Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

Important Book Found in French Quarter

   Sometimes I am lucky enough to travel with Handsome whilst he saves the world from energy crises, regulatory challenges, management mishaps, and such.  Really any escape is appreciated, even to oft-stomped grounds like Tulsa. 

   But another way I am lucky is that sometimes I get to accompany him on trips to amazing cities like New Orleans, from where I might actually originate, despite all evidence to the contrary. 
   Mom & Dad, is it SLIGHTLY POSSIBLE I was born here and you just forgot?  Or did you feed me bread pudding in my bottle?  Did something formative happen to me on the great Mississippi? 



   No?  Eh bien…  I am content to claim Oklahoma as home and visit Louisiana from time to time. 

   On one such N.O. business trip in the warming months of 2010, I had the afternoon to myself while Handsome attended meetings.  I enjoyed lunch of half a cold muffaletta and hot, rich chicory coffee.  With sugar and heavy cream.  Always.  The cafe had a curved painted ceiling.

   And live jazz nearby.

   In the arts district I made purchases of sparkly gifts for my teen aged daughters, and then I found the most beautiful book store.
   Like many New Orleans shops, it was three deeply set, ornate stories stacked onto a diminutive footprint.  It was creaky, painted for the umpteenth time, and crammed to the hilt with treasures.  Treasures the proprietor is happy to reveal to his visitors, but only in hushed tones…  Like he’s letting you in on a little bit of Creole magic…

   This isn’t the same building, but it is a New Orleans building with some elusive magnetism.


   I looked for over half an hour, lazily tempted by five or six good looking titles, when I decided to ask the bearded book pusher for a recommendation.  I asked specifically for anything not mainstream, maybe something local?
   I suppose everyone knows that Anne Rice is just about the hottest New Orleans author known, but the treasure offered me that day was a title not widely published and also one not centered around vampires (arguably her most well known flavor). 

   The Feast of All Saints had three big things going for it even before I swiped my debit card: 

  • Local author in my very favorite city
  • Relatively limited circulation
  • Historical fiction off the beaten path 

Purchased without hesitation, thank-you-very-much. 
This is an unfluffy, uncrunchy image of the book cover.


   I always devour Rice’s prose with shameful gluttony.  She writes with sensuality and  painfully accurate emotional detail.  Her characters are many and varied, and they are each developed exactly as much as you want them to be.  Her stories are reliably complex, fast moving, entertaining…  Feast of All Saints was no exception.
   I blazed through the first third of the book immediately upon returning home, only to drop it in our swimming pool that summer.  It needed to dry out baby! 
   During those page drying days I moved on to a new title and then got busy with back to school tasks and rituals.  This was not a book I wanted to read with divided eyes, so it got temporarily shelved.
   I noticed the now fluffy and crunchy paperback several times throughout the winter of Snowmageddon but could not bring myself to read more, even with undivided eyes, because it had such a summer feel. 
   Do you ever read a book and crave certain tastes in your mouth?  Certain fragrances or tactile sensations?  Well sometimes I associate certain books with certain seasons, and this book begged for summertime.   It demanded humidity and sexiness and profound beauty, just like what the French Quarter provides. 
   So finally late this Spring the reading stars aligned and I resumed my unladylike feast of Feast.  And I loved
Every. 
Single. 
Page.
Full review to follow…
  

My Top Ten Summer Don’ts

   Summertime 2011 will be a season different than any I have ever had in my life, for so many reasons.

  • I have been a Mom for sixteen years, but this will be the first summer both of my two beautiful daughters plan to spend full time with their Dad & his family. 
  • Handsome and I have a busier hobby farm than we have ever had before. 
  • I am actually on the road to losing weight instead of gaining it. 
  • The gardens are mostly planted by now, and not just on paper. 
  • I have a blog, a new, shiny, unscrewed up blog. 
  • Handsome’s car show calendar is the fullest it’s ever been. 
  • I am scheduled to be a bridesmaid in our nephew’s wedding.  
  • Handsome & I will be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary in July. 
  • And our very best friends will be sending their youngest off to college in August, a milestone we cannot help but commemorate along with them. 

Gulp.  Lots going on!

   So how shall I ensure that this summer of patchwork challenges and opportunities doesn’t fly past me like a kid greased up in Coppertone, zooming down a wet Slip-N-Slide?  I have a plan….

  1. I will use sunscreen & self tanner on my face and throat as often as possible, acknowledging all the while that I am now in my late thirties and no can no longer afford multiple sunburns there.  Similarly, I will wash up frequently, because summertime means outside, and outside means dirty (especially around here), and dirty means surprise breakouts.  I will not be grody.
  2. I will seize every day for what it offers.  No matter the weather or the agenda, I will accept every day for the specialness it bears, because Summertime 2011 will be made up of only about eighty-four days and eighty-four nights.  And we all know how quickly those can evaporate, especially in the Oklahoma heat and humidity.  I will not luxuriate in the freedom of summer so much that I waste it.
  3. I will send gifts to my children, call them frequently without asking when we’ll see each other again, and pray for them and their Dad and Step mom every day.  I will get through this summer without bitterness, and I will conquer the seeds of resentment.
  4. I’ll spend some time with my sweet and wise ol’ Grandpa Rex.  He has the prettiest and most productive garden in the world, and he has taught me nearly everything I know about this rewarding art.  I hope this isn’t our last summer with him.  I will not take my loved ones for granted.

