Summertime and the livin’ ain’t always easy. It is hot and humid in New Orleans with oppressive heat and mosquitoes ruling the night. When the power goes out, even for an hour, you wonder how people ever survived the long, hot summers in the south.
When you live in an old house in New Orleans, you discover that there was an art to home building generations ago to make its inhabitants as comfortable as possible. Porches were designed to catch the maximum breeze and when I’m still long enough, one leg dangling, pushing the swing gently and rhythmically, I can hear a song that’s been playing here for a long time. Close your eyes and listen. It feels something like this.
Living in an old home, it doesn’t have modern day insulation or double-pane windows that would make summers more comfortable, but it does have tall ceilings that help heat rise and lime plaster walls which are cool to the touch. All I have to do is lean my back against the original plaster walls with my palms touching it, and I feel soothed. When I look out of the window, I like the distortion from the old wavy, imperfect glass. 
The creak of some loose heart pine floor boards that I manage to always step on in the dark bring back memories of a loose board in front of our children’s cribs that would creak and wake them up after we had finally gotten them to fall asleep in our arms.
I like the stainless steel, travertine, granite, and marble in our kitchens and baths, but I don’t want to lose all of my old home’s imperfections. An old house is a living being. When left unoccupied, it deteriorate quickly, but keeping a home filled with love can keep its pulse beating for a very long time.
xoxo,
BelowSeaLevel
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The past month has been hectic, but the last couple of weeks have been brutal. I have what I guess you could call a “vampire schedule” since my natural circadian clock has me wired to sleep during the day and wide awake during the night. That sort of schedule doesn’t mesh too with the real world, so every now and then I have to crash at the normal human bed time. Last night was one of those nights. I seldom turn off everything and cocoon before midnight, but I had to do it–and I wanted to do it.
There was a struggle going on between my body saying, “Go to sleep!” and my mind fighting to stay awake. As the body was winning the war, I hear, “Roach.” It wasn’t a scream or in an excited voice, but rather more of an explanation or mild expression of disgust. Considering I live in an old house uptown with huge oak trees covering two-thirds of my home, we are actually pretty lucky with only one sneaking in every three months or so. It isn’t the smaller food-driven ones, it’s the large Palmetto water bug type that fly–and they fly very well, thank you very much. They’re big enough to make a light flutter sound. It’s horrible… just horrible.
I’m still listening for voices and spraying patterns, trying to judge how close the roach is getting to me. I hear two looooong sprays, pssssssssss….pssssssssss. I stay bundled up but go ahead and ask loudly enough to be heard if the roach is heading in my direction. Thankfully, it’s not, it’s on some new blackout curtains I just bought. Okay, that’s cool, just as long as it’s not coming my way. I start to drift off comforted that all is clear. Then, I hear spraying again without any warning. Psssssssss…pss…pss…pss. Silence. Pssssssssssss….psssssssssssss. What in the hell is going on? Morse code?
Sleep isn’t happening. I lazily ask from bed if it’s heading in my direction now. My son answers in a disinterested voice that he thinks it’s actually two of them. God, I hope not. Instead of freaking out, I start thinking about roach memories. Two stick out in my mind. The first–because it’s the worst–was when I was a teenager. I was doing homework or something in my room when I happened to see a roach, which was very rare since my parents’ home was new construction and the oak tree didn’t cover the house. Anyways, I start screaming bloody murder and start running for the door, except the damn roach starts FLYING and lands on the door before I can get to it! I can recall screaming in circles like Linda Blair’s head in The Exorcist. 
The other “fond” memory was when we were staying at one of our “Katrina” homes while our home was being repaired from hurricane damages. We just happened to pick up this bug zapper that’s like a tennis racket, except it has an electrified grid. I’ll never forget reading a book or something that had me distracted when I felt intense pain. My son touched me with it to see what would happen–the same one with the current roach situation. That’s okay, I still love you. Those things hurt like hell, so be careful.
