The Death, as it affectionately has become called in my house, won’t leave. Still running fever on and off, my head is killing me, and my congestion won’t ease up. And Sun is teething. So she, too, has fever on and off and is cranky. Oh, and because I am the generous sort and I didn’t get anything for CS for his birthday, today I gave him The Death. Nice of me, huh?

I even had to bail out of CS’s birthday dinner at Pascal’s Manale last night. That hurt the most. I had made all the arrangements and contacted everyone and stayed home in bed. But I knew I’d have been miserable and potentially contagious.

The dinner was apparently quite the success. Go read what Pete had to say about it here. His post just made me feel that much worse to have missed such a meal.

I’ve been sick with this sore throat thing all week–missing work, sleeping a lot.  So there’s really been nothing for me to write about.  Even though this week was CS’s birthday (and Sun started to say “dadadada” on his birthday) and Valentine’s Day (we were in bed by 9pm, but that was because we were both sick).

Tonight NOLA hosts the NBA All-Star game, and I will leave downtown before the traffic gets too bad.  Tomorrow, we will be celebrating CS’s birthday in style–at Pascal’s Manale.  Ah, something to look foward to posting!

And in closing, Pete and I have set up a new website, StreetcarArt.com, to showcase the YLC’s A Streetcar Named Inspire art project. We’ll have pictures as the streetcars are installed around town and hopefully will be getting more previews and artists’ comments to post. I’ll keep posting here about this project, but since we hope to have lots of pics and artists’ sketches and comments, we’ve decided to collect all of it neatly in its own site.  So go visit StreetcarArt.com.

I know Mardi Gras 2008 is over. But. I cannot resist sharing this with you. Here’s the lovable cartoon of Bunny Matthew’s “Vic and Nat’ly”:

And here’s our friends dressed for Endymion:

Had we spent Endymion with them, there would have been no suckage!

The Young Leadership Council is currently working on its latest community art project:

The project will place 200 (!) streetcar‐shaped custom creations developed by local artists and sponsored by businesses throughout NOLA as part of YLC’s ongoing mission to inspire hope throughout the city. The streetcars will soon be placed around the city, and they will grace NOLA until early 2009 when they will be sold at auction. Proceeds from the sale of the streetcars will go to a yet‐undetermined public project.

The streetcars, designed by Steve Ulness of Mardi Gras Decorators, are to be approximately 6’ by 2’ and made of fiberglass. Here’s a picture of one “naked” at the recent unveiling:

Unlike YLC’s Festival of Fins project, the only requirement for the artists of A Streetcar Named Inspire is that design themes answer the question, “What inspires you about New Orleans?” I get a wee misty eyed just thinking about what we’ll see in these pieces.

Here’s a sample of what we will see:

This is the sketch of Dennis Procopio’s streetcar, entitled “Hands Across the Water.” Here’s some of what he has to say about his design:

Looking at the stark white model streetcar, which is about 6′ long, I thought immediately of a casket. Somewhere in my mind I decided I’d incorporate a face and the insinuation of a body on the top along with the hands, perhaps to allude to a wake. But I left that idea open.

The next idea was that I would cover the windows and doors with plywood. As I already work on plywood this wasn’t hard to come up with. I realized that this would officially begin to make the piece a hurricane Katrina statement, so I decided that somewhere I would include the spray-painted “X” that we all came home to discover on all of our homes. This governmental graffiti is one of the more poignant symbols now associated with this disaster, as it tells who searched the house and the date of the search, the number of dead bodies, the number of dead animals, and any other information such as “dog seen under house.” In fact, plywood, garage doors, brick walls, discarded refrigerators . . . these all became community bulletins boards for the survivors. . . .

I decided that to cover ALL of the pieces of plywood with text and search-party X’s would be too much. I opted instead to do portraits. No one in particular, just faces of people you might see here. This would insinuate people sitting as passengers in the car, only there would be something slightly creepy about having them painted on wood to represent would-be passengers. Then the idea of Fayum Portraits popped into my head. In Egypt, signifying Greco-Roman influence, Fayum portraits were the faces of the deceased painted onto wooden panels which would be affixed to the sarcophagi. . . .

