so far

our parade scene so far:

friday night - too tired, too much migraine, too cranky, too rainy

saturday - I bought groceries after working all morning so we didn't get out there til nearly 4. we saw shangri-la right on canal, surrounded by tourists, but nash & liam liked the spot. the tourists... in this case it wasn't they that were horrible assholes per se, just that they were utterly devoid of the spirit.
after that, we bathroomed it up at canal place mall and washed washed washed our hands and then walked on down to the spot on st. charles where our friends from the unschool group have their spot. local crowd, definitely in possession of the spirit. liam and I went over to the sushi place and got miso soup and california rolls and used their lovely bathroom. I am determined to spend less money this year on take-out food than in the past but still, there is only so much I can carry, and, unless you're near a friend's house, most bathrooms have a price. the food was excellent, besides.
and so we saw sparta and pegasus for the first time - I love the pegasus medallions. nash snapped at one point and dove on this kid (much bigger kid than nash) who caught a blinky medallion bead that he'd been after. he's pretty lucky that he didn't get an elbow to the face from the kid - he did get benched for a few floats and a serious talking to from me.
liam had a great time for the first parade. he caught a football by himself and was very proud. by the second he had switched over to "why are they throwing things at me?" mode and hid behind our friend's stroller for each float.
walking home on a saturday night, the crowd changes for the worse as you near canal street and the ferry. swaying, stupid tourists. piles of vomit here and there. get out of my way, you morons. somebody yakked in the heated room on the ferry, so despite the cold, we were all crammed together outside. we got home at 11, washed washed washed our hands and went to sleep.

sunday - raced home from work and packed the wagon full of snacks for barkus while talking on the phone to various folks about where to rendezvous and getting warm clothes together for all of us. barkus was awesome! so many harrys! and a couple of fine sirius blacks, too. people who have never seen barkus truly do not know what they're missing. talk about having the spirit! there's so much more to it than the dogs. some folks are such exhibitionists they're out there with no dogs at all, or carrying stuffed animals. and so many children. we were with two friends and kids from the neighborhood and had a blast, even liam, who definitely bagged the most booty based on sheer charm.
that ended when the parade did, though, and the ferry home was a nightmare of liam melting down.

yesterday was the city-wide day off from festivities and so we (mostly me) cooked up things to bring with us to the rest of the parades. I assembled over a dozen "emergency burritos" and a pint of hummus and another of chicken salad (lots of cubed, cooked chicken; lots of plain yogurt; lots of mayo; lots of dill, salt & pepper), and then said, who am I kidding, we'll want something sweet, plus it's high baking weather, and so I looked through my cookbooks until I found a cookie recipe that matched up with most of my ingredients and sounded like something I would want to eat.
I wound up with these cookies from the "cooking with the dead" cookbook that I got in a swap, thinking it was some sort of dia de los muertos book and being foolishly surprised to discover that it is, duh, a deadhead tour cookbook. damn hippies, but the cookies are great. I used oil instead of butter and maple syrup instead of honey and I had no raisins and only half of the chocolate chips that they called for but I doubled the bananas and added walnuts, sunflower seeds and a third of a bag of cinnamon chips to these oatmeal cookies and they are delicious. of course, one's first sweets after some sugar-free livin are always tasty but I do think these cookies are particularly good. we ate a handful last night and packaged up the rest for parade eats.

it's raining, it's raining, and earlier a little hail. tonight I go nowhere. right now the kids are watching disc one of the pee wee's playhouse collection, later we'll clean more and cook more and eat more and watch the amazing race.

nash has nearly finished reading dragon rider, and he is so itchy to get to the grand finale at this point that he has been sitting in the lighted stairwell reading it after I call it quits for the night and springing up in the morning to resume. and I'm so happy about that.

it's a cool book, too, with strong, intelligent, funny, compassionate characters in male and female varieties.

I am psyched for tomorrow night, rain or no, I mean, hell, my first Muses parade was in the freezing rain and it was still gorgeous. we are older and wiser now, we will have umbrellas and everything and we'll be right outside of a friend's apartment so we'll be okay.

right now my energy is all about the cooking & cleaning, keeping the rainy day kids happy, and warding off this sore throat that keeps threatening. and stray thoughts of john cusack tip-toeing here and there...