Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

My, we’ve had a lazy day. Since we were up so remarkably late last night (for which I blame my husband for his 3 AM munchies), we slept in this morning and finally rolled out of bed around 1. Well, I rolled out of bed; hub lounged around and watched TV. We headed over to Mother’s Restaurant for some debris poboys and etouffee. ‘Debris’ is the stuff that’s left soaking in the juices after you cook roast beef. It’s famously good. They serve shredded cabbage instead of lettuce on their sandwiches, so you don’t get that nasty wilted flavor.

Then we drove over to the D-Day museum, but they stop selling tickets at 3:45 so we didn’t get in. We’re planning on getting up while the clock still reads “AM” tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll go then.

Then we proceeded to get lost while trying to find Metarie Cemetery and ended up crabbing at each other the whole way there. We found it and scooted through, not wishing to be locked in when they closed the gates at 5:30. Spending the night in a New Orleans boneyard is not my idea of a fun time. Especially when we have reservations at NOLA tonight.

On the way back we got lost again and ended up in the projects. We felt just a wee bit out of place, between the fancy car and the color of our skin. We were both humming “One of these things is not like the other” until we got out.

Oh, and driving in this town sucks. The streets are narrow and bumpy, there are kamikaze pedestrians, street signs are one sided facing the wrong way on one way streets, and in one memorable intersection between a fairly-busy road and the interstate access road, there are no stopsigns. To my credit, I did not shriek a bone-piercing yell at that point, although I did sing “Nobody has a stopsiiiiiign” rather loudly.

I almost forgot to mention that we’re staying next to the Ritz Carlton, and last night when we went out there was an obnoxiously huge RV with shaded windows offloading an obnoxiously large amount of luggage and the guys doing it were taking up the whole sidewalk. I wondered what cele it belonged to. About a half block away we passed a group of people and one of them was either Reese Witherspoon or her doppelganger. Maybe it was her junk littering up the walkway.

OMG, Ron Jeremy is on an infomercial pimping penis enlargement pills. That’s it, the world is officially coming to an end. Someone pass me the ice cream, I’m going all out for this one.

I just ate an $18 poboy from room service. Plus 19% tax, plus $2.50 delivery. Insane. But tasty.

I really need to go to bed. What in the hell am I doing up at this hour? And why won’t anyone leave comments for me?

Hello, howaya, I’m tipsy. Greetings from Nawlins, where it’s against city code to be sober. We got here around 8:30 and spent a good 30 minutes talking to Bellman Earl, who was very nice but didn’t seem to understand that after the 5 hour drive, I had to pee! So here we are at our hotel, and may I add that it’s really, really nice. Right after getting here we headed down to the elevator, where we were accompanied by a wheezing weirdo who picked stuff out of his teeth and showed it to his wife. Nice.

We walked the couple of blocks over to the Acme Oyster House and had some oysters on the half shell and poboys. And beer. Then we walked down Bourbon Street for a stretch whereupon I proceeded to step in a big deep puddle of ick whilst wearing my sandals. That was, of course, all the way at the other end of Bourbon Street from our hotel, so I had stickyfoot all the way back. I had to buy about a gallon-sized pina colada to make me feel better. Understand that this came straight on the heels of falling off the bed last night while reaching to get something. How embarrassing. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t made such a huge loud thud, especially since we were trying to get the kids to sleep. Whoops.

Here we are on the road in Louisiana, just across Old Man River from Grosse Tete, which hub insists on pronouncing “gross teat”. He is calling me all sorts of bad names because I am blogging in the car. I am ubergeek, hear me roar.

We priests have a happy life! Join us!
-billboard on the side of the road. No more comment necessary.

Is there anything better than Waffle House? We stopped there for lunch and had waffles and eggs and bacon and grits, oh my. And they have these fantastic jukeboxes, too. I had to put a dollar in for my five selections:

I’ll Play for Gumbo – Jimmy Buffett
Heartache Tonight – The Eagles
A White Sportcoat and a Pink Carnation – Marty Robbins
Still the One – Shania Twain
Lying Eyes – The Eagles

…and sat munching on sweet waffles and coffee, slightly humming along with the waitress singing too. Nirvana! I really wish there were a Waffle House closer to home. We used to go to them all the time when I went to school in Virginia, for those middle of the night munchies.

