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I was thinking about a couple of things that I wanted to jot down when I was taxiing into JFK – I wore my “Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was gone” tee shirt on the plane and you can’t believe how many people approached me to just talk about their experiences. I was in the elevator in NY and a family got on with all the girls wearing some fashion of Fleur de Lis pendants and I said “New Orleans?” and they were smiling and seemed normal – Boarding the plane for NO, John Besh came up and I said I was thinking about you having seen him at Dean and Deluca a couple of trips ago when he was talking about opening up a jazz themed restaurant with Marsalis, he looked good, lost a little of that Katrina weight, and said he was on the Today Show promoting Louisiana Shrimp. N said she saw him on the Food Network and they showed clips of the restaurant and there was a clip of Nick and Steve sitting at the kitchen table.

I worried because when I was taxiing in at the NO airport, I had this feeling that I might be entering some kind of dark vortex and it has the potential to suck you in and make you have evil thoughts such as “The world is going to end anyway, so why bother” – but that is not a Katrina phenomenon, the sentiment was in the air long before our city was almost wiped out. The more I thought about it, it wasn’t really about not caring, it was perhaps that you have this life, which is a puzzle, and you are sitting there cross-legged trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together and the old pieces don’t really fit with the new pieces but they kind of look like they should.

I went with my gal colleagues and did the pole dancing class and that pole kicked my butt – I’m covered in bruises from “trusting the pole” a little too much. Then together in the cab to dinner it was nonstop “let me see that lipstick,” “I just got these shoes,”” is that a self-tan?,” “I got my hair done before I left” – just all that kind of hen talk that goes on when girls congregate without men. Moments later I was commanding a table of 7 men (a mix of clients and salesmen and traders) and it was another universe, nonstop shop talk, with me providing the fodder. I know for a fact had it been saleswomen, women traders, and female clients – we would have snuck in a few statements on the current skinny jeans trend and/or permanent mascara.

Later on the dance floor I was a house on fire – my joy in dancing is unparalleled – and that I have not been doing enough of.

What is my standard response to those who ask about New Orleans? – “It is getting better! We still have issues with trash piles. And those of us in the throes of home construction are suffering immeasurably at the hands of higher costs and inordinate time delays.” (This was made crystal clear when J showed me a photo of a second home he built – a big barn looking structure – on his family’s land up north – and it basically was done in a matter of 5 months – he started the project in November and they have already been using it.) And when they ask about Katrina and I tell them my pat responses – “better, trash, construction,” they say, it’s so hard to imagine. And I respond, yeah you’re right, it’s even hard for me to imagine.

Someone responded to my blog the other day and said Gina, who I had quoted, had gone through this ordeal for a reason and perhaps that was to help others and by doing that would help herself.

Yes, what is the reason for all of this suffering? I ask myself.

I touched down to three voicemail messages about Orleans Sheet Metal not being able to come at 11, Todd can’t make it, says the woman on the other end of the phone. My carpenter K calls saying that the manufacturer shipped nylon sash chord instead of cotton. That the decking material was not delivered. And the concrete board just didn’t work out so he took it back and bought Chinese redwood and he can’t find cedar siding anywhere in the city. And oh, by the way, can N (his son) and I borrow the canoe?

Then mom called to say the initial estimate to fix the Volvo is $6000 – and I said, well, hopefully the full estimate will total it and she informed me she didn’t have collision insurance – and I beat my head on the car window – [I gave her my Volvo when we returned from Texas because her car broke down. She had an accident in it the very next day. It prompted me to take her off my insurance.] Of course. I took a deep breath and stopped the self flaggellation and said, you know it’s only money. And said to myself, thankfully she didn’t kill anyone. She’s okay.

I thought about Mexico – and how it really isn’t that far. But then I took a deep breath – the Bean was sitting beside me, smiling, having just been rescued from the pokey.

And so I begin my affirmations – The LaLa will get done and be wonderful. Cotton or nylon, in the end it doesn’t matter.

I’m left to contemplate what does matter and I’m not sure I have those answers down pat anymore – the ones that so easily rolled off my tongue.

Do girls just want to have fun? Is family important? Should you return to a place just because it haunts you even if cosmic events render it a swirling caldron of unappetizing gumbo? How long does mid life crisis last?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.