izzyblog

There's nothing like having female friends who like to cook.  Tonight Heather Bell (who goes by both names since we also have a good friend named Heather Graves -- you just have to pronounce it quickly like it's one name, and it'll make sense) cooked up a yummy stir-fry of various veggies and hosted us in her teeny apartment.  She's amazing at maximizing space.  She manages to fit an oversized sofa and loveseat, a keyboard on a stand, a bookcase, several lamps and fountains, a coffee table, her laptop and entire DVD collection in one very small apartment-sized living room.  It never feels cramped, just cozy.  I don't know how she does it.  She's absolutely gifted, with a great sense of spatial design.  I think she's European at heart.

I brought over a chocolate mousse from one of my Nigella cookbooks.  I love Nigella's recipes, and this is one of the few that doesn't rely on bacon.  But it does rely on an overdose of sugar-laden foods, so she makes up for her usual meat-based decadence in other ways.

On the workfront, I've got very good news.  I've been tapped to take over the summer Paris program beginning this upcoming academic year.  I really hope it comes to fruition.  It's such a random inheritance but also very much what I've wanted all along through academia.  This means I'll be doing admin and going to Paris for 4 weeks at a stretch during the summers.  In other news, Loyola is also opening a new line of hire, tenure track, that I'm encouraged to apply for this coming academic year.  Now my big hurdle is to finish my diss.  So I'm writing, writing away -- but it's so scary all the while!

Jesse and I finally made it to visit his sister in Chicago. Damn, was it cold! Ridiculously cold, as in... there's no need for that sort of cold on the planet unless you're living in an ice field! I can't quite recall why Missoula seemed so temperate at the time, but it did. The cold there was completely manageable, whereas this Chicago cold was simply depressing.

But it seemed like a great city otherwise. If I were making a chronicle of my life through pictures, the next set would include Jesse and me at the Crescent City Classic this past Saturday. I of course didn't run the whole 10K, but I did run much more of it than I anticipated, and I even beat Jesse by a full minute. Ha! While I'm not rescinding any of my earlier complaints about New Orleans, I'll also say that the morning was one of those magical moments in NOLA when I was really proud to live here. So many people turned out for such a gorgeous morning, and bands followed the crowd through the whole route. We ran under a canopy of live oaks, and some folks came out in costume. Others just strolled along pulling kegs of beer in little red wagons. All in all, it just felt so good to be moving so much so early in the morning. Makes me want to finish up this coffee and enjoy the lovely morning budding just beyond my door. To the park, I believe....

Things that crack me up... or is this a fear-induced hysteria??

I was commenting on a student's short response paper and trying to connect with him by using a specific example to make my point. Knowing he's kind of an edgy music student who works at our local independent theater, I used the band Jane's Addiction in my example. So after he read my commentary, he approached me after class and asked if I liked the band. I of course responded in the affirmative, having been quite a Jane's Addiction fan in my day, and he asked if I had seen Perry Farrell when he came to NOLA a few months back. "No," I said, "But I did see him with Porno for Pyros awhile back. Let's see... I think that was 1996. So yeah, I saw him, but 12 years ago." I don't think my student even paused at this remark, but sheesh, he must have been... what, 6 years old at the time? He did proceed to tell me that his first concert was an Aerosmith concert when he was 4, but I just found myself derailed by the notion that I was going to concerts while these guys were in Little League. Ah, the gulf widens between us every year.

I wanted to pull a quote from my friend Wendy's blog. She's quoting Loren Eiseley here:
"In some of us a child--lost, strayed off the beaten path--goes wandering to the end of time while we, in another garb, grow up, marry or seduce, have children, hold jobs, or sit in movies, and refuse to answer our mail. Or, by contrast, we haunt our mailboxes, impelled by some strange anticipation of a message that will never come. 'A man,' Thoreau has commented, 'needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost.'

"...We cling to a time and a place because without them man is lost...it brings stray cats running over endless miles, and birds homing from the ends of the earth...I once saw, on a flower pot in my own living room, the efforts of a field mouse to build a remembered field..."

