Tornados, parades, love

Early Tuesday morning a tornado touched down about two blocks from my house. It blew roofs off of buildings and knocked over power lines and trees, which crushed the cars undeneath. I slept through it, more or less. I was expecting a bad thunderstorm and that's what it sounded like to me. I got up the next morning and the power was out, but there's nothing new about that. I took Hank for a walk and when I got outside I realized something bad had happened. But my house was untouched.

So what do you say about that? How lucky I am again. How unlucky this city is.

Yesterday I turned in a 50+ page paper with more than 140 footnotes. It's about the use of eminent domain to prevent development, as happened in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, where the township condemned a piece of land where a developer was about to start construction on a new subdivision. It was a really interesting and engaging thing to write and it was just about as satisfying as any writing I've done, except for all the all-of-control footnoting and nutty, uptight formatting that goes with academic legal writing.

But anyway, I was going to say that I turned it in and then I realized: it's Mardi Gras. I'm not ready for Mardi Gras at all. There's exactly 0% chance I'm going to appear in public in a costume. But I will probably go to the parades tomorrow or Monday or both, and maybe on Tuesday I'll go down to the Marigny to see what other people are wearing or not wearing. But mostly I'm going to spend the holiday catching up with everything I got behind on while I was writing my paper.

Mr. M was here two weeks ago, and we went to the Krewe du Vieux parade, which was a nice little discreet piece of Mardi Gras. It was great to have him here, but now I miss him more. He's doing well and looks much better. His hair is growing back, even. The city was lovely for him, as beaten down as it is, and though the weather was grey. We ate amazing food every day and I took him to the barber who serves cocktails with a shave and a haircut. On the way home one night I hit a monster pothole which destroyed one of my wheels, but it was good to have someone around to help me deal with a crisis, for once. It also made me realize how hard these roads are on my poor car, which makes me sad. Every mile in New Orleans has to equal at least three miles of normal driving. Alas.

Mr. M and I have a kind of relationship I recognize. It looks like a hybrid of my favorite aunt & uncle's relationship and that of a couple in a screwball comedy from the 30s. There's an ongoing banter where he teases me and I get agitated, but underneath there's a warm electrical buzz. It's hard for me to have someone around because I'm set in my ways and introverted and used to being alone. But when he goes I miss him awfully.