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Yesterday was a stressball day – I had mistakenly waited a day to make T’s birthday cake and then ended up taking shortcuts by not sifting the flour because I was rushing to make it (lumpy cake – we’ll taste it later today), I missed for the second day in a row doing any physical activity (no yoga, no gym) because of work, I left my desk with too much left undone because I was trying to make T’s birthday enjoyable and then at the appointed hour when we were to leave for dinner our babysitter didn’t show up and I panicked and called everyone and then Aunt Jerri assumed the role of emergency babysitter and by night’s end I was strung out and tired and fell asleep on the sofa before dragging myself to bed. I slept in fits and starts and woke this morning to a feeling that I have SO MUCH TO DO.

This morning, when I got to my desk, I read an article that said a Christian preacher was denouncing yoga as not being Christian. Duh, I thought. Then missing yoga from traveling last week and work this week, I was uber conscious of the nagging torque my body is taking because of my incessant mousing on the computer over the last twenty years, and I also felt like a stressball had grown inside my stomach and much like a hairball, it needed to come up.

I look around right now at my desk and aside from stacks of papers, it is covered with exactly 33 purple sticky notes of things that need to be done. And I turned and saw the Tao Te Ching sitting on the corner of my desk and opened it to page 24:

He who stands on tiptoe
doesn’t stand firm.
He who rushes ahead
doesn’t go far.
He who tries to shine
dims his own light.
He who defines himself
can’t know who he really is.
He who has power over others
can’t empower himself.
He who clings to work
will create nothing that endures.

If you want to accord with the Tao,
just do your job, then let go.

Interesting because a friend had stopped by earlier in the day who works for the motion picture industry here in New Orleans and she was anxious about her next project but said she had a note on her mirror that said, “Work is now.”

I didn’t get it at first but I get it.

Oh, come on and admit it, life is a puzzle, correct? I mean here you start heading off in this direction and then you are thrown a curve ball and you fallback to catch it and find yourself running in circles and then you jump off the merrygoround and hit the ground and you’re stunned at first but then you get up, dust off and start running and suddenly you find someone has been running beside you, and then together you reach out and scoop up another, and then one of you grabs a cat out of the air and the other a dog who wants to join in and you are suddenly still in motion, but you’ve gone from all out heart thudding sprinting, to a jog, to a skip, to a walk and you look around one day and you are strolling arm and arm with this other person and you have together a little person and together y’all have two dogs, two cats, and a house on the bayou and the sun is just so in the sky and today is someone’s birthday!

Happy Birthday Tatjana – the piece of the puzzle that was missing in my life to make sense out of all of this craziness.

This morning the weather was next to perfect – well let’s just give it perfect – tee shirt weather if you are walking briskly and we were as we were late getting out the gate this morning. The lagoon in City Park was filled to the brim with ducks and herons and egrets and swans and I’m just waiting for the day when I see the cormorants back on the tree and the pelicans gracing the air. I’ve spotted one or two errant ones, but not the whole enchilada.

The light is soft and the air is cool and crisp.

Here we are in paradise, and we are grateful for another day in paradise.

My brother came by and brought Tin a Monster Truck that makes Monster noises and after he left, us three women – me, T and M (the nanny) stared at it and thought, hmmm. Only a boy would by a Monster Truck for a boy. I’m half way into the Real Boys book and I’ve been observing men in a very different fashion – imagine the boy growing up who loves his mommy and his daddy and his family and is totally himself at home and then this little boy goes to school and he learns from people outside of the house that there is a boy code and he doesn’t know it – you have to be mean, you have to be stoic, you have to be tough, you have to be indifferent. What a confusing message. I spoke with two men who are close to me this week and both of them are doing what they were told they are supposed to do – earning a living and supporting their family and manning up – only the wear and tear of that shows on their general joie de vivre. Where is there place to say – WAH, I don’t want to do none of this!? Where is their appreciation?

The men who follow the boy code, who go out there every day and slog through work, support their families, and don’t utter a whimper need a pat on the back, but they also need a place to say you know what I’m scared, I’m hurting, I’m vulnerable. How about along with monster trucks comes a lot of hugs and a lot of kisses and welcome man’s lap who is there for him, who says, “You can cry here, son. You can say what hurts.” I guarantee you this boy would not be a wimp.

Yesterday in my mondo multitasking Monday mode, I accidentally sent to a friend of mine an email intended for the salesperson I work with – she’s an artist and so she wrote back “fine writing here, but I cannot fathom any of it” – whatyagonnado. Today I got this alert from the New York Times about the Nobel Prize winners and I read it several times but for the life of me cannot fathom any of it:

Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki won the prize, the Nobel Committee said in a statement, for “palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis.”

Why after all these years do I expect Mondays to be anything but Mondays? The bell rings and your out the gate, you are inching up on the rabbit, then suddenly, bam, the rabbit is off, faster than the speed of sound, and you’re behind it, chasing and huffing and puffing and still you can’t catch that silly rabbit. Then boom it’s time for bed. But you’re so wound up from the chase you are still panting only the race is over – at least for today – and so you sit here bewildered, staring at the four walls of your bedroom going – which way did he go? which way did he go?

I thought it was a cosmic joke when I left New Orleans after the first break in the heat since the last weekend of Jazz Fest (read: April) and arrived in California for its record heat of 113 degrees in LA and 91 in San Francisco. This morning the temperatures dipped into the light jacket (T has cashmere and fleece on) and the dogs had a zip in their step. I could tell something was different when I woke to an amber light streaming through the front windows and a smell to the air here to fore not present.

Fall is here along with all the feelings that this time of year conjures, school uniforms, lunch boxes, book bags, the smell of paper, pencils and glue (do kids nowadays have the smell of computer bits and plastic?), warm light, darker color clothes, paler skin, and a deep desire to move from rose and pinot gris to a ruby red syrah (saw a great tee shirt the other day that said “Need Mo Pinot”) and a great desire for comfort food (in our fridge right now is a spicy pho plus Israeli couscous with fairy cap mushrooms and chicken with pine nuts plus sauteed cabbage and Turkish style green beans.

It’s that time of year again where the pumpkins are showing up on porches and scary witches and ghosts are flying from trees and it’s perhaps one of my favorite times of the year – the approaching of All Hallows Eve when the border between this world and the otherworld thins and spirits dead and alive walk the earth. This year we will be heading across the bayou to trick or treat with the little kids and then coming back for some candy passing later in the evening. The Court is having the Saints game and Halloween combined and in their new routine they will be projecting the Steelers and Saints on the side of a house.

In the meantime, I just like hearing Tin say pummmm kin as he walks up and down the stairs.

As Tin and I were riding the bike along the bike path I spotted my mortal enemy the huge towering yellow blossoming Acacia tree – a hand full of them – along the other side of the bayou. I found out just how deadly Acacia trees were in San Francisco when my neighbors tree that was taller than our building bloomed and sent me into a tailspin of allergies. Since I’ve had a headache for two weeks, I now know the source.

So everyone asks why we can never seem to get together. We have friends across the bayou who we have been trying to just have a glass of wine with for the last four months and another friend who lives nearby where the kids don’t even find time to play in the sandbox together.

Well it’s called a schedule and it goes something like this:

8:30 Tin wakes up

9 Tin eats breakfast and Skypes with Tete

10:30 Tin takes a chill out in the crib (he wants it)

12:30 Lunch

2 ish to 6 nap

6:30 dinner

7:30 prepare for bed (birdbath, teeth brushing)

8 to 8:30 bed

If you manage to be around during any of the half hour increments that we have a wow, we have a moment here, then we see you, if not, welcome to our world.