Dangermond.org

News just in:

A federal judge ordered the government on Tuesday to stop enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, ending the military’s 17-year-old ban on openly gay troops.

I woke a little bit on the late side this morning but had to walk the dogs because I realized that if I don’t walk Loca she is crazy (and that is not redundant), and that because of her I get my walk and I’m therefore not crazy. So we went for our long walk through the park and saw Great Egrets, Tricolored Herons, two Cormorants up in the tree, ducks galore and three white swans. Louisiana is called Sportsman Paradise but it actually is a bird’s paradise. How great for us!

I was able to check off many line items for work that made me feel satisfied and productive and then I went to yoga and had the most incredible class with Michele at the helm and two assistants flanking her. I was in such a blissed out state when I left that I forgot my mat and had to go back up and get it.

I came home and T had heated up the risotto I made last night – the one with broccolini and black trumpet mushrooms with a little saffron and so I had some good nourishment for my belly.

To think this day started with the water being turned off for an hour – wait I forgot all about that – because I’m having a blissed out day. I highly recommend it. Here’s how it started, knowing that I was waking late, instead of immediately starting to kick myself for not having got up on time, instead I laid in bed a moment and said, What a wonderful day, this day is going to be a day where good news comes my way and I am feeling great.

Remember to construct your own day when you get up tomorrow – it really works.

Last Christmas I took a photo of Tin and I dressed up in Santa outfits. I sent one to a client and friend of mine and he said, “You have the same smile.” A couple of months ago, I took a photograph of Tin sitting on the front porch eating raisins and a friend wrote, “He looks like both of you.” It’s amazing what you see when you are looking. I was sitting a long time ago in a client’s office and he had a photograph of his three kids on the side table. I said, “What a lovely family.” And he told me they were all adopted. He had also been adopted and had such a wonderful experience that he and his wife opted to adopt rather than conceive. When I looked closer at the photograph I began to see the glaring differences in the way the children looked from light to dark. But on first glance I just saw his lovely family.

Everything we humans know, we know because we construct it.

Our nightly ritual consists of telling Tin we are going to Mr. White’s party (what my mother told me as a child) and of blowing a kiss to (my mom) Mimi’s photograph and thanking her for bring him to us, then there is a nod towards the Russian tapestry of the Prince on the Horse (we ask Tin who is our Prince and he taps his chest), we also look at the drawings of Mama that Kim Frohsin did in San Francisco, and then we have a good chuckle about the photograph of Loca on the beach.

In this house we run light to dark and we all fit together to make a lovely family portrait. And that’s a good thing.

A couple of days ago out of the blue, Tin started trying to hurl himself down the stairs. T noticed it and told me about it, but I hadn’t seen it up close and personal. It’s odd because he has been such a careful boy, learning so fast how to go up and down the stairs either on his bottom or holding on to someone’s hand. Suddenly he is standing at the top of the step and just plunges headlong. He tried it twice on the front porch and then again at our friend’s house during their party.

Well yesterday, I was watering the succulents (it’s been so dry here, and now we think the worms died from the drought) and Tin was crawling up the back stairs and then carefully coming down them on his bottom. Then he climbed to the top and completely threw himself off and he did a somersault after hitting his head on the cement. I gasped and my heart stopped and then I held him, but he was more surprised and shocked then hurt – which is unimaginable after what I saw.

Afterwards we sat on the ground, him in my lap, me stroking his back as he cried, and we talked about why you need to hold hands or sit on your bottom to come down stairs. Seems all the words from Mama weren’t going to stop him – only the reality of hurling down a small flight of stairs and flipping over after hitting concrete could make the same words later from Mommy sound like a smart idea.

The nun said it was Tin’s right of passage. And I said under my breath, I hope Tin takes most things on our advice and doesn’t have to go out there and try to prove he knows better. Otherwise, I envision worry worry worry. On the other hand, I can sort of see what he was doing, he was up there thinking, you know all these people around me just walk down the stairs without holding on or scooting on their bottom, if they’re all doing it, why can’t I?

