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Catalog of birds seen this morning on walk through City Park:

Black-crowned Night Heron
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
White Ibis
Mottled Duck
Tundra Swan
Snowy Egret
Canadian Geese

A few months ago, every person I spoke with seemed intent on bursting my bubble and telling me that Obama wouldn’t get elected. That has changed recently, there seems to be hope in the wind that he will win this election and become the 44th President of the United States. Wow!

I was listening to Michele’s speech and I thought wow!

Barack Obama will be president. Wow!

Besides Southern Decadence this Labor Day Weekend – MidSummer Mardi Gras is also taking place on Saturday. The parade begins at the Maple Leaf Bar, 8316 Oak Street, at 8:30 p.m. It will stop at neighborhood bars, including Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge. If you’re in New Orleans, there is nothing like Mardi Gras in August – believe me.

Today, in accordance with my eel indoctrination, I sat on the porch for T’s lunchtime routine and then ate lunch on the screen porch. Read: I sat on the front porch, in a rocking chair and had a beverage. I then ate my lunch on the screen porch in a chair, with a fork, breathing while eating. The miracle of eel.

Hurricane season starts on June 1st and ends about the end of November but around here we believe that three weeks on either side of September is critical and so when we get through September there is a small sigh of relief.

Well it’s Labor Day weekend and that means it’s Southern Decadence here in the Crescent City. Last year, as I was coming out of a store in the Quarter, I ran into a group of 20-something year old beautiful men – having forgotten it was Southern Decadence, I thought for a moment I was on a different planet. I thanked them all for beautifying our streets.

Truly summer is over when the parties begin in earnest and Southern Decadence kicks off an almost nine month wonderland of small to large festivals and holidays that are unrivaled in the world – which helped nickname New Orleans, the City that Care Forgot.

On Friday late in the afternoon, I’m picking up D, who was my best man when Steve and I got married (my maid of honor couldn’t make it to San Francisco), at the airport and after stopping by the LaLa for T’s famous vodka tonics, we’ll bring him right into the mayhem that will have already descended on the Quarter.

Wonder Woman is not the average bear, she lives life by certain tenets that include but are not limited to:

Proceed with Love
Press outside your comfort zone
Practice simply being

So for today, think of one step to take that will bring you closer to being Wonder Woman. At the end of this day, I will tell you what step I took.

What Wonder Woman is not:

Perfect
Capable of doing everything for everybody
Invincible

When your week gets off to a rocky start – let’s just say your geriatric dog goes to the bathroom on the floor and you step in it – it’s up to you to not let that first step be the deciding factor for how this week is going to go. Instead, remember that in Italy and Spain, stepping in dog shit is considered lucky. And there you have the makings for a fabulous week.

This Friday will be three years since the Corp of Engineers failed to protect this city from a Category 5 hurricane and our president turned his back on a great American city. Since then, half of the population has returned with an army of volunteers still coming to the city to help rebuild the 200K + houses that were destroyed.

Three years and some people are still suffering from Post Traumatic Stress having lost everything they owned. Three years and some people say they will never return. Three years and god is the only one who knows what Mayor Nagin is doing for our city. Three years and the only news that gets published about New Orleans comes from the New York Times, who has never turned its back once on us despite the fact that most of what it prints leaves you believing New Orleans is moribund or dead.

Well, hey dear reader, I’ve been here those three years. I lost not a house, but life the way I knew it – a husband, friends, the companionship of a little boy – so much lost. But I’m standing here today in the house I built through thick and thin, I have hope, I donated to a bike corridor, I’m riding with a group of friends for the MS 150 ride to Mississippi again this year, I’ve been blessed to find love – someone not from here who decided New Orleans was the best home too – and hey, we are all still hopeful that this hurricane season will pass with nothing more than the rain that is coming down outside my window right now (a product of Fay).

We’re still here, world – we threw open our doors to welcome the world back in and little by little they are coming and seeing for themselves – New Orleans, Louisiana – is still one of the greatest cities in the world.

Went for my bike ride this morning and it was cooler than normal because we are feeling the effects of Fay. As I rode to the Lakefront, I saw girls coming back saying it was nasty out there. When I got there the wind was whipping around like a squall and it started raining hard and riding my bike through it all was almost like a test of endurance. But there was also an underlying feeling of being out on the lake, with the water a greyish brown from the churn, and the palm trees blowing and bending almost to the ground, and the ongoing levee repair still in progress from Katrina that was eerie, thrilling, and melancholic all at the same time.

As I made my way to the point, I could see the pilings and structure for the lighthouse. The red and white lighthouse had fallen over on its side and had been there decrepit like that up until recently. The boathouses that line West End are maybe a third finished, but the rest still look like ghost houses. Even more ghostlike is to pass Al Copeland’s old boathouse – he always sponsored the cigarette boat races out there – and to think that he passed – or to see West End completely devoid of any structure, even the raggedy ones that remained after the city ruined West End with its greed and blindness. There is no bridge to Bucktown because Bucktown doesn’t exist anymore.

Thanks Fay for passing us by – we’ve had enough storms for a while – but I have faith we’ll put Humpty Dumpty back together again – we just need a break.