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We posted the house on Craig’s list as a one year rental – we’ll see. This way, I have more than week to week to figure out my life or work on my groove.

In the South, the whole world exists on the front porch. We take this for granted in New Orleans. Porch sitting is a way of life down here. But when I was young we lived for a time in Manhattan, near Washington Heights, and there and then people used to sit on their porches stoops too.

Yesterday, we did what we do normally – we waited till the sun was low and then we went out to the front porch to sit and watch the golden light that stretches across the bayou and casts everything in an antique hue. Neighbors and friends rode their bikes, their cars, walked, strolled, ran by or were gathering around the table on the bayou chatting, and they all either waved, stopped, came over and sat, called to us from their own porch or from the bayou.

One had a granddaughter born yesterday, one had started a new job and had just come home, one drove by on her way home from her new job, one was simply walking her dog, one was trying to call but saw us on the porch instead.

Our friend turned to us and said, “Does this happen every day? I never speak to my neighbors and they avert their eyes when they see me coming. This isn’t just saying hello, there is a lot going on out here.”

Yes, as Eudora Welty once said, “Southerners live their narratives,” and as the proprietress of the LaLa is wont to say, “We live them on our front porches.”

I was pulling weeds out of the driveway strip and a woman crossed from the bayou with her dog and said, “Is this your house?”

She then said she had just moved to the neighborhood and had been admiring this house every day she takes her bayou walk.

I bit my tongue and said, “Thanks.”

The LaLa Drama is always about – the latest is I wanted to hang a simple sunshade on the back screen porch that had been designed with a large pecan tree shading it, which fell during the 2005 Federal Flood. Now a flood of sunshine enters about 2PM and from there, it is all downhill – because the porch heats up too much to enjoy. Except, of course, you can’t just simply put up a sunshade on a house in New Orleans, no you have to build a galvanized hood to put it under to protect from sun, rain, termites, you name it.

Yesterday afternoon, with our friend visiting from New York we sat outside and enjoyed the LaLa for all of its glory. The garden is lush because it never winterized (read: there was no Winter 2011), and butterflies are still feasting on the milkweed. The newly planted roses are trying to find themselves – right now they are putting out small blossoms perhaps due to the shock of being planted so late in the season. The front porch itself is newly painted albeit the wear and tear to the treads is already visible and needs to be addressed (sooner rather than later) (read: very large sigh).

My kingdom for a front porch with a water view.

Wait, I already have that. Bite my tongue.

Tin is out of school for two weeks before his camp starts and before we leave for Europe. So for two days I decided to have pool day and have a couple of his friends/classmates over since they are out as well (in turn they will have Tin over – so what goes around comes around).

His two best buddies were over and one of them brought a friend and of course, that tilted the scales – it ended up with Tin getting bit – but all in and all they remained semi civil and did not destroy the (entire) house.

Wednesday down – Friday to go:

A friend of a friend was here today – we mothers with kids out of school pooled resources and I have two days – today and Friday to have the boys and then they get distributed through the rest of the week. She began telling me her story about the house she designed then spent her last red cent on and then how she did not have to do things once or twice but actually redo them many times and how she calls her house the bear she cannot get her arms around.

Then another friend was telling me her air conditioning compressor just blew out, or then there was another person who had bought a house because they really believed that home ownership was the end all and be all but turns out to be the keblewy.

Why are we all living in houses that we invested our hard-earned retirement dollars into and now have watched not only the equities (where the rest of our shekels are) but the real estate market devalue everything and make it seem like we have been running around like a bunch of complete fools?

We should be living in yurts – a yurt is something you can get your arms around – and would be all we need to get by – none of us would be so miserably trying to keep up with the bearish demands of our homes.

When did your home turn into such a PAIN IN THE ASS?

The Times Picayune said it will shuttle their daily paper and deliver only three times a week. Well, maybe that is not such a bad thing – today I spent my morning coffee time instead of watching the bluebirds in my garden reading about a guy who ate the face off another guy (the victim was, of course, from Louisiana), a child’s birthday party that ended with one kid and one mother dead, and others injured, another guy on a bike who shot a man in the face, and honestly, this is not the best morning constitution building material.

Last night, I went with friends to Meaux Bar and on the way, one of them had updates texted to her about shootings around the city.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get a text message that said simply – It’s going to be okay. Or something like that?

I went for blood work today and since my new doc wants to do tons of lab work on me there was lots of blood to be let.

Now to go find someone’s neck to suck so that I can replenish.

In the world of Life Coaching there are all sorts of names you give the tokens you are moving around on the Game of Life. The Captain I had visualized as a Stick Figure, which fit the game perfectly since I’m hairless and starting over and a Stick Figure is as elemental a drawing as you can get. So I can dress, put hair on, make my Stick Figure into anything I want my Captain to be from here on out. Not a bad deal.

Then there were the Saboteurs – the devils that wake me in the middle of the night when they know I’m at my most vulnerable and tell me things like – IT’S NOT GOING TO BE OKAY – and I’ve learned to talk back, not scream back, but just chant myself into a meditation that leads me back to lala land where I can slumber.

Now the Appreciator has been the tough one – I always had a good friend in my appreciator who believed mainly what my momma told me – I can be anything in the world I decide to be – but that inner appreciator got some come uppance as of late and has been slightly challenged in its job. I learned today that those devilish saboteurs are at war with my appreciators – full blown war. Weapons of Mass Destruction and all sorts of other imaginary evils lurking.

So Stick Figure has to come out and take control and let the Appreciators do their thing and silence the Saboteurs so that the Appreciators can help the Captain guide me to my life’s purpose (which btw seems overwhelming right now). It’s been bloody exhausting over here just keeping up with the game.

A few years ago someone put up little wood signs all over New Orleans on telephone poles, trees, and anywhere else they could nail these plaques to that said: THINK THAT YOU MIGHT BE WRONG. Then Kathryn Shulz wrote a book about “Being Wrong” – watch her here on TED:

After the complete discordance of a few weeks ago, we find ourselves with an amusing and loving 3 year old who loves nothing more than to read his books, come looking for us and “catching us” and who goes for his nap easily and who has taken to wanting to dress himself.

Don’t look back, just ride this wave until it ends: