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A friend wrote that her “efforts” with a man over the last year have been for naught. Another friend told us her ex love was incapable of wishing her a Merry Christmas even though they are only recently split up. Another friend worries her husband is spending too much time primping and what could that mean? Another friend arrived in the same city as her ex-lover who teased her with text messages and ended up a no show. What’s a girl to do?

I told my first friend, relationships are hard as shit and being single sucks, so whatyagonnado?

I wish all my single friends love, and all my married friends harmony and the knowledge that the grass is not greener on the other side.

I got the fat end of the wishbone from the turkey on Christmas night and I wished for peace – all over the world – and especially here in New Orleans. Only I read the police reports and it seems people are still desperate and peace elusive:

This report comes directly from the New Orleans Police Department‘s Major Offense Log for 6 a.m. Monday through 6 a.m. Tuesday.

Armed Robbery (gun)

16:42 Hrs.

Danneel St./Valmont St.

Victims: Female, DOB 1-14-92; Female, DOB 1-16-93

Gist: The victims were approached from behind by an unknown black male armed with a small black revolver who demanded their belongings. The victims complied, the subject fled with cash and some credit cards.

Armed Robbery (Gun)

20:46 Hrs.

9000 blk Chef Menteur Hwy

Victim: Male, DOB 03-26-91

Gist: An unknown b/m entered the store and robbed the cashier of his personal cell phone.

Homicide (Shooting)

21:04 Hrs.

1800 blk N. Prieur

Victim: Male

Gist: The victim was found unresponsive inside the residence suffering from a gunshot wound to the head.

The dogs and I took a long walk through City Park this morning because we could and because it was so beautiful outside this morning. While the east coast has been socked in with horrendous snow storms, down here there was frost on the grass, an unusual sight for us to see but welcome nonetheless. Frost kills bugs if nothing else. But it also glistens in the sun and it is a sunny day and as I walked through the depths of the cypress forests on the backside of City Park, I marveled at how the frost on the grass contrasted with the deep ember cypress trees that looked like they were on fire. Fire and Ice. How beautiful.

The dogs were scampering about and chasing squirrels and doing dog things and I was contemplating and one mantra kept repeating itself through my mind – Jai Guru Deva Om. We had watched Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, which I recommend. T loves musicals and every time I thought this one would grow tedious or trite it kept itself aloft and lyrical. Well done, Julie. The same impression I had of her Lion King in NY when I saw it with Miracle Baby years ago.

I give thanks to my heavenly teacher, om. A source of mine over many years sent me a note thanking me for the voodoo pencil I sent him for a Holiday gift with the message “may all your voodoo in 2011 be good voodoo” – his note said he could already feel the luck coming from it and that was only adding to his already perceived luck. He said his golf buddy asked him if he’d rather be good or lucky, and they both had come to the conclusion that luck was the better gift.

And yes, I’m lucky, and yes, I’m grateful, but I do have times when my head is on fire and I can’t see the light emanating from the ground up – I get nervous that this lucky streak is about to end – why wouldn’t it? And I have to remind myself to flip the coin Rachel – it’s the other side you want to ponder and be grateful for – the lucky side of the coin, heads up, Jai Guru Deva, ommmm.

One of thirty nights I can’t sleep
I awaken to motion in the last dark
out the window, tight against the hillside.
I put on my glasses to stop
the glass in the old house from wavering.

Three of them, maybe twenty feet away,
they nuzzle new snow,
leaves and twigs not yet frozen hard,
a poor diet, winter just begun.
Foraging, chewing, staring lines into space.
Their necks bolt upright only to the slight
shift in what I imagine is wind,
to things I can’t hear, couldn’t,
were I with them outside and not still
warm on the edge of the bed

Then a cardinal is winter
red against the even gray of 6 a.m.
—cloudy, this time of year. I’ll stay watching
until I’m late for another morning meeting,
my alarm clock not gone off—that must be it.
I can’t know how little I’ll be missed.

RICHARD TERRILL

I forced myself to go Spin class yesterday morning and was all the better for it and today I went to boot camp because I need something to work wonders on my jelly belly roll that is growing thicker with each passing moment. But before I dragged my lumpy butt to boot camp, I managed to treat myself to lunch at Eco Cafe on Carrollton for a nice portobello and chimichuri panini with a side salad and a hot mug of mint tea. I brought along Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which I’ve been meaning to read, and then it was hard to get me out of my Queen’s chair in the corner.

