Ten.One Hundred & Fifty
1. I wake up to the sound of him blowing his nose. A little bit of light is creeping in around the edges of the window.
2. Willa Jean for breakfast. I have coffee and kombucha and shrimp and grits. He gets the huevos rancheros. Amy, our waitress, has a tattoo of South Carolina on her wrist.
3. The light in this space.
4. I am a little disappointed that I didn’t get to do all the things I’d planned to do. I had my own expectations and reality didn’t align. I feel behind.
5. We head to Lucullus on Chatres. I decide that I’ll come back when I no longer have children in the home. This is not a place for people who like to really live in their homes.
6. I love beauty but I love function. I don’t desire to have things in my home that I am afraid to touch.
7. I forgot that City Putt is closed on Mondays. So is Cast Nets. We take the little one to go get some beignets to cover the wound of my forgetting.
8. Roasted chicken and roasted carrots with sautéed spinach.
9. I’m glad that I like my parents.
10. I’m not really ready to go home.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Nine
1. No one to tend to this morning.
2. The first parking lot we try is along the river and there’s this big oak tree she has me take a picture of before we get back into the car to find a cheaper lot.
3. We find a bakery but I opt for toast and fruit while everyone else eats gooey cinnamon buns.
4. Ogden Mueseum of Art.
5. I could stay in art museums for hours. In another life I’d be a sketch artist or maybe a painter or maybe a ceramicist or maybe a curator or maybe a gallery owner.
6. The same woman who made us breakfast is now here and she makes a treat.
7, Grey Skies in London: Gin, rosemary, and violet.
8. La Petite Grocery.
9. Red Burgundy, crab beignets, ricotta dumplings with hen of the woods mushrooms, duck confit with chilled barley and spaghetti squash and spinach and golden raisins, butterscotch pudding, coffee.
10. Early to bed.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Eight
1. The way the the wind is blowing through the palm trees.
2. Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.
3. Two cousins, the husband, and I head toward the quarter so they can grab a few souvenirs from the market before they leave for their flight.
4. There’s a parade and the intersection of Frenchman Street and Elysian Fields so we take a detour down Esplanade. The colors and the shutters and the iron work on the balconies.
5. Satsuma trees still full of fruit.
6. Secret gardens.
7. Now only seven of us remain. It’s so quiet.
8. Steaks with red wine mushroom sauce. BV George Latour and Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.
9. When you want to fall onto your knees and light candles and run fingers along rosary beads.
10. It’s so quiet.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Seven
1. This morning is for making sure he makes the biscuits and gravy in time.
2. Auntie is ironing all of the kids’ clothes.
3. My brother and I grab our cameras and hunt for light and decide that it has to be in the front of the house, outside, not inside like we originally planned. And all of us need to be squished in between the two pillars.
4. It only takes us 30 minutes to get in all of the shots. Mom makes a comment about how even though she hates taking pictures, she’s beginning to understand the importance of them.
5. I am feeling everyone's emotions.
6. I think of what it might feel like to be a man whose years of life have now outnumbered both his father’s and his younger brother’s.
7. The way the water is reflecting the colors of the trees and the people and the sky.
8. All of the live oaks.
9. Squeezing all of the leftovers into smaller containers.
10. He finally pooped.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Six
1. I don’t make it downstairs until almost 8 and I feel the best I’ve felt all week.
2. Toasted crossiant and fruit and coffee.
3. We plan for the meals of the day: what will be cooked, when and what will go where, how long does is all need.
4. It’s so sunny today. We look up at the chandelier.
5. I sit on the semi-circle driveway, find a place in the sun, and begin to write. The neighbor from across the street honks his horn at me and says something I and understand but I’m sure it was Happy Thanksgiving.
6. The food is good and familiar and after we’re done we make my auntie a bitmoji.
7. Then the topic turns to genealogy, the history of the names and personalities of people from another place and time.
8. I wish I knew more.
9. We are a family of storytellers.
10. Happy Thanksgiving.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Five
1. Double batch of granola and a little bit of coffee before we head to the quarter.
2. Elysian Fields.
3. We get to Cafe Du Monde in just enough time to grab two tables together. The way the waitress says "baby." The powdered sugar everywhere; I shake some of it off the plate into my cafe au lait.
4. We walk into Jackson Square (I thought they were supposed to be taking down the Confederate statues?), pass some street artists and then the fortune tellers that sit in front of the Cabildo, before heading down Pirate's Alley.
5. Faulkner House books. I grab a collection of poetry by Tennessee Williams.
6. We split up for a bit so that I can head to the little postal shop on Bourbon Street where they sell the kind of postcards I like. I pick up a few that make me think of my dear ones who love this place just as much as I do.
7. 18 different personalities is a lot to hold. There are all of these overlapping triangles.
8. I am a milder version of her.
9. I am my mother's daughter. What is biological? What is learned? What is it that stays dormant for so many years? Why does it all come out at once sometimes?
10. The cold is still sticking around. I'm almost certain I've reached sinus infection stage. I make a cup of sleepy-time tea and head up to bed. I wanted to make coffee cake for tomorrow.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Four
1. My alarm goes off and I touch snooze. Then I touch snooze again before I remember that I’m supposed to go get the smoked turkey from Honey Baked Ham.
2. Pink scrubs. Shiny pearly white Cadillac. Her kids don’t like turkey so she does ham. She seems a little sad about this fact.
3. From three lanes to two lanes down to one. The return trip was almost twice as long as the departure.
4. Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food. - Hippocrates
5. They got the #10 can of tomato paste intead of tomato sauce. Let’s see if I can make it work.
6. Veedercrest.
7. Chateau St. Jean Bijou rosé.
8. Hugs by the kitchen sink. When you know but don’t know and can only offer your embrace.
9. Charades.
10. Sleepy time tea + NyQuil.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Three
1. No sleeping in.
2. The chandelier. The way the light is cutting through the glass.
3. 7 kids.
4. Tickle in my throat that won’t go away. But I have coffee and light. A few laps around the neighborhood to reset after making the meals.
5. Is it only Monday?
6. The things you learn when you decide to close your mouth and listen.
7. I want more books.
8. 17 people.
9. Bacchanal. All of these 20- and 30-somethings trying so hard to be so different and yet they all look exactly the same.
10. Colonization.
Ten.One Hundred & Forty-Two
1. 5 AM alarm.
2. Everyone is on adrenaline and dressed with backpacks packed full of toys and homework and coloring books.
3. The sun is coming up but the clouds want to stay close. But there is a thick split in sky where the orange glow is peaking through.
4. She left her water bottle in her backpack.
5. Babies on a plane.
6. I squeeze out three pages while in the middle seat. My throat is still scratchy.
7. “I just love New Orleans,” she says from the back of the taxi as we make our way to 610.
8. Grey high-top Converse with tiny silver threads running through them. I might have to jack them from my mom.
9. Thick palm tree branches, browned, lying on the side of the road.
10. We try to put in dreads.