Not doing much this year because I need to finish cleaning up. Housesitters arrive tomorrow, and we leave on Monday! I have the pumpkins lit, though, and am giving out candy. Frankie helped me greet the last bunch of kids. I picked him up for them to pet, and one of them -- ten years old at least -- said, "I never petted a cat before." This made me sad.



If I'd known the smiley one was going to come out looking so much like Ernie, I'd have gotten a football-shaped pumpkin and made a Bert one too. Or is it just me?

txtriffidranch! Look! I have a pitcher!



There are some small gnat-type insects floating around in the bottom, so it is hunting.

Thanks again! The Medusa's Head is doing fine too, though still small. Tiny toads are living in its catch pot.

As most of you know, I'm extremely fond of my Second Amendment rights, but this ad from today's paper cracked me up. Yes, I always take along my snub-nosed revolvers when I go hunting. I find them especially useful for the deer that let me walk right up and stick it in their bellies.*




*For the record, I'm not against hunting for food, but I don't really do it. Could if I had to, but don't feel the desire. I have been known to wet a line, but both the fish and the pelicans who mocked me will tell you I am no threat to the piscine order.

First of all, a thousand apologies to foodie readers, but I didn't take a single picture of the amazing-looking and -tasting food at Alinea. I enjoy seeing other people's food pix, but I just can't do that in fine-dining situations ever since I once saw Chef Pete scowling at a diner who was happily clicking away, and anyway you can see better pictures on their website.

I did, however, manage to take a few goofy camera-phone pictures of me and Neil:



This one is blurry, but I like the contented, slightly dazed look on Neil's face, which pretty well represents his expression throughout the meal:



And here's Neil in the photographic style of Nick Rhodes (yes, I was enough of a Durannie to buy Nick's incomprehensible photo book):



Here's a Magnificent Mile skyline near our hotel:



Mr. Beef from the outside:



Mr. Beef from the inside:



And the winner is ... Portillo's!



(I know I said I hated taking food photos, but Mr. Beef was empty and nobody notices what stupid touristy shit you do at Portillo's.)

In keeping with its Richard Bachman theme, this scary scale in my hotel bathroom weighed me ten pounds lighter than I weigh at home despite my having consumed a 23-course meal the night before:



Garden photos coming soon, I promise.

Because I know I haven't been posting many photos lately (I'm still futzing around with new computer software/old camera software), here is a slightly blurry camera phone picture of me, Chris, Russell, and our dear, notorious friend Dale, a.k.a. Dr. Death, the mortician who helped me with so much hands-on research back in the day (Russell was Dale's date, and I'm very sorry I cannot remember his last name) at Commander's Palace last night. There was no special occasion, but as Dale says, it's always a special occasion when we get together, and he wanted to take us during his brief visit from his still-rebuilding home of Galveston, where he has been working constantly from the first wave of drowning victims to the recent surge of suicides similar to our post-federal-levee-failure one. Things got very gay indeed, but if Chris says a combination of champagne, other substances, and Dale's encouragement caused me to write any bad words such as, say, BUNGHOLE on him in permanent ink while he was passed out in his easy chair from his two cocktails after we got home, he is, of course, lying.



Please note that I am wearing my cocksucker suit, although you can't see it very well.

I'm sorry I am too lazy to write up the dinner, but it was exquisite. Chef Tory McPhail just gets better and better. theferrett, the Foie Gras du Monde with the coffee and beignets is more delectable than ever, if you can believe that.

Still no word on why Facebook disabled my account, and at this point I'm pretty much thinking fuck 'em. I enjoyed getting back in touch with a bunch of people there and meeting a bunch of new ones, but if they don't want me and my 2000 friends, I'll just become a Twit when I get back from Chicago.

I go through periodic spells of several days to a couple of weeks where the idea of getting online just revolts me for some reason, and I'm in one of those spells now. (I apologize if I've ignored any important communiques, and offer my earnest intent to get to them the next day it rains soon.) I did want to quickly jump on to give two updates.