This morning a fine white fog pervaded City Park and cast an eerie glow over it. It is perfect for the upcoming Halloween holiday or maybe its a pall cast more from the Saints’ loss yesterday. Someone said there was some bad voodoo on the team and that the devil was in our backyard laughing at us. I ran into a fellow morning walker and he speculated it was all about gambling and I said you think Brees threw those interceptions on purpose? And he said he didn’t know but something wasn’t right.

When things are working for you, you got your mojo rising, when things are against you, it’s gris gris. Either way, with Halloween around the corner and a fine mist in the air, the spirits are coming and we better be prepared to know the difference between good voodoo and bad.

Overheard: A young woman’s recent fleur de lys and Saints tattoo on her shoulder and an older gentlemen who said, “You’re going to be sorry when they lose.”

So today is 10-10-10 and according to someone I met today, it is a transformative date – interesting, because the day started with me making French toast and watching this woman doing a headstand on her kayak go by on the bayou:

As we ate our tasty breakfast, Blekica climbed into the money tree and started to shake, rattle and roll:

And then T and I quickly divided and conquered. T took the dogs around and in the bayou and I took T2 on a bike ride through City Park where a Breast Cancer walk called SAVE THE TATA’S was in full swing. We came back and showered and then jumped in the car and drove over to the Magazine Street festival and arrived just as Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue took the stage at 11:30 – we danced and had a nice ice cold beer while Tin drooled his teeth out. Then it was home and I was off once again to my acro yoga Sunday class – woo hoo!

Aaron says that doing acro yoga is sort of like playing with Ginsu knives – dangerous in other words, but today I was able to hold a man up on the balls of my feet and a woman by her arms and later I had an almost 200 pound man lie back on me while we simultaneously supported two different people doing handstands on us. Yes, this is a very unusual form of yoga but it is AWESOME.

Again he said we are compelled to go to his class for a reason and I’d have to say that it didn’t take 10-10-10 for me to have a transformation, mine came when I realized that the world was an overwhelming place to be when the focus was work, mortgage, retirement, savings and debt and it is far more enjoyable to stay as whacked out as you can and enjoy life – if that means acro yoga – then whatyagonnado?

We’ve been off of the comfortable sleeping schedule for Tin. His early to bed was disrupted the other day when we had friends over for T’s cake on Thursday night – and he went to bed at 9 but didn’t fall asleep until 11. Since then his nap and nighttime rhythm has been thrown off. Yesterday instead of his usual three to four hour afternoon nap, he slept for an hour and then when we went to a friends’ birthday party, he was flinging himself down the brick stairs like a drunken midget and hurling through the house faster than a speeding bullet.

Everyone kept saying, “Oh he’s just a little boy.” But we knew that this little boy was wired for sound and at any moment might take off like a rocket ship. So we did the usual drive by eating, drive by chatting and switched off between who did the block and tackle and who did the quick friend face time, and by the time we all got home at the late hour of 8 PM, we hurled ourselves to bed.

Well not quite, Tin went down like a house on fire after we finished reading Dr. Seuss’ A to Z and we followed shortly after two episodes of the Wire. I’m getting anxious as we are finishing the last season and they are killing off all of my favorite characters – last night Butchie died – damn it! And then Prop Joe. If they kill Omar, I’m done!

We’ve gotten into a rut lately, one in which we barely have time for the friends we have, and barely any time for ourselves, but we flung the doors open on Saturday morning and invited over a couple with a child – a similar set up to what we are – and afterwards, we thought wow, that was nice. New friends, cute little boy.

It was interesting to see our lives mirrored by others who are dealing with the same challenges with the same thoughtfulness and the outcome is the same right now – a loving little bundle of energy.

Sometimes that overwhelming feeling comes from trying to do too many of the same things, making something new seem effortless and expansive.

Tin peed in the potty today!

I was always close to my second to oldest brother, the one who is in prison. He wrote me something today that explains why he and I have always related to each other. We were talking about the changes in my industry and my role in covering them and he told me:

I have always been of the philosophy that you should create your own nitch/opportunity and then fill it with your self.