A Dapper Evening

I will admit that I have been neglecting my love of nature and the outdoors. I live in one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen and yet, I seem to stay in my little comfort zone. So, this evening, I grabbed the camera and set out to find some things that make me smile about my little neighborhood.


I headed down to Magazine Street. For those of you who are not familiar, Magazine Street is a street that has a plethora of restaurants, boutiques, and art galleries. We live within walking distance and could easily walk down the street to enjoy some fabulous live music or delectable Cajun cuisine. It is very charming and eclectic.


Here is a little candy store. Other than chain stores, I have not seen a candy shop in a very long time. I simply adore the horses that sit out front. Sometimes, the owner ties balloons to the horses and they float in the breeze. There is something so simple and nostalgic about going to buy candy. And colorful, for that matter! If you look in the upper corner, you can see a sign for the Buddha Belly. It's a pool hall/bar/laundromat - I think that sounds like a plan! Have a beer and wash your socks all at the same time!


Here is a picture of the French Bakery that is literally right down the street from our house. It's so charming with it's bright blue walls and and yellow trim and smell of baking bread in the mornings. Mmmm....warm bread. Is there anything better?


Here is a purple house. I am obsessed with the purple houses in these parts - a very popular color. I love the boldness, yet the calmness of the purple. They definitely stand out, but then again, so do the bright orange or lime green houses you see.


Here is a picture of the house we live in. This is the front of the house and our front door is on the side of the house.


And here is our front door. Yes, we do have a steel cage door that we have to open before we can open our actual front door. I particularly like the glass that is in the door. Alice likes to sit on the landing and sun herself in the afternoons in the stairwell.


Finally, here is our street. I love how the neighborhoods around here have the street names embedded into the concrete on each street corner. It's the small things that make this city charming. The water meter cover, the lady at the grocery that calls you "baby", the way the magnolia blossoms only seem to stick around for a day, and the way you can set your watch to the afternoon rainstorms. And boy, those thunderheads are huge! I guess that's what you get to observe when you live so close to the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River. I love New Orleans.

Leaf by Leaf, Page by Page

Deciding to make a major change in your life is a big deal. It is hard for most people, myself included, yet it seems I have made most of my major life changes in a quick, and perhaps not so thought out manner. I guess I like the thrill of jumping into something that I might not have any business getting involved. This technique has worked for me thus far.

I find myself at a crossroads. I came to this city to shake up everything in my life. The idea of completely removing me from my comfort zone and moving to a city where I could be anonymous was romantic to me. I have never truly been anonymous in my life. That is not a bad thing. Because my support system was always around, I constantly felt I could accomplish anything I put my mind to. That is not to say I have super confidence. Since moving to New Orleans I have realized my confidence is in quite the opposite state.

So, the big question is, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Um. I don’t know.

I am proud of all my accomplishments thus far but do I want to continue to work in the non-profit sector? I feel I should. It holds my heart—well, part of my heart. Then there is that little ballerina still inside. I have found a couple of jobs to teach dance and when I see those, my little monkey heart does a flip, flop (swish, swish).

Like for instance, I found a job to apply for teaching Burlesque to housewives. I know, this isn’t ballet. Nevertheless, it could be awesomely fun and feed that flip, flop (swish, swish) in the old ticker.

There are parts of myself that I ignored in my transition from graduate school to working at the Symphony. I miss these parts and I don’t want to continue ignoring them because I am too busy having a “career”. Yet, I don’t want to ignore my educational accomplishments and limit myself to simply waiting tables. It’s not that I’m beneath that—it’s that I owe it to myself to try and do something with everything I have been striving toward.

I think that I will apply to teach Burlesque to housewives. It feels right to move my body once again and I need to feed the intellectual side and find a job that serves a purpose. The whole reason I started this journey in the first place was to do my part in helping make the community of New Orleans better and stronger. Even if I am only one person, I am here and I am ready.

To quote Radiohead, "Are you such a dreamer to put the world to rise?"

Yes, I think I am.

Leaf by Leaf, Page by Page

Deciding to make a major change in your life is a big deal. It is hard for most people, myself included, yet it seems I have made most of my major life changes in a quick, and perhaps not so thought out manner. I guess I like the thrill of jumping into something that I might not have any business getting involved. This technique has worked for me thus far.

I find myself at a crossroads. I came to this city to shake up everything in my life. The idea of completely removing me from my comfort zone and moving to a city where I could be anonymous was romantic to me. I have never truly been anonymous in my life. That is not a bad thing. Because my support system was always around, I constantly felt I could accomplish anything I put my mind to. That is not to say I have super confidence. Since moving to New Orleans I have realized my confidence is in quite the opposite state.

