Before we left for New Orleans, I told some people I work out with that I wasn’t going to do the thing everyone does at Mardi Gras, i.e. get wasted and stumble around town like a roaring idiot.
And I didn’t. We stopped into the Hermes Bar yesterday, aka the Antoine’s Annex. because I thought a snack would be nice before our late brunch reservation, and also I needed to use the bathroom, and it was one place that wasn’t blaring hip-hop at a bazillion decibels. I ordered a Bloody Mary, and struck up a conversation with a nice gentleman, a local. He was there with his gang of fiftysomething friends, also locals, because it’s what you do, and he was a great ambassador for his city, introducing us around as “my aunt and uncle, up from Dee-troit.” He told us they were leaving shortly, and we should claim their table, as we’d been standing at the bar.
They left, with many good wishes to have a good time and tell the folks back in Dee-troit how great the city was, and we took the table. We ordered truffle fries and what the hell, by now it was noon, let’s have the signature cocktail, a sazerac.
The sazerac made the world a little sparkly and magical, and we left after a while, buying and drinking a bottle of water to be responsible. Everyone is always telling us how important it is to stay hydrated. Wandered the Quarter, saw this, saw that. Got to our brunch, which featured bottomless mimosas, but all I did was sip, honest. We left after the crab cakes Benedict (me) and the chicken and waffles (Alan). I’d describe my state of inebriation as gently tipsy, like my mother when she’d tell what she considered to be a dirty joke. And we were wandering back home when I tripped over a pipe or some fucking thing sticking up from the tree cutout that I’d stepped into to avoid some other bad thing on the sidewalk, and I fell, hard, whacking my eye, but not, amazingly, breaking my glasses.
And now I have a shiner. A very big one, like Rocky when he’s moaning CUT ME to Burgess Meredith. And I will not have more than two drinks at a time until the day I die. As I told my friend when I said I wasn’t going to get drunk, moderation tends to impose itself when your hangovers progress from feeling blah to feeling nauseous to throwing up to requiring a good 48 hours to recover and now, apparently, to falling down and getting a black eye. I’ve always been clumsy; I don’t need this shit. Next time it’ll be a tooth, or my hip. This was last night:
It’s worse this morning. I’ll spare you.
But! It’s been a great trip so far, other than the injury. We arrived Saturday night and found, to our delight, that the Endymion parade was passing right in front of our hotel. Endymion is a so-called “super krewe,” and what that means is, the parade is insanely big and insanely long — band after band after band, float after float after float. So many throws. I got some beads, and we decided to go into the hotel and have a drink at the lobby bar, which we did. You had to have a wristband to even get into our hotel because of the crowds outside. The parade kept going by, and suddenly about 30 or 40 people from outside came rushing in, with the facial expressions that say “some shit is going down outside,” and not “we all need to use the bathroom.”
Alan immediately ducked down. I did not. And then I heard him call out, “Nancy! Only the white people are standing up!” Which is kind of our family joke about how black and white people process violence in our violent world, and so I ducked down, too. After a few minutes, the front desk clerk began checking wristbands and the crisis was over. Apparently there was a scuffle across the street, and one of the scufflers yelled, “I have a gun,” and that’s what started the panic. No gun was ever brandished, and the bartenders all thought Alan’s warning about not being the dumb white person who doesn’t have the sense to get down was very funny. There was a Scottish couple sitting next to us, and this was quite a welcome-to-America kind of initiation. “We’ve only been here an hour,” the man marveled in his thick accent. Well, now you know: Don’t stand up.
Anyway, Endymion:
In the Quarter, Louisiana National Guard and hard barriers everywhere:
This is what terrorism gets you: A police state.
Finally, my sazerac:
Today we have a quieter day planned — the New Orleans Museum of Art, etc. I will step very carefully, wherever I go.
alex said on March 3, 2025 at 10:51 am
Hoping to make it to the Munchie Emporium (now known as Mad Anthony’s Tap Room) tomorrow before they sell out of their Fat Tuesday features. It’s the one day of the year that hubs and I don’t find their menu absolutely boring as hell anymore. But you’ve gotta get there early.
I just blew $2K this morning on garage door repairs. Evidently the door had been installed crooked when we bought it seven years ago from a company no longer in business, which led to abnormal wear on the wheels, springs and cables, all of which needed to be replaced, and a reinforcing bracket had to be placed where the garage opener connects with the door as this area had been subject to undue stress and tears were appearing in the sheet metal. The door never sealed properly along the floor, and I had assumed that it was a problem in the concrete being unlevel, but no, it was a crooked fucking door installed by some crooked fucking contractors.
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Courtney McCrimmon said on March 3, 2025 at 10:53 am
Oh my goodness! I love NOLA and have been a few times and always end up with some…adventure. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the show Better Things with Pamela Adlon – it’s so amazing at capture the never ending shit show that seems to be mid-life in America but if you watch one episode, the main character’s visit to NOLA is a perfect episode of television, I think.
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Heather said on March 3, 2025 at 11:01 am
Glad you were not more seriously hurt. I’ve noticed that my balance is worse lately in exercise classes, and I almost fell on a narrow spiral staircase at a restaurant over the weekend. I’ll be in New Orleans by myself so even more important not to get absolutely sozzled.
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JodiP said on March 3, 2025 at 11:18 am
I am glad you weren’t more seriously injured. I love the sazerac shot.
I found my yoga routine has helped with balance. I am 100% certain I’ll never do a full dancer’s or tree pose, but I have really seen an improvement. I do a 10 minute routine from YouTube every day, and take an hour-long class on Saturdays.
