CS had today off. Oh, what to do? How not to waste the day? I read the newspaper and scanned what events were going on today.  There was a book sale at one of the libraries.  That’s always a good thing to me.  Then there was a party for the streetcar beginning the route from Carrollton to St. Charles Avenue again post-Katrina.  Well, I am all about streetcars these days.

But then my eye settled on a third event.  A book reading at New Orleans Main Library.  The book was “Cooling the South: The Block Ice Era, 1875-1975,” by Elli Morris.  See, my family, way back when, was a very major player in the New Orleans block ice business.  A great-great-great uncle made a fortune in the business and sold it just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.  And his line of the family sailed through the Great Depression flush with cash.  My great-great-grandfather had a small piece of this family business and my great-grandfather worked in the business, too, until it was sold.

So, with my curiosity piqued, we were off.  Getting off the elevator on the Main Library’s third floor brought me back in time to the countless hours I spent there researching my family.  How coincidental that that research had brought me back where I started for a book reading.

Inside the auditorium, there were few people.  Elli Morris talked for about 45 minutes.  Her family owned the Morris Ice Company in Jackson, Mississippi.  She grew up around all the machinery.  Her photographer’s eye drew her to the icehouse over and over.  Their icehouse is no longer working (like so many other block ice plants) but it is still every bit in tact.  She lived there for a year in 2001.  And explored and photographed.

Then she researched and learned that her family played a role in a much bigger piece of southern, even American, history.  And so her little story about her family’s business mushroomed into a much bigger project.  Her book is the result of her hard work.

She talked about the inventor of the first ice machine and ice deliverymen, and the ice trucks that were pulled by mules.  She explained that some trucks did not have a spot in the front for a driver; that the mule knew the route and didn’t need to be steered.  And she talked about the switch to refrigerators and the customers who returned their refrigerators because they were too noisy!

She intimated to the decline of the block ice industry, but “didn’t want to give away” the end of her tale.

Morris then opened the room for Q&A and then signed and sold her books and blank cards of her beautiful photographs.  Her book is wonderful–it is hardcover and filled with lovely photographs along with her thoroughly researched story.  The cover of her book shows a block of ice “feathering” as it freezes from the outside in.

Elli Morris will be in the New Orleans area for about a week and then she is moving on to other parts of the country with her book tour.  This is something that is truly fascinating, and hearing her tell of her story and read from it was just a delight.  Click on her site here and check out her schedule.  You won’t be disappointed.

I cannot say enough how much I like love crawfish bisque.  It may well be my all-time favorite dish.  Growing up, my mother never made it, not once.  The first time I had it was at my best friend’s aunt’s.  That bowl set the bar very high.  My grandmother would make it every couple of years.  Maybe.  Sometimes less.  The reason you see it so infrequently is that, done correctly, it takes a lot of time.  All together, it probably takes a full day to prepare.

First, you need to boil crawfish.  Then pick them.  Then clean the heads.  Cleaning the heads is the worst part of preparing this dish to me.  Not because it is as gross as it sounds (it isn’t much more weird than peeling the tails) but because you have to snip off the noses of the crawfish.  This rips my fingers to shreds.  Here’s what four look like cleaned and ready to be stuffed:

Only 146 more to go.  Yes, the recipe I use (from Marcelle Bienvenu’s “Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make A Roux? A Family Album Cookbook” –great title, eh?) calls for 150 stuffed heads.  That’s a lot of heads!  Now, the next step is to stuff said heads.  To do that, you chop bell peppers, celery, onions, garlic, and crawfish tails and mix that together with stale french bread crumbs.  You then mix in more tails you did not chop and saute in oil with lots of salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper.

Cooling crawfish head stuffing.

Let the mixture cool.  Then stuff the heads and roll them in a mixture of seasoned and plain breadcrumbs.  They will look like this:

Bake them until golden brown in a 375° oven (about 20 minutes).  At this stage, go crack a beer.  And give yourself a high mark for Effort.  You have come far and done well.  You are clearly at the point of no return and the rest, as they say, is a cakewalk.