5.  I will entertain zealously, like probably once or twice a week, but I will NOT, I repeat I will NOT gain three to five pounds for every party we throw.
6.  My husband and I will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary in July, woohoo!!  I will not wait until the morning of departure to pack my suitcase and mop the floor.
7.  I will not spend more time on Facebook than I spend writing something that will last.  Yikes, that one could be difficult.

    8.  I will not shy away from the most difficult and icky farm chores, forever resting on the brute strength and industriousness of my Handsome Husband.  I will shoulder more of this burden than he’s honestly expecting me to, but I won’t tell him first.  Who was it who said this?  “Don’t tell me what you’re going to do; show me.”  This is good advice.  The bank where I used to work had a customer service tenet:  “Under-promise and over-deliver.”  Bingo.
    9.  We have a great book club.  I mean, we have collected some of Oklahoma’s best and brightest women, and we have a great time!  But this summer I will not read the last page first, not on any of our chosen titles.  Like, I totally promise.
    10.  Lastly, I will not freak out too awful much if I fail at any of the previous nine resolutions.  Life is good; life is beautiful in fact, and I am so grateful for every detail of what I have been given.  Even the tough stuff. 

Tornado Season in Oklahoma

   As a little girl I never found tornadoes scary.  In fact they were a source of great excitement, testament to the fact that I never had a close enough call with one to become properly frightened.  Tornado drills were a welcome interruption to school every spring, several times per season, and our family’s evening meals were frequently set against the backdrop of Gary England’s affable, in fact folksy weather reports and warnings.  We had safety plans in place, of course, and my parents always made sure we were safe.  But it was just a feature of life. 

   We grew up learning to recognize wall clouds, hail clouds, and that eerie yellow glow that our skies could adopt with just the right atmospheric changes.  We smelled rain, we felt electricty, and we giggled while hiding from tornadoes in the innermost windowless room of the house.  For us it was the utility room, and we always wore good shoes, just in case a tornado indeed struck and we had to walk around outside in sharp debris.
  
   As an adult my feelings about tornado season are quite different.  I have been through two formidable storms now, and several smaller ones, thankfully uninjured every time.  But I have seen the overwhelming dangers as well as the merciless property damage that tornadoes can deliver.  Even the best insurance coverage cannot make recovery painless.  And of course the loss of life is a very real possibility.

   Our hearts go out to the town of Joplin tonight as they buckle down to collect their families and rebuild after the devastating tornado yesterday.  The suddenness and brutality of a strong storm like that will rattle your nerves for a very long time. 

   Kudos, Mom & Dad, for making sure we always felt safe during Oklahoma tornado season.  We are so blessed!

Work That Matters

   The work we choose often has a lot more to do with filling a financial or otherwise practical need (like health insurance, daycare, etc) than it does intrinsic value or personal satisfaction.  At least in my exposure to this world, most people work because they have to work, and they stay in unhappy jobs because those jobs pay big bills.  Sometimes, though, life is blessed with a job that serves up both a paycheck and a personal reward.  Such is the case for us right now, thank you Lord.

   In describing my husband’s work I will inevitably reveal my wide-spilling ignorance, sorry Handsome, but hopefully the basic truths are here.  He does good stuff, man.  Together with some incredibly hard working people at the State of Oklahoma, he has his capable hands in the goings on of our public utility services.  They not only regulate prices and tariffs (laws) but they also spur education, efficiency reform, job enrichment, and the overall strength and futures of the industries they regulate .  And that’s just HERE! 

   Did you know, fellow Okies, that our state is a global hub for natural gas capture and delivery?  We set the standards, baby.  There are countries all over the Eastern hemisphere where homes and businesses are just now beginning to receive gas piped in for heating, cooking etc.  Right this minute a woman in an opposite time zone from here is excited that soon she’ll be able to turn on her interior stove and cook dinner for her family then run hot baths, rather than have propane hauled through town on a donkey.  That sounds a bit Susanne-Struthersy, but it’s just true.  And who is helping these countries establish brand spankin-new systems?  Our Great State.

   People are amazingly capable of great things.  The unseen systems of our modern world are just fascinating, from ground level production and deliveries to fluorescent-light conference rooms and courtrooms, I doubt we’ll ever know all of it, all these systems, all the businesses of human effort that make daily life so comfy. 
   Hug your civil servant today.  Or…pat him on the posterior if you think you can get away with it…  I just did.

A Beginning

   The idea of writing a blog at first smacked of ego trip, as if it would be assuming I have anything different or interesting enough to offer.  Certainly the questions in my heart far outweigh the answers I have so far. 
   So this will not be a well of wisdom necessarily, nor could it possibly be a mouthwatering tastemaker’s blog like so many I adore.  But maybe at least we can share how many eggs get collected on a daily basis.  That is pretty Zen.  Our life is incredibly beautiful, after all, even with its nicks and bruises.  And sometimes in sharing questions with each other, we stumble upon answers.  If you read this, please join the conversations.  Cross-pollination is where it’s at.