How to make groceries in a pirogue

I thought I would just blog a quick entry to let everyone know I’m doing well. It’s feels so natural to be home, but strange at the same time. Katrina is on the tip of everyones tongue and still a major topic of conversation. Hurricane season starts June 1st, and as my friend Jananne says, “There is a palpable, underlying level of terror.” To address this, by the way, she thinks we should change the name of hurricane season to “Weather Fest” and have a slogan “Let the good times contraflow”. She’s hysterical!! In fact, her and I are planning on starting a knitting gang. We read about a group of women who call themselves the “Knittas” and are tagging statues in there community with scarves and such. They have given themselves nicknames like “P-knitty” and “Loop-Dog”. We thought if we started doing that, it might do something to raise morale, at least put a smile on passers-by faces. I’m having dinner at my friends house tonight who is a chef, so I best not let the food get cold. I’ll keep posting- I didn’t pack my camera, so it might be a while before a picture entry.

I am moving tomorrow…I am moving tomorrow…Somehow, I know it will happen, but I can’t quite visualize it. Oh, scary scary hurricanes. Hopefully, they’ll stay away. It’s kind of crazy how life just picks back up. I got someone cooking me dinner on Saturday when I get in town. I’m babysitting Sunday. Sunday evening someone is cooking for me… this is maybe why I got fat in New Orleans. At this point I’ll take fat and happy any day over skinny and stressed to the gills. Have I told y’all I’m pretty much skinny again? Who knew, it wasn’t about exercizing and eating spinach, it was about staying so stressed that your stomach is in knots and you can’t imagine putting food in it?

And of course, I can’t be pleased. I am so excited to be going back home, but so sad to be leaving the area. Cheryl and Adam are two and a half hours away, it’s been great getting to spend this time with my in-laws, and I dare say I won’t have any Klan rallys to protest. There are some drawbacks, obviously, to New Orleans right now. Still, I told Chris from here on out we’re going to be like those crazy Cajuns on Grande Isle and just rebuild year after year after year. Hurricanes are one of your kinder disasters if you have the means to evacuate. They say they aren’t going to keep us out of the parishes any more, like with Katrina when we had to wonder about our home for a month before we got to see it with our own two eyes and then leave it indefinately.

Well, I’ll leave you with a link that I think is interesting, it goes through the timeline of just how exactly New Orleans and it’s surrounding areas flooded. Check it out.

Guess who I met…Guess…Ray Nagin!! He was at Jazz Fest and came right up to talk with my friend Molly and I. I wish I would have thought to take a picture with him, but I didn’t. I don’t know why I didn’t because I took a picture of him walking in the crowd:
Here are a few other pictures of the fest. New Orleans children got to make their own houses and put them on a map of the city:
Here is a picture of the crowd, watching Bruce Springstein: I have had the biggest smile on my face ever since I found out we were moving back. I start my new job in New Orleans on May 22nd. Chris is planning on coming down by June. It’s all coming together. I feel like I’ve been in some kind of weird hibernation and my life is finally starting again.