Plan C

Thanks to my Mississippi friend Amelia, a new idea emerges. Her favorite place on the planet because of "really, really spectacular people."

Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Who doesn't know why? Are you AMERICAN?! That's the crossroads, baby - where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, the true birthplace of the blues.

And I love New Orleans jazz in a way I never thought possible, but the blues, well, they speak to me deeply.

I can go to the Delta Blues Museum and then stay at Shack Up Inn:
"If you want something more down to earth, try digging up the roots of the blues in Clarksdale, Miss., home of the Delta Blues Museum. “Here in Coahoma County, we have a rich history with musicians like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, who were born or lived here,” says Bill Talbot, innkeeper and co-owner of the wryly named Shack Up Inn.
Accommodations are a “six-pack” of shotgun shacks slightly renovated and furnished with mismatched furniture and a potent dose of memorabilia. Once tenements for sharecroppers, today’s tenants are more likely to be blues-minded tourists from far-flung places such as Japan, South Africa, and Latvia.
In addition to soaking up history, tourists can drink in live music at the Commissary, the on-site club that’s a remnant of its former identity as a plantation, and at actor Morgan Freeman’s juke joint called Ground Zero.
Rates start at $50 and, in a true show of Southern charm, you’ll find a Moon Pie on your pillow when you check in. For details, call (662) 624-8329 or log on to www.shackupinn.com."

Damn. I need a month for my spring break! Maybe next winter break I need to stick around here - three weeks of playtime.

Yup. Breaking up with what's-his-face is just sounding better and better. Moonpie on my pillow or mosquitos? Blues or grief? Driving six hours or flying 24?

I'm at the crossroads myself now baby.

Spring Break Plan B

Myakka River State Park in Florida. I can hike in to camp (yay, backpacking!), get a fun Saturday eve fireside chat and Sunday morning birding. I can rent a kayak to toodle around the swamps - getting eye-to-eye with alligators. (Um, yeah, I remember the Eskimo roll.) I've never kayaked alone, and I don't think I've ever backpacked without Selma. So, a little spooky, but still sounds much fun.

But, maybe I should have stolen one of those dogs today. A big ferocious one to protect me at a remote campsite. Who am I kidding? I sign in at the ranger station there, my truck will be left there, and if I don't return they'll come out looking for me. Unlike here, where they just found a guy who died in his house during Katrina and people just thought he evacuated and didn't come back.

And yes. I'm writing. Just finished a rough draft. And it's very, very rough. But a few hours tomorrow evening and a few hours Tuesday evening, and it should be spic-span shape for Wednesday.

I didn't get my Contracts outline done this weekend like I wanted, but oh well. I'm sure my study-buddy didn't either - her attitude is worse than mine. I got to have fun this weekend, serving coffee while dancing to a band covering ALL the southern bands (I didn't know there were so many - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels Band, Georgia Satellites, Allman Brothers, etc.) I know, I know. I'm not supposed to really like the south. It's supposed to be all about racism and Civil War victory fantasies (it is known as the War of Northern Aggression) and vapid southern belles. But darn it, I like it here.

I looked at a map and thought, hm, I can drive down to Florida for a weekend in the swamp and then up to Savannah to find that damned Garden (literary reference) and then over to Atlanta to hit REI and Ikea and then back here. But that might be a lot of driving and $$, and I'll get further behind in studying and won't get any NOLA sightseeing/volunteering done. Maybe I'll save those for next break.

I do wish somebody wanted to go do fun stuff with me, but oh well. I only have gear for one. For one and a Selma. It would have been so fun to have her there today at the parade, all prancing around in some fun costume. OK, maybe Otter would have been the prancer. But those girls would have had a BLAST! Hundreds of butts to sniff!

Mystical Krewe of Barkus - Streetcar Named Desire Parade

So, my first Mardi Gras parade was a great success - much fun was had. Dogs in great costumes, often matching their owners. I was amazed at how many dogs were there and how great they all seemed to be getting along most of the time. They were so happy - it is such the canine social event of the season. And, I got a slice of kingcake and a cup of jambalaya, so I got my NOLA fix for the day. (And I may just break down and buy myself a darn kingcake - even if I eat the whole thing. Mardi Gras is NEXT WEEK! And then NO MORE FOR A YEAR! And, I realized how early MG is next year - so it's a SHORT kingcake season! I'm already panicked about that!)

