This was a brilliant, spring-like weekend in New Orleans. (Spring comes early this far south.) Friday night we went out to dinner at a Mexican place known for quick seating, quick food, and not-terrible margaritas. The boys all pretty much stayed in their chairs, ate their food, and were well-behaved. It was a gift, after a long week. I had steak nachos – I was expecting a big pile of nachos covered in messy cheese and steak and guac and what-have-you, but instead I got 8 individual nachos, each carefully loaded with steak and cheese, and then dipping stuff (guac, salsa, sour cream) in the middle. AND IT WAS PERFECT. I approve the less-mess, more-bang-for-your-nacho-buck version.
Saturday Prof did the taxes (what we owed cancels out our refund, meaning we’ve just about gotten our withholdings down perfect at last!) while I took the boys to Audubon Park to play in the glorious sunshine. We parked across busy St. Charles Avenue, and crossed the street all holding hands in a long chain. The park is a large green space with a pond in the center of it, a bird sanctuary island at the center of the pond (and a golf course sprawls along the middle as well). A 1.8 mile wide paved walking/cycling track circles the pond and golf course, linking St. Charles Avenue and the Tulane/Loyola campuses on the one end, and the zoo on Magazine Street at the other end. Dotted along the perimeter are a few kids’ playground structures, ornate fountains, picnic tables and shelters, wide open fields, benches for the foot-weary . . . it really is a blissful space, and never feels crowded even when the entirety of New Orleans is out there milling about in spandex and sunglasses. I told at least five groups of tourists how to get to the zoo. (New Orleans pro-tip – never go to the zoo on a gorgeous day. The animals get hot and hide, and there are a kabillion people. Go when it’s slightly chilly, ideally off-and-on drizzly. It’s worth getting wet.)
The boys frolicked under leafy oak trees trailing Spanish moss, joining up with other children to form giant packs of roaming kids. They climbed over the enormous tree limbs like tiny ants, and I watched nervously for signs of breakage at the trunk. A giant mute black man with a brilliant diamond in each ear served as our broad, strong back – lifting everyone’s children (including his own) up and down into the tree. At one point, he clicked his tongue and jutted his chin at us, then waved toward St. Charles Avenue – we all looked and there were riders on horseback, dressed in some sort of costume. His kids and mine became besties, and their mother helped me wrangle mine, seeing as they had just two between them and I had three alone.
A young Muslim family joined the group, their tiny girl dressed Western style but both of them in wraps and head scarves and such. The mother miraculously looked less hot than I was, swathed in all those layers. The fabric must be light. They whispered in a foreign tongue to their little girl, laughed with glee at her antics, and she played with my boys a bit, though she was shy (the boys are a bit much, all together).
I herded my boys up after we’d played for a while, and we went home for lunch, and the rest of the day was uneventful. Sunday, we went to church. I’ve re-joined the choir, and we sang an absolutely haunting, beautiful Gregorian-chant-like piece. We had to take two cars to church, just a mile away, and so we left one there and planned to walk back later that afternoon and picked it up. We stopped by an open house for a home we liked – it’s lovely, small but well-designed. (Can we survive in 1650 square feet? Stay tuned, we may be able to tell you shortly). That done, it was rounding on lunch time – there was no food in our pantry at home, so we drove to a sandwich shop we love. The traffic was heinous, it took forever to get there – the shop was closed. We just went home and I made a box of mac and cheese for them, tuna wraps for us. Turns out there was enough food in the house after all.
A little later in the afternoon we put the kids in the stroller and headed up towards church to pick up the other car. Two blocks from our house, we stumbled upon a home with an automatic bubble blower and a bouncy castle in the front yard. Turns out it wasn’t even a kid’s birthday party – just a Sunday afternoon – and friends we knew called us over from the elevated front porch. We let them cajole us into stopping by and making friends with the homeowners, and we each had a beer while the kids went nuts in the bounce house and three dogs (“one big, one little, and one middle” per Jack) raced the perimeter of the iron-fenced front yard. New Orleans – one big party, all the time, and everyone is welcome, doesn’t matter if you’re old money, new money, or no money. Love it.
After extracting the boys from the bounce castle, we decided to drop them + 1 parent off at Audubon park, and the other parent would run to a local Jewish grocery and grab a few staples. It took about a half hour to drive a couple of miles to Audubon, and there was zero parking – I don’t know WHAT was going on in uptown NOLA this weekend, but we spent inordinate amounts of time in a car traversing a distance that couldn’t have totaled more than 5 miles all told.
We went to a less-famous, non-touristy playground/park and I dropped off all four boys, I zoomed through the tiny grocery, and then we went home and I cooked the week’s meals. We had BBQ chicken legs and fries with frozen veg last night, and I made chili; soaked and boiled red beans for a quick red-beans-and-rice next week; made sweet potato and black bean enchiladas; made slow cooker refried beans; and soaked and boiled some navy beans to put in soups and salads.
This was a nice weekend where I tried to shore up the domestic needs and my mental health needs. Sprinkled in all of this was laundry, dishes, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, etc. – and I even managed a run. It was a good mix of productive, restful, adventurous, and planning-ahead. We’re stressed about schools and buying a house, but man if we can get those things sorted out I think I could live here forever. Where would you stumble upon a bouncy castle, bubbles, and beers on a random Sunday afternoon and be invited up as if you were family?
So cool, Gill. Glad you sound so much happier in NOLA. I found out when raising the little ones, sharing time with friends with children, whether the time was spontaneous or planned, was priceless to help maintain my sanity. You bring back some good memories from the old neighborhood! Those Saturdays when the weather turned warm were golden.