So, the big question is, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Um. I don’t know.

I am proud of all my accomplishments thus far but do I want to continue to work in the non-profit sector? I feel I should. It holds my heart—well, part of my heart. Then there is that little ballerina still inside. I have found a couple of jobs to teach dance and when I see those, my little monkey heart does a flip, flop (swish, swish).

Like for instance, I found a job to apply for teaching Burlesque to housewives. I know, this isn’t ballet. Nevertheless, it could be awesomely fun and feed that flip, flop (swish, swish) in the old ticker.

There are parts of myself that I ignored in my transition from graduate school to working at the Symphony. I miss these parts and I don’t want to continue ignoring them because I am too busy having a “career”. Yet, I don’t want to ignore my educational accomplishments and limit myself to simply waiting tables. It’s not that I’m beneath that—it’s that I owe it to myself to try and do something with everything I have been striving towards.

I think that I will apply to teach Burlesque to housewives. It feels right to move my body once again and I need to feed the intellectual side and find a job that serves a purpose. The whole reason I started this journey in the first place was to do my part in helping make the community of New Orleans better and stronger. Even if I am only one person, I am here and I am ready to work.

Leaf by Leaf, Page by Page

Deciding to make a major change in your life is a big deal. It is hard for most people, myself included, yet it seems I have made most of my major life changes in a quick, and perhaps not so thought out manner. I guess I like the thrill of jumping into something that I might not have any business getting involved. This technique has worked for me thus far.

I find myself at a crossroads. I came to this city to shake up everything in my life. The idea of completely removing me from my comfort zone and moving to a city where I could be anonymous was romantic to me. I have never truly been anonymous in my life. That is not a bad thing. Because my support system was always around, I constantly felt I could accomplish anything I put my mind to. That is not to say I have super confidence. Since moving to New Orleans I have realized my confidence is in quite the opposite state.

So, the big question is, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Um. I don’t know.

I am proud of all my accomplishments thus far but do I want to continue to work in the non-profit sector? I feel I should. It holds my heart—well, part of my heart. Then there is that little ballerina still inside. I have found a couple of jobs to teach dance and when I see those, my little monkey heart does a flip, flop (swish, swish).

Like for instance, I found a job to apply for teaching Burlesque to housewives. I know, this isn’t ballet. Nevertheless, it could be awesomely fun and feed that flip, flop (swish, swish) in the old ticker.

There are parts of myself that I ignored in my transition from graduate school to working at the Symphony. I miss these parts and I don’t want to continue ignoring them because I am too busy having a “career”. Yet, I don’t want to ignore my educational accomplishments and limit myself to simply waiting tables. It’s not that I’m beneath that—it’s that I owe it to myself to try and do something with everything I have been striving towards.

I think that I will apply to teach Burlesque to housewives. It feels right to move my body once again and I need to feed the intellectual side and find a job that serves a purpose. The whole reason I started this journey in the first place was to do my part in helping make the community of New Orleans better and stronger. Even if I am only one person, I am here and I am ready to work.

Moving and the Cats - MEOUCH!

Our kitties are quite spoiled. If you own a pet, you know all about wanting to take good care of your furry family members and we are no exception. That's why when we made the big move to New Orleans from Amarillo, I drove my car with the kitties and Kevin drove the giant truck by himself.

Alice decided that the back of the car by the speakers was to be her spot the entire trip. It was not a big deal until she decided to get sick down the back of the seat. I guess our "little girl" gets carsick. Poor baby. (See Kevin driving the truck behind us?)

Another interesting thing they both started doing in the car was panting. Now I am used to seeing dogs pant. That's what doggies do. But to see the kitties pant was kind of frightening. I felt like we were in the African desert and there was about to be a stampede or something. Guess that's what we get for moving to the deep south. Heat and panting cats. Very odd.


Here is fluffy, pretty Oliver. He knows he is pretty and tells us this every day. He's particularly happy in this picture - it was Christmas and we had just given them their stocking full of toys. Like I said before, our cats are spoiled.

Alice was, for the most part, pretty chill on the trip. Other than panting and throwing up, she did awesome! Oliver, of course, was another story. We drove to Austin the first day of the trip and stayed with my brother Chris. By the time we had arrived in Austin, Oliver had managed to climb in and out of my lap repeatedly. He also thought it was great fun to try and get into my floorboard and under my feet. It might not have been that big of a deal, except I drive a stick shift and having a cat under your feet while you are trying to shift in rush hour traffic is simply dangerous.

This upset our little prince immensely and he retaliated by smearing poop on me. Gotta love that Oliver! By the time we showed up at Chris's house, I was covered in cat hair and smelled like poop. Yuck!