First the bad news: Catcentric readers may recall that our Siegfried had to undergo extensive dental work a couple of weeks ago. The doctor thought the soft tissue he removed from Sig's mouth didn't look right and sent it to be biopsied. Unfortunately, the tests revealed that Sig has squamous-cell carcinoma on both sides of his upper jaw. The treatment would involve surgery with at least a month's painful recovery time, then reconstructive surgery to repair his jaw, as well as radiation. Sig is 10, but I can't see putting even a young cat through all that. As well, with our large and aging population, we will be called upon to make some difficult decisions over the next few years: if there is scant hope no matter what treatments we opt for, and if the treatments are expensive (the above would run a minimum of $3000), mightn't it ultimately be better to save for later illnesses that may have more chance of success? When Marcel was so sick with hemobartonella in the winter of '05, his bills ran to $4K, but we've never regretted spending the money because he made a spectacular recovery and has been thoroughly enjoying himself ever since (though he did earn the nickname "Four Large").


Siegfried (bad camera-phone shot)

Next the good news: The Green Goddess is open for business! (Visit chefcdb for more details.) They're serving lunch 11am - 4pm Wednesday - Sunday, dinner 5pm - midnight Thursday - Sunday. Paul Artigues is the lunch chef, Chris the dinner chef. He's ecstatic to finally be cooking instead of dealing with bureaucracy. The Green Goddess is located at 307 Exchange Alley in the French Quarter. Please note that while they do serve several wonderful vegetarian dishes including an entire vegetarian tasting menu, they are not a vegetarian restaurant, nor will they become one if enough puling PETA members whine about foie gras (which isn't currently on the menu, but soon will be). There seems to be a certain amount of misconception about this, and the pulers really need to bite Chris' sweaty crank after a long and busy dinner shift; that will teach them to love meat. Oh dear, I've done it again, haven't I? This was supposed to be a promo, and one doesn't generally mention the chef's sweaty crank during a promo. Oh, well ... er ... COME ONE, COME ALL!

I took this picture to post to longhair (which I joined when I realized my hair was actually long enough to wear in styles, not just in a ponytail, braided, or clipped) and will probably do so eventually, but for now, I thought people here might like to see how long it has gotten.



It hasn't been anywhere close to this length since I was, like, 8. For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, I haven't cut it (except for trims) since the post-Katrina failure of the federal levee system, and I have no plans to do so, since it has begun to take on that weird pet-like quality that long hair sometimes gets (especially when you don't process it or use heat on it, so that it actually feels nice -- a novelty for me after all those years of bleached, Manic Panic-ed hair!).

After taking this picture, I realized it was a little longer on the right side than the left. I think I have remedied this with my clever scissors, but it could require professional intervention.

I observed a strange pair of creatures in my house today. I call them Watering-Can-Headed Things One and Two. They appeared to represent two different coat/color morphs, but both had heads that strongly resembled old-fashioned galvanized watering cans.





Though they were as large as good-sized house cats, they did not appear equipped to bite or sting, and were curiously uninterested in me.

When it comes to hands-on endeavors, I tend to be hopeless at those that don't have some whiff of the artistic. As a cook, visual artist, and gardener I am at least competent. I can even sew, though I don't enjoy it, and have made two dresses, a pair of pants, and several pillows in my life. (The pillows and one of the dresses came out very well; the other dress and the pants, not so much.) By contrast, as a repairman, computer geek, or participant in any kind of sport -- just to name a few non-artsy things one does with one's hands and brain -- I am of very little use. So it was with great pleasure yesterday that, about halfway through the project, I realized I was actually building a decent-looking and functional six-by-six-foot cucumber trellis. (Yeah, it's gardening, but it's not hands-in-dirt, which is what I tend to be good at.)



It is only three stakes and some garden twine, but it is mine own creation. Now if the cucumber plants will climb it, I'll be in business.

And because posting just to brag on my cucumber trellis seems far too garden-dweeby, here's a bonus cute picture of Zenobia:

Boo took a turn for the worse this afternoon and we had to take him back to the vet. He died peacefully in our arms about 6:00 this evening. Thank you all for the kind words and well-wishes.


Photo by marquisdd
Boris "Boo" Boudreaux Brite-DeBarr, 1994-2009
We love you, Boo.

I've known cats who liked tomato juice before, but until Terrell, I never had one who would chase me down and demand his share every time I opened a can.



(I let him drink from the can so I could get a picture, but I worry about him cutting his tongue, so I usually pour a little into the palm of my hand and let him lap it up. Spoiled? Our cats? I can't imagine why anyone would think such a thing.)