Okay.  Now, the recipe calls for sauteing more crawfish tails (the recipe calls for a total of four pounds of crawfish tails) with salt, cayenne pepper and paprika.  The recipe suggests 1 tablespoon of cayenne.  That will blow my mouth apart.  We used 1/2 tablespoon this time, and that seems juuust right.  Then you add warm water and roux to the pot.  Well, damn. If I hadn’t read ahead, I’d have been in a pinch because I make roux and don’t buy it.  So before I get going on this step, I make that roux first so that I can add it without having to take my cooking pot off the stove.

Pontchartrain Pete doing the work of the sous chef.

In yet another pot, saute green peppers, onions and celery until they are tender then add them to the main pot along with more water.  Cook vigorously for 2 minutes.  Add more water and cook for 15 minutes at a lower heat.  Then add green onions and parsley and let cook 10 minutes more.  Use this time to also cook a pot of rice.  Your hard work will be rewarded with a lush pot of this:

Everyone you know, and some you don’t, will invite themselves over for dinner.  Seriously.  It IS that good.

And the best thing is that this is one of those dishes that tastes better the next day after the flavors have had time to meld and relax.  So leftovers are as decadent, if not more so, than the first eating.

Bon appetit!

I am going to try something new here–I am going to write what is in my head right this moment. No previous thought has gone into this post; my thoughts have been all over the place. Here goes.

I had an epiphany this week. Ok, epiphany is a bit strong of a word. I had a realization. A confirmation of a suspicion. An acceptance.

In the hospital two weeks ago, my sister offered to drive to Dallas to allow my husband to return to work ASAP. She’d have had to have driven 8 hours each way; we knew I wasn’t going to be able to drive. Turned out I was sprung early enough that my sister did not have to follow through.

Upon my return, my sister took Sun for 3 days/2 nights. Then another 3 days/2 nights. And Sun was content to be with my sister and her family. I had worried she’d be fussy; she wasn’t in the least.

I knew my sister would make a great aunt. She’s the aunt to six other nieces and nephews just on our side of the family. And I knew my sister would do anything for me, no matter how intrusive or short-noticed.

But.

It’s a completely different thing when someone DOES anything for you than from you KNOWING they would do anything. And it was meaningful to her that I LET her do for me. I tend to do for myself, not ask for help and turn it down when offered. But this surgery brought me to my knees.

My sister and I spent today at the zoo with Sun and my sister’s niece. She wants to start seeing Sun once a week during the summer while she’s off from work.

When I mentioned to my sister once that I was sorry that Sun wouldn’t know our grandmother or the fun childhood memories we had of our fun aunt, she said, “Sun WILL have that. With me.” And she is being true to her word.

My sister and I are close in a sisterly way. We don’t talk every day or gush about every detail of our lives when we do talk. She doesn’t know about this blog, even. But I KNOW there is NOTHING I couldn’t tell her, nothing she wouldn’t support or help me with. Even if she thought I was in the wrong, she’d take me in and hug me.

The boil we had this past weekend didn’t have all of my family, but it did have many of the friends that we consider family, the family you create. And when I think back on the boil—Sun swinging; box fans blowing; the screened porch blocking both sun and rain; family and friends enjoying good food, drink and company—I realize that such event is EXACTLY like the childhood memories I cherish so dearly. (Is that an epiphany?) Except now we are creating these memories for Sun, just as I had hoped we would.

And THAT makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Or it’s the absinthe I am drinking.

Hodding Carter, who was a progressive journalist and author, and fellow Louisianian, is credited for saying, “[t]here are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.”

On the first anniversary of Sun’s birthday, I keep thinking to myself, “Roots and wings.” This year has gone by awfully fast. I have taken a lot of pictures, maintained her baby book, kept this blog, and kept a journal entitled, “The Story of You” for Sun when she gets older telling her of her “firsts”—her first trip to the park, the zoo, her first flight, her meeting her family members, her teeth coming in, her immunizations, her CT scan, her hemangioma treatment, her first Mardi Gras parade, her first Jazz Fest, her first night away from home—all the details of her life that I think she’ll find of interest when she is older.

But through it all, I am aware of my job, my goal: To raise Sun to leave me. To fly away with her wings. And to give her a foundation, roots, to ground her as she makes her own way in the world when the time is right.

