one) because recent calculations have shown the deciphering may be off by 50 to 100 years. Go figure. So now we may not see the end of the world in my lifetime or in my son’s. Another reason to sleep peacefully.

I can’t help but still get goosebumps when I hear U2 singing that song and thinking about the great gift the Saints gave this city. BTW Drew had his baby – he was in the hospital when Rita was doing the presentation – another boy.

When I saw the parents around me giving out Ritalin by the handful on school diagnosis of ADD and ADHD, my whole body screamed, just say no. When all of my friends were prescribed anti-depressants by their doctors because they were going through challenges, I wanted to scream, just say no. When doctors were prescribing me hormone replacement therapy in all sorts of different dosages, I took it but wanted to scream just say no and finally just got off myself after a year on them.

The age of medicating instead of remediating is a sign of the times. Most depressed people I know can do more for themselves by getting off drugs and alcohol, and getting into some real time behavior modification. And kids – let’s face it – mainly it is boys who are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and there is little that anyone on the prescribing and diagnosing side has done to investigate the possibility that perhaps boys are, well, just being boys and we need to change how we teach and parent them not drug them.

But today the New York Times printed an article that HRT not only raises the risk of cancer but makes it aggressive and virulent. Just say no!!!

Last night an octogenarian said that Tin is beautiful. I said thanks, I know. She said no he is really beautiful. And I said well we hope to teach him what my mother taught me – Beauty is as Beauty does. She said, well it does matter.

Anytime a black woman sees him the first thing she says is, “Hey handsome,” and he just smiles back, opening his moist brown eyes – he’s already, as one 8 year old boy called him, “a seducer” – so we have to start now instilling in him the thinking that beauty is as beauty does. But that woman is right, beauty does open doors, but you have to know how to behave once you walk in.

Still and all when it comes to bathtime that is the time we indulge in beauty talk – good beauty talk – as I comb out his knots in his hair, I say, Tin has beautiful hair, beautiful curls, gorgeous hair. I learned about this in a book called It’s All Good Hair because when you’re combing those knots out you want to be saying other things, like keep still, I know it hurts, etc., so focusing on the fact that this combing is about keeping up beautiful hair is more the message you want to send. And believe me, I look around at most boys his age who have shaved heads and think, hmmm, but in the end I love his hair and I want him to as well. That’s why when I saw this Sesame Street short, I had to show it to him. I love my hair! Yes, indeed.

Last night, we went to Bacchanal to celebrate Jim Singleton’s 55th birthday and we all dressed up in 1955 attire – or so we thought. I had read that India and Asia had a huge influence on fashion design during this period so Tin wore his Indian outfit that Alice’s daughter brought back for him and we dressed in our own hodge podge glamour, debonair way. But before we left Tin wanted to play the flute and so we had to pause for a musical interlude (made sense given the occasion of the evening). Behold our budding musician’s first concert.

Sundays are purely intended to be lounging for the Lord days around the LaLa – despite the two hour interlude for acrobatic yoga, most of the day is spent in repose as it should be – these are how Sundays look like around here, dining al fresco on the porch, dogs lying doggo on the floor, cats lying in a sunbeam, friends stopping by for a chat:

Mondays look more like this: columns need refinishing, work calls start early, locked and loaded.

Then Tuesdays the water gets shut off for the third time this month and you sit and sit and sit trying to get the day going.

On the road to discovering how truly cliche you could possibly be, please refer to every inch of my blog. I’ve had a mid life crisis (marital affair), I’ve had spiritual redemption (post Katrina), I’ve changed teams (now lesbian), I’ve adopted a black child (before Sandra Bullock), I’ve been obsessed my whole life with nutrition (read: any Michael Pollan), I left the world of conservation to work in the world of Wall Street only to start down the path of self-discovery (after the 2008 meltdown).

I was reading about Alex Bogursky’s leaving of CP+B – the guy sounds like a total whack job but not unlike a boss that I slaved to once and somehow almost miss. He had an epiphany when asked about selling Coke Zero in a time of kid’s obesity issues – he said he responded to an audience and realized his mouth was totally disconnected from his soul. I recall a moment but it was a while ago when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade center and emails among my sources in New York were flying all around and in one I hit reply to all: “Keep buying, it is us as consumers that will overcome this event.” Was that me? Good grief. When Alex asks what is Alex, moments that like make me ask, who the hell is Rachel? I had spent a lifetime making sure to never work for the man and certainly to never work for just money.

But again, as I start down this path of enlightenment and realize that in getting and spending, I have laid waste my powers (see Wordsworth’s The World is Too Much With Us), I now want to use my all powerfulness to make my contribution as my mother used to pine for working in nursing homes, she wanted to make her contribution and her contribution was not lost on me, I never pass up an opportunity to help an elderly person because I always think that could have been my mother.

