Happy Mardi Gras!
No, really. Happy. Sort of.
At the very least, I’m starting to remember what happy feels like. Kind of like getting a whiff of a licorice scratch-and-sniff sticker and thinking, “Huh, it’s been a while since I last had a stick of black licorice, but I can kind of remember what it tastes like.”
Sometimes I think it’s the weather. That things take a slightly balmy turn this time of year. And Mardi Gras is nice—even though, I’ve always protested that I’m really not a Mardi Gras kind of girl. But this year, it’s clearly a different sort of thing entirely.
But really, it’s just a simple matter of being so busy I hardly have time to admit the gloom into my life any more. I’m too busy to spend much time feeling crappy. That and I finally, blessedly, have the overwhelming weight of being in panic mode over my finances lifted off my shoulders. (Hence, the busy).
I am now an official employee of the University of New Orleans Athletic Department. I am, in short, a brand-spanking-new Privateer. (I love the sound of that. Next week, I’m raiding the UNO bookstore and buying a bunch of Privateer paraphernalia.) ARGH!
Ah yes, I know what you’re thinking. Stop it. I
like sports. Really, I do.
I am an academic mentor for student-athletes. That means that I am given a caseload of around 20 kids who are struggling in college, and I have to mamma them. Meet with them once a week or so, keep track of their grades, review their notes with them, that sort of thing. I start next week. And while, at first, I was highly skeptical of whether or not I wanted the job—I remember teaching the football players at Hannan; the tough cases were way less than fun— then I found out what they were paying me, and then I met my boss Hope, and now, well, woo-hoo! I’m a Privateer.
Grad school has been (almost) exactly what I’d hoped it would be. I have one totally bogus on-line class (it’s a requirement for the degree). Fiction Workshop and Non-Fiction workshop. My fiction class has been incredible. Eight really bright, talented writers. The teacher is the head of the MFA program, and she’s a pleasant surprise. I’m less impressed with my NF workshop. I am not a fan of the memoir, and there’s something really blechy about a 23 year old writing a book about his/her life. I mean sure, it can be done, and it can be done well. But at 23, I knew bupkis about life. Hell, at 32, I still know bupkis—just more of it. But I’ve studied with the teacher before, and he just tickles me.
I did, however, forget how much work grad school is. Knocked me on my keister at first. And of course as a writing student, it’s all writing. Tons of it. Every day.
Word seems to have gotten out that I had a nasty run in with an alleged brown recluse spider. And yes, the rumors are true. The story, in short:
Several Fridays ago, I was working with Hal, getting his home ready to move back in. I started sneezing and getting a sore throat, so I took a break, went to Walgreens, and picked up some Cold-Eze. Woke up very early on Saturday morning with a full-blown cold—runny nose, sore throat, fever, chills, aches, the works—AND two enormous welts, one on each forearm. I took some Comtrex, drank some water, itched the welts a bit, and went back to sleep. When I awoke, the welt on my right arm had spread an angry red and the welt on my left arm had blossomed into a giant blister—around the diameter of a quarter and the height of a stack of maybe $1.25 worth of quarters. I spent days in misery. Even my toes hurt. For two weeks, every time I ate my stomach clenched up in terrible cramps. I went to the doctor and she (who is very sweet) treated me like a sideshow attraction. She thought it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen. To be honest, even though it hurt, and it’s still gross and still healing, it is pretty cool. Like being bit by an alligator or something. The upshot is, I will probably always have a scar to remember the incident by. And a cool story. And if you ever have a cold and a spider bite at the same time, you should go see a doctor and not assume that the chills, the aches, and the fever are due to the cold and not the spider bite. I’m sure I would have felt much better if I’d gotten medication sooner.
The job search has been interesting. I’ve had phone interviews with two schools in Providence, and I am in the process of planning a trip up there to meet with the schools in person. Interestingly, both of the schools with whom I’ve had this second phase of contact have been schools that I’ve sent “cold call” resumes to—not schools referred to me by the independent school search firm. It is kind of depressing to know that I have sent referral letters to more than 25 schools and haven’t heard a peep back from any of them.
Jas has been out of town a bunch lately, and he’s out of town now. Last week he was hob-knobbing with celebrities in NYC; this week he’s in San Jose. (How sad is this? We had to Google San Jose because neither of us had any idea just where in California it was going!). He’ll be back on Monday. My cousin Sarah and her husband Greg are heading to NOLA for Mardi Gras. It will be my first time having out-of-towners around during MG, although they aren’t bunking with us. I can’t think of a better MG to play host.
On the local political front, I’ve lost track of how many people have decided to run for mayor. I’ll miss Brother Ray when he’s gone. A gigantic grassroots push for a consolidated levee board passed in legislature as an amended bill that creates two boards (instead of more than a dozen local boards)—one for the East Bank of the Mississippi and one for the West Bank. Still a big honking improvement. Unfortunately many of the other bills that would have shown the world that we have our act together did not pass.
My latest pet peeve is listening to/reading national news. We’ve become a blip on the radar screen. It is monumentally sad to know that “Katrina fatigue” is a bigger news story these days than Katrina outrage. I know that 90% of you who read this blog are out of towners, so just in case you’ve been scratching your head wondering how we’re doing in NOLA, let me just clear things up and tell you: THINGS DOWN HERE ARE STILL TERRIBLE.
I’m honestly really concerned about my cousin Sarah visiting. She went to Tulane and loves New Orleans. I have a feeling it’s going to be really sad for her. And this will be my first time seeing Post-K NOLA through the eyes of a woman who hasn’t seen it yet. (I should probably drop her a note and give her a little heads up about that).
The state of things is hammered home to me every time I go out to UNO. UNO, located right off Lake Ponchartrain, has only barely recovered. Many of the buildings still don’t have phone service. Only one cafeteria is open. The room where I had my first NF class had a tarp-covered ceiling. We moved to another room, and that one had plastic covering all the missing windows and no flooring. There are two ways to get to UNO from where I live, and both are through vast, uninhabited, uninhabitable wastelands. It’s lousy and it hurts my heart.
And finally, I went to my first Uptown Mardi Gras parades this afternoon. I drove because it was cold and misty and parked a few blocks away from my “spot.” (Everyone in New Orleans has a Mardi Gras spot. Mine is on Napoleon & Magazine.) When I arrived at the spot, I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. There were the floats, the small marching band was playing and waving their flags… but there were maybe no more than twenty people in my spot. And my spot is a good spot. Usually we’re at least four or five people deep. I put my blinders on and barreled ahead, toward St. Charles Avenue. The whole way, all I could think was: “If this is what it’s going to be like, this is going to be much more sad than it is happy or fun.” I was really, really shattered by it, choking down tears, totally ignoring the beads sailing over my head.
By the time I got to Prytania & Magazine, the crowd had thickened to almost its normal size. And I planted myself there and had a good time. But the four parades were done in an hour. Only two or three marching bands per parade. And I still can’t make up my mind whether it made me happy to be there or sad to see our diminished numbers. Next weekend will be different, I’m sure. There will be at least some tourists in town. But I’m just not sure that this Mardi Gras is going to be the jubilant catharsis that I thought it would be.