How hard it is to be a parent, to give such love so freely, so willingly, to someone we KNOW we will “push” out of the nest. If the quickness of this one year is any indication, Sun will be out of my nest in hardly any time at all. My time with her is short and I need to make the most of it.

I know she will grow up and hate when I refer to her as my baby. I know because being the youngest of five, I have detested my parents calling me their baby girl for years. But not anymore. Now I know that when my parents look at their adult child, who they loved so tenderly when she wasn’t feeling well in the wee hours of the morning as a baby, they still see that sweet love of theirs reflected back in the face whose brow they’d wipe. I know Sun will fly away one day. But she’ll always have a piece of my heart with her. I can only hope when she does fly away, her roots keep her grounded. And connected to her parents.

Happy birthday, Sun. Momma loves you more than you will ever know until you have a child of your own.

Crawfish boils are a common thing during summers in New Orleans.  I threw my first boil a couple of years ago and was amazed at the amount of work that goes into one.  Here’s a quick to-do list:

1. Order the crawfish in advance.
2. Buy groceries—veggies galore (this year, potatoes, onion, garlic—the typical trio—along with celery, lemons, broccoli, brussel sprouts, corn, artichokes, and mushrooms), sausage to throw in too, along with spices, salt, booze, napkins (and wet wipes), ice (day of), cokes (we in the South, or at least my family, call all sodas “cokes”), water, and garbage bags.
3. Cut the grass.
4. Board the dogs.
5. Sweep the porch.
6. Borrow and set up folding tables and chairs on newly cleaned porch to accommodate 30 people.
7. Put several fans (not less than three) on the porch.
8. Borrow second pot, burner, basket and cover.  Boiling goes quicker if you can do two pots at a time.
9. Fill propane tanks.
10. Be sure you have a tub for the crawfish to soak in pre-boil.
11. Pick up crawfish.
12. Prepare side dishes.
13. Set up pop-up tarp for the men-folk/boilers so they don’t fry in the sun.
14. Clean the house.
15. Bring ice chests down from attic.
16. Get koozies/huggies out of pantry.
17. Cut/prep veggies.
18. Purge the crawfish (sorry, fellas).
19. Boil the crawfish and the veggies.
20. Eat and enjoy!

Yes, they are a lot of work.  Almost as much work as will go into the crawfish bisque we will be making with the leftover crawfish.

Today was such a good day.  My sister and her husband and son arrived early, as did my aunt and uncle, to assist with getting things ready.  The women dressed Sun and prepared side dishes while I drove to the Marigny to get the birthday cake from NOLA Cafe and Bakery.  The men started boiling the seafood so it’d be ready when the guests arrived.

My husband also finally installed a swing on the porch for Sun.  She LOVED her swing.  How much?  She fell asleep in it!  Ok, that may have been because she still had fever and no nap, but it was darn cute.

I could write many other details of the wonderfulness of today—seeing friends and family that I see regularly and some not so often, drinking Pimms Cups, eating watermelon, enjoying my new teak furniture, laughing, relaxing, watching the rain—but what made today special was something less concrete than any one of these things, or even all of them combined.

Recovering from surgery still, I was FORCED to take things slow and not push to the extreme.  It caused me to be even more organized than I usually am for a party.  But as it got nearer and nearer to 1pm and I could see not every detail I wanted attended to was going to get attention, I didn’t resist or balk or scramble.  I just allowed it to be good enough.  I was confident that overall we were ready.

And those things that did not get attention, I promise you, no one noticed.  I was at peace all day.  As Sun ached with fever, we took turns holding her and caressing her and swinging her.  And she’d feel better or not or nap or not or laugh or cry.  But through it all, she was a delight.  My baby is turning into a little girl.  A gentle, wee bit shy, sweet little girl.  And mamma was mighty proud of her today, and mighty proud of her home, herself, her very life.

Tonight I was on deck to get Sun down for bed.  I took her to her room to give her a bottle and rock her.  In college, I dated a guy who had a really nice rocking chair, and he told me once, “Everyone should own a rocking chair.”  A few years later, I was in a flea market and saw a rocker and coffee table that I loved.  I bought both for $75 days before I graduated from law school. Upon getting the rocker home, I realized that one of the rocker blades had been replaced; this causes the rocker to have a slight bump in its rocking.  So every time I rock in the chair, I am reminded of its imperfection.

