How to Break up a Cat Fight

Mom's hand.

Actually this post is more or less how not to break up a cat fight so that in the future you know how to break one up.  See that hand?  That is an example of what happens when you incorrectly break up a cat fight.  Okay, I have to admit that the hand is that of my mother and she got that petting her darling Abby, Evil Queen of the Underworld, but my hand looks about halfway to this right now.  I took a pic and then couldn't find the thingie  that allows me to load it onto the computer.  I have a fever, (99.6), and whacked my hand on the drawer looking for the camera thingie which sent my stomach into a spiral and left me whimpering. I gave up on hunting up the thingie, as a result, you get Mom's hand and are asked to use your imagination.

I am a natural born drama queen so everyone takes my suffering with a grain of salt in my household.  When I came into the house, whining and drama full on, J took one look and asked, "Why would you stick your hand in the middle of a cat fight?"  Men can be so moronic at these times.  I'm not looking for common sense; I'm looking for the poor baby treatment.  I'm looking for the, "Oh you noble woman who spared Greyfur from an epic butt kicking," treatment.  Of course I didn't get it, then again I never do, but I keep trying.

So here I am on day two, (and three), using peroxide to open the wounds and drain the pus and two fingered typing and now...  Now, that I am all red, green and pouffy, now I am getting sympathy.  Well it's about time.  So all I can say on how to break up a cat fight:  Use a garden hose, or a broom, just not your hand.

Today is Election Day!! Hooray!!!

I have been drowning in political fliers.  I have been bombarded with calls.  I have had to interrupt my quiet evenings to answer my door only to find strangers who want to stand there and talk my evening away.  I hate the time that leads up to election day.

I'm not one of those who blows off her civic duty; I vote in every election.  Yes, every election, even the ones where you are just voting for dog catcher.  I make the effort to actually know what and who I'm voting for.  So fliers, phone calls, and interrupting my evening aren't going to help.  I've already done my research.  If I want to talk to you, I'll call you, knock on your door or send you a letter.

So, today will be the end of the constant barrage of harassment, (I hope), and I'm going to celebrate with a nice evening of nothing going on and a beer.

Ranting and One Pair of New Shoes

I figure I'd get the positive stuff out of the way before I lose y'all on the rant.  They are Nurture shoes, style Cedar in nutty, but I call them my Mexican hippy shoes.  They are awesome with jeans and my maxi dress. 

Now for the Rant:

Everyone hates it when they are sitting on the highway in bumper to bumper traffic while work crews block off three out of four lanes.  Imagine that road crew tearing up your entire neighborhood.  That's how I've been living since June and it's old.  It's real old.

They have jackhammered the entire street on my side, dug down about five feet and left us having to walk half a block down in order to find a spot we can use to cross the street and then walk down another half a block to one of those houses where the neighbors gave up on Katrina recovery and left for greener pastures, or in this case a place with streets.

Yeah I know they said it would take 10 years to put this place near where it was before Katrina.  I understand the streets need to be redone before that grant or whatever runs out, but geez did you people in the Government Building have to wait until the last minute and have to do everything at once?  Didn't you realize that a fire truck isn't going to make it around a one lane corner and a canal?  I guess we could call the neighbors together to carry the fat heart attack prone guy around the corner to the ambulance.  D. down the street said we all need to pray and carry mo-jo bags in order to prevent fire.  I said we all just need to get extra long hoses so that we can reach each others' houses.

Yay they filled in the hole!  See the pickup?  That's my car on the other side.  See the red outhouse?  Thats where I have to walk down to cross the street.  It's the same in the opposite direction,  except that the outhouse is green down there.

Yesterday I drove through the neighborhood where the parish president lives; not one orange cone; not one hole.  SIGH.  I guess it could be worse.  The construction guys have been really nice and friendly.  Lol they helped me unload my pumpkins today.  It was funny to watch a brigade of  3 hardhat construction worker warriors jumping into and out of the trenches armed with my pumpkins.  I'm just under 5' and over 40 so there was no jumping on my part.  Okay, better.  I can face another day of loud machines and walking a block to my car.

RIP Archbishop Philip Hannan

New Orleans is a Catholic city.  It doesn't matter if you are Baptist, Wiccan, Jewish, Buddhist, Atheist, etc., here you function as a Catholic.  Someone even wrote a book on it, The Joy of Y'at Catholicism.  Now don't go thinking that people here are somehow forced by majority rule to head over to mass or stand in assemblies having to make the sign of the cross or something; it's not like that at all.  It's more like the Jewish guy telling his boss that he has to get off work a little early on Holy Thursday to get to Dooky Chase's for the gumbo z'herbes, or the Wiccan who hits the St. Joseph's alter for that lucky fava bean, or the Atheist who only does seafood on Friday.  You don't do it because you have to, you do it because you want to.

So when it comes to the clergy in the Catholic church we can be a bit odd.  A good priest can be a rock star in this town.  Archbishop Hannan was a good priest.  He championed the poor, opened the archdiocese pools to children of all colors when the city refused to open their pools rather than desegregate, he helped AIDS patients back in the 80s when it wasn't popular, he welcomed the Vietnamese refugees when others didn't make them feel so welcome, he expanded charity services, promoted the opening of the Second Harvest Food Bank, and so many

We went downtown to the procession and then to the wake at the cathedral.

I Was Feeling a Little Halloween This Past Weekend...

I had the nieces over to decorate the yard for one of the two favorite holidays of mine and I just had to go whole hog with the day so here's our lunch...

Monster eyes, deviled eggs with olive pupils and carrots used for bloodshot effect.

Kid created plate #1

Mummy dogs,  just hot dogs and crescent roll dough.

Zombie fingers, just sugar cookie dough dyed green and almond fingernails.

Zombie slush, (coke) and dragon's blood, (Hawaiian punch)

Kid created plate #2