 Godspeed, Gaghan Family! |
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I was feeling kind of sick last Tuesday so I was lying in bed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt with one cat on my feet and one purring behind my head while watching The Amazing Race and just hoping against hope that the Gaghan family would not get Philiminated. But they did. And I've now decided that they're among my favorite people ever to do this race. When they were in the car driving to the pit stop, you could tell that the parents knew what was coming, and in pipes one of those kids, saying that winners never quit and quitters never win. And the dad said, "And what are we?" And the mom said, "Winners." But you could see it all over her face that she was fighting back tears and trying not to break down. And she didn't! And neither did those awesome kids. Carissa's face falling and seeing her bite her lip as she tried to hold in the tears at the pit stop -- God. My tears were not held back at all and I was openly crying my face off. And Billy said that they ran it the best they could and that they would go out with their heads held high. And Phil focused on the kids and said dreamily kind and understanding things, as he usually does when the team deserves that, and the dad reached over and kissed the mom and said first how proud he was of her and then how proud he was of the kids and my GOD, those kids are just dynamite kids. The way that Carissa charged across that bridge (a bridge that would have left me shivering in terror), actually swinging it to make it more wobbly -- that is just so trademark Carissa and the way she seemed to approach the whole experience of the race. This has not been a very good season overall -- I don't like the family concept because we never get a strong feel for who these people are, and so much of the greatness of the show is based on the partnership -- not the group -- dynamic, and I think the legs are horribly planned for the most part and the tasks pretty lame -- but it was just a delight, week after week, to get to see this little family rock it out to the best of their ability while always, always having each other's backs. It was just a joy.
So, another weekend in the city. On Friday night, we tried to eat at Irene's, but it was crowded and they stopped seating right when we got there. That was kind of sad, but we soldiered on and ended up at Muriel's, which was mighty tasty indeed if you like redfish and barbeque shrimp and bread pudding in rum sauce, which I do. On Saturday, we headed to City Park to volunteer with the clean-up. Notwithstanding the fact that my hamstrings are still so aflame that I can hardly move my legs, it was a good way to spend part of the day. We raked and raked and bagged and bagged and ate shrimp gumbo and jambalaya provided by Ralph's and raked and bagged some more. There was a good crowd of people out there working, and it was nice to feel like we were making a difference even though it might have been just a small one. I love City Park. Then it was time to spend some money, so we headed to a street party on Magazine. Lots of shops are now open again, like my favorite card/stationery/journal/pens store, and there was a jazz band playing on the sidewalk and stores were flying balloons in celebration and some were serving snacks and drinks. Then we checked out Maple Street Book Shop, where I saw for the first time in my life another book written by M.A. Harper, who wrote For the Love of Robert E. Lee, which I loved with my entire heart when I was in high school (even though I never got all that into the Robert E. Lee parts) because it pretty much changed the entire way I thought of myself as a Southern female teenager who constantly thought, "Who in the hell are these people and where am I and who am I?" For years, I looked for other books by her, but I never found one, so I guess I gave up. But there one was, autographed and everything! I might have jumped up and down a little bit. See, here's the thing. There's just no ignoring that the areas affected by Katrina and Rita have been rightly fucked backwards, forwards, and sideways. When I sit here and think of all of the fun things I've done in New Orleans lately, it's not because I'm blithely ignoring all of the catastrophic horror that looms in this state like a big mean cloud daily taking a big poop on every aspect of life here. It's just that if I don't focus on little good things, like days in the park and really good meals and shopping, it's just too heinous to even deal with. Clearly, that's easy for me to say as someone who doesn't live in a hard-hit area and I'm not trying to act like things here are rough like they are in those places. Clearly, they are not. But it's impossible not to be touched by the destruction and not to feel wholly daunted and to despair when thinking about the hard road ahead for this state. It's not pretty, and it's not going to be fixed overnight. I can't fix the whole mess, though, so I can just do things like buy food and books and gifts in restaurants and stores that are employing people who want to be in their city and that are trying to stay open. Like I was recently telling Jette, I feel like all I can do, even when it feels kind of unnatural or stupid or wrong, is balls-out embrace everything I can that has survived and that is trying to keep on surviving. I guess that's all anyone can do right now. I guess it's like any kind of heartbreak in a way. It's not like things are normal or that anyone would be stupid enough to pretend like they are. But you still have to get up and get dressed every day and go to work and sometimes do fun things even when you can't fathom how there is any fun left in the world to be had. That's kind of what New Orleans is doing right now, I think. It's going out for coffee at its favorite coffee shop even when it's served on the sidewalk because the inside is gutted and figuring out ways to take hot showers with bizarre camping propane contraptions and just soldiering the fuck on in the hope that every day it's going to get a little bit easier and that even though it will take days adding up into weeks adding up into months adding up into years for what is dead or dying to be resurrected and rebuilt -- it will happen. You never thought you'd get over that person who broke your heart, did you? But you did. Or you're doing it right now with big spoonfuls of ice cream and boxes of kleenex and Jon Stewart and buying cute new sweaters for the winter. Those bitches Katrina and Rita surely broke our hearts, but we'll get over them. There are some brave people around here fighting with everything they have to get over them every damn day. And if I sound like an emotional retard who's talking out of her ass, I don't even care.
And on a lighter note, because evidently I have not in my lifetime pissed away enough hours on WB dramas, I have discovered Related. And I pretty much love it. So … yeah.
About this time in ...
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