Mardi Gras 2016

It's that time of year again, y'all. Mardi Gras! Fat Tuesday is tomorrow, a final day of celebratory excess before the Lenten season commences with Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras became a holiday in Europe in 1582 but didn't arrive in North American until the late 17th century. It became an official holiday in Louisiana in 1875.

My New Orleans friends and family have been enjoying days of parades, bead throwing, mask wearing, and king cake eating. I definitely want to take the kids down one year to spend Mardi Gras with cousins. They would love it.

Here, I've hung purple, green, and gold bunting from our front porch, and have gotten together a large basket of beads and made two king cakes for the boys' classes; I'll bring them in tomorrow, give a brief presentation about the holiday, and hope they enjoy the cake.

King cake has never been a favorite dessert of mine, but I love making them each and every year. I love the smell of yeast and flour, butter, sugar, and cinnamon. I love to watch the dough rise, to roll the cinnamon-sugared rectangles into smooth logs, to join the ends and seal the rings. This year I used Southern Living's traditional king cake recipe.

all puffed up and ready for the oven

This year, I let the kids decorate; naturally, they have a heavier hand with the colored sugar than I do, but really, the cakes look all the better for that.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Diary of a move, 6: A sick child in the mix, aka How Odd Squad makes a day go by, and Why emojis and hashtags are awesome

Alright y'all. Last night, I went to the State of the School being hosted by the head of school and the Parents Association. It constituted the social highlight of my past two weeks if you don't count my visit to the 2nd District police station or the meeting with various folks associated with readying my home for the wilds of the DC market. 

I came home so happy to watch Downton with T and then dive into bed. The snow days and packing and sick Ol and a shocking trip to the gym had conspired to make me seriously exhausted, and eager beaver is a vast understatement when considering just how to describe my mindset about bedtime last night.

Surely you know where this is headed. Naturally it involves a profound lack sleep, holding my darling boy as he booted responsibly into the toilet, cuddling his feverish-with-chills body until he was able to sleep, Percy barking and then peeing, Nutmeg mewing and then puking, and finally, finding an insane looking Jack pretending to do math at the kitchen table at 5:55am.

Do not even think I believed his protestations, y'all. I am certain he was not actually attempting to do his homework but rather planning to collect his daily gold ration in Clash of Clans or whatever. #momsalwaysknow

Ol stayed home again today, and I admit that I let him watch approximately nine hours of Odd Squad. His brains are probably oozing from his ears right now as he sleeps. I'm likely to find a brain-crusted pillow tomorrow morning (or, who am I kidding, later tonight when that bitchy fever wakes him) because I just decided to let.it.go. 

My little bug felt like such crap today, and I really did need to paint the powder room and clean the yard so there you have it. He did learn to count by 3s. #winning #momofyear

I admit to being wholly gaga right now. The room is spinning and I've only had one, much-deserved bourbon. I'm telling y'all, February. #suckmonth

As an aside, can we talk about how much I love hashtags and emojis? It's an emphatic love, a wildly enthusiastic, unadulterated joy love. I adore words and long, flowing sentences, and gorgeous language and all that jazz. But sometimes -think cuss words versus their vanilla kin- you just need/want to make.the.point.

Like, if we were to have another snow day tomorrow, I would definitely text my friend, Annie, the revolver or bomb emoji. No words needed. The picture says everything AND makes you laugh.

If my friend, Anne, and I are gossiping about something, we will text each other a simple train emoji (or, let's be honest, about 90 train emojis, including all varieties of them), to symbolize that we are on the bullet train to hell.

If my friend, Jennie, reminds me of the one story that both nearly got us in trouble AND to this day makes us laugh until we cry, we text the tears-down-the-laughing-face emoji. 

And so forth and so on. I mean, just today with my girlfriend, Diara, I used two separate horse emojis and a heart. You cannot say what we meant in three words. Nor should you have to.

I LOVE the freaking emojis, though don't get me started on why there is not a pie emoji. WTF?!

If you cannot tell, I am beyond punchy. I am so damn tired I don't know my name. I best go get the salmon out of the oven and stop eating all the allspice- and cinnamon-roasted butternut squash before T gets home. 

Diary of a snow, 1 (hopefully only)

**This got published on HuffPo Comedy!!
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Well, my favorite thing in the world has happened. An epic snow. Truly, I can't imagine anything I'd rather experience.

I love being housebound for days. Playing every game in the house with children who alternate manically between whining and laughing is dreamy. I adore shoveling one pile into another pile right next to the original one like some sort of deranged Sisyphean loon. There are never too many puzzles to complete, and your hips will not fix forever into seated position as you try to conquer your collection.

I can't think of anything I'd rather do than run out of lemons, milk, kindling and sanity- all before 3pm when it is entirely too early to imbibe and all stores are closed and your car is snowed in anyway, so who cares and what would he/she do about it anyway?? #amiright?

It is tremendous to watch your lovingly tended plants be crushed under banks of white death. It feels good to be on live-text with your girlfriends as they implode. It is even more fun to pay for both school and after-school activities and then watch your kids enjoy 10% of all that. My sides are aching I'm laughing so hard. Beyond question, this is prime living. 

"I'm alive!"

Truly, winter is idyllic. Especially in cities that, each year, appear to experience winter as if they've just discovered something new and potentially dangerous.

• "Can I touch it?"
• "How do I do this thing called snow?"
• "What is driving and functioning in temperatures of 20 degrees? Is life possible?"

Clearly I am being sarcastic. Well, except for the lemons. I despise being without lemons because really, it's like the sun might as well have burned out. 

Being snowed in is like a detox of sorts.

The first 48 hours are miserable. I mean, you NEED a fix. It's horrid. And then you accept that you can't make hot chocolate because listen, there is no more milk. And if your kids go across the street to their snow fort and you cease checking on them because you're enraptured with your New Orleans puzzle? Well, they're fine. 

You start to realize just how great all that senseless shoveling is for your physique, and so you double-time it out there. Because you can. Plus, your cat fancies himself a snow leopard and traverses with spy-like glee the extensive pathways you've dug out for his wimpy canine friend's bathroom needs. And you've eaten chili for three days straight and could use some alone time in the fresh, open air, if you get my drift.

That chicken in the freezer? Girl, it was time to roast that bird anyway. Get busy. It's #notchili. And if you are also supposed to be packing? Get a garbage can and watch out world, because you am gonna tear through this joint like it's your job. Nothing is safe. 

Soon enough, you're gonna find some more lemons and with them the sun, and those goddamn white banks out there are gonna melt. And it's back to school, back to everything. Onward ho!