Anyways, back to the roach. It was extremely late–I mean vampire prime time–when someone spotted a roach. One of my kids was willing to get close enough to it with the tennis racket zapper since we didn’t have a can of Bengal. He touches the thing with it, which should have killed it, except the thing took off, jumping two or three feet into the air and was catapulted across the room several feet. It did NOTHING to the roach. We were too horrified to move, so FrankenRoach lived to see another day.
Despite going to bed early, I still missed getting some much-needed sleep. This weekend, the yard will be sprayed, just in case I can manage getting to bed early this weekend. I hate roaches, but I love Bengal.
Something about gnomes makes me smile–and a tiny bit creeped out. I like the concept of those mischievous little buggers. The Travelocity commercials crack me up, but my love for them goes back well before that funny gnome hit the big time.
Having never really thought about gnomes much other than laughing at how cute they are–or dastardly–I spent a few minutes online trying to figure out what the deal is with these tiny guys. I was short on time, so I couldn’t delve into the subject too deeply, but this is more about the cute factor than the history that can be traced back centuries, anyways. It is believed the original gnome was a humanoid spirit that dwells underground and can easily move through solid earth. Their image has changed over time and now is sometimes viewed as the fat cousin of fairies, elves, goblins, and various tiny mythical creatures.
Most of the modern gnomes that I’m familiar with are the garden variety gnomes found with tiny lanterns, shovels, rakes, and wheelbarrows. They tend to gardens when no one is watching and bring a sense of happiness when seeing their rosy cheeks. Modern gnomes sometimes resemble Snow White’s dwarves. As much as I like them, I only have a few. I received a couple as a gift a few years ago and placed them outside of the doghouse of our Corgi that passed away several months ago. Those are the only gnomes that make me sad to see because I remember seeing her looking up at me between the two gnomes with a look that said she wanted to get up, but was too happy or lazy to move. She had the sweetest eyes and I miss her so very much.
There is a movie, Amélie, whose title character has a father that obsesses over his garden gnome. It is worth a watch if you’ve never seen it–at least I liked it. Long story short, she performs a good deed and then decides to devote her free time to helping others. Her father always wanted to travel, but always found excuses to stay home. She decides to push him to travel by stealing his gnome and giving it to a friend that is a flight attendant to take pictures with it at foreign destinations. Amélie anonymously sends her father the pictures of the gnome seeing the world.
Before anyone thinks that I am a gnome freak, I only have a few here and there in my yard. I use restraint and prefer to smile when I see them tending to the yards of others.
Thank you for reading my blog and taking the time to say “Hi” and letting me get to know YOU better. That is why I love my little blog so very much. It started as–and continues to be–a way to relax and let my thoughts turn into written words. It is a combination of sharing my city and various things that make my world go ’round mixed with things that maybe one day my kids might read so that they can always hear my voice through my words. There are things that I want to share with my kids as they venture into the world, but the fact is that kids are kids. One day, I hope they’ll stop by here and read what Mommy had to say.
I consider this blog a refuge from the web, my little comfy corner where I can hang out and have friends visit when they get a chance. The topic can be a book, a funny story, pets, or a favorite food. No subject is off limits, but I always want the conversations to be caring and kind.
If you’re reading this, I hope you will continue to take the time to stop by and say what’s on your mind and going on in your life.
This time of year is always sentimental to me. Personally, it stirs bittersweet emotions. As a kid, though–and even more so as a teen–there wasn’t any bitter, only sweet. That changed after becoming a parent.
Middle school is probably the least stressful of all since kids are no longer kids, really. They are capable of handling all sorts of situations on their own. They haven’t reached upper school yet with the importance of GPA, course selection, or their first boyfriend/girlfriend, and the demands of college seem so far away.
During the senior year, very often, there will be a college rejection that will sting, but in the end, most college freshmen grow to love the college that loved them. This time, though, kids are no longer kids and know the finality of that last day of school and saying “good-bye” to their best friend that they might never see again. I hope that regardless of age, every kid has a great summer and finds their sweet spot, leaving the emotions for when they become parents.
