Sorry I've been MIA. Last Thursday my daughter and I flew to Baton Rouge to be with my mother for five days. It was my usual quarterly trip to take her to the doctor and run errands that she hates asking anyone else to do. While there, my daughter somehow injured her back. I brought her to an urgent care place where they took x-rays and dispensed muscle relaxers, which didn't really do that much. She is still suffering, so I hope my baby girl is well soon! Below is a short pictorial of our time there.
Down the street from my mother we discovered this tree that we thought had fake flowers attached to it. They weren't fake. It took some serious investigation on Google, but it turns out that it's a Jane Magnolia. Fell in love.
The way the light was hitting these azaleas was incredible. I really didn't do it justice.
This was a drink I had at The Chimes restaurant called a Tigertini. All I remember was that it had vodka and pomegranate liqueur with gold salt lining the rim. (Taken with my iPhone)
This was my poor baby on the 2nd day. She was such a trouper, hardly complaining and trying to keep my mother from worrying. My mother is an expert worrier.
This was a really creepy cemetery off Old Hammond Hwy. and Airline Hwy. The graves were all askew as though they had been through an earthquake. I'm wondering if either Katrina or Gustav might have been responsible.
Although the graveyard appeared to be abandoned, this bright bouquet of balloons looked as though they had just been placed there. Again, creepy.
Some of the vaults were broken, exposing the coffins underneath. Creepy times 12!
LSU Lakes...I've always loved this place. Beautiful homes surround the area while joggers and bikers pass energetically by. We had been looking for moss covered trees this trip and they were everywhere in abundance.
Drove to meet my dad in Hammond, LA at Don's Seafood Restaurant the day before we left. It was kind of an awkward visit, but from this picture you wouldn't know it.
After lunch with my dad we drove to my Aunt's in Killian, LA where they have a condo on the Tickfaw River. This is their dog Smoke. Supposedly he is named after a Nascar driver. :/
Convinced my mother on the last day to pose for a picture with my daughter. She fought me hard until I said, "Autumn took a picture with my dad - don't you want to have one too?" That's all it took.
My mother can be a little competitive - just watch her bowl.
During a visit back home a few years ago, my uncle took me and my daughter to his little get-away cabin in Sunshine, LA. He built the structure all by himself, erecting it in the same place where the old barn used to be on my grandparents' property. Inside the sparsely furnished room was my grandparents' kitchen table with the bright yellow top and wide chrome sides, a guitar, my grandmother's collection of plates from different vacations, and a boom box. Pulling the boom box closer, he asked if we had ever heard Amazing Grace in french. We answered no, that we'd love to hear it. And that's how I discovered and fell in love with La Grâce du Ciel by Les Amies Louisianaises. Today I found it on youtube. The video accompanying the music made me completely and utterly homesick.
La Grâce du Ciel est descendue
Me sauver de l’enfer.
J’étais perdue, je suis retrouvée,
Aveugle, et je vois clair.
Le Bon Dieu m’a ouvert le ciel.
Son Fils est mort pour moi.
C’est grâce à Jésus, mon sauveur,
Que j’ai reçu la foi.
Quand j’aurai chanté dix mille ans
Dans Sa chorale des Anges,
Je n’aurai fait que commencer
À chanter Ses louanges.
De tous les dangers de la vie,
La grâce est mon abri.
C’est cette même grâce qui m’amènera
Aux portes du paradis.
TRANSLATION:
La Grâce du Ciel
Les Amies Louisianaises
(Amazing Grace) (Traditional, French words by D. Marcantel)
Musique Acadienne Pub. Co. BMI and Pocahontas Music BMI
Grace from heaven came down
And saved me from hell
I was lost, I am found
Blind, and I see clearly
God opened heaven for me
His Son died for me
It is thanks to Jesus, my Savior
That I received faith
When I will have sung ten thousand years
In His choir of angels
I will only have begun
To sing his praises
From all the dangers of life
Grace is my shelter
It is this same grace which will lead me
To the gates of paradise.
I recently realized that my whole life has been dictated by irrational fears. These fears keep me from living a happy, healthy existence. Mostly, I fear revealing my feelings.
There have been so many occasions where I want to tell my children how precious they are to me, but before I can even begin to form the words I am overcome with emotion, unable to say anything. We say "I love you" in phone calls and text messages, but that's different. The other day I wanted to tell my husband how much I love him and how special he is to me. I couldn't do it. My brain actually had the nerve to retort, "No. The minute you divulge this, he will be taken tragically away from you."
Can I get any more irrational?
Of course it didn't help that my grandmother was afraid of just about everything, passing those fears down to her children and grandchildren. Very clannish, she was suspicious of people outside of our close family circle. She was afraid of large bodies of water, germs, thunderstorms, God, and much more.
"Cher, don't go past that curve on the levee, 'cause the green boogie man lives back there. He eats chirren."
I imagined an ugly monster covered in algae waiting for a misstep so he could devour me. I would inch ever so close to see if I could get a glimpse of him. The snap of a twig would shoot me out of there like a cannon. I'd hurtle down the levee, rolling over cow manure to escape the horrible boogie man. I'd have stickers all over me and spend the rest of the afternoon picking them out of my skin and clothes. But hey, at least I escaped the boogie man.
"Cud'n Angelle had a niece that didn't tell anyone she got cut on a barbed wire fence. It got infected and a few days later she died of blood poisoning."
My grandparents had barbed wire all over their property. It was hard for me to look at that barbed wire and have any good feelings about it. After she told me that, every time I looked at the barbed wire I thought about that poor girl who died for no good reason. And I didn't want that to happen to me. Looking back, I'm sure there was no girl who died of blood poisoning. Maw-Maw simply wanted to instill fear. That was her way of controlling us.
I think this is why I'm so skeptical. Of everything. It started with Maw-Maw's manipulations and ended with finding out Santa wasn't real. As a child I thought adults were these wise creatures who knew the secrets of the universe. Why would they purposely lie?
They say awareness is the first step to change. I hope after 40+ years of fearfulness I can let go and be happy. I'm really going to try.
Were you envisioning a naughty post? Shame on you. ;-p
I and the rest of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex woke up this morning to this:
So far we've had 7.9" of snowfall in a 24-hour period, which breaks the old record of 7.8" on Jan. 15, 1964 and Jan. 14, 1917. We're on track to get another 2" overnight.
I know how much people in the Northeast hate snow, but we rarely see it here, so forgive me for enjoying it. It's so beautiful as it falls, blanketing everything in pure white. There's something very peaceful and soul-soothing about it. Of course, it's very easy to romanticize when shoveling is not part of the picture.
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This was a drink I had at The Chimes restaurant called a Tigertini. All I remember was that it had vodka and pomegranate liqueur with gold salt lining the rim. (Taken with my iPhone).jpg)
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