Beth B is probably reading.

It's like my mother's famed holiday dessert, Hershey Bar Pie (a melted giant Hershey bar stirred into room temp Cool Whip, blonked into a graham cracker crust, and frozen) in a can. Revelatory.

PS this thread helps.

I went stress shopping at TJoe's last night and spent $200. That is a stupid full cart at TJoe's. So now we're ALL stress eating all the things.

Frosted Flakes. Would that I were a child again.

HA! Right?!

Static. Bane of cats and fine-haired dogs and people.

DO SOMETHING.

Exactly. And fire behind the eyes.

If I thought it would elicit any real change, I would light myself on fire in front of the white house. I have no useful outlet at the scope of my rage and anguish. I have no words to quantify this evil, to define, frame, and diminish it. Daily life feels like bad puppetry. What do we do?

My son just got accepted to the University of Minnesota. I do not know how I feel about that possibility. I cannot even think a week ahead, let alone 6 months. I love Minnesota. I would be terrified for all the math kids of color who would be his friends. I am apoplectic with rage. What do we do?

I'm shaking. Everything in me is screaming to run to Minnesota and help the helpers. I swear to god I'm on the verge of lighting myself on fire on TV, I feel so helpless and swallowed by the void. How are any of us functioning? Why isn't this all over EVERY media, and called what it is?

I volunteer.

Yeah. It fucking IS.

Me and daughter in the bar where we sneaked the 17 yr old son to hear jazz in its natural habitat.

Husband and 17 yr old, happy with the music and the successful sneaking into the bar.

Excellent graffiti reads "Decriminalize Frolicking". Yeah!

Gorgeous house front in the Garden District, with friendly yellow lab behing the deep grey decorative iron fence. The house is white, with an upper balcony. There is copious, lacy, delicate, deep grey iron work everywhere and tasteful holiday decorations. Love.

New Orleans things 4

Gorgeous swamp landscape

A great brass band busks at a corner on Bourbon Street. So many incredible musicians here!

Son leans against the outer window of Peaches Records on Magazine Street, where the coolest little stores are found.

Found a bangle and a ring (that I am obsessed with) at an antiques store. Bangle is ivory lucite encrusted with an array of stones and gems of different sizes, shapes and colors in a palette of blues, purples, golds, whites, and seafoam greens. Ring is silver band topped with a white ceramic cushion rectangle, with a bezel-set round, faceted amethyst in the center and an unexpected swoop of marcasite curving up one of the long sides and ending in a point.

New Orleans things 3

My 2 youngest kids sit stiffly side by side in granite chairs in the NOMA sculpture garden, looking silently ahead at a pool of green water with a statue in it. They look like they are in time out and it makes me laugh.

Charlotte and I found the most perfect, cozy, charming coffee shop/bar for reading time called The Fourth Wall. This is the back end of the long, narrow space where the art-covered brick walls, colorful rugs, cozy sofas and old desks open out on the courtyard, where one can read, drink, and even smoke (!!) just like in the olden days (the 80s).

A giant voodoo priest float "prop" at Mardi Gras World, where design and construction takes place. He holds a skull-topped staff and a green boa wraps around his arm. He's beautifully painted and his dramatic expression is incredible!

Delicious and diverse pastries line the counter at Bearcat Café, where we made our way for delicious breakfast several times during our stay. All made in house.

New Orleans things 2

NOMA sculpture garden in City Park had breathtaking landscaping, including beautiful arched bridges over water with tiny floating plants, strategic palms and lilies, and enormous Spanish-moss-draped Live Oaks shading everything.

Highly recommend The Pharmacy Museum in the French Quarter, 2 floors of rooms chock full of fascinating and sometimes ooky potions, poisons, ingredients, bottles and jars, treatments and equipment, with informative explanations worth reading. All housed in the original site of a historic and important NOLA pharmacy.

One of my favorite tomb statues at the beautiful and peaceful Metairie cemetery: a white marble, robed angel 3/4 facing towards the tomb (NOT towards the viewer) bears her chest and neck towards the heavens, eyes closed, wings folded at her back, arms down at her sides as she arches her neck and head backwards and face to the sky. She looks to be almost fainting backwards in either resignation or grief or ecstasy.

Sasquatch and my husband are annoyed in step with each other.

New Orleans things 1

I had the same issue. You could try Katabasis, which I found quite satisfying in a brainular way, or the dense world-building of the French series in translation that starts with A Winter's Promise, which is super weird and has great characters, and manages a whiff of steampunkery without being twee

show up tonight with the incredible meal we had catered from the delicious Turkish place and pay to supply for all 20 family members to have a nice Christmas eve dinner. I guess I'll just take my book and sit on the corner of the couch and get drunk and read. Because I haven't heard from her since.

the curator of the elegant and beautiful setting, because he hates conflict and says it's not worth it and to just laugh because she's so petty and damaged. But I'm exhausted planning and shopping and cooking for them and cleaning up after them and I've had enough. So anyway that'll be fun when we

I (finally) told her so. And a couple other long-term thorns in my side as well. My husband will never tell her how it hurts me to be overlooked every year as she hands me my Starbucks gift card and goes back to ignoring me, the fucking creator of their bountiful vegetarian and vegan feast and

that she made me angry because I asked for help with Christmas day brunch, instead of doing everything myself to give her family a warm, lovely, delicious holiday tradition. I am simply too overwhelmed this year. And she basically refused and she'd just get Kroger muffins. And this infuriated me and

Welo, it happened. I finally told my mother-in-law (who doesn't like me because I saved her son from her basement and helped him build a beautiful home and successful life, and also I'm too prissy & fancy for her, insisting on things like... our children need to be fed actual meals, not just sugar)

I liked it too. The family dynamics were eerily familiar and it was so validating just seeing that in writing.

being guillotined. But no. Silence. What a worthless piece of shit.

As an Indy resident whose theater is visited by that reprehensible ghoul, Mike Pence, I often think he has such an opportunity to do the right thing and write a book detailing all he knows about Trump, in scathing fashion, and he just... doesn't do it. This man's boss woul've been cool with him

When other kids met my kids in school for the first time, they thought they were either "fancy" or "foreign" because of how they spoke. LOL job well done, I say. Chips off the nerdy, verbal blocks. Huzzah to you!

Snowy backyard, snow falling, view from inside the back door. Out in the yard, a giant blonde goldendoodle/house horse curls up for a relaxing nap in the snow. In the foreground, a small silky red cavapoo sits inside the sliding glass door with just her head outside, catching only approximately 18 snowflakes on her head and ears as she monitors the situation.

Inside you are two wolves..
#dogsky
💙🐕

She's used to our travels always being like explorer/anthropologist field trips where our agenda always includes: local art, bookshops, pastries, outdoor adventures, and either antiques, cemeteries, or a tour of the weirdest thing the place has to offer.

Hehe welcome to NORMAL my love. Nice to visit, but we wouldn't want to live there.