 Partners in a Mystery |
|
Here's just some stuff I've done over the past few weeks. We ate at Restaurant August. We started (and I'm copying this from the online menu because otherwise I'd never be able to describe all of its fabulousness) with organic greens with 30-year-old sherry vinegar, pumpkinseed brittle, and Point Reyes blue cheese and barbequed shrimp with bruschetta. For our entrees, I had almond-roasted gulf sheepshead (alert! Not actually a sheep's head) with a Meyer lemon and crabmeat salad and he had a cast-iron pan seared filet of prime beef with asparagus, marrow-stuffed morels, and oxtail jus. I'm not sure what that last thing is, and I don't plan to find out. We drank sazeracs. It doesn't take too many sips of a sazerac to make you a little tipsy, I'll tell you what. During the meal, approximately ten million birds decided it would be a swell idea to evacuate the entire contents of their stomachs onto my car. Pretty! The next morning, I drove home early and went through the car wash twice in the attempt to remove some of the avian excrement, largely to no avail. I decided to console myself by getting a smoothie for breakfast at the coffee shop, and when I got back in the car to rush to work, it wouldn't start. I called my dad and brothers, none of whom answered, so my saint of a mother headed over and we stood there with our hoods popped and jumper cables in hand, paralyzed as to what to do next. Eventually she went inside and solicited the aid of a foxy older gentleman, who was more than happy to oblige. I drove my car to the repair shop and had a flashback to the time my girlfriend poured coke all over my battery in the work parking lot. Damn car batteries! They hate me. The next night, I knew I needed some Thai food, so we decided to try a different place than my usual haunt. I'm here to tell you that there's no reason why a Thai restaurant needs to turn into a nightclub at 10:00. We were peacefully slurping on our Pad Thai noodles and Tom Kar Gai when all of a sudden there was bumping disco music and moments later the onset of drunken karaoke. No. We got the remainder of our food to go and fled as quickly as possible. No October weekend would be complete without attending the obligatory day game in the football stadium complete with the obligatory raspberry margarita and snacks such as very expensive bottled water and crawfish pies. Let's see … last Sunday was spent cleaning out my boyfriend's house. It was not too bad save for the piece of cheese left in the refrigerator for 7 weeks. Whoops. I'm now in the process of trying to wash a trunk full of moldy clothes. Some of them are coming clean, but the smell seems to be hanging on with a ferociousness that even Clorox cannot faze. I've washed most of them repeatedly and have been spreading them out on my patio table to sit in the sun every afternoon. Maybe the sun can suck out the grossness. I hope so. Much of last week was spent writing two midterm essays for my class, and I've got to tell you, they were kind of a bitch. I decided to go as Holly Golightly to the Halloween party even though the character is kind of an idiot. Shelley sent me her gloves, sunglasses, cigarette holder, and tiara in the mail, and I handled the black dress, black FMPs, and fake pearl necklace. Sadly, the tiara is not visible in this picture.  Before the party, we ate at Martinique Bistro … a salad with pistachio-encrusted goat cheese, tomato basil soup, pork tenderloins, and shrimp in black beans and papaya chunks. And of course a sazerac and some pinot noir. And the party was a lot of fun. And my date was his usual smashing self. It was a good weekend to be in New Orleans. The weather was amazing. We ate lunch at Frank's on Decatur and went to a laundromat in the Quarter because you can't dry clothes in a gas dryer when you ain't got no gas. We played Scrabble and each won a game. We liberated a big wooden entertainment center from a curb with the homeowner's permission. We saw a very, very funny comedy show, where we ate some crawfish beignets, which frankly there are just not enough of in this life. I blubbered when the gray kitty left, but I know she was ready to go home. I miss her, and I think my own cats do, too, even though they would never admit it. I couldn't help but get embarrassingly weepy when telling her goodbye even though I'll see her again soon. You can't share a room with someone for two months and not break down a little bit when she leaves. I keep expecting to see her sneaking out from under the bed to get a Pounce treat, but she's not there. The night before she left, she actually slept with me in the bed the entire night, which was a first. I LOVE YOU, GRAY KITTY WHO ONCE HATED ME BUT NOW LOVES ME.
I spent some time driving around the city this weekend, and I sort of wish I hadn't. I was relieved that my sister's old place seemed to be doing pretty well even though much of her street fared much worse. It was strange to see the clusters of refrigerators littering Claiborne's neutral ground. I regret driving to my aunt's school because it was just like something out of a nightmare. Everything was dead and dirty and brown. It was like all that is left is the ghosts of houses and not homes themselves. The neutral ground on Pontchartrain Boulevard has been turned into a dump -- gargantuan piles of debris that must be two stories high. How can something like that exist in real life? I don't know. We drove out to another horribly damaged part of town and went to a mass unlike any I've ever attended … Vietnamese chanting and hymns alongside a clapping gospel choir and people just glad to be home in a place where there is still no electricity or water or sewerage. We ate egg rolls after the service, and I'm so glad we went. And not just because the egg rolls were really good. It's just kind of beautiful to see these people who actually believe that they will be able to go back home and that their community will come back to life. The odds are just incredibly stacked against them, it seems, but they believe. Or at least they want to and claim to, and maybe that's half the battle. 
© Copyright 2005 elb |
|
