On last travel post relating to our recent trip to Dallas.  Heading out, we stopped at the outskirts of Lafayette, LA to get gas.  We pulled up to this quaint looking place, The Boudin Shop and Country Store:

After filling the tank, CS went inside for snacks.  He returns to the car and tells me that the proprietor told him that George Rodrigue, as in the famous blue dog artist Rodrigue, painted the chicken on their roof way back before he made a name for himself:

I don’t know if this rumor is true, but the chicken DOES bear a resemblance to the pieces Rodrigue did for the Lafayette Junior League’s Talk About Good II Cookbook.  Certainly beats the advertisements for the high cost of gas shown at the other convenience stores!

We drove from Natchitoches to New Orleans today.  I slept much of the way.  Well, rested, I should say.  I didn’t sleep all that much.  I lay in the back seat next to Sun in her carrier while CS drove.  I had my eyes closed and made every attempt to sleep, and I am sure I dosed here and there.  But most of the time was spent thinking about (and occasionally gazing with my glasses off at) the microcosm that is my life: my husband and child.  All that matters to me in the world fits snugly in my car.  With room to spare.  God or Fortuna or The Fates have been good to me giving me such a caring husband and an easily-tempered baby.

I write wills and trusts and living wills for folks all the time.  I also handle estates of clients when they die.  Which they do, we all do.  And although my chance of dying this past Monday was slim(ish), it existed.  It always exists when surgery is performed.  And laying on the gurney moments from being taken off for surgery, I had the talk with CS about my living will and what my wishes were should something go wrong.  How do you NOT think about such a thing when you are about to be put under and cut?

He didn’t try to stop me or think I was being macabre.  I had little to say on the topic, and he already knows my wishes but I needed to know he’d be doing what I wanted done because of quality of life issues not matters of money or guilt.  Then I had a split second thought about Sun growing up without me.  I wouldn’t let myself think about that.  I simply told my husband to call on our friends and family if that were to happen–to LET them help.  He agreed.  Then I was rolled off and fell asleep and woke up hours later with things having gone very well.

Today I am elated.  I am filled with joy.  And gratitude.  And love.  And sadness too.  I am sad that I had to think about my mortality; that my body is aging and showing chinks in the armor; that I am tattered and bruised and have racked up scars like crazy for the past five years; that one day Sun will live without her mother as will I; I thought a lot about my grandmother and the time we all spent visiting her in the hospital during her last days.  Hospitals are depressing places.  Even sick, I am usually the healthiest person there.  Unless you are on the maternity floor where life is celebrated, you are moving among folks that are sick or on the mend, but not always healing.

I feel weird that I don’t have a piece of my body, an organ, with me anymore.  My gall bladder is in Texas.  Being biopsied.  Then they’ll toss it, I guess.  I don’t care what they do with it.  I feel different without it, though.  Ironic that the removal of the organ that stored bile in my body seems to have removed a lot of negative energy with it as well.  I am a better person having released my gall bladder, having observed the unyielding support of my husband and family (more than one member volunteered to drive 8+ hours each way to come get me and allow CS to leave to get back to work), and the complete support from my friends too.

So as we left the hills and curves and smooth highways of Texas and came to the straight, flat lands of Louisiana, passing towns with funny names, bayous and cypress trees with their knees jutting out of the water, signs for Boudin and andouille and swamp tours, and Spanish moss hanging in the trees waving in the traffic’s breeze, I never felt more welcomed, more at home, than I did today.  I know where I belong in the world and I know how I fit into this life I have confected.  And I couldn’t feel better about it or be more grateful.

The thing about doing cool stuff with other bloggers is, well, they BLOG about it before you get the chance.  Yesterday’s food orgy is captured by Pontchartrain Pete better than I could have captured it.  So click here to read about the best oyster po boy I’ve ever eaten followed up by the best sno-ball I’ve ever had (and that is saying a mouthful!).  Truly a grand eats day!

And then for breakfast, I had one of Katie’s Caramel Oat Chocolate Bars.  She gives away her secret recipe.  Go get it.  Now.  I’ll wait. . . . Back?  These bars are the perfect blend of sweet and salty and chewy and crunchy.  They feel homemade yet are rich and decadent.