I’m loving this week – at a slower pace – the end of the year, end of a decade is advancing at high speed and yet, there are little ways to apply the brakes. Why not treat yourself to a small corner somewhere that you might have been coveting all year?

If You Say It Right, It Helps the Heart to Bear It

by Mary Oliver

The comforts
of language
are true
and deep;

in a cemetery,
in the South,
so many stones
and so many

so small.
Sometimes
three or four
in a row.

In this instance:
Eliza May,
Oceola,
Joseph.

Can you imagine
the condition
of the heart
of a mother

or a father
watching these plantings?
I cannot.
But I try.

“God taketh
his young lambs home”
is carved there.
A few words

like water
on a stone.
Cool and beautiful
like water on a stone.

Okay for someone who does not do a darn thing on Christmas, we managed to make the most of this holiday by joining into others’ fun and tradition – Christmas Eve with friends and a big goose, Christmas morning by our friends/neighbor’s tree, Christmas dinner with friends and a big turkey. All in all we passed a good time, cher.

On Christmas morning, our neighbor’s gave Tin new pajamas, nice warm fleecey footy pajamas, just what he needed on this cold morning. And another neighbor gave him this great toy that he can bang on.

After the goose the night before, we were treated to a more traditional meal of turkey and gravy and stuffing and sweet potatoes and all the yummy goodness one table could hold.

We made new friends.

‘

We shared in new traditions, the first gingerbread house made by our friends.

And we were greeted once again by the miracle of light that is ours to behold on the bayou.

While you are sitting there trying to figure out where to leave a message for your friend – her cellphone, her Facebook page, her email, her landline (if she still has one), a letter (do you know her physical address?), her IM, Twitter her? think of this, technology which is something that can make me howl like a feral cat sometimes because it is overwhelming, mind boggling, and disruptive, is equally as fascinating, hyper enlightening, and new.

If you haven’t already ready the book I recommended a while back, that Clay Shirky wrote on how the internet is changing our lives, Cognitive Surplus, watch this video clip and see just a hint of what the book contains. It’s amazing how he has cut through all the first layers of technology to uncover something about humans that they don’t know or have forgotten about themselves.

Love this guy!

Tin kicks the wall to a steady beat from his crib, we knock back from our adjoining wall in our bathroom. He plays the piano on everything and drums on the computers so we are constantly moving him away from the table and laptop. He picks up his flashlight and plays it like a horn. The bars on his crib have become a bass. AND when he shakes his booty, we just laugh, he has got a great butt roll.

Suddenly our little toddler is becoming the great entertainer and there are less tantrums and more personality coming out. So we have been showing him a lot of old clips of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and he is fascinated by these videos.

We are also using YouTube videos to help teach him other things. We are trying to change from liquid vitamins to Flintstones but Fred is an anachronism so we have to show Tin YouTube clips of the Flintstones so that when we sing Yabba Dabba Do to get him to eat a vitamin he knows what we are talking about. We put his Ms. Jessie’s Baby Butter Cream in his hair every morning and try to get him to endure the comb outs by watching I Love My Hair. However, here is one video we won’t show him – the last thing we need is our little music man learning how to drum with a fork and spoon on the dining table.

Let’s revisit the last New Year’s and resolutions, shall we? What has stuck is this, we are constantly in need of fine tuning, revisions, and recalibrations of how we spend our days. It’s a given that exercise will be on everyone’s list but it is always on my daily list, so that is not a resolution or recalibration. It’s safe to say that I will cut back on my alcohol and food intake as my body right now is rejecting every glass of champagne I’ve tipped and every sweet I’ve snuck between my lips. How about learning to love ourselves, that should be front and center on many people’s lists and for me the learning to take care of me is one of my focal points.

The main thing I will be searching for in 2011 is nonattachment and that is so big, it doesn’t need a number two or three after it because almost everything can fall under it as a subhead. Two items that should be on everyone’s list are 1) digest the fact that change is certain and 2) gratitude is a direct pathway to happiness. For item one look at this chart and you will see one thing that is constant is change, BIG CHANGE, and yet we move onward and hopefully, upward.