I decided that we should keep Oliver in the pet carrier for the second day of the trip. But I knew that he would freak out even worse if he realized he was stuck in a cage all day. Therefore, we gave him a tiny, tiny bit of Benadryl before we put him in the carrier. Except when we did that, he started oozing pink foam out of his mouth and was quite angry. I cleaned him up with a wash cloth and helped Kevin wrestle him into his carrier. I figured he really didn't ingest enough of the medicine to really affect him because he was screaming his head off for the first 15 minutes of the trip out of Austin.

Then, it was silent. And he was KNOCKED OUT! I then started having major remorse for doing something so evil to my cat child. I kept on calling his name and trying to wake him up and would occasionally get a weak "arrggg" out of him. I got used to this and was ok with the situation until I started smelling cat pee. (And let me just say, I will take cat poop over cat pee any day.) We stopped at a gas station and I let him out of the carrier to stretch his paws and maybe go to the bathroom (they had a litter box in the back seat), except when he came out of the carrier, he was covered in pee. YUCK. GROSS. GAG!

Luckily, he was still pretty drugged up and didn't fight me going back into the carrier (we cleaned it out first, of course!). We still had about 5 1/2 hours left in our trip and I was just hoping that the medicine would keep him quiet - this cat has some lungs on him - until we could get to our hotel in NOLA.

However, about 2 hours later he woke up. And boy was he angry! I didn't know how I was going to take 3 1/2 more hours of a screaming, smelly cat. So Kev and I stopped at a truck stop and bought liquid Children's Benadryl. And the foaming and the upset started all over again. But it knocked him out again and we were good for the rest of the trip.

Except, he smelled like pee. And he knew it and we knew it and we had to do something about it. So, Oliver got his first people bath since he was a kitten.


And all was right with the world once again.

Left Out

I'm sitting in my kitchen, bored, trying not to think about things too much. Kevin is at work, as he should be (since he seems to be the only one around here that has found a job), and I am at home, thinking about how I feel like a big loser and how this whole adventure might have been a mistake. Yet, I cannot fathom being back in Amarillo. I need to keep my chin up, I know. But, I just found out that all of my close fellow job seekers have officially found jobs (and I would like to say how truly happy I am for them) but my feelings are hurt because it seems they didn't want to share this information with me because I'm still looking. Am I not a strong enough person to handle another person's good fortune? Did I not just walk away from a perfectly fabulous job to pursue a more challenging life? I would say that qualifies me as a pretty tough cookie.

When did I get to a point where my own friends and family don't want to talk to me anymore? Am I THAT bitter? Have I turned that bitter and negative that I'm horrible to talk to and be around? At least I still have my husband. And my kitties. And the Tyra Banks show. (There is awesome free television around here, folks! I have learned alot from my friend Tyra...)

But, I digress. It isn't right to put that amount of negative energy out into the world. I am a true believer that kharma is a bitch and she can be pretty fierce when you surround yourself with negativity and and self pity. You (meaning I) must remain positive to attract positiveness in your (meaning my) life. So, to my near and dears' who have completed their search, congratulations! You are all fabulous! I commend your efforts and knew deep down in my monkey heart that you all would have ultimate success. Now, if the great Universe would only answer my prayers and send one my way. Keep praying, folks! It will happen. Otherwise, I might just end up on the street, sans a husband. Just kidding, darling...I know you would kick Oliver out before you would send me packing! ;)

You may lose the small ones but win the big ones...

We are finally settled. When we lost the house, we ended up renting a walk-up apartment in Uptown NOLA. I love it. It's part of a huge house that used to be a double (like a duplex) and then has a "camel back" built on top. We live in the camel part of one side of the house. Or maybe the house is the camel and we live in one side of his hump. (I will take pictures of the outside soon so you can have a better visual.) It's small but definitely enough space for Kevin, the kitties, and me.

This is what I mean when I say walk-up:


And then there are more stairs:


And then you are in the apartment. In case you are wondering, we put curtains at the top of the stairs to try and keep the air conditioning inside the apartment and not down in the stairwell - so far, it seems to be helping!


To the right is the kitchen:


To the left is the bedroom/living room:

See - this is the bedroom and is on the left side of the window.

And this is the start of the living room on the right side of the window:


And finally, here is a picture of the basil, chives, and parsley that I am trying to grow from seeds. So far, so good.


I am happy and grateful to have a home and for Kevin to be working at such a great hospital. I've got something in the works so everyone please send good vibes and I'll keep you posted on what that something is soon.

Tomorrow, I'll post the best, most fabulous thing about our apartment. It is really, really fabulous!