I didn't technically see the parade - I volunteered until later than I expected and now I have to get work done. I figure I'll get to stand around and see plenty of parades. And now I know - the party AFTER the parade is when the real fun happens - but, I couldn't spend my whole day there, so next year (when friends visit, hint, hint), I know better and can plan accordingly.

The Canadian showed up with a Korean who doesn't really speak English, and trying to explain the whole "Streetdog named Desire" thing to him really didn't work. Also Joan and Doug, whom I volunteered with the first time I came to NOLA, showed up so I got to catch up with them which was really nice. I spent most of my time helping out the folks of Mojo Coffee Shop, who will start tomorrow with selling King Cake by the slice because I begged. I met a couple other nice people and saw a couple classmates, as well as the immigration lawyer I decided not to hire. The Mojo guys are "husbands-in-law" - one guy is the ex-husband of the woman who is engaged to the other guy. They get along wonderfully well, which is great for all the kids involved.

There are cowbirds outside my window, I swear. I didn't think they came this far east, but they sure were just looking in my window as if to kick me out of my nest. Nasty things. There was a kitten trying to play in the trash cans outside my door yesterday - I've got quite the menagerie of non-pets.

Anyway, I'll try to post all my pics to my meewt.shuttefly.com account throughout Mardi Gras. Enjoy!

volunteering = crack

So, I'm looking at volunteering for Jazz Fest. It is *the* social event of the season. If I volunteer at least 15 hours, I get in free on the days I volunteer - and daily cost is $45, so it's not an incidental expense.

So what's the problem? It's during FINALS! Yes, those horrendous events that interfere significantly with my positive sense of self.

So, I think it has been decided. I'm here during spring break. I'll do lots of studying and some sightseeing (think: cemetery tour, finally, and maybe a good voodoo tour) and get ready for some Jazz Fest fun!

Of course all these plans can change if somebody wants to interview me for a job or invites me to Africa for the weekend or anything such. But, I like to be a girl with a plan. Numerous plans.

Oh, and now I'm almost late for today's methadone dose, er, volunteering.

compulsion

Good god. Did I JUST say that I'm stressed about not enough hours in the day and how I have so much work to do and don't know how I'll get it all done?

And so what did I do, because I'm not wound down enough yet to go to sleep?

Craigslist. Volunteer. And now I'm offering medical assistance during Mardi Gras.

MEDICAL ASSISTANCE. Yeah, I took the CPR classes - but never thought I'd actually USE it! But people here really do have heart attacks and pass out and all sorts of things.

I'm just worried that I'll pass my Mardi Gras time locked up in my apartment with case books. I want to be out and enjoying!

But mostly, I think I'm just really addicted to volunteering. Ah, that sweet smell of working without pay. Gotta love it!

Jock-A-Mo

My spyboy and your spyboy ...

Iko Iko ...

We all know that song; it's by Sugar Boy Crawford. I didn't know it was about the Mardi Gras Indians. Mardi Gras Indians are totally cool, man - and I'm way glad it's not about revenge anymore.

So the unknown Canadian stranger is tucked away in her hostel. She's quite nice and I'm glad I could help her. We went to the African restaurant and then to Cafe du Monde - because what else would I do with a NOLA visitor besides stuff their faces with beignets?

I'm thinking this whole Mardi Gras thing is pretty cool - people walking around with beads showed me I'd just missed a parade. So next year, everybody who is reading this is ordered to come visit. February 5, 2008 - so the two weekends before that are the best. And I promise to get a larger place so that I can host.

So I got home to an email that I am indeed volunteering tomorrow starting at 10. Another day shot. I'm totally screwed. But, I'll have fun, so it's all good.

spring break

I just sent a plaintive cry to Michele, begging for a fun spring break. Michele and me paddling off Baja would be a great trip that we would laugh about for years to come.

I'm getting a really sweet tax refund. With it I could make three trips to Africa, including all expenses, or I could live in NOLA for the summer and meet all my expenses as long as I'm pretty frugal. I could even pay rent here for the summer and meet all my expenses interning in Africa both. (Which might be my strategy - if I find a really great apartment I should snatch it.) Or, I could pay $400 more a month next year for rent. (Of course I could also use it to pay part of my $42,000 borrowed per year - but that would just be silly.)

OR ... I could go on a totally killer spring break. Thailand? Kenya? Peru? Come on, Michele!

