Oh, My NOLA August 30, 2007

Here are 13 random memories of New Orleans, rebuilding for two years and counting (shout out to Oh The Joys for her post). And check out GulfSails’ sidebars – both the top 16 Remembering Katrina posts and New Orleans resources.

This list will not mean much to you, but I wrote it for my NOLA guys and gals, my bestest of friends, and the people who helped me become who I am (yeah, blame them). Someday, these will all be chapters in a book. More lists forthcoming.

1. All-you-can-eat red beans and rice and fried chicken at Dunbar’s on Freret St.

2. The Keg Rodeo (you don’t want to know).

3. MOMS Ball (you might want to know).

4. Naked Saturday (you DO want to know)

5. Caterpillars that sting.

6. Rebirth’s Mardi Gras 06 show at Tipitina’s and the guy outside in the monkey suit (we paid him to do a cartwheel).

7. New Orleans Philharmonic Night at NOMA and Bolla wine.

8. Jazz Fest food booths, Southern Comfort, and turkey legs (I’m gonna eat it, and then I’m gonna use it as a weapon!).

9. Hazy afternoons in Audobon Park

10. Sitting on the neutral ground at Louisiana and St. Charles, eating crawfish, drinking Abita, watching Endymion.

11. Beth’s foot getting run over by the Zulu float (but at least she got a golden coconut).

12. Po-boys from Adam’s St. Grocer.

13. Sitting on the roof of Lucky’s with a guy in a fedora hat, talking about the city and sewing. And then seeing him a week later climbing into a dumpster. (??????)

And now my favorite grocery store slogan—

Party on Coliseum Street, Mardi Gras 2006

(This list part of Thursday Thirteen, which you can also learn about here)

The Importance of Verb Tense, or I Think the Diet is Working August 29, 2007

It’s such a big rule in creative writing: Don’t shift the tense. Repeat after me. Didn’t shift the tense. (Doh!)

If your story is in present tense, you’d best bet it better stay there. From time to time, I read something where the writer magnificently shifts the tense, like “The Custodian” by Deborah Eisinger, but generally speaking, it’s best to keep to the same tense. And in fiction, writers (and readers) tend to favor the past tense. Including me.

As it turns out, I also favor the past tense in certain conversations. I made this discovery just yesterday when I was talking to my naturopathic doctor about The Boy.

For those of you not already aware, The Boy has eczema. Severe eczema. And whenever I took him out in public, people asked me about it–
“Does your son have chicken pox?”
“What’s wrong with him?”

In June, we put him on a special diet.

Now, when I take him out, the people who stop me and ask about his skin say this–
“Did your son have chicken pox?”
“What happened to him?”

See?

See the beauty of the past tense verb?

People no longer think something currently afflicts The Boy, they just think something USED TO afflict The Boy and he is now healing from it.

Ah.

Of course, we’re still a ways from the finish line, but we get closer every day. I suppose the next step is people not noticing his skin. Dare to dream.

And in other news, I find it supremely hilarious that there is a brand of milk called Hemp Bliss.

Oh yes. I do.

May 20, 2007

August 29, 2007

The Path August 29, 2007

Taken at T-Street beach in San Clemente, June 2006

See more pix here: wordless wednesday
Wordless Wednesday

Do Bears Make Bad Postcards in the Woods? August 28, 2007

Bear! Bare! Get it?!

They DO crap in the woods! Get it?!

They’re looking at us like WE’RE the sights to see! Get it?!

Scary bear… outhouse… no pants… toilet paper… “Alaska!”? Um… I don’t get it.

Technorati tag:
postcards
tacky postcards

Sawdust Art Festival August 26, 2007

I went to the Sawdust Art Festival last Wednesday. For those of you who don’t know (meaning those of you who don’t live around here and even some of you who do), Sawdust is an awesome art festival where 200 Laguna Beach artists get together. Each artist has their own booth and the entire festival takes place within the Sawdust grounds, which are covered with – you got it – wood chips (heh, bet you didn’t get it. I guess they originally used sawdust, but nowadays they use woodchips).

There are a multitude of artistic endeavors on display at Sawdust Festival, something for everyone I imagine. I saw oil on canvas, glass sculptures, beaded jewelry, photography, mixed media, etc etc… oh, and gourd art.

Don’t you love that phrase? Gourd Art.

I don’t know who first thought to hollow out a gourd and decorate it (my guess would be Native Americans) but God (Great Spirit?) bless you, my fine friend. I love gourd art. There was an artist at Sawdust, Bette Bennett Lee, who could do some mad crazy things with a gourd. Give her a knife and a paintbrush and let her go MacGyver style (Bear Grylls style?). I’d have bought all of her Christmas ornaments if not for the fact that I had little money.* Plus, I’m trying to lay off on the Christmas ornament purchases now that my children are of school going age and will be bringing home gold painted dry pasta and the like.

I did purchase a couple handmade ceramic sculptures by Lupe Blanton – cute polka-dotted mushrooms for $7 apiece, one purple and one green – and put them in the rose garden. Little No Limit broke them today. Do you think if I had given her fourteen hundred pennies and told her to throw them one by one into a water fountain, it would have made the money last longer? Ah, well, serves me right buying something breakable AND colorful AND leaving it within her reach.