I love rocking Sun.  Tonight, we listened to her American Lullabies CD.  This was a gift Sun received during French Quarter Fest some five weeks ago.  I love the songs on this CD and have played it every night since we got it.  I haven’t even gotten to the second CD that was also given to her that day.

Our rocking went something like this:

Saddle up your pony,

Rock, rock, bump

Sandman’s here
To guide you down the trail of dreams

Rock, rock, bump

Tumble in bed, my tired,
my little sleepyhead

Rock, rock, bump

To a Prairie Lullaby

In no time, Sun was all but asleep.  I struggled tonight to put her in her crib.  Usually, I am more than happy to have her get drowsy and settle into her crib.  But tonight, tonight I wanted to hold her forever and never have her grow up.  I thought of my grandmother rocking me as a baby, and my mother and aunt rocking me too.  And all the other mothers all over the land for generations that have rocked their babies.  I could feel the string tying us all together.  It was powerful.

So, to you mothers out there, ROCK ON!

I was 37 when Sun was born.  I am the youngest of five children (my mother was 29 when I was born), and all four of my siblings had their respective two children when they were younger than 37.  My sister, who is just three years older than me, is a new grandmother.  My grandfather was just 50 when I was born.

What I am saying is that my family tends to have children when they are young.  The one exception to this was my father’s mother.  She was 33 when my father was born and 37 when her twins were born.  And that grandmother was always the “old” one.

Since Sun was born, I have always felt like an old mom.  I know that mostly means to me that I am more mature, more experienced, more settled, more mellow.  But superficially I worry about not connecting with Sun as she is older; about being old when she marries and has children of her own (if that is to be her path in life).

I married someone who is the oldest child in his family.  His mother is 10 years younger than my mother.  Ten years–from being born in 1940 to being born in 1950.  Can you imagine the differences in my mother and my mother-in-law?  Compare June Cleaver to Carol Brady.  Both nice and motherly but in starkly different ways, and both ways very different from my path as a mother.

I also have a sister-in-law that is a freshman in college; she just turned 20.  My MIL and my SIL are very close, more like sisters than mother/daughter.  And sometimes it annoys me but as SIL gets older, I find myself a bit jealous of their closeness.  It is nothing I will ever share with my own mother, with whom I have a good relationship.

I think about Sun and how we’ll be as she grows up.  And I have been envious of the bond my MIL and SIL share, thinking that I will miss that because I will be too old when Sun is SIL’s age.  But I am envious no more.  Why?  Because being the smart bugger that I am, I asked MIL how old she was when she had her daughter (I am not good at math).  And she told me she was 36.  “Your age,” she answered.  Well, one year off from when I had Sun, but YES, MY AGE!

Age IS what it is in your mind.  And my MIL is simply NOT OLD (she loved me just a bit more for blurting that out).  And dammit NEITHER AM I.  Nor will I be when I too am 57.  Frankly, Bring. It. On.  I have no doubt I will just be even more mellow and confident then.  And my MIL?  She’ll still be visiting regularly kicking it old school with me (and Sun)!

My funk is, finally, over.  Over. OVER. O.V.E.R.  And I hate to admit what it took, but I will

It took a day completely, fully, wholly, unattached.  Captain Sarcastic took Sun to Jazz Fest today, and because I had to work yesterday I was not in the office today.  Ten plus hours of me-time!  Ah, it was a luxury just to think of it.  I wanted to do NOTHING of the things I normally do; I needed to do something other than the same places with the same faces.

Yesterday on the twitter, talks were had about meeting for drinks this afternoon.  Things were settled on Cooter Brown’s.  Then, later in the evening on the twitter, Bud’s Broiler came up.  And before long, YatPundit and I had made plans to meet for lunch for a Number 4 and Number 3, respectively, each with cheese fries.

So once CS and Sun were off this morning, I spent an hour cleaning.  I got more cleaning done in that one alone-hour than I have in the past year!  It was amazing.