Louisiana roads are miserably bumpy. I’m sure my nether regions are going to be completely numb by the time we get there. This also means that looking at the screen too long will make me want to yark. I’m going to go back to listening to our audiobook – The Puppet Masters, by Robert A. Heinlein.

We’re halfway there; stopping in Houston to drop off the kids. C. is wired and refuses to sleep. J. is totally zonked. I’m posting this from a laptop connected to our cell phone, using it as a modem. Really cool. I can’t wait to get going. Is it wrong to be looking forward so much to time away from the kids? Does it make me a bad mommy? No idea, but I do know we’re going to feast like kings.

I ate my first raw oyster in New Orleans when we went last year. I was pretty nervous about it, since I was pregnant and had heard horror stories about hepatitis and other nasties you can get from oysters. It was ok, in a not bad sort of way. I wouldn’t mind eating them again, which I most certainly will if hub has his say.

N.B.: being pregnant in Nawlins stinks. Literally, in the case of Bourbon St., which has a constant air of yuckysmell, but also in the sense that you can’t go out and get loaded, and drunk people are so lame when you’re undergoing enforced sobriety.

With this connection, I can even blog and publish from the car. Bahahaha! Take that, M.S.!

They teach porn in British schools? I feel gypped.
Naked chickens!
Stripper’s daughter can stay in school but the mom has to find another line of work. Nice bullying.
Maybe Dave Thomas really does have burger powers
Tales from the dark side of fish sex
Start saving your shekels now… cause you’re going to space!

We’re off today for a week. I will try to keep blogging, but if you don’t see any entries for a while you’ll know why.

Disturbing search requests, or “How did someone searching for ‘naked tiny pickle’ get to my site?”

I just went and looked at the amount of clothes I bought yesterday, I thought there were far more than there actually are. I’m bored as hell right now, trying to find something interesting to do, but completely obsessing on growing my blog readership. I have no idea why. Why do we want people to read our silly little musings? Is it an attention thing? People don’t want others to read their diaries, why their blogs?

Embarrassing moment: at dinner after I got married, I asked my uncle if he would like to dip his meat in my sauce. Of course I meant about our food, but I don’t think I’ve ever blushed that hard in my life.

There are rumblings that the government is intercepting messages from Al Qaida planning another terrorist attack on the scale of September 11. Tie that in with the missing cyanide and I’m glad we have a home water delivery service. Will we ever be secure again? Even now when I hear a plane flying low, I cringe. I remember the first planes that flew over the house after the ban on flights was lifted. I expected any one of them to come crashing down on us. And a couple of months later, one did crash in New York. My second daughter was 4 days old on 9/11, and while we watched the news reports, all I could do was just hold her tight and shake. Tears well up even now, writing about that horrible day. I think what struck me most was the next week… all the flags everywhere, all the television channels either pre-empted by news or off the air with a memorial page on screen, or (in the case of MTV) playing comforting music. Our 2 year old was in Houston with her grandparents and I was scared to death that we would never see her again. Who know what else was going to happen?

Yep, that pretty much secured the fact that I’m not going to fly for a long, long time, and even then only if I’m heavily medicated. I have enough problems flying as it is. I’m too much of a control freak to feel secure putting my life in some stranger’s hands.

Oh, wow, I just checked out the weather forecast for New Orleans next week. It looks luscious. I once went to New Orleans in August and it was like swimming through boiling water. The city is actually a bit under sea level, which is why their cemeteries have above-ground crypts, because the water table is so high that coffins will come to the surface if buried (shades of Poltergeist). What that means is that the humidity is so high that it’s hard to breathe… which is fine if you’re just sitting there at a bar getting sloshed, but there are so many fun places to go and shop and discover that it sucks to be benched.

Is my cat hot or not?
I weep for the future
Gov. of Texas broke, film at 11
In-flight safety card
I feel violated, having watched this
Darwin Award runner-up