Ah, I thought these were beautiful, found myself taken with the sweetness of these lines, the very truth of them. Why do I haunt my mailbox -- why have I always haunted my mailbox? In search of an answer to a question I haven't yet asked? In search of a message that recognizes and summons my own uniqueness and directs the course of my life? That haunt is such a familiar routine that email has only worsened. I've found peace in the days when for some reason or other I've been forced to limit my endless checking. And even though there's no great cosmic game involved, I must feel on some level as though there is, or else I wouldn't keep returning so often with hopeful anticipation. Like I'm looking for a compass from the divine.

Then the clinging to a time and place -- also a familiar idea, but in a hazier way. My problem with NOLA perhaps arises from an opposite perspective. I can recall another city that I knew before this one, but the architecture is of a theatrical sort that I won't restore. I'll explain: I used to ride down Magazine Street on the back of my then-boyfriend's bike on afternoons, holding up a broomstick like it was a lance, and we would sing together one of those militaristic ditties that ends in "Charge!" Or I recall being with the same boyfriend on a crowded streetcar once, when he stood up and gave the oxygen-mask soliloquy that stewardesses give before take-off. Most folks just rolled their eyes or looked out the window, waiting for their stop, but I was folded over laughing. I also remember interviewing a local voodoo priestess and her husband for a school essay and going back to visit just for the sake of pleasantries. The priestess made me pancakes one Sunday morning, and her husband told me stories about his own initiation into voodoo in the Caribbean as a young man. A local priest made him a drink once that turned him invisible, or so he said. These were the days when I would meet the same boyfriend in a bar on Bourbon Street each night when he got off work. One night, I was stopped by the bouncer of a strip club who asked if I wanted a job. I considered the offer seriously but eventually turned it down. That's a New Orleans I recall, but it's worlds away from here, from me. The New Orleans I live in now is a heavier place, still humming with the percussion of insect wings and steaming up with heat just like it always did. I can see the remembered city shifting about in this New Orleans where I now live, but it's a city I won't revisit. It's not a pre-K city or a post-K city. It's a much more personal landscape than that, and it's a dream that NOLA can still facilitate, but it would be the work of other bohemian visionaries to create.

Maybe that's the problem. My NOLA today is still so saturated with the vivid dream of the old that any new life pales in comparison. How can a neighborhood association meeting dare to compete with climbing high into Louisiana live oaks by moonlight? And the new life, the pale life, isn't well facilitated by New Orleans today. This city facilitates well the other, dreamier, riskier adventure, but it isn't like Austin, say. There aren't public pools or other civic recreation opportunities. No good public schools, no midwife on every corner. No bike lanes, no vegetarian restaurants. No food co-ops, no recycling. It's not a city so much for progressive-minded adults. It may have been a fantastic jungle playground for my younger self, but it no longer nurtures the person I want to become.

I have no qualms with my old self or the city I once lived in. I like to flip through the mental photographs of it and remember the lightheartedness, the adventures, and the stranger, darker nooks of the city I sometimes occupied. But as for what to build now, goodness. Let's say I were a bird. I might feel that there weren't enough sticks for me to gather to build a sound nest. My nest would be floppy, risky and unstable, held together by lesser materials. I live a pressboard life, and I'd like to gain more solid footing!

Well, perhaps I'll work through it. But I wonder, is it possible to carve out an adult life in the city of one's youth? A fulfilling life, especially if your city is New Orleans? I feel enough nostalgia for the place, certainly, but that's not enough! What's enough is solid footing. Can I gain that here?

The worst of the hormones have finally passed, and the sadness has taken on a much duller edge now. Thank God! This sort of sadness is much easier to handle. I'm truly amazed at what the body does to prepare itself for childbirth. I see the process having happened in myself twice now. Like I said earlier, giving birth seems to me a biological imperative; my body responds to pregnancy by creating an emotional environment in which I feel a sense of dire urgency to have that baby. What a wild, wild ride -- one that's both unexpected and overwhelming. In the couple of days following the d&c, the hormones continued to rage, and then they subsided. I could track the progress through my own stages of grief dulling to sadness. So strange. What will probably happen now is that I'll carry a manageable sadness that flares up into something uglier during my next period. That was the process last time too.

Watching yourself deflate makes you question your commitment to the idea. Was I indeed ready to be a parent? I think so. I certainly felt like it at the time, though I'm now resolved to whatever outcome life eventually brings. What I dread most is the surge and crash of another miscarriage. The hormonal ride is truly exhausting, and the bursting of that dream affects everyone who wanted to invest in the life of the child -- my husband, my parents, and our families and friends.