I then had the idea to have a water-line. One of the other creepy things about the neighborhoods we gutted houses in were the water-lines. These were mud-colored racing stripes running horizontally across the faces of all the houses showing where the water level had been. There were usually at least three distinct lines. . . one at or above the door jamb, one just under it and one just under that. For design reasons I decided to make actually water rather than the line where the water would have been. This solved a problem about color. Anything below this line would be a sort of aqua green, above it a darkish blue.

Procopio’s piece has a lot more symbolism in it than described here. And the other 199 artists also have their own stories to tell of what inspires them about NOLA.

Things are just getting geared up for this project, and I am very excited to start seeing the works popping up around town. And like with the Fore!kids Fleur de Lis project, Pete, Captain Sarcastic and I will be hitting the streets to get pictures of every last one of the pieces! As I learn of placements or other stories behind the pieces, I will post them. So stayed tuned. And keep your eyes on the look-out for these inspirational and uniquely-NOLA pieces of art.

If you are interested in being a part of the design process or in sponsoring a streetcar, please contact one of the project leaders, Amy Catalanotto, Michael Atwater or Jude Boudreaux, at streetcars@youngleadershipcouncil.com and tell them Nola sent you!

We are in Austin for a business trip for my husband. I intended to take in the sights and have a mini-vacation. But I am feeling sickly and having an eight-month old afoot has made those visions dissipate. But the inside of my hotel room is top-notch!

Although I did have dinner with Captain Sarcastic’s peeps last night. And included in that number was one celebrity among certain circles (circles including CS’s peeps). And guess whose table this celebrity sat at? Yup, mine. This celebrity is totally cool and hip and, oh, yeah, HOT! And in the course of the evening, I mentioned that I was a tax attorney. You know, trying to impress him with my smarts. Except that late into the dinner, he inquired about my work as a taxidermist. Oh. My. God.

I mean, I know I am talking about flirting. With my husband sitting right next to me. But we have an open marriage. Did I ever mention this to you before? Well, it’s not that open. But it’s open enough to allow for pretend boyfriends (and girlfriends and crushes).

Anywho, realizing that even my pretend flirting was bombing, I can still say that I had quite an enjoyable evening. I even learned who Flaco Jiménez is.  This morning I awoke to a sore throat. It seems I am being punished for my impure thoughts.

Instant karma is a bitch.

We flew to Austin last night, CS, Sun and I. I intended to write about Sun’s first flight (it went very well), and the food I prepared and froze for her (it stayed frozen until we could get it in the refrigerator at the hotel), and the case of dried formula that exploded in my suitcase (quite the mess but clean now), and about how yet another blogger who planned to meet Sun and me got sick.

But now I don’t feel like writing about any of that. I just finished reading James Salter’s “Light Years” and want to go for a walk and feel the sun on my skin. This is the story of a marriage that falls apart. They had a perfect marriage and it just fell apart. The perfect home, children, friends, spouses. The perfect life. Then it fell apart and sadness ensued.

Salter’s writing is so strong. I want to re-read this book already just to read his punctuation. This was a borrowed book of Pete’s, and I am sorry that it will be returned with many pages dog-eared. It took all my willpower not to underline passages. Like these two about children:

Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit. We believe in it, the radiance that streams from the future, from days we will not see. Children must live, must triumph. Children must die; this is an idea we cannot accept.

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other, that sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one’s own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.

You know what? I am going to go for that walk in the sun. With my Sun. And bask in the warmth of both.

Mardi Gras 2008 is in the can. We don’t do the Fat Tuesday parades (but we will once Sun is a bit older). Bacchus was awesome–0% suckage in contrast to Endymion. Pete and SoMo describe it well. The weather was nice; the company was good; the crowd was manageable; the floats and throws were top-notch.

Monday was equally as nice. We had a relaxing morning then a nice lunch at Crazy Johnny’s in Fat City. Then we did a quick Katrina tour (my friends could have seen more; it was too depressing for me to continue) then spent some time in City Park. After the park, we stopped at Angelo Brocato’s for gelato (that deserves its own post). Then we headed to the parade route and had a very nice time watching Proteus line up and Orpheus ride. Sun is a natural at parades. Not one tear or fear the entire time! Just look at her wigged up and ready to go:

Today we slept in, had a nice lunch then drove my friends to the airport. Overall, this was a great Mardi Gras season for me. Having a child certainly makes it special. But it also quadruples the headaches. But the parades we caught uptown were just so darn nice. And it is always nice to have my Colorado friends in. Plus, Sun got to meet their daughter. They were fast friends, even at their tender ages.

