Better than nothing

I'm grumpy, one of my cats keeps peeing on my shoes, another one barfed on my calendar yesterday morning, my right ankle is screwed up from my run the other day and I've had a headache for 3 days straight.

Other than that, the play was great. Smartass.

My vacation was lovely - Jef and I went down to Louisiana in a little zippy rental car, hung out with the grandparents and the brothers and the stepmom, then drove back in the kiddo's truck.

We took one day to go to the French Quarter. Jef had never been and he insisted on referring to me as "the local", which was very sweet if a tad misguided, considering I only know two areas of the town really well and those areas have been thoroughly rearranged, courtesy of Katrina (bitch.) Anyway, while I was able to find every daquiri place in a 2-mile radius, I failed miserably at finding food. Yes, food. In New Orleans. In the Quarter. Shut. Up.

Fortunately, my grandparents' house is only a paltry 45 minutes away (SHUT UP) and the woman cooks as if she's hosting the 82nd Airborne all the damned time. And there were McDonald's on the way. Listen, if I have to tell you to shut up one more time, I'll turn this blog around, young lady.

Anyway. A good time was had by all, despite the frightening alchohol to blood sugar ratio we had going on at one point. We drank, we shopped, we hugged people who moved back to the city, we talked to total strangers (I love this man, y'all. Seriously.), we drank some more. I took him to St. Louis Cathedral and the Moonwalk and Cafe du Monde and Jackson Square and we wandered around and we watched big ships pass each other on the Mississippi and it was lovely, really. Just a lovely, sweet day with my boy.

Sweet baby Jesus, I need a haircut, y'all. Yipes.

Jef impressed the shit out of my grandparents and my stepmom and my brothers. I mean, of course he did, since he is the niftiest thing since sliced bread. I'm not even that big a fan of sliced bread and I think he's pretty cool. Heh.

Before y'all throw up, we don't fart rainbows all the time. We'd been getting on each others nerves before the trip and the whole not feeding him thing led to some issues and being stuck in a pickup truck for 9 hours, knowing that you have to drive another 3 and it's the end of vacation and you're tired and won't get to see each other again for another couple of weeks and you have to go to work the next day? Let's just say tempers can flare.

But we worked through it and the gas is poly-chromatic again and everybody's happy. Yay. Now you can barf. Just not on my calendar, I just got it dried out.

Seriously, y'all - I am the mayor of Split End City.

Kiddo also returned from New York in one piece. She cheered me up by calling me pretty much every day to tell me what she was doing. My favorites were the voicemail I got from her in Little Italy and the "mystery phone call"

"Oh my God, mom, we're in Little Italy, and I got a loaf of some kind of bread (background 'ciabatta') Ciabatta?? OK Ciabatta bread, anyway, for like a dollar and a container of gorgonzola stuffed olives and these mozzarella balls and oh my God, it's all so good and I got it all for like, less than like, 5 bucks. Loveyoubye!"

Hee. My little foodie.

The "mystery phone call" went like this:

"Hey mom - guess where I am?"
"uh...New York?"
"Well, duh, but WHERE in New York??"
"......"
"Ok, it's sparkly and it's mentioned in a Marylin Monroe song."
"TIFFANY'S????"
"Yep!!"

At that point my stepmother got in the discussion and tried to convince kiddo to bring her something back. Alas, I am a mean mommy who only thought to send enough money for my kid to y'know, eat and buy reasonable souvenirs. I know, I know, I'm an ogre.

I'm off to trudge around Town Lake - y'all be good.