But as I said, things are moving on. Jesse and I are starting to look at boats for the summer. With his new job, he doesn't have much time for travel, but we could easily take weekends to explore the waterways of Louisiana. More on that fantasy next time, as the plot develops.

I didn't meant for this blog to become a confessional when I picked it up again, though that seems to have happened anyway. The d&c went fine on Tuesday, better actually than I expected. I'm not in any pain, and bleeding is minimal. This is a better experience than the Cytotec-induced procedure that I had to undergo in September to expel the contents of the last miscarriage.

Emotionally, the miscarriage process is much harder than I expected. I was always pretty ambivalent about having kids till I found out that I was pregnant last summer. There's really nothing to rev up the hormones, though, like... well... like the biological process of pregnancy! It's like I took off at 90mph into the land of wanting a baby, thanks to all those hormones. And I'm still there. After the last miscarriage, I felt like I eventually settled back down into my normal ambivalence, even though grieving the loss shook me to the core. It hurt much more than I ever would have thought, but once I had moved on, I had moved on. And then boom. Without even trying, we were pregnant again. And then came all the hormones and the strange surging, overwhelming desire to have a child. I can't explain that desire other than that it must be a sort of biological imperative. It's a sense of urgency that I never would have expected to feel. And when that urgency goes unmet, well... that's where I am now. In recovery, you might say.

It's a weird place. Now that I've found out that my body isn't so good at doing something fairly crucial, from a biological perspective, it seems that my self-esteem has been shaken. I mean, how can you suck at having babies? Anybody, it seems, any body can have a baby. But not my body. Why not? This is the part that's akin to yelling at God, and it doesn't do any good to rant about the unfairness of who does and does not get to bear children. But I indulge myself a little anyway. I have friends who've had abortions, and I think about that, and it sucks that their bodies are apparently quite capable of producing babies that they didn't want, while my body can't produce a baby that I do want. Of course, none of us has approached that point aloud, nor do I think it will ever come up, though I imagine the thought has crossed their minds as well. Such a strange and divisive secret... Anyway, I know that everyone has their own share of trauma to bear, but I'm just not doing well with this one. On a deep, irrational level that only time will talk me out of, I feel like a failure as a human. There's no comforting that wound. It'll just take time. And perhaps eventually my body can make a child, but I don't trust that to happen right now.

There's more. I know the root of my own ambivalence. It's that I long for a life of adventure that I don't think children will afford me. But what adventures have I even had here in NOLA? Not many, just the dull, slow comeback of living in a post-K city. I'm simply lost here. There's no baby. Jesse is more interesting in managing our funds for things beyond travel, and looking at the numbers, I know he's right to be responsible toward our goals of retirement and getting our house fixed. The budget is limited. But egads, my life feels so... empty. Empty womb, empty calendar. Nothing to dream about. No little person, no big adventure. There's a way out of this muck, and it's got something to do with changing my perspective, I'm sure of it. But I don't know what needs changing -- empowerment? Something that leads to me making fulfilling decisions... but what?

Just briefly, no baby. Tomorrow is the d&c to remove the tissue left inside me. I am scared shitless. I've never had an anesthetic before, and there seems to be no way of avoiding that part. I'm confident that my OB will do what she needs to do, but this anesthesiologist doesn't know me at all. Who is she, and what's she doing with my life in her hands? Why can't this be more simple?

One problem that arises with opting out of posting for over a year is the fact that so much information hasn't come through the mainline. One of the most salient bits of info is the fact that I've recently sold my yoga studio. I'm about 6 weeks into my studio-lessness, and I do believe I made the right decision. The new owner, Jen, takes to the job with just as much passion and determination as I did. And what's most improved at Tapas is the fact that she's much more outgoing than I am, so she works constantly to keep the place full of her own warm vibe. My vibe's warm too, but definitely quieter. She believes in selling herself as much as selling the place, and there's merit in her assumptions. A business that small really must invest itself somewhat in having good characters in place. Jen's contagious warmth is part of what will sell the studio, b/c most folks looking to do yoga in that neighborhood are looking for a place of community. They want to be pampered, amused, inspired, catered to. Jen's good at doing all those things.