Of course I should really stick around here. And there are a ton of things to do around here - I could go to Alabama to see Kim, go to historic sights around, go up to Natchitoches and see Ahmed (or use his hotel room when he's not there), go to the World Championship Crawfish Etoufee Contest. I could study and get my hair cut and work out daily. I could cook healthy food and prepare my oral argument of the appellate brief. It would be really good to be here and work on exam prep, since I do want to do better this term. I could also do lots of volunteer work.

Or I could go back to Baja and kayak and camp on beautiful beaches and pee in the intertidal zone. (By then, I wouldn't be radioactive anymore.)

It's five weeks away. What shall I do??

The only real reason I believe I can actually seriously think about sticking around town is that I'm done with class in April and exams early May. Seven weeks after spring break is over I'll be someplace else probably. And who am I kidding - trans-oceanic travel in coach kicks my ass. I was tired after this last trip for a couple weeks. The last thing I need is to start the semester exam home stretch exhausted and drained.

So, I tell myself to stick around here, but when have I ever been good about sitting still?

deceitful appearances

I just went to campus to pick up my outline for the appellate brief we're working on in Legal Research and Writing.

On the one hand I was annoyed to have to go in on Saturday morning. She wouldn't give it to me yesterday when I stopped by her office on my way out to the doctor (she wasn't finished with the class's). On the other, we turned them in this week, so I do really appreciate her efforts in getting 60 outlines commented-upon and returned to us before we embark on our first draft efforts which are due next week. In four days.

Which I have not started, but my apartment is darn clean and I just dropped off newspapers to recycle (probably about 3 months worth), picked up papers at school, went to grocery store and got a kingcake mix to mail to Gail when I get my next amazon order to send out. I finished my federal taxes and printed out the really confusing directions to my nonresident California ones and am waiting for my FAFSA pin. I cleaned all windows/mirrors and vacuumed, and did the dishes and scrubbed down the countertops (which, as Ahmed and Tami know, was a very short task). I swept the front steps and organized my closet and old binders. I've started a list of things I'll ask somebody to get me at Trader Joe's. I chatted with my neighbor who was worried because he hadn't seen me but has heard me coughing for weeks.

I blew off volunteering at the library and at the Latino legal clinic. They're there now and I hope all is going well. In five hours I pick up the Canadian stranger at the airport and kill a few hours on that. We'll probably go to Port of Call for its very famous burgers.

Because now it starts - when I plant myself on the couch and type like there's no tomorrow. I made another cup of coffee, have some Pepperidge Farm milanos by my side, and I dig in to a stack of cases as tall as Selma (ok, I know she's not very tall, but that's still a lot of cases!). I've been missing Selma very much - and I worry a little that the Barkus Krewe tomorrow will make that even stronger. I hear dogs don't just march in and ride on floats in the parade, they also go as spectators for all the biscuits and such that are thrown off the floats. Selma's not nearly as proud as she could be - she likes to the be the queen, but since she wasn't really a stray she could never be, and she'd be perfectly happy to sit alongside the street watching dogs in masks walk past while she catches tossed bones.

ANYWAY, there weren't many comments on my outline. Mostly just "You seem to be in good shape. See me with any questions."

I spent three hours on that outline, the day it was due. My classmates spoke of days and days spent on it, and I worry that I'm so far behind.

I think my appearance isn't just deceiving, but flat-out deceitful. there's no way I'm in good shape.

I would love an A in Legal Research and Writing, but I gave up that dream long ago. Good shape? Head barely above water.

fruits & vegetarians, oh my

This link has a couple interesting articles - one "The Kings of Freaky Fruits" which Gail would find good fun, and a special section on The Sweetest Fruit being the Carabao Mango for Tami, and then top 5 Vegetarian hotspots for Jenny and Tami.

The lab tech today said things look fine with my thyroid. In that way that they're not supposed to tell us things, and I go see the doctor on Monday.

I have SO MUCH to do this weekend workwise ... but instead I just watched Gray's Anatomy to celebrate a cancelled housing test. Man, it was WAY intense. I'm thinking Meredith will adopt the little girl or something such.

I just really want good beans and rice without driving out clear to Slidell. Sigh.

learning

My French teacher is totally adorable. I don't know how to explain it - he's this really great combination of self-effacing and competent, utterly engaging and genuinely nice. I'm always fascinated by how other people teach, and perhaps after beginning my second semester of law school I was a little hungry for nice. And I got it. In spades. Seriously, he asked if we would rather take our handouts with us or if we'd like him to hang onto them for us and bring them next time. I didn't have to carry anything! I love him!