R.I.P. My mushroom friends

In addition to artists, the Sawdust Festival also has children’s booths where kids can paint and if a certain age, participate in spinning a pottery wheel. Because my children enjoy rejecting my suggestions in public, we did not partake in these fun activities for kids, but instead, they made mounds of woodchips and called them castles, took pictures at the little waterfall and listened to great live music, that included a man playing a bizarre V-shaped violin/fiddle type thing (that’s an actual music term).

All in all, we spent two and a half hours of fun filled art appreciation and left before either child threw a tantrum. I call that a good day.

*For the record, if money were no object, I’d have purchased the works of Vladimir Prodanovich for my living room, Laurel Meister for the kids’ room, Susan Dysinger for husband’s music room, and Becky Prelitz for my bedroom.

sawdust art festival

The Dirty Mind Test August 25, 2007

Do you think this is funny?

Rest Assured August 25, 2007

The Boy: Hi Mom!

Me: Hey Buddy! How’s it going?

The Boy: I assure you, I gotta go pee.

Multiple Personality-Test-Taker Disorder August 24, 2007

I can’t help myself. If there is a free online quiz that will tell me about myself, I will take it. Note my love of Blogthings quizzes. In the recent past, I took three personality tests and it was SO AMAZING what I learned about myself! Wow.

A few weeks ago, Zany Mama introduced me to this fun site, which offers two personality tests—

Some people might find it exciting to be the same personality type as Dr. Seuss, Bob Dylan, and Joseph Campbell. Personally, I’m more excited to find out I’m the same personality type as Will on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (sing it with me, Now this is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down…).

One description of the ENFP personality type is “outgoing, social, disorganized, easily talked into doing silly things, spontaneous, wild and crazy, acts without thinking…”

Ha! Shows how much THEY know… me doing silly things, as if. And I suppose those clever clever Jung devotees define “silly things” as dressing and talking like a pirate? Whatever. That’s not silly. That’s FUN. I don’t care what that test says. I am decidedly NOT silly.

At least that’s what I thought until I took this test:

You’re Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you’re
actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their
assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they
build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You’d
be recognized as such if you weren’t always talking about talking rabbits.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I see. Guess that means no more rabbits.

The Road to Heaven August 22, 2007

This picture was taken at the beginning of July en route to Prince Rupert in Alaska’s Inside Passage. What it reminds me of are the times when I was a kid and saw the sun shimmer along the water in a straight line like that. I always called it a road to heaven, because surely such a road would be this beautiful. Right?

See more pix here: wordless wednesday
Wordless Wednesday

The Wonderful World of Disney August 18, 2007

I realize there’s a lot of Disney dislike out there, and sure, it’s fairly easy to make a compelling argument against The Man. Yet, I have no hesitation in fully admitting—

I LOVE DISNEY.

I grew up in Florida and whiled many a day in Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center. I loved Figment from Imagination (although they’ve really changed that ride around from when I was kid). I loved going on Space Mountain as many times as possible and turning around and making a face at the person behind me when it zoomed through the red tunnel. I loved making faces at the timed photo shot on Splash Mountain just before the descent.

There is a magical feeling to Disney parks that stems from these memories of my youth:

when I step into a Disney park, I am a child again.

I walk with energy that should have expired hours earlier only to completely pass out once I get home. I get excited when I see the Disney characters-turned-life-size. I have to stop myself from buying autograph books and pressed pennies.

It doesn’t matter that Disneyland and Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom are bizzaro versions of one another, or that there is nothing like Disney’s California Adventure in the Disneyworld Resort. Anyone who has every spent time in a Disney park knows that there is something ‘Disney’ to it, the proliferation of ear-shaped things, the adults walking around in the ubiquitous ear headband, felt top hats with Goofy ears, and lately, Jack Sparrow caps.

Now that I bring my own kids to Disneyland, I have the added excitement of seeing them experience it, much like my newfound excitement for Halloween costumes, Easter eggs, and Christmas morning.

My brother is visiting from Florida and we took the kids to Disneyland yesterday. Little No Limit received a birthday button (she turns 3 next weekend) from Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. We went on Pirates of the Caribbean and It’s a Small World (both rides are better than the Florida versions). We waited in line for half an hour for The Boy to meet his beloved Mickey Mouse (he watches old school Mickey cartoons, thanks to the advent of DVDs), only for him to bury his face in my leg when he finally met The Mouse (I guess Mickey was MUCH bigger than he expected him to be). My brother bought Little No Limit a Disney Princess outfit for her birthday gift. It was a toss up between Belle and Pocahontas, but in the end, we went with bells and whistles over trees and thistles.

My brother and I reminisced on our Disney days. Of the time our brother lost his hat on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (I mean, really, you go on all the fast rides and then lose it on Mr. Toad????). Of playing in the arcade while our parents sat in a saved spot on the curbside to watch the Electric Light Parade. Of spinning ourselves to dizzy exhaustion on the teacups. “Those days are over,” I said. “I get so sick now on anything that spins.”

When we passed the teacups, though, the kids eyed them with such interest and the line was only five minutes. My brother said, “Let’s take them on it. We don’t need to spin the cups around.”

WHY, OH WHY, DID I LISTEN TO MY BIG BROTHER????????

He played it cool upfront, just chilling in the teacup as the floor swirled us around, and the kids laughed. But in the last few swirls, he grabbed the steering wheel and spun it with the mentality of the twelve year old I used to know, and my head swam and everything in my stomach did backflips and somersaults.

When the ride came to a stop, he laughed mightily to himself. “Gotcha.”

I guess he still feels like a kid when he’s in a Disney park too.

(This post part of the Carnival of Family Life)