I'm home, have been home for a few days but haven't felt like posting, in part because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about Grand Isle. We had not been down there since Hurricane Gustav made landfall very close by last September. Couldn't go for a while because the island was closed except to residents and service personnel; then you could drive onto the island but none of the hotels was back open yet; then the hotels began to reopen but Chris was unemployed and we were broke; then, finally, we went.

We saw Grand Isle not too long after the double whammy of Katrina and Rita, and the structural damage was appalling. This was worse. This changed the shape of the island, changed the configuration of the beach. I had read that much of the beach sand washed into Highway 1 and they had to bulldoze it back. Reading about this and seeing it are two very different things. They bulldozed what they could, but a lot of the sand is just gone. A lot is gone in general. Chris and I have been going down there for, what, five or six years? In that short time -- infinitesimal time, climate-wise -- much of the grassy marshland that flanked Highway 1 between Leeville and Port Fourchon has been replaced by vast stretches of open water. A little more land is gone every time we make the drive, but this time, the loss was dramatic and soul-sickening. I didn't take any pictures because I didn't have the heart to and doubted I could capture the scale of the loss anyway. You'd need satellite views to even begin to communicate it.

By no purposeful design, but simply because I'd begun to start thinking about Dead Shrimp Blues, the book I happened to be reading when Katrina hit was Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell. This book describes the possibly unsolvable problem of Louisiana's wetland loss -- a loss that will impact the entire country in more ways than I can list here -- in the best, most readable detail I've found. I'm less than thrilled about some of Tidwell's post-Katrina writings, but I do believe he is in our corner, and Bayou Farewell should be required reading in schools across America.

Anyway, yeah, the fact that we didn't get the relaxing vacation we'd hoped for is kind of beside the point. We were happy to make our little contribution to Grand Isle's economy, and we still love it, and we will return. But I'm beginning to wonder if we might actually be the last generation that gets to treasure this beautiful, wild, demanding place.

Since our somewhat subdued return, I've kept busy nurturing cucumber and tomato seedlings and making this hangy doodad for the garden:



The lines, by Dylan Thomas, read "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age." I've always liked these lines and their imagery, but just lately the green fuse is right up in my grill every day and I'm reading them in a whole new light. The slate is from the roof of our old house, the one that got destroyed when the levees failed. I'd like to make more pieces like this, maybe even do some custom work if anyone was interested, but I only have a couple more pieces of our Napoleon Avenue slate and I'd like to hang onto them. It may be time to start haunting salvage yards.

Also, mainly because I'm still amazed to know photography has advanced to the point where a genetically crappy photographer like me can now capture an image like this, here's a shot of the Mabel Orchard Spider who has set up housekeeping between my foxgloves and my red salvia:

We started our vacation a little early with a date in City Park. (It's a photo set with captions that tell a little story, and it includes pictures of cool plants, Storyland, and the promised shot of my Archbishop's Papal Police T-shirt, which I just got crawfish etouffee on and must go wash.)

Here's me presenting T. Jefferson Parker with the key to the city at Octavia Books last night:



TJP is one of my favorite modern writers, which caused me to do dorky things like call one of his novels by the wrong title (Where Serpents Lie; I called it The Shapes of Snakes, which is the title of a very different mystery by British author Minette Walter) and, after giving him my card, loudly announce "BUT I'M NOT TRYING TO HIT ON YOU!!!" He couldn't have been nicer, but I was still smacking myself in the forehead by the time the signing ended. Chris was busy with restaurant stuff (see chefcdb for news of his upcoming project) and didn't go with me, but when I told him about it later, he asked me, in a nicer way than I am currently able to phrase it, why I still geek out around writers I like when I know perfectly well that most writers are just boring dweebs like me. (And I say that with the utmost love for my boring dweeb writer friends, who know the truth of this all too well.)

It took me until this morning to come up with an answer that satisfied me: Even though I'm aware that writers are just regular folks, words are still the best magic I know about. Put in the right order, they can excite me, comfort me, and take me out of myself like nothing else can. Without the books by the writers I love -- hell, without books in general -- I have no idea how I would maintain even a vestige of sanity. I could live without music, visual art, dramatic performance of any type, or even sports if I had to, but life without books is totally out of the question. The people behind the books are just people, but they impress me because I know how much I owe them. On some level I must have already known this, since I've always tried to be kind to the people who geeked out, cried, or otherwise seemed embarrassed by their own behavior at my signings, even though I privately thought they must be, you know, a few noodles short of a casserole to get so worked up over a boring dweeb like me.

