Positive Attitude Ladies!!!!
That was one of my stand out lines in Desperate Editors – a skit we editors put on at the reporters conference two years running. Think we need a new sitcom, but since I have so many Bree like qualities – red hair, positive attitude – it is easy to fall into character when need be.
Last night G picked me up and we went to Delachaise to meet E – who by the way turns out has a blog – http://www.ernietheattorney.net/ – and has a Panamanian mother so we seemed to have a lot in common. He was there to tell us about how to get a patent on the product G and I are working on. But turns out he was more than that – he was a New Orleans enthusiast and (read his blog) he had a very positive attitude about where the city is and where it is going and it was great to get to know him because the world, this city, needs more people like him.
This morning the Bean and I headed out alone with L still in Arkansas and N still in Virginia, and as we were crossing over the footbridge I caught the BSF running up and we both smiled big smiles since we haven’t seen each other in two weeks. Then it was back to my desk for work and trying to figure out how the television upfront season is going thus far – it’s not – and later it was two hours at the gym trying to recoup a weekend of no exercise and what feels like an ever increasing middle – thick as a tick.
Today was E day and we had a nice session recapping all the events – she agreed that the J cum N missive seemed so unfeeling as to be almost from a robot, and that the S communications were sad indeed (she secretly, I believe, hoped we would be together again). But she felt that I was making good strides in getting my creative juices flowing on some new business ventures and that I seemed to have opened up recently and become more aware of the world at large. A positive transition, no doubt.
When I left her G called and we talked about some ideas for the product, then I went by the LaLa to get mail and saw L out with his three dogs – having just picked them up from the kennel. He brought his mom back from Arkansas and she was home while he walked. We spied the Snake across the bayou and I went to meet him at the end of the footbridge to say hi to him and Renny. Then coming back across ran into A who was walking Layla. A was gushing over a new business venture he has which he feels is going to be a major step in helping to rejuvenate the city. He was enthusiastic and excited about creating a new business out of an old business at Ocshner where he practices and he talked about all the good that will come from it. “This is an exciting place to be,” he said echoing E’s comments to G when she first came back to the city and what he writes about on his blog – we are living in interesting times in one of the most interesting cities in the world.
You have to want to be here right now – really before it was easy to say oh I live here because the living is easy – well it’s not easy here anymore – it’s frustrating and frightening and exhilirating – but you are surrounded right now by one fourth of the people who lived here before and every single one of them want to be here now more than ever and I second that emotion.
Dinner with mom – arroz con gandules, I brought it over and she said “Puerto Rico” – because that is what it reminds us of. We caught up on everything and she said at one point – “honey you are entering the best phase of your life – the next years will be wonderful so sit back and enjoy the journey.”
Tomorrow Cowboy Mouth is in the square – and I am going to be running late because by my own personal miracle I’ve scored the hottest flashing guy in the city to come look at the LaLa and so I am meeting him late in the afternoon. I left a message for my MIA contractor and said if the guy with the front windows couldn’t get his sorry ass over to the house to install them this week I’d get them from someone else and he could eat the ones he has. I hired P’s wife E to do the two busted windows and now it is a matter of finding that old float glass to match the rest of the house. D – the new contractor – is meeting me with R the flashing guy – and well, maybe we could be taking some real positive steps in the right direction for a change.
I’ve come back to this city where I have such deep deep friendships and I’ve made a handful of new friends in the last two months – two of which are knock your socks off friendships – G keeps calling me her new best friend and T writes this evening “avoiding J tomorrow, but I miss you” – and you tell me – do you think this is possible anywhere else in the world? I’m here to tell you it is not – New Orleans is unique and it attracts unique and creative people who do not fear social intimacy.
I believe in miracles – after all – look at me now.