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nancy said on March 3, 2025 at 11:22 am
Yeah, yoga is again in my future. I do squats on the flat side of the Bosu ball, but clearly I could use a little deeper instruction.
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Peter said on March 3, 2025 at 12:06 pm
There’s always a silver lining – you should leave that shiner alone. If anyone asks, just say “you should see the other woman”; you will be the Woman You Don’t Mess With and have free rein in that town.
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Jenine said on March 3, 2025 at 12:51 pm
What a souvenir! Happy pancake day to all.
@Alex, I just paid a bit less than $300 to a garage door repair-er. A first company fixed the mechanism when it broke last summer. And it worked great, except for when the power went out (which it did several times this winter) and we could not get the door to open manually. Pulling on the string did nothing and that first company wouldn’t return my calls.
Second company made it work and I am grateful.
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Dorothy said on March 3, 2025 at 1:09 pm
I’ll let you use your imagination what words I said as I scrolled down and saw that picture. Jiminy Christmas! (those weren’t the words). I’m glad your glasses didn’t break but not glad that you fell. And I’m glad there were no gunshots. Holy cow that’s quite some action for just a few days in Big Easy so far.
We had excitement here last Thursday when a house under construction, same side of the street as our house, had an explosion in the basement and did extensive structural damage. Two workers had to go to the hospital, it was briefly on the news and I’m hoping we don’t have three fire trucks, six ambulances and three police cars whiz by our house again any time soon.
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David C said on March 3, 2025 at 1:47 pm
Mary was dusting and knocked a ceramic owl off a shelf and bounced it off her eye. It gave her a black eye. She said any time we’d go out together she felt like she needed to tell everyone “He didn’t hit me”.
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Pam H said on March 3, 2025 at 2:56 pm
Falling down is a genetic inheritance from mom. I swear all the women in our family are victims. Watch out Kate! At least you didn’t break a bone.
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Dexter Friend said on March 3, 2025 at 4:35 pm
My VA doctor didn’t like me using my canes and rollator like I do so she sent me to a chiropractor. I just got back from appointment number one and my back hurts like hell from the treatment. This is just my first big step into geriatric living. In a few weeks I’ll be in Ann Arbor getting scanned and likely probed.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2025 at 6:01 pm
Trump seems determined to put the economy into recession. Between the arbitrary and capricious Musk shit and now tariffs, employment is going down and prices up, and consumer confidence is already low. The treasury secretary is already talking about redefining GDP to exclude federal government spending, to try to hide the hit of the Muskcession.
I guess it’s one way to force the Fed to lower interest rates…
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Sherri said on March 3, 2025 at 6:17 pm
Here’s what I don’t get about our oligarchs trying to destroy our government: who do they think is going to buy their products? I know, I’m silly, they don’t really sell products anymore, they sell hype to drive up their stock price, but even so, the money has to come from somewhere. Do they think they can get rich just trading it among themselves? Do they think they won’t need any good and services? Do they plan to live in the metaverse, where they’ll have no physical needs?
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Dave said on March 3, 2025 at 7:40 pm
I had a big flashlight setting on a shelf in our garage a good forty years ago. My wife was out in the garage, she jostled the shelf somehow and the flashlight fell off and hit her right between the eyes, truly, I take blame for having it too close to the edge but nonetheless, she had two black eyes, somehow, luckily, it didn’t break her nose but she looked terrible. No, we never or I never got accused of any domestic abuse but she looked like a victim.
My neighbor told me today he wrote a letter to Indiana Senator Young and told him that he doubted he was a real Marine because he served with Marines (he was in the Coast Guard) and they had spines. He doesn’t expect an answer. I see that the senator in Kansas had a town meeting but left because he thought the constituents were being disrespectful.
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Deborah said on March 3, 2025 at 7:54 pm
Ouch, that looks painful. I managed to fall and hit my head on the base of the Aeron chair by the desk in our bedroom in Santa Fe a couple of weeks ago, all I was doing was taking off a turtleneck shirt while sitting on the bed next to the chair. Because of my bunged up shoulder I have to lean way forward to pull a shirt over my head and even from a sitting position I lost my balance. It was fine, no injury but it scared me.
Also a few years ago (before the pandemic)one morning I tripped on Michigan Ave and landed on my face, broke my sun glasses, needed some stitches in my lip and eyebrow but surprisingly didn’t break my nose. I was with my husband and he helped me walk over a few blocks to Northwestern Hospital emergency, they gave me a CAT scan to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. I tripped on one of those thick steel panels they put down when there is a construction hole in the the street. I had a black eye and visible stitches for a while and when my husband and I were in the elevator in our building I too felt like I need to say that my husband didn’t cause it.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2025 at 8:06 pm
My most recent black eye was caused by my coughing thanks to pneumonia so hard I passed out and hit my eye on something when I fell, breaking the orbital floor under my eye. I’m not sure what I hit because I was unconscious, I just came to on the floor wondering why I was there and why my eye hurt.
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Dave said on March 3, 2025 at 8:19 pm
Too late to edit my above remark but today’s Fresh Air on NPR was an interview with a novelist and screenwriter, Hanif Kureishi, who suffered a fall in 2022 and broke his neck. He states he was feeling lightheaded, stood up and fell over on his face. Just one instant changed everything for him, he’s written a book, “Shattered”, about the experience.
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Jason T. said on March 3, 2025 at 9:48 pm
Egad, Nancy. I’m glad you’re OK.
When we were in Manhattan a few years ago, somewhere near the Strand, I walked right into a very low bench and fell over. I have never seen my wife laugh so hard in her life.
To this day, to send her into a fit of giggles, all you have to do is show her a similar bench.
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