(On the other hand, it's always fun when I get to be good enough friends with a wonderful writer that they are just human to me. "Oh, Gaiman? He's a great guy, but he really needs to learn to keep his sunglasses away from my flamingo." But they, too, turn into magicians when I read their books. It's said among writers that the highest compliment you can give to a book by a friend is that you became so immersed in the writing, you forgot your friend wrote it. I don't entirely agree, but I understand what it means.)

Since marquisdd called my Mardi Gras summary on his journal "minimal and stark ... pure Hemingway" (and since I'm a tired old fart despite only having had one Bloody Mary yesterday), I shall repost it:

We went out. We had fun. Here are a couple of lame pictures we took before leaving the house because we were too lazy to carry the camera around. Saw Rex. Saw Indians. Came home, watched the Rex Ball and the Meeting of the Courts on WYES while Chris fell asleep in front of the TV.

I did manage to do slightly better than the couple of lame pictures -- a whole set of them (with maybe even a couple of pretty good ones)!

This Mardi Gras was also a day of loss. Anyone who follows New Orleans music has probably already heard about the death of Antoinette K-Doe. I had the honor of meeting Ms. Antoinette once, at a 2007 Twelfth Night party at the House of Blues. She kindly invited me to be a Baby Doll, which in fact I was already going to be that year, but I didn't feel I could swear to be 100 percent "proper" and I strongly suspected she would not go for the Nixon head.

This morning, a bunch of us from Our Lady of Good Counsel met up at the church and caravaned over to St. Francis of Assisi on State Street to get ashes. Not long before we left the house, I received the news that my godfather, Warren Donald Henry, Sr., had also passed away yesterday. He had been very sick with cancer for months, so while this was terrible news, it was not a surprise. I only had the privilege of knowing Mr. Warren (as I called him) for a few years, but he and Rosary, his wife of 40 years, have been wonderful godparents who became the big Italian family I always fantasized about -- sort of a real-life Stubbs family without quite so many kids. I loved him dearly and am bereft.

[ETA: A couple of people have asked what I am giving up for Lent. Since I have already given up not only my church, but the certainty that my Church will not treat me like a criminal, the answer is nothing. But I am really going to try to get back on a regular weightlifting program, since it helps my back so much that it is foolish not to.]

I wanted to rest today, but unless I keep moving, that long stretch of parades that starts the day after tomorrow and ends on Fat Tuesday is going to wear me out early. So instead of curling up in bed with the autobiography of Johnny Cash, I weeded and mulched the Bed of Dangerous Plants. Said bed isn't really all that dangerous right now aside from the pencil cactus, but I'm putting in a Madagascar bottle tree soon. Currently, the bed contains fennel, aloe, snake plants, Kalanchoe daigrepontia (Mother of Thousands), pencil cactus, shell ginger, supermarket ginger, dwarf basil, Wandering Jew, and a purple palm tree whose name I can't remember. The bed will also feature tomatoes (Creoles, Brandywines, and/or Huge Yellow Oxhearts) and cucumbers (various weird varieties) this spring. You can see a few pictures of it and various other nifty plants here.

Also, I've finally finished a photo set that took me more than two months to put together: the flowering of my big Mother of Thousands. I'll be crossposting this one to gardening if anyone has questions or comments.

Today's King Arthur parade featured a float about the New Orleans church closings. King Arthur isn't an especially satirical krewe, and this float was pretty obviously recycled from some other hot topic of some other year, but it was a nice gesture. (They were generous with the throws, too -- I caught a pair of King Arthur medallion beads with mini-medallions of Merlin and Guinevere, a pair of old-fashioned glass beads, a bracelet, a rubber shark, a Buffalo Soldiers doubloon, and regular beads aplenty.) Chaos and Krewe d'Etat are expected to provide somewhat more biting satire on the subject later this week, and I hope to get pictures of those too. For now, here are some shots of the King Arthur float (plus a few others).

