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Wow, I didn’t realize how tense my whole body was awaiting this election but I can tell you the minute CNN announced Obama had won, I felt my entire body loosen up and a big roaring yeeha came spilling out. We went to Kermit Ruffin’s Treme Speakeasy to celebrate and it was a packed house so we walked down to Bertha’s with our little group and were there when it was announced.

I have said Thank Jesus, Thank God countless times since last night, I have put my hands together and up towards the sky, I have never felt so happy to see a president get elected, re-elected and I wonder how we are going to remedy the fact that half this country has entirely different values than the other half. How are we going to do that?

In the meantime, a deep breath, a good time, and onward we go.

This is the photo I took with my iPhone – I’m a terrible photographer no matter the device

This is the photo Marc took – that’s why Photographer comes after his name:

The party continued into the wee hours, long after we were tucked in our beds:

I’ve lived for a long time by a motto of fake it till you make it and that has served me well. Goethe said, “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” I think it is more important to focus on what you say, because it narrates the life that becomes.

For a long time, I was saying I could do anything in life because those words were put into my mouth by my mother who truly believed I could do anything and she was specific about it too – she said don’t get married, live with someone, I would have done that if it had been available to me. I don’t regret any marriage but I should have listened to mom on that one – marriage does feel like a trap.

The message from the world are clear – do your own thing usually leads to trouble. But do your own thing is the message that became very clear to me this morning. Not only do your own thing but make it uniquely your own thing.

Everything that has happened to me in the past twelve months has been a blessing. I’m thankful. I am living the creative life that I could not when I was trapped in a 9-5 job working for the man and in this case a man for whom I have no respect.

It’s freeing to be able to create a vision for my own life, one that marries with my ambition, energy and creativity.

Thankfully, this woman on fire (she has more wisdom than a girl on fire) is here to say it’s okay to get off track from your heart’s desire, but seize any opportunity to get out that trick bag and get back onto your path. Chew your way through it, claw your way out of it, kick and scream and crawl back to your path to live the life that is uniquely yours.

I have gained so much in the past year that even Queen Hippolyta would be proud of where I stand today.

Tin has been obsessed with trains of late so I decided to take him on a short train trip and the easiest destination was Picayune, Mississippi, which happened to be holding their Fall festival and so we invited his friend to join us and off we went. Logistically there were problems from the get go – we would have to leave at 7am and would arrive in Picayune at 8:22 and the next train home was at 5:42, but we decided what the hey, let’s do it.

And so we did. We got up at the crack of dawn. We caught the train and traveled across Lake Ponchartrain, seeing trees changing colors, and getting our train fix in. We arrived in Picayune and took a stroll down the street as the vendors were all setting up their tents. We saw amazing things such as:

A wooden structure with ten holes to hold your 2-liter soda bottles
A leather pouch to strap to your belt to hold Skoal
Crocheted Jesus is Our Lord pot holders
A metal sign that says WE DONT CALL 911 with a shotgun hanging from it

Yes, it was colorful and Tin went on the EuroBungee jump ride and he even surprised the guys there at his fearlessness – he went back and rode it four times as a matter of fact – going higher and higher each time.

And then it started to rain, and it rained and rained and rained, and we sat in PJs for two hours trying to keep two young boys quiet and calm. Then we went out finally in the drizzle to see all of the vendors picking up their tents and closing shop. And then we had four hours left before the train arrived to take us home.

Endurance – that is what I am good at. I’ve never been a fast athlete, but I have a strong capacity to endure like a beast of burden. We had never once checked the weather, and I should have known a storm was brewing by the beauty of the sunrise over the bayou:

All in all we had ourselves an adventure:

The election is tomorrow and in order to be able to fully cope with the final hours before the decision is announced, we are headed to Kermit Ruffin’s new Treme Speakeasy to watch the results on Tuesday night. In the meantime, Saturday morning it was such a wonderful day that we laid out on the bayou with neighbors and soaked up the last bits of warming sun and saw a neighbor and friend campaigning from his kayak.

I’ll be so glad when the politicalness of our daily lives is safely tucked away for another four years and I can wake up and Obama is my president.

As we enter the darker days, with the time change that came on Saturday, Waldorf is lighting the way for the kids as well as the parents. The early childhood classes held their ceremonial lantern walk as we made lanterns from paper, leaves, and paint and we sang songs about light, and walked through the dark halls into the fading light of the playground. What a lovely ceremony and a good reminder that Tin is learning about the rhythm of life and how to be in harmony with nature.

I saw a guy with a tee shirt that said YOLO in big yellow letters and on the back – You Only Live Once. So my dear readers, that is the motto this Friday – not TGIF, but live a worthy life.

Today was Tin’s teacher meeting and I learned that our little boy is a master builder, never duplicates any of his complex designs and loathes anyone to mess with it. He’s a little bossy and likes his role as the older boy in the nursery and enjoys telling others what to do. He has a memory like a steel trap and can recite any finger puppet or circle song with only hearing it once. He does not know a stranger. He always has plans. He comes to the nursery every day and goes directly to what he wants to do – build, play train, be a marching band, run, jump. He’s his own man.

I then went to see E and I talked about me – I’m loathe to have anyone mess with my plans. I can be a little bossy when I don’t get my way. I remember everything when I should be forgetting some of it. And I don’t know a stranger.

Later this afternoon, Tin and I were coming home from the cobbler and we both saw a tall man at the streetcar stop fall over and begin convulsing on the ground – a woman jumped off the streetcar and ran to him, a man ran across the intersection cell phone to his ear dialing I would imagine 911 and both Tin and I watched from the car, alarmed, concerned, and holding hands (mine reached to the back).

YOLO Baby – go out there and live it.

The super storm on the East Coast seems so far away and removed from our lives down here in New Orleans as we regale in the beauty that is today. Tin was out of school so a bunch of his friends came over and we made pesto fresh from the garden, and we ran races on the bayou in the sunshine, we inspected spider webs on the Magnolia Bridge and we ate snacks and played games and a good time was had by all.

And some hundreds of miles away people are trying to get their lives back together without electricity after having been scared to death and shook up by a Frankenstorm.

But we’ve been there, done that. It wasn’t just a couple of months ago that we were sitting here not in the cold without electricity but in the heat without air conditioning – the south versus the north – and we were miserable and no one could really understand in New York just how we do it – why we do it – it seemed foreign to them and now well, they know.

You do it. You make hay when the sun is shining, and you white knuckle the rough patches.

Last night, after trick or treating, I asked Tin as I was putting him to bed if he had a good day and he said, “Yeah I did, and tomorrow I’m going to school.” I said no, you’re off tomorrow and we’re having a big playdate here. “Will Kenjy and Jared come?” Yes, they are coming and so is Cadence, Simone and Elodie. “Oh thank you booty mama,” Tin said.

All of this brings new meaning to the word live in the now. It’s truly all we’ve got.