So, as long as my friends keep posting great posts, I am left with nothing to do but give out the linky love.

So what have I been up to? I’ve been busy with a teething Sun (three teeth in one day!), buying patio furniture I just love (peanut shaped teak bench, coffee table and two chairs), making plans to visit with Katie and Pete at Parasol’s this afternoon (after attending SoMo’s daughter’s birthday party).  Oh, and hunting streetcar art; click here to check out the awesome pieces I’ve been seeing pop up around town for YLC’s Streetcar Named Inspire project.

The loss and devastation currently playing out in Myanmar cannot but remind us here in New Orleans of Hurricane Katrina.  I’ve previously mentioned the loss of my grandparent’s fishing camp in Katrina.  This was a colossal building — two stories, over 3,000 square feet, exterior walls all cinder blocks.  But not all was lost.  In the rubble was this:

This elephant lamp was on the second floor.  How it survived in one piece, I can only imagine.  The only thing more remarkable than its survival was that an identical black elephant lamp in another second-story bedroom of the camp also survived in one piece.

We recovered both lamps.  My grandfather took them home and cleaned and rewired them.  The black one went to my aunt, and the green one came to live with me:

If you shake him, you will hear one large, very solid clump of mud rattling inside.  My grandfather, try as he might, could not break down and remove that last clump of evidence of Katrina from the elephant.  I am kinda glad he couldn’t.

Tis the season.  Crawfish season, that is.  And shrimp.  And really, it’s always crab season here in Louisiana.  Growing up in New Orleans, there are many things I took for granted and many things it seems my family actively sought to avoid.  But one Louisiana thing my family has always embraced is its seafood.

All of my childhood summers were peppered with crab boils, crawfish boils, shrimp boils. There is something that draws me to the formality involved in a boil, the ritualistic element: there’s the special large pot and burner, the paddle, the strainer basket, the spices, the vegetables, and, of course, the seafood.  Oh, and the large-handled spoon.  The spoon!  The spoon that is used to dip into the searing hot liquid to taste for spiciness while the seafood is boiling.

What I have tasted from the hand of my grandfather, father, uncles and brothers from that spoon–truly boiling, smoking hot spiced juices.  This is HEAVEN to me.  I once drank cups of this at a time (back when I didn’t know what sodium was).  Oh, me.

YatPundit changed his avatar on Twitter to a long metal spatula holding a crawfish over a boiling pot.  That image is so iconic in New Orleans.  How iconic?  Well, it reminded me of a puzzle I had growing up, a puzzle I still own and still build from time to time.  A puzzle purchased by my mother from D.H. Holmes Department Store.  I give you, “Bayou Banquet”:

I LOVE this picture!  It is so representative of Louisiana food and particularly a seafood boil: boiled crabs, shrimp, crawfish; lemons and vegetables to add to a good boil; oysters on the half-shell and stuffed peppers; cocktail sauce and Dixie beer; the Times-Picayune newspaper to cover the table; the notable Louisiana spices; the seafood basket and net; and French bread and gumbo.  How can you not want to live in a place where this is standard fare on a warm summer night?

For those of you here in NOLA that still call Dillards Holmeses out of habit, I leave for you this picture of the side of the puzzle box:

If you don’t follow me on twitter, you don’t know the run of bad luck I have been having.  Wednesday, Captain Sarcastic called to tell me he had bad news.  “Who died?” I asked, “No; it’s not that.  My car started to make a weird noise…”  “Is there a cat stuck in your engine?” (that had happened to me once in law school).  “No.  The mechanic says I need a new engine.  It’ll cost $3,000.”  His car is eight years old (mine is ten).  I tell him to drive straight to our friend–he works on a car lot and can get us the best deal on a new or used car.

CS calls back soon thereafter to tell me he didn’t make it.  His engine officially blew out on the Greater New Orleans Bridge.  Lovely.  After a long afternoon, we settled on buying a very stripped down 2009 Dodge Journey.  Since Wednesday, I have been having fits about being in a car note again.  Suffice to say, we will be eating a lot more home-cooked meals.  And that’s not terrible.