Then lunch.  I LOVE a burger at Bud’s Broiler; they are char-grilled and yummy.  But today the focus wasn’t on the food; it was on the company, the conversation.  We talked about blogging, twittering, lawyering.  We talked about the proposed church closings, cemeteries, where we went to high school.  We talked about being a cultural catholic, and about being a parent.  We talked and talked and talked.  No babies, no office calls.

After three and a half hours, I needed to leave.  I had meant to run to the knitting store between lunch and my next agenda item, but that fell to the wayside.  YatPundit and I parted and I drove to Old Metairie to meet Katie at Lovejoy Spa for a pedicure.  I haven’t had a pedicure since I was pregnant–a year and a half ago.  It was JUST what I needed.  Adult activities with adults with no children.  We talked about weddings and doctors and weddings OF doctors.  It was decadent.  I could have sat in that vibrating chair for two pedicures.

Then Katie and I parted–her to nap and me to head to Cooter Brown’s.  At Cooter Brown’s, Yat Pundit arrived and then WarriorEngineer. And so did my cousin and two of his friends.  We drank beers from “around the world.”  And I ate a dozen raw oysters.  Their oysters are some of the best in the city: super fresh, ice cold and salty.  Oh, and yeah, MORE cheese fries.  Damn, their cheese fries are amazing: hot discs of potatoes SMOTHERED in dripping hot melted cheese.

At the end of it all, I got a call from CS sounding downright frazzled.  This is a sound usually found in MY voice, not his.  All day at Jazz Fest alone with Sun–including an exploding diaper and port-o-lets–had taken its toll. I was needed back home.

Walking in the front door to a bathed Sun (Sun-bathed?) and an apologetic husband (he was sorry he’d interrupted my day alone–can you believe?), I was rejuvenated, refreshed.  I AM rejuvenated, refreshed.

I am appreciative of the blessings of my life, of my family, of this lil blog o’ mine, of the comments and e-mails you, my amazing readers, sent me regarding my last post.

I am a lucky gal.  And all I needed was a bit of exclusive me-time to feel it all again.

I have recently found myself a bit addicted to Twitter. And I am now following many other New Orleanians. There is something even more intriguing about following the (mostly) silly details of a person’s day when that person is in your city–eating where you eat, enjoying (or not) the same weather, lamenting the same local political problems. It’s been very satisfying.

Yesterday, my sister came to visit Sun and me. We didn’t have any plans mapped out, and it was too cold to do the zoo and I was in no mood to run errands at the mall. So I twittered, “What to do today that is kid-friendly. Nothing with animals or malls. Suggestions?” And within minutes, YatPundit responded to me to “ride the streetcar,” and I knew immediately it was the perfect thing to do.

I decided to ride the Canal Street line since I’d never ridden that one and we’d be in the new red cars. YatPundit soon concurred with my idea to ride the Canal Street line, advising, “if you do it, do canal. start at cemeteries, end up at the old mint or vice versa,” but cautioning once we were settled on the green car (much to my confusion) that “the red streetcars aren’t running yet. all but one got flooded and are still being rebuilt.”

Armed with my camera and my Treo (and the baby and all her stuff), my sister and I were off. We approached the streetcar named “Cemeteries” (it says Special at the top but that is because the green cars are used for the St. Charles line–the piece of paper taped to the window gave it’s accurate name) and got its pic:

The point where the streetcar leaves from (Canal Street at City Park Avenue) has not less than six cemeteries. Here’s a shot of one of them:

Further along in Mid-City, Sacred Heart Church:

Then the neoned Walgreens downtown:

While stopped at a light, my sister noticed something odd on the side of a lamppost:

I got home and did a quick search on The Google to learn that the base of the majestic lampposts are decorated, and each of the four sides are different. This picture is of the first side; the second side has a castle and lion rampant, and states “Spanish Domination 1769-1803”; the third has the motto Deo Vindice (“With God as Our Defender”), “Confederate Domination 1861-1865.” And the last side has the American eagle and states, “American Domination 1803-1861, 1865 to Date.” I love the little things like this that NOLA offers for the observant.

At the foot of Canal Street, the car turns left and goes along the river in the French Quarter to the Old Mint Building. We saw the Mississippi River Bridge, the St. Louis Cathedral, the French Market, and the former Jax Brewery building:

Then we were at the end of the line. We paid another $1.25 each (young children ride for free; correct change is required). And we returned from whence we came.

