[title type="h5"]Sunday, November 30, 2014.
Caroling.
[/title]
It's a lovely, cool day. The last day of hurricane season--a very easy one for New Orleans. We weren't even inconvenienced by having to track any storms. They all stayed far away.
My only difficulty of the day was a fruitless search for a black, button-down-collar shirt I know is around here somewhere. That is the uniform for the Northlake Performing Arts Society, which is singing Christmas carols at Christwood, a retirement community in Covington.
I'm the first to arrive, and as I watch the tenants of the place move about, I start thinking about what it must be like to live that way. Then I stop thinking about it. This is a day of good cheer.
I have a solo. "The Christmas Waltz," a title by which only musicians and disk jockeys know it, but a familiar song on the radio this time of year. "Frosted windowpanes," it begins, with a waltz tempo. I break loose from the other singers and weave a path through the audience, handing out little candy canes as I go. (Candy canes are mentioned in the lyrics.) I don't think I messed up the song. I get approving glances from the other singers, and we head off into harking the herald angels.
The Marys and The Boy attend the performance. Then we have dinner at Zea. Tomato soup and a house salad for me. Somebody got the rotisserie roast beef and loved it. We don't go to Menchie's.
Then, as I have done on Sunday evenings through most of my life, I get to work on tomorrow's load.
[title type="h5"]Monday, December 1, 2014.
Fence Me In.[/title]
For the past week or so, The Boy has been engaged in building Mary Ann's Fence. It will enclose most of the Cool Water Ranch, even the parts of it that are thick with brush and trees and the pond. I think it is a bit much, given that its main purpose is to keep the dogs from running free. That could be done with great comfort for the dogs with one-fourth the amount of fencing. They will continue to hang out on the deck or in one small area of grass. They will never go to some of the places where the fence does. But this is the first thought that came to MA's mind, and that will be the way it is. She does not compromise.
Mary Leigh and I have early supper at the Acme. Red beans and rice with hot sausage for me, of course. Wedge salad with tomatoes and blue cheese for her, of course.
But we are not here primarily to eat. This Sunday is Mary Ann's sixtieth birthday. (I know I am revealing what should be a secret, but MA is writing about this at length in her own blog.) We are having the party at the lovely home of our friends the Fowlers, who have much more room indoors than we do for our expected forty partyers. And a grand piano, creating the perfect space for Daniel, the Gourmet Cellist. We have booked him and one of his fellow string players in the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra to provide music for the occasion.
I set that deal up, trying to keep it a secret. But somehow, MA found out. She is planning everything else, including all the food. (The thing she wants most is Her Way, All The Time.) But she doesn't know about our other, even bigger surprise. Jude has been insisting to MA that he cannot break away from his movie production in Los Angeles to attend the birthday party. In reality, he planned to do so all along, and bought the tickets months ago. Trouble was, the airline changed the flight schedule, and he will not arrive until the party is half over. And how will he get from the airport to the party? Such logistics must be handled, while the secret is kept.