But what's the "but" here? Well, although I've certainly burned out on planning, teaching too much, running payroll and other mind-numbing admin tasks -- and I am quite happy not to fret about the low financial returns on all that work -- I feel a bit adrift now without my little ship to captain. I feel like I've lost a bit of my own direction, my moorings, my "something important" to contribute to New Orleans. Teaching college freshmen is fine, but hardly as rewarding and "in the big picture" important as bringing physical and mental well-being to adult women. My daily cohorts are largely self-interested and self-important, inexperienced if at times charmingly so. The job is fine, but it just doesn't feel... significant. And I'm not sure how to change that.

Maybe pregnancy invites reflection. Maybe I'm reflective naturally. I don't know. But I find myself sort of floating through New Orleans at this point, irritated at the general failure of this city not to bloom up into something brighter post-K. Feels like NOLA has simply come back to itself; feels like I'm not helping its progress anymore; feels like the same tired issues (crime, poverty, inept government, low quality of life) keep plaguing the same tired place. Did you know that 2 young boys shot 5 people at Endymion on Saturday night? The victims suffered only surface wounds, but the shooting took place on Canal Street! Right at the edge of the Quarter! Ridiculous!! And these days, crime seems to have ticked up so much. I get lots of emails through Loyola about incidents in the university area (which is also where I live now). It reminds me of the crime waves when I was in college, when everyone I knew (including myself) had some sort of mugging or major personal theft story to relate.

When I left New Orleans for Montana, I never meant to come back. And now that I'm pregnant, I just can't see how I can raise my kids here. I love these old houses, my friends and the proximity to my family, but I also feel like this city is the pits. Where are the public swimming pools, the outdoor recreation, the recycling programs, the safety to be outside in your front yard -- those quality of life elements that I've loved in several other places? The other day, we went to a neighborhood association meeting, and the invited guest was someone talking about putting bike paths in place in NOLA. Temporarily, I got so excited. But as the guest talked, I started to hear the same old soundtrack. More studies need to be run before the bike lanes can be implemented. No bikes lanes will be painted on streets till those streets are re-paved. Having lived here for quite some time, I know that'll be several years. Sheesh. But -- the speaker did say that his organization has come up with a nice sign to post along bike paths that'll have a fleur de lis on it. Great. So we have the facade of change happening without any actual change.

Sometimes I'm hopeful. I was excited that Bobby Jindal was elected governor -- and I'm not a republican by any stretch of the imagination. The democratic candidates were just republicans in democrats' clothing though -- all good ole boys with same ole plans. More hope -- Baton Rouge is coming along, making some nice strides in redeveloping its downtown. Downtown looked more alive than it had in years when I drove down there one night in December. But our fair city? I just can't see the sunlight. I sit inside alot, actually, because there's not much that I want to do. I have a lovely yoga community that I enjoy, but I'm waiting for the second trimester till I can return to class. And I have other friends in the mind-body arena, like my friend Shannon who just opened her own bellydance studio, who are working to pump new life into the city. But when's the city going to step up? When will we get recycling back? When will the crime taper off? When will recreation become as much a priority around here as drinking?

For the spring, I look forward to gardening and having a crawfish boil, and I'm a little bit looking forward to going to the Quarter dressed up tomorrow. But even gardening, parties and masquerades can't seem to solve this bigger issue, this sustained disappointment with my city. Some of my friends and coworkers still feel an intense love for this place -- I hear them talk about it. I used to feel that too, but I don't anymore. When I think about NOLA these days, it's with a sinking feeling of resignation. I'm really not sure how to solve the issue. I have a great job, good friends and close family. I don't want to leave that. But feeling adrift like this, I find that a terrible isolation creeps in, in the midst of all that I've always known and felt connected to.

Mardi Gras is upon us, and it's downright chilly! Brrrrrr!!!! Although last Mardi Gras was a bit chilly some nights too, this one is definitely colder than I remember the holiday ever being -- primarily because Mardi Gras is earlier this year than I remember it ever being. This does add a bit of difficulty to the costuming process, since bare patches of skin often contribute to many a costume. I'm at a bit of a loss concerning dressing up this year, though I think that I'm going to go as a Ponchatoula strawberry. If I do, it'll be rudimentary, but I'll post some pictures.