He says things like, "And tonight on our French adventure," and "I promise not to scare you with grammar." My first reaction was, "What the hell? Learning languages is WORK and it's PAINFUL!" But I think with him it's really not. I hear people making real progress and learning all sorts of things that I know are not super easy to teach or learn. Things he says, they're sometimes cheesy, but it sets this tone of real gentle fun.

But the best part, the thing that has me sold, is that whether he does it intentionally or not, he has multiple layers to the class. So he plays these great Yves Montand songs for real beginners to hear pronunciation, but I'm learning and reinforcing all sorts of great vocabulary. And I can ask him really ANY question about French linguistics and he's all over it. He's the perfect French grad student, and he's so ultra prepared. He comes with handouts he made special for us, and power points he made, and CDs cued - he's a walking tech show.

It's a beginning French class and I don't even know why I showed up. I'm not a beginner - I can have conversations in French with people and exist solely in French in social interactions. But I'm so glad I did - to have this practice is sweet, and to relearn things I didn't learn right the first time. It's taught in the business school and it's no credit, so it's totally low stress. And I have really nice classmates, a couple of whom were my friends already, and it's fun. And when it's not fun and when I'm too stressed to take two hours a week, I can blow it off and have happy memories.

So let me contrast that to something six hours prior. In Con Law, the prof called on somebody who blew off answering. But instead of just apologizing and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm not prepared, may I pass today?" the guy wouldn't even really answer. Finally the prof said, "Do you plead the 5th?" "Yeah." The thing is, the answer to this question the prof had said 10 minutes before and we learned the last class - the point of the question was to reinforce, which is why he picked on somebody. For really new stuff, he waits for volunteers. So on to the next case, he called on the same guy, who said, "Me?" "Yeah. I thought maybe since you weren't up on McCulloch you would be on Godby." "I think it's pretty clear I'm not prepared today, so how about if you call on somebody else?"

WTF?! You come unprepared to class AND you give attitude? The prof could have not called on him again - I certainly have days where I don't feel well and can't answer simple questions - but WTF? After class that guy was talking to the prof, who was NOT impressed. Why on earth would you give attitude for being a jerk? Good grief! I felt like I was back in teaching.

And contrast it to one of my French classmates, who is, I believe, married to one of my law classmates (actually, one of the really most annoying people in all my classes and we all make fun of his nasal "like" but now I see he's a nice guy and I have to be nice and actually defend him). She teaches at public school here - and trust me when I say that no matter how bad I think things can be at other schools I've been at, there is no place nearly as effed up as the Recovery School District in New Orleans. It is atrocious. She teaches science and has NO lab equipment - not allowed to do any kind of labs because that would cost money. Of course there's not really textbooks either, so what she's supposed to do is rather unknown. When French teacher gave us worksheets we were working on, she looked up and said, "Wow. You are giving us work to do and we are doing it without any protest or threat or promise. I forgot what this looked like."

Sigh. I remember those days, and there's not enough money in the world to make me go back to it. I remember the kids in Elim BEGGING for worksheets instead of more creative learning.

And now, I do cover letters that are not going to get me a job because I'm not all that. But who knows - maybe somebody will find me oddly intriguing and beg me to come aboard. I guess I should try. 7 more to write, which is difficult after four nights of varying degrees of insomnia. But, the applications are due tomorrow. With my watered-down resume. Shrug. Not a lot of investment here, clearly.

Oh, and I am radioactive, which is more than a little cool I guess. I was really impressed with the professionalism at this hospital - they called me in exactly at the appointment time and she took me back and introduced herself and explained everything and told me exactly what was happening tomorrow. That's pretty darn cool.

And then tonight I went on another civil rights investigatory mission. It's starting to get hard on me, the lying. Today I have a live-in boyfriend. I asked my handler how long we've been together and she said about five years and I exclaimed in protest, "Well, then why hasn't he made an honest woman out of me!" Seriously though - I get a different personality each time, with a different back story, and sometimes it's hard to remember where I work. It's not that I get nervous or anything - I do know how to bullshit. It's just ... it's lying, and I don't like lying. Which is really hard because I really like the organization that I'm helping and I like channeling my rage about racism and I want to support. But it's lying. We'll see how much longer I can keep up living like Alias.