Yesterday, I finally accepted that we could manage the car note and let it be.  Only to come home and find the SECOND red light photo ticket sitting in the mailbox for me.  That’s another $110.  The first one I thought I’d fight (it’s the lawyer in me).  But after mailing it in to fight it, I have been advised that it isn’t worth fighting and I will now also have to pay court costs.  Again, it took me all night to come to terms with this hemorrhaging of money it seems we are doing lately.

Today, I woke up renewed.  I think it was the margarita I drank last night that helped me sleep.  I loaded Sun into our new fangled car and drove to meet CS.  At a light, I felt a bump.  “What the…?”  Sure enough, I had been rear ended.  In case you lost count, this is in the THREE DAY OLD CAR.  I stepped out of the car and see a large scratch on the bumper.  Errrr.  The couple in the other car are screaming at each other–the female passenger is screaming profanities intermingled with expressions of not having insurance.  My blood pressure continued to rise as Fortuna’s wheel dipped.

Folks, I swear I am not making up what happened next. The driver of the other car stepped out of his car.  With his Red Stripe in his hand.  Red Stripe beer.  In his hand.  Beer.  Hand.  Driver.  I could not believe my eyes.  I must have done a quadruple-take.  And what did he do with his beer?  Well, he DRANK IT, of course.  I swooned.  Then returned to tend to a screaming baby.  Then I called the cops and began the wait.  All the while, the driver is screaming at me that there’s no damage and I am being ridiculous.  And the female passenger is crying asking me how long this will take.

Then I wise up and ask for their information.  The female is now sitting in the drivers’ seat.  She hands me her license and (God bless) the car’s insurance card.  As I am writing her information down, my pen explodes.  Blue ink all over my fingers.  Undaunted, I stay on my task and tell her, “I hope you don’t plan on telling the cop you were driving.”  Then I tell them I need to see HIS license.  There is more screaming from her to him.  He steps out of the car and comes around to me.  Then he turns to his girlfriend who is screaming that she can’t believe he doesn’t have a license (somehow I could believe it) and screams, “BITCH, SHUT UP OR I WILL KILL YOU.”  And what does your fearless dumb Nola do?  She tells the boyfriend, “Look!  It isn’t her fault or mine that YOU caused this accident.  If you don’t have a license, just say so but stop screaming already!”  Then I hightailed my ass back to the safety of my car.

And I kept an eye on that beer bottle.  I was expecting them to throw it in the bushes on the neutral ground.  He didn’t.  As he got out of the car over his license inquiry, I had seen him tuck the bottle between the seats of the car.

Finally, the cop shows up.  I hear the other driver say the accident was the result of slippery wet streets.  I tell the cop about the beer bottle.  You know, the RED STRIPE BEER I SAW HIM DRINKING AFTER HE HIT MY CAR.  The cop goes back to the other car and I watch in the rear-view mirror.  He has the driver open the back door of his car and shuffle some things around (the driver, not the cop).  Then the cop comes back and tells me, “I don’t see a beer bottle.  And I don’t smell booze on his breath.  And he’s not slurring his speech.”

Inside, I raged against the injustice; the laziness; the stupidity.  I said, “He should be sent to jail.”  To which the cop responded, “There’s no proof he was drinking.”  And I responded, “Yes there is.  It’s in the car.  He didn’t throw the bottle outside.   Look under the seat yourself.”  He shrugged me off and said, “He’ll get a ticket for no license.”  The end.

It dragged on, but that was the gist of it.  Once I pulled away, I burst into tears.  This kind of thing really offends the lawyer in me.  I get that it could have been a lot worse–that Sun or I could have been hurt or the car, you know, totaled.  I GET IT.  But it does NOT negate the fact that this man was driving WHILE DRINKING A BEER I SAW THE BRAND NAME OF with no license.  I am pretty certain had that have been me, CS would have been retrieving me from jail.

And my anger!  I know had I left it unchecked, I WOULD have been arrested for assaulting a police officer, verbally or physically (depending on how off the deep end I’d have gone).  It took every ounce of my self control to keep that anger in check.  It wasn’t easy.  Especially watching the other driver walk around chatting on his cell phone like this was all nothing.