It wasn’t all roses. We also saw various states of repair (including no repair at all) of homes and companies impacted by Katrina. We saw vacant lots where building stood before Katrina. We saw a tent city of homeless people under the interstate. We saw the cheesy t-shirt and tennis shoe shops peppering the downtown Canal Street.

And that is New Orleans. The beautiful intermingled with the ugly; the rich with the poor; the old with the new; the dead with the living. This ride was the most fun I’ve had in a really long time. I am ready to ride again.

I mentioned in my last post my being a patient of Dr. Socks and then sleeping with a lesbian and getting pregnant. I am sure The Google will send all sorts of disappointed visitors to my site with this post, but here’s the rest of the story.

If you did not evacuate your home, your life, for a month or more following Hurricane Katrina, you cannot understand my sense of community upon my return. We had little actual damage ourselves, but the devastation was so vast that all of us were deeply impacted in many ways. And for me, like many of us, I looked for unity, community, continuity.

When I learned my OB/GYN wasn’t returning to town, I was really upset. He worked out of Memorial Hospital and that whole situation was quite distressing. I am not one to just pick any ole doc to be my OB/GYN, so losing my doctor, the doctor I’d used for over a decade, really wigged me out. I asked girlfriends who they used and whether they liked their doctors and I got a lot of lukewarm responses.

One day, I went to my favorite local yarn store. Think of “Cheers” but with yarn instead of beer. I opened the door and heard, “Noooooola!” The shop owner was helping the sole customer in the shop–a man. The one thing you see little of in a knitting shop is the male customer. You will see sad male friends and husbands looking bored silly but few actual male customers.

They were in the needlepoint section of the store looking at the needlepoint canvases and threads. Their conversation, which they included me in on, was about the sad state of medical affairs in the post-Katrina NOLA; the lack of doctors and the high need for care. I mentioned my situation with needing a new OB/GYN. And the proprietor said, “Well, Dr. Socks here is a gynecologist!” [If I told you his real name, you'd pee your pants. Trust me.]

It was a sign.

Here I was struggling to find a gynecologist I could trust and feel comfortable with. And here he was–a fellow customer of the yarn shop! It was meant to be.

So I made an appointment with him. As soon as he saw me he said, “You’re the girl from the knitting store!” His remembering me filled me with confidence in my decision. We talked about his current needlepoint project and my current knitting project. He wore pink argyle socks. Always.

At that first visit, he saw the Anthony Trollope novel in my hands and commented about his love for his work and his disapproval at Trollope’s descendant’s (Joanna Trollope’s) less high-brow work—I hadn’t know Joanna and Anthony were related! [It was at this point that I began to suspect that he was gay. Yeah, I'm slow like that.] Needle arts and Trollope? Really, it was too good to be true.

You can click here to read more of the specific details of things going wrong. Suffice to say, things went really wrong. And against Dr. Socks’ advise, I ended up seeking the help of a local fertility specialist.

Skip ahead five months later.

We were scheduled for our second in utero insemination. CS and I drove in separate cars because afterwards I was driving out of town for an overnight convention. I got to the doctor’s office first and signed in. They called my name; CS hadn’t shown up yet. I went to the exam room and CS showed up about one minute before things got underway. Four minutes later, I was lying on my back giving CS’s guys a fighting chance. CS had brought me a lemon Hubig’s pie (part of the reason he was late).

I munched and watched the clock. After 20 minutes, I jumped up and hit the road. Then I sat in a conference for the next eight hours. No lying around all day for me like I’d done the first time.

That night, I met a fellow attendee of the conference—a very good friend of mine who is also a lesbian—and one of my oldest friends. The three of us had drinks and a rich dinner. Then I went to my hotel room, the room I was sharing with my friend also attending the conference. We had asked for two double beds; we got one king. We were confident enough in ourselves, our sexuality and our significant others to know nothing would happen. So we shared a bed.

She warned me that (1) she snores loudly and (2) she has the tendency to have women who are trying to get pregnant that are near her find themselves pregnant. “One night with me, you’ll be pregnant,” she exclaimed.

That night, she did not snore. But I DID get pregnant.