I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, without a man around, there is no one to say no – (I know, Tin is going to be a man and he is practicing no in earnest, but for the adults around here, we’re still on yes, sure, why not?) WE ARE GETTING ANOTHER DOG – a German Shepherd!!! She came to visit today and she’s beautiful – she has Cleopatra eyes and is a…
The irises are now waxing in their beauty at the park – they come in purple, yellow, pink, orange, red, and white – so awesome. I see them and I feel instant joy. Yesterday as I was speaking to my friend who was fishing on the bayou, another neighbor was getting in her car and I asked her how she was doing and she said, “GREAT, it’s spring after all!” And I concurred. Spring makes…
Tin has decided that everything bugs him – the changing table bugs him, whatever I give him to eat bugs him, not being able to swing as long as he wants bugs him, making him turn in a direction he doesn’t want to go in bugs him, removing deadly objects from his hands bugs him. The problem with Tin is he doesn’t know how to deal with what bugs him. So we are trying to…
I learned to live with my anxiety by developing what the guy who helped me learned to modify my behavior called a tool box. Not a real tool box of course, more like a fig newton of the imagination. But in the toolbox is knowledge – what causes anxiety, and tools like rhymes or songs that help pull you out of the anxious moment and keep you centered. I have developed a similar toolbox for…
There is a report in the NYT about the use of hallucinogens to help overcome depression. Interestingly enough the core of the findings is that patients who took the hallucinogens were able to move past their anxieties and perceived boundaries of self to feel more united and empathetic with others, helping boost their overall moods. And most remarkably after the experience they were able to better accept uncertainty as a constant.
We sidled up to our friend and neighbor’s couch to watch the premier of Treme. I came to the show with trepidation that New Orleans is in essence an enigma and hard to capture, but willing to suspend my disbelief to join in the fun. Half way into the plotless story I had this weird feeling that someone was staring into our daily life here in New Orleans and viewers would need a translator because…
Despite there being so many groups I wanted to see at French Quarter Fest, it has been one of those weekends, the kind where you take one baby step forward and about ten sideways. We had vouched to go to Gal Holiday and then to Astral Project, but alas, even those have eluded us because the truth is you can’t make a plan. We get up and we start the day and we just start…
I remember when I was living in San Rafael, California, in Marin County, and someone at the gym was going to New Orleans on a girl’s trip and she showed me the B&B someone had recommended. I said, “Well it’s in Treme, and right by Louis Armstrong Park, and fair warning, that area can be a little dicey.” The woman relayed what I said back to the person who had recommended it to her and…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the what if’s in life and we’ve been talking a lot about living for today, and it occurred to me that things are happening that have never happened before in our lives. For instance, I wrote about my mother dying, my friend wrote about his daughter dying, friends are writing about treating cancer, and all of this is happening in this cyberworld and we’re talking about it and…