The food in Spain makes me wary – it’s highly nationalistic – no one tires here of tortilla española, patata bravas, manchego, and jamon. Eggs, Potatoes, Cheese and Pork. SAVE ME. It’s enough to make me give up on trying to find a salad as I perused the menus at the open-air cafes along what is commonly referred to as the golden triangle – the blocks between Madrid’s three great museums – the Prado, Reina…
I noticed that the weeks leading up to our leaving for a month in Spain brought a rain of abundance in terms of work projects – YAY and HEY. With the surfeit of financial blessings also came friends and outings, all conspiring to make my goal of losing weight before the beach a fantasy gone awry. And at the 11th hour, the obstacle came out of nowhere – the four-ton air conditioning unit – on…
Vestida con mantos negros Piensa que el mundo es chiquito Y el corazón es inmenso… Draped in black She thinks that the world is small and the heart is immense… Frederico Garcia Lorca
A friend reminded me the other day that we always have the ability to begin again, and so this morning was my renewed expression of flipping the script. As Tin drew trains in beautiful detail and color on his drawing paper, I kept Stella in her kennel after the third paper towel was stolen and chewed to smithereens [sometimes it IS us and them], and began to organize my work day to encourage fruition instead…
I have taken to smiling thinly and telling people it’s like Groundhog’s Day around here because this is what my schedule has looked like every day even on weekends: 1) wake at 5:30 take Stella and Heidi out 2) feed dogs 3) make tea – watch it grow cold as Tin wakes and engages in counter maneuvers to thwart my parenting 4) argue with Tin about breakfast 5) argue with Tin about getting dressed for…
Stella graduated from dog obedience training – an A+ student throughout – and yet, undercover she is a criminal and a thief. She steals whatever she can get her hands on – she destroyed a very expensive beach tote that I’ve carried from place to place in pristine condition – she chewed Tin’s bathroom rug – she has chewed the built in hutch that was newly refinished last summer – she chewed a corner of…
Everybody has an addiction right – in this house, we call Tin the 5-year-old a trainaholic and Heidi the German Shepherd a cataholic and Stella the mutt is a chewaholic. My addiction is working. I’m in the thick right now of juggling so many multiple projects, steam is coming out of every orifice from the gears grinding so hard. However, I can say that I get immense satisfaction in completing work projects. Raising a child,…
I moved to the 3rd ward in June of 2013 without much fanfare. I had left the luxury living on Bayou St. John, an address with a sense of an address, to join the urban riff raff who had been living in the dark, literally, for years after the 2005 Federal Flood. My front strip of grass was an amalgam of stones, old cans and bottles, and Katrina detritus that stuck to the bottom of…
I marvel at the fact that long ago I left my religion after sitting in the small shule before daybreak during the first year of my father’s death and nine men showed up so we could not say Kaddish aloud because I did not form the 10th “man” for the minyan. I left that Judaism like yesterday’s news and went out into the world on the arm of many an atheist lover – glad to…
Who said the middle of nowhere is the center of someone else’s universe? I don’t know but I hear ya. Recently, someone in D.C. said that in a poll of those making under $75k a year, 100% said their financial situation has grown worse in the last four years. There you have it. Here in a city where poverty and neglect are as common as crawfish, I’ve entered the hard times with the rest of…