Cymbalta works by restoring the balance of certain natural substances in the brain (serotonin and norepinephrine), which helps to improve certain mood problems. -- drugs.com

I've been taking Cymbalta for maybe eighteen months. It definitely helped, but I feel I'm at a point where my brain should be able to handle a little more of its own balance. I'm not on sick-making painkilling drugs; I'm not in crippling pain (most of the time)*; I'm doing creative work; I'm active in the world. While I am still subject to anxiety attacks on occasion, I am no longer a whipped and whimpering ball of PTSD. There is no generic Cymbalta yet, and the drug is ridiculously expensive. More important, I don't like taking antidepressants, I only agreed to try this one during a period of crisis, and I don't want to be dependent on it anymore. So I'm tapering off, slowly and (at least according to medical advice) safely.

Now I just need my brain to back me up on this.

Assuming that my brain-chemical imbalance was caused by extreme stress and depression (and I think that's a fairly safe assumption, given that I was not a particularly broken person before the levees failed), it should be able to rebalance itself now that I am no longer living in those conditions. What I am worried about is the period -- if there is one -- between when the Extra Bonus Serotonin fades out and the Natural PZB Serotonin kicks back in. I'm sure that is a gross oversimplification of how the process actually works, but I do know from past experience that there will probably be a period of danger during which I am likely to become bad-tempered, cry for no reason, make dire predictions, and eventually convince myself that I really am just crazy and will have to be on this drug forever. There is something very negative in me, something that wants me to hate everything and myself most of all. I've gotten pretty good at shoving this thing back down into the depths where it belongs, but as the Cymbalta wears off, it will doubtlessly show its ugly head more often.

One thing that helps me is the St. Francis prayer. I often say it in its entirety, but I don't have it memorized, so when I realize I'm acting like an asshole to someone else or myself, I just repeat in my head like a mantra: Make me an instrument of your peace. Make me an instrument of your peace. Make me an instrument of your peace. It does help. Sometimes. Even when it doesn't, it serves to remind me that I don't want my life to suck. You wouldn't think a person would need reminding of that, but over the past three years, there have been times when I genuinely believed that having a non-sucky life would be some kind of betrayal of all we have lost. Teh mental illness, it is fun.

Anyway. Not asking for advice (though I wouldn't mind hearing from others who've stopped taking Cymbalta how it affected them), donations, or affirmations of any kind. Just wish me luck, if you don't mind.

Two new blank books are up on eBay. One has a Royal & Divine Birds theme; the other has to do with Lost Souls? at the Sacred Yew. (Oddly, I feel perfectly comfortable revisiting characters and settings in this medium that I'd never consider writing about again.) If you bid on them, I promise to spend the money on something more fun than Cymbalta ... like maybe Shaq's teeth-cleaning and dental work next week.



See that fang poking out so cutely? That means his body is rejecting it, so the fang and probably a few other teeth will need to be extracted.

*OK, so a more accurate choice of phrasing might be, "There are frequent times when I'm not in crippling pain." I was trying to look on the bright side, but if I paint too rosy a picture, people will start wanting me to do signings and conventions and stuff again, and I just don't feel my health is predictable enough for that.

A recap, for anyone who's just tuning into our program: On January 6, 2009 (the Feast of the Epiphany), I and two other parishioners of Our Lady of Good Counsel were taken out of our church in handcuffs and arrested on the orders of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which had closed the church in October '08. We had been holding peaceful prayer vigils in the church since that date, and archdiocese spokespeople had falsely assured us that they would not use force to remove us. These tattoos on my wrists, done by Walt Clark of Nola Tattoo & Piercing, commemorate the event for me.



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A cool thing that I didn't realize until hours after getting the tattoos is that each cuff contains a full decade (ten beads, not counting the ones between the crucifix and the separator). I could actually say the rosary on them!

I give Nola Tattoo & Piercing an A+ for talent, cleanliness, and fun. It was by far the jolliest experience I've ever had getting tattooed. (Also the first time I've been inked by a handsome young man, which may have had something to do with it.) I've never been pierced there and probably won't get the chance to be, as I don't currently want any more holes in my body, but if you do, piercer Pat made a good impression on me too. He has an excellent sense of humor, and if someone's going to poke sharp objects through your sensitive parts, he or she should definitely be able to laugh about it.