a few things in which i am not interested September 28, 2009
Steven Seagal pretending to be a cop.
Tom Delay on “Dancing with the Stars.”
“Dancing with the Stars,” period.
Television, in general.
Tonight, I was at a friend’s and we watched the network news. We heard the shocking story of how difficult it is to get teenagers to drive responsibly. Who would have thought that parents laying down some ground rules for automobile use would make a big difference?
I don’t feel like I have been missing much with no TV.
purple, rain September 27, 2009
It’s taken David forever to make it back over here to paint over the Mardi Gras purple primer, but he is here today. It’s not his fault, it’s just been raining every weekend. The actual paint color is a dark eggplant purple. I love it, but there is a lot still to go.
I’m sure the neighbors are relieved. Two of them spoke to me today. Coincidence? I think not. Just when I was going to tell them, “don’t worry, I’m painting the front green and gold!”
bent, but not broken September 26, 2009
I was at the Krewe du Vieux Den today. Mama Roux has some issues with our float (not caused by the fire), so I went down there to help them deconstruct it so they could check out the underneath.
It looked like the fire burned quickly and hot, but only in one corner of the huge den. Most of the floats were not damaged at all, except for sooty dust all over everything and some melted plastic. Two floats, the ones right next to the fire, were completely destroyed and another was heavily damaged. The metal roof beams above the fire area are warped and will have to be repaired.
Mama Roux’s float was unharmed, but our “Ernie K-Doe For Mayor” sign, which hung from the ceiling, was melted into a piece of ugly sculpture. The FEMA tarp we’ve been sporting since 2006 was singed at the corners and slightly melted over the wood on our “roof.” Thank god they got there in time! We did not loose our plastic blow-up dolls and our whipping machine from last year.
One guy who was there lives nearby the Den, and he said the fire department got there in what seemed like seconds. It was obvious that there was a lot of heat. It would have been terrible if people had been there working on floats when it happened.
So far, KdV has no theme, so Mama Roux does not have one either. Watch this space!
if health insurance companies ran the postal service
A funny post from Daily Kos:
If health insurance companies ran the mail service, it would cost you money to mail a package, but it would also cost you money to not mail a package. That’d be the fee for possibly mailing a package, in the future, and it would go up by twenty percent every year under the “just because” clause of your contract.
If health insurance companies ran the mail service, your contract to have packages delivered would stand a chance of being revoked if you actually mailed one.
books, floods September 24, 2009
Tomorrow is Book Club, and I should be cleaning my house right now because we are meeting here. I stupidly chose the book Sarum by Edward Rutherford. Neither I nor anyone else has come close to finishing it. It’s about 800 pages. It’s a great book, but it’s just v-e-r-y long.
I should have known. We are all incredibly busy. We like to get together and eat, drink wine and talk about the subject of our lives. “What is going on with you?” is a more important question than “what did you think of the book?”
We have only one rule - we must talk about the book for about 20 minutes. It’s OK to not finish the book. If we had that rule, no one would show up, including, this month, the hostess. Allison has suggested that we read children’s books because they are easy to finish!
I really hate not having time to read, but I am just awfully busy.
On another note, a friend of mine was in the Atlanta floods. We should keep those folks in our thoughts. Who would have thought that when you live 1,000 feet above sea level, you might flood?
the invisible life September 23, 2009
While I was in Jackson this weekend, my cousin and her husband came by for a visit. We got to talking about how old we are all getting. We often have this conversation, because we have known each other all our lives. We went from cute little babies to sexy young things to moms together, and now we are becoming matrons together.
My cousin turned 50 this month and her husband turns 60 in November. I will be 49 next month.
My mother, who is 67 but looks much younger, said, “God, I can’t believe how old ya’ll are getting!”
When you have been lucky enough, as I was in my youth, to have enjoyed the experience of having every head turn when you walk into a room, it can be hard to adjust to the enjoyment of just looking like a well-put-together older woman.
I told my cousin how much I love the episode of Six Feet Under where Kathy Bates takes Francis Conroy shoplifting just to prove to her that “women over 40 are invisible. No one sees us. We can do what we want.” It’s very true and very funny.
My cousin and I, because of our professions, both dress pretty conservatively now, something we did not do back in the old days. Because I’m a grandmother now, I have also had times when I’ve said to myself, “a grandmother should not be wearing that!”
I have something she doesn’t have, though - every Mardi Gras season, especially since I am over 40 and can do what I want, I have carte blanche to go out looking like a complete nut-cake, turning heads wherever I go!
the old folks at home September 21, 2009
I went to visit with the family in Mississippi this weekend. Everyone is still doing well. I think I have written about my step-dad having liver cancer and the new drug he is taking. It is doing wonders for him and he still seems to be improving. The doctor is now threatening to let him start driving again.
My grandmother still has trouble with her hip, but is otherwise doing OK for 87. It’s hard to get her to eat anything, but she is trying. She was encouraged by her visit to the doctor, where “they didn’t find anything” and he told her to come back in two months, so she figures she’s got at least two months. As usual for my family, she jokes about death and hers in particular.
Yesterday she said, “Winter’s coming. Ya’ll can just send me out on an ice floe with my blanket.”
I protested that that was too much trouble, finding an ice floe and all.
“I swear, the Lord must be keeping me here for a purpose. I wish I knew what it was.”
“It’s to keep us all entertained.”
“No, it’s to let you all know what you’re going to look like when you’re 87!”
lots of people who died September 17, 2009
Another day, another death of a legendary celebrity. Today, it’s Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. The NYT has an article about how it only seems like more big celebrities have been dying this summer than usual. The author says that we baby boomers are more saddened by the latest rounds of the grim reaper because the famous people who have died lately are our near-contemporaries. They represent some part of our consciousness that we thought would never go away.
I think the young ages of some, like Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze and Farrah Fawcett, make their deaths particularly poignant. It also forces people around my age to confront our own mortality right when we are trying with all our might to ignore the inevitable.
I can’t remember which celebrity death brought on the comment, but a friend of mine said, back in the eighties, “we are going to start seeing them dropping at a rate of two or three a day.” In the era of mass media, there are just so many famous people and, like all of us, they just aren’t getting any younger.
regime change September 14, 2009
I was thinking today about what a nice quiet hurricane season it has been. That got me to thinking about how next hurricane season is a year away. So, then that got me to thinking - by next hurricane season, we’ll have a new mayor! We’ll almost have a new mayor by Mardi Gras! Then I did my happy dance.