After it was all over and done with, I swapped cars with CS.  I also give him Sun and her baby bag.  As I was driving off, I looked at the back of our new car.  It seems what I thought was a scratch was dirt.  There is, in fact, such little damage you cannot see it from two feet away.  It makes me giggle.  Had I seen NO damage and NO beer, I’d have driven off without concern.  Serves that jerk right.

A bit placated, I drove to get coffee at CC’s on Veteran’s Boulevard.  After ordering and pulling up, I realized the cash I left the house with was not in my wallet–I must have put it in the baby bag.  Oh, for the love of all things holy!  I pulled up and explained to the clerk, whose name tag said “Rita,” that I was having one of THOSE days and left my cash behind and could I charge the $2.75?  Lovely Rita says, “Sure you CAN, but don’t worry.  Here (and she handed me my coffee).  Catch us back next time.”  I almost burst into tears again.

Later, I realized my cash was in the pocket of my jeans.  Doh!  So I returned to CC’s to make right.  Sweet Rita was still working the drive-thru.  She simply WOULD NOT let me pay for my earlier cafe au lait.  So I gave her a $5 tip.  And I drove away wondering what state I’d have to move to in order to stay married to CS but to also marry the sweet and lovely Rita.

Also posted at Pontchartrain Pete.

The NOLA bloggers have been doing great work covering the first weekend 2008 Jazz & Heritage Festival. Chronicling the rising prices, the food, the rain, the influx of tourists Foreigners taking over and most of all the music, NOLA bloggers have written of their experiences for all to read. We therefore bestow the following Lucky Blog awards for excellence in all things Orleanian and Jazz-Festy, First Weekend of Jazz Fest Edition:

Best Overall: Wet Bank Guy at Toulouse Street’s Battling Fortuna at the Track, and his posts that follow.

Most Thorough Coverage: Minor Wisdom’s posts starting with Where I’ll be on Friday (maybe) and continuing for each day of the fest so far.

New Orleans Music’s Best Friend: Bonerama Freak Stacey’s Jazz Fest or Rain Fest?

Best Jazz Fest Newbie Post: Kiss My Gumbo’s My 1st Jazzfest.

Best Jazz Fest Post From Someone Who Didn’t Go; also, Best Atmospheric Post: Tim’s Nameless Blog’s The Sounds of New Orleans.

Best Rant on the Foreigners Taking Over: Mosquito Coast’s Jazz Fest Musings.

Good Solid Posts That Do Not Necessarily Fall Into Any Category: Prytania Water Line’s Jazzfest Story and Drive By Blogger’s advice to the Foreigners at New Orleans Jazz Festival 2008.

So here are your awards to claim, if you so choose.

Full size:

Or bling-sized:

Disclaimer: Read these other blogs at your own risk. We don’t vouch for other peoples’ content in posts and comments we didn’t read. Also, Pete and Nola bestow these awards in appreciation of everyone’s hard work, wit and humor. If we left anyone out, sorry, we tried to gather as many as we could. You’re welcome to point out posts we should have seen in the comments.

This weekend and next is The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.  To many, this is THE festival of the year.  It is certainly the biggest and most famous.  My husband is one of those die-hard Jazz Festers.  He has a brass pass and will be attending every day minus one due to work, six days of festing for him.  That’s a lot.  My in-laws are two more hard core Festers.  They will have driven 30 HOURS, over two full days, to attend JF.  Yeah, it’s a big deal.

And in honor of Jazz Fest, Pete and I will be bestowing our next Lucky Blog Award.

We will be scouring blogs to find the single best post about this year’s Jazz Fest.  So, if you are festing it up at JF and think we may miss your post, leave a comment on this post with a link to your post and we’ll check it out.  You do not need to leave a post to be eligible to win, but we do need to read it!

So whether you are in New Orleans or not, hop around the NOLA blogs (many can be found under my NOLA Blog Krewes) and those vacationing in NOLA to read all about Jazz Fest 2008.  It never disappoints!

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.