At the end of every Mardi Gras, a sadness comes over me. And this year is no exception. I think it is all the anticipation; all the hustle; all the drinking and eating; the lack of sleep; the close quarters spent with company. It is really good but it is so unreal, so not ordinary. So when the bubble bursts and it dawns that tomorrow is Wednesday and I need to go to work and get Sun to her sitter and go back to the day-in/day-out routine, there is a let down.

I am exhausted, emotionally and physically spent. I love my life, including my day-in/day-out routine. But I will miss the connectivity shared with my friends these past four days. In my beloved NOLA.

I am not one to complain about things uniquely New Orleans. But. Endymion about did me in last night. We got to the parade route at 2pm so as to be able to get to the parking spaces that were reserved for us. We also had access to a toilet. This should have been the basis of a good parade experience. We lugged our Popeye’s fried chicken and ice chest of beers to the street and took possession of a corner. And we hung out there enjoying the crowd scene for the next three hours. Then at 5 o’clock, we blinked and the entire corner was filled with people.

Now, I fully understand how parades and crowds work. I have been doing parades for over 30 years. Not a newbie or a snob. There are a few rules of parade etiquette, and if you don’t know them, STAY YOUR ASS IN THE QUARTER. Do not arrive at the route minutes before the parade is due to arrive and mosey your way in front of those who’ve been out all day (and in some cases, all night, too). There is NO REASON to scream, “You go, pom-pom girl” or “Keep the beat, drummer girl” to every female in every band THAT CANNOT HEAR YOU. Especially if this screaming is in my ear.

Further, you can call yourself a southern gentleman, but true gentlemen (as the one from Chicago proved) that are taller than women (even their own women-folk) DO NOT stand in front of the women and not move when asked nicely. Especially when these men arrive late to the route.

Unfortunately, the parade was excruciatingly slow. And the first band (St. Aug!), stood in front of us for 20 minutes. I love this band most of all, and it was pissing me off that I was having to admit that a migraine was coming on.

As the parade snailed along, the suckage increased. My migraine just got worse. All the nuisances of the crowd really wore on me. And the noise and the lights. If the parade would have just moved, I could have endured it. I do give a lot of thanks to the guy who loaned me his chair; it did help, but it was not enough.

As I sat in that borrowed chair at the back of the crowd taking it in (I generally love people watching), I knew one thing was certain: I had gotten old. When did this happen, I asked myself? When did the crowds annoy me? I used to be that person in the crowd (not rude, but merry). Now I just wanted a mute button.

I admitted defeat and was ready to leave early. Early! Me! Blasphemy! But, oh, the suckage. My car was blocked in. I would have to wait for the parade to end. I called my sister to check on the children. My aunt answered the phone–she had come over to visit my sister and the kids. My sister offered to come pluck me from my misery. I greedily accepted her kind offer.

I was never so happy to leave a parade. I got home to a leaking kitchen sink (really a small flood) (oh, the suckage). I immediately took my good migraine meds and nursed Sun before the meds could effect her. My headache abated before everyone else returned from the parade.

The newspaper reported today that a rider fell from a double-decker float at the end of his ride and died. Five shootings occurred on the route.

For us, the verdict is in. Endymion 2008 was the most suckiest ever. Damn it.

Last night was Sun’s first parade. We set the bar high for her by making that first parade Le Krewe d’Etat. She did very well and only fell asleep after the seventh or eighth float; there were no tears or fears. She got to see many of the things that makes this parade so special, like these guys that precede the floats handing out parade bulletins:

Then she got to see the likes of this guy carrying the theme of each float:

And she got to see beautiful floats like these:

And she got really cool throws. Here are my two favorites–a parade bulletin and a High Priest doll:

And she got to see Pete’s blinky bling before she faded out:

Yes, it was a huge success. Today we are off to Endymion with my sister graciously coming over to babysit the two babies. Things are shaping up quite nicely, albeit a bit more tamely than prior years.