For the college kiddies, Mardi Gras rules have changed since when I was at Loyola as an undergrad. I'm not talking about the drinking age (although it's ticked up, I'm sure my students are clever at finding covert means of imbibing). But these kids do get an entire week's holiday. Wow! In my time, that holiday was three days -- two because EVERYTHING comes to a standstill here for Mardi Gras, and 1 extra day for the kiddies to puke and recover. By Thursday, everyone was still a little sleepy, but mostly good as new. Lest this sound like a complaint, please note that it isn't. I am just delighted that we won't be meeting again till February 11th. And that'll be a nice week too -- just days before I turn the big 3-4. (Gasp!!)

There are other little changes to consider this Mardi Gras weekend too. For the first time in many years, I'll be alcohol free for the celebration, thanks to a little somebody incubating inside me. I'm 9 weeks pregnant today, and I'm hoping hoping hoping that this baby makes it through the first trimester, unlike our last attempt. We did see the heartbeat for this one last week, which means that we're already off to a better start, though still not out of the woods yet. But I'm hoping.....

Ah, lovely! The floors in the upstairs portion of our house are finally complete.

Now that football season is a bit less pressing in these parts, Jesse has turned his Sunday focus to renovation projects again. Of course, he's now sitting down in front of the tube, reviewing the last few minutes of the Pats vs. SD game on our DVR, but he put in a good long day of work beforehand. Days like today, I don't mind the fact that our relationship relies on largely on stereotypical gender roles. Inhaling large quantities of toxic materials isn't my cup of tea, and there were plenty of those stinking up the house today.

Today's project was bamboo flooring. Most of the floors in our house are the original boards from the 1920s construction, and these have held up rather well, though the refinisher seemed to believe that our floors couldn't be sanded down and refinished again after his job, as they were so thin. Those floors run through the house, and stained, they're a warm, inviting amber color. They were hiding under a rather repellant pelt of faded carpet when we bought the house, but they're buffed up nicely now. The trouble was with the back two rooms, which were covered in an industrial tile that my environmental geologist husband identified as 1950s asbestos tile. We hemmed and hawed about pulling up this tile to reveal the floors beneath for some time, but the intensity of the labor and the possibility of environmental hazards kept us hesitant. About two weeks ago, we decided on the bamboo and found a terrific sale at Home Depot.

My dad has been particularly helpful with these projects. Truth is, I think he's happiest tinkering. He's done home repair work quite regularly for as long as he can remember. He's owned property since he was a young adult and has held himself personally responsible for repairs the whole time. Makes sense. He's a blue collar guy, a butcher, from rural Louisiana. He should know a good bit about manual trades, and he does. And I think he really takes a shine to helping Jesse. He devotes some good long days to working here.

My mom, she's begun to bring food, and I welcomed her homemade spaghetti sauce today. Dee-licious. With the temperature finally feeling like January, warm comfy pasta felt as Sunday as an afternoon nap.

Oh dear! First thing -- Ellie, of course I'd be happy to. If it's not too late, please send an email to my school address -- tawatts@loyno.edu.

Secondly, I'm finally attaching a pic of one of my fave things I did this holiday season, which was to bake a bunch of loaves of Anise Kuchen. It's such a fun bread. When it gets to its second rising, you oil strips that you've cut from paper bags and staple them over the kneaded individual rounds that will become your bread. As the rounds rise, they grow around the strips of paper, making a cloverleaf shape of dough that you can tie ribbons into once the bread is baked. I love to make these when school gets out and then give them to my aunts. I've tried giving them to friends too, but most of my friends don't really care. As my friend Polly says, she's "undomesticated." So I keep a bunch for myself too.

In fact, today I finally ran out. In addition to the anise kuchen, this year I made some sort of eggy bread that reminds me very much of a Jewish challah -- yellow, sweet and addictive. I got both recipes from my bread bible, Bernard Clayton's book of breads. In the years I've been acquainted with this cookbook (it came with Jesse when we first consolidated some years ago now), I've only tried a couple of recipes, and I've returned to them time and again, working to perfect the method. This is unusual for me. I usually flip through a cookbook with salivating ecstasy, like an impatient little gobbly goat, trying one recipe after another. I think the difference arises from the fact that bread-making is such a time-consuming process that I usually only do it when I'm off school, so I turn to what's most tried and true. Cooking dinner can be a more regular affair, so I tend to be more risky, more fly-by-night -- and I think that my cooking often suffers from this approach!