But my focus is on children – specifically feeding them nutritious meals and radically changing eating patterns of less fortunate people. Will I one day find out this too is a cliche, and that it is arrogant, narcissistic, or whatever to believe you know best and can save anyone, change any system, be the person you hope to be?

My mouse died on me when I got back from Orlando and stretching across the desk to hit the track pad on my laptop and still keep my eye on the external monitor that is in front of me is excruciating to my already unresolved back and shoulder issues, so I’ve been not so thrilled about sitting in front of my computer. So today, was about a computer-less day. We went to the park and slid down the slide, and swang and ran and jumped then we came home and had lunch al fresco on the front porch for one of the most beautiful days I have seen in a long time. Sort of reluctantly I pulled away to go to acro yoga and on the way my bike got a flat tire so I locked it up where I was and continued to yoga on foot.

When I got there Aaron wasn’t there and so I almost wanted to turn around and come back. He does make the class more compelling. But in staying, I was able to work through some of my issues with strangers, which was pretty cool. I didn’t want to try to do a helicopter spin on top of a guy that I didn’t know especially without Aaron standing there to tell us what to do and I know to catch me if something went wrong and so I almost opted out, but my teammates helped me get comfortable and so I did get up there and I did a half spin, which was more than I expected.

I walked back to my bike after the class and walked it home and when I got here T was grading papers on the porch and T2 was napping and so I was able to get a little more porch time in, which was what I really wanted today since I’m bookended by media conferences last week and this one.

At the end of the day, the mouse wasn’t missed nor was my presence at my desk (which btw is a disaster). Monday will come soon enough and I’ll figure out where all these stacks of paper go and figure it out. Meanwhile, there is a few more minutes left to the weekend, so enjoy.

I realize this low grade anxiety about my financial future is not just my own – it’s a sign of the times. I was reading the NYT about several of the Tea Party initiatives and also about that person who I will not name’s call to “Reload” and I don’t want to get stuck on the obvious – that members of the Tea Party are shallow reductivists or that great things don’t come from challenging times.

Part of the conversation last night among friends was my own inability to understand my journey here – along such conventional routes and yet I fancy myself so unconventional – not. Three marriages, the good daughter, the responsible one – I ask you where was my open letter to go out and explore difference and radically shake up your notion of the world – I’ve stayed within the confines of the familiar to do my jazzing around. Boring!

Even with my blog, I can remember the first impulse was to write the truth and nothing but and along the way I started encountering collateral damage of my truth because it included their truth and so I had to start confining the truth to what was unharmful musings. Alas, my kingdom for the truth, my blog for some neutral soul searching and wider understanding of nature, more particularly mine.

The most I can hope for is that the best days lie ahead of me and that the fiery spirit inside of me will meet its call to action in the service of others, where my mind keeps heading these days more and more readily, but that it doesn’t have to be done in a conventional way that would cause a shake up to my family and our comfort, but rather that it could be accretive and soulful and meaningful and purposeful and these are the things I dream about – and to you who shall not be named in my blog EVER – Reload  takes on not the warrior’s chant that you intend it for, but rather the big thinkers – the Ghandi, the King, the Mandela – the radical purposeful meaningful change that this very angry country needs to heal itself from having spun out of control with industries that do not serve us (food, energy, education, healthcare), and the engines that have failed us (Wall Street, politics, religions), and laws that do not help us (anti-immigration, anti-gay, corporate tax breaks).

Perhaps this low grade anxiety is a good thing because it is the spark of something bigger and more powerful than anything I already know.

On my flight home I ran into a neighbor and gave her a ride from the airport. When we drove down City Park Avenue and passed the park with the beautiful large Louisiana oaks covered with moss, I knew I was finally home. I live in such a unique area, Flower described it as a small Italian village, but here it is, home. I drove to Ursuline to drop off my friend, one of the most beautiful streets in New Orleans aside from St. Charles, and then down the bayou and saw my friend getting out of her car, and pulled up to see Loca and Heidi running out to the driveway to greet me. Home at last.

The bayou is so incredibly beautiful right now as the last of the warm days wane and so too does the light. It was dark before I could turn around and I got Tin up from his nap and after we ate, we walked down to visit a friend and neighbor. Tin was squealing and running around and in an overall fabulous mood.

Goodnight moon, goodnight bayou.

When I returned from my trip to the West Coast there had been a spate of young boys committing suicide and it was about being young and gay and having no where to turn. In my Real Boys, I just finished the chapter about being gay and young and having no place to go. The chapter was a lengthy explanation about how gay is not a choice and that was driven home time after time. Anyway, today I was watching a spate of videos about gay men who have come out to tell young boys that it gets better.

Let’s hope the next message we send young gay girls and boys is that it is better – they don’t have to wait.