Mardi Gras

Our last one-day vacation (on Ted's day off) included our first Mardi Gras Parade in Slidell, LA.

Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday.

Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, when Lent fasting begins. 

Fat Tuesday has grown from the last day to eat rich foods, to a carnival atmosphere lasting a month or more.

My understanding is that a krewe is sort of a social club. 

 Members pay dues, participate in fund raisers, crown a king and queen,

attend balls and sponsor parades.  The individual members also pay for the beads they throw.

Here are a couple of the floats.  

 There must have been 20 people throwing beads on some of the floats.

An up close shot of bead tossers!

The girls in this cheer squad were looking a little tired.

This enterprising fellow has everything imaginable for sale.

This is Emma Rose, who brought her girl scout cookies to sell. 

The Papa pining away for his own Hannah Grace almost bought her out!

Yep!

It's all about the beads!

Bloom Where You Are Planted

A couple of years ago, we were in North Texas for a job.  Ted worked in Borger and we stayed in an RV park 10 miles away at Fritch.   The trailer was parked on rocks - no trees, no Wi-Fi, no view - it was just plain ugly.  But that adventure is one of our fondest memories, because of the great friends we made while we were there.  One day  I was out walking and stopped to visit with a lady sitting on her RV steps.  She and her hubby were also away from home and working a job nearby.  I'll never forget her answer to my "how are you" - "I hate this God-forsaken place.  There's no place to shop except for a dinky little Walmart and it's 10 miles away."  I didn't tell her that our last job was in a place 100 miles from a Walmart, and 30 miles from a grocery store, laundry mat, and gas station.

It reminds me of Jeremiah 29:3-7.  In the margin of my Bible I have written beside that passage:  Bloom Where You are Planted.

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.   Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
(Jeremiah 29:4-7)

These people had been carried away from their homes against their will, lost everything they owned, and were forced into slavery.  God told them to  bloom where they were planted.

In my life I have been all kinds of places that weren't fun, comfortable, or where I thought I wanted to be -  sometimes I chose to bloom and sometimes I didn't.  Now that I'm learning a few lessons about the places I pass through, I hope I bloom more than complain.  It's not always an easy place to be, but blooming makes it easier.

When I hear comments like:  I hate this place,or  I wish I knew what's next, or I'm tired of feeling this way, I would like to just put my hands on their shoulders, look them square in the eye and quote that scripture to them...wouldn't that help a lot!!!  I pray they learn to be bloomers.

Most of our RV neighbors are here working like we are.  I have only had one brief conversation with the wife of a welder here, but love the attitude displayed on her pick-up window. 

What a great additude. 

This gal is blooming where she's planted!

Grand Isle

Today we drove to Grand Isle, one of Louisiana's few beach communities.

It was good to be away from traffic, noise, and people for a little while.

(Not to mention getting out of the RV)

I love the brids.

I love the waves.

I love the sand.

I love the beach.

It was a good day.

Oil Spill

The down side to the beach on Grand Isle was the lingering evidence of the Deep Water Horizan explosion and oil spill from last year. 

 The beaches were open and looked pretty good. 

Here's a tar ball nestled among tiny shells

This part of the beach has some black on it.

And here's a group of "yellow boot" workers

cleaning up the beach.

I don't think they were volunteers, because they were all men.

Not being sexist (?), but surely volunteers would have included women.

Last week in Gonzales, we saw one holding/staging area

for the BP's oil spill clean-up supplies.

Here is one of many stacks of booms

that were tied together and anchored in an effort to contain the oil.

The local newspaper reported that BP has left over 4,000 anchors in the Gulf and will be attempting to retrieve them.  Every newspaper has at least one article about the spill.

This is a stack of oil absorbant.

Attorney's advertising signs abound, but the locals seem to be less displeased with BP's handling of the spill than with the government's.

A side note that even though the off-shore drilling ban has been lifted,

 permits have not been granted for future drilling by the government agency in charge.  

Some reports say that the off-shore drilling ban has cost up to 12,000 people their jobs in the Gulf region.   

And just maybe these suds are from the Dawn dish detergent used to clean birds.

Weather

Yesterday's Weather:

34 in Berwick, Louisiana

23 in Alexander, North Dakota

9 in Snyder, Texas

It was colder in our Texas home town than in North Dakota!

However, the snow is deeper in the Northland.

Vicki sent a picture of our house in North Dakota

(It's the one on the right)

A neighbor sent me a picture of our lonely Texas home in their winter storm.

And here's our home in Louisiana.

34 degrees with breezy 75% humidity

is still to cold for me!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Scooter

When my daddy died, I inherited his little dog, Scooter. She's the only dog he ever paid for and he drove a hard bargain for her.  My mom never cared for her much, so Daddy would sneak her in the house on occasion and let her join him in his recliner.  Always an outside dog, she was never very comfortable inside.  She got snake bit when she was pretty young and spent a week in the vet hospital - also a first for one of Daddy's dogs - the vet, not the bite.  From then on, she had a vengence for rattlesnakes and didn't stop barking until someone came to kill it - that is if she didn't shake it to death herself.

It took her months to feel comfortable with us after we moved her, and she kept trying to go back to her home.  When we went to the pasture on the 4 wheeler, we would take her along, but when we got there she would  jump out, go exploring, and beat us to the house.   She was a little stubborn and didn't usually come when you called. 

Last year, she quit eating and wouldn't leave her house.  In the mornings I would have Ted look to see whether she was alive, and the third morning she popped her head up I decided that she just wasn't ready to give it up.  We went to the vet and she got better.  The last year, she took medication for her heart, was hard of hearing, and refused to eat dog food. 

I knew there was no way we could take her with us to North Dakota, so I asked my neighbor if she and her girls would take care of her, knowing the end of her life might be soon.  They loved Scooter too, because she visited them from time to time.  When she went visiting, she walked on the highway, never in the ditch.  I don't know how she kept from getting run over. 

Scooter lived a luxurious life at  McCowen Farms - with a plush indoor bed, a heated dog house, and people food.  In fact, she sometimes shared her warm condo with the cat and the neighbor's dog.  While away Carol has twice let us know that the end was nigh - then sent a text saying say she was running and jumping in the yard.  But today really was her last day. 

If dogs are in heaven she is sitting in Daddy's lap while he reads the news. 

Our best guess is that she was around 20 years old. 

Carol has a beautiful tribute to Scooter on her blog: 

Carol McCowen Photography

Thanks Carol and family for loving her, too.

Enough

The thought ocurred to me that one day my man is going to call and say, "Hey, girl. Start packing.  It's time to go home." and I will say, "Oh, No!  I haven't eaten enough fresh seafood!".  So my new goal is to eat enough!

I have bought crab meat from the folks down the block, and shrimp from the back of a pickup, and crawfish from the seafood market down the road, and oysters from the grocery store.  I have cooked boiled shrimp, grilled shrimp, fried shrimp, crab cakes, crawfish bread, boiled crawfish, crawfish scrambled eggs, fried oysters, oysters rockefeller, and oyster stew. (Sounds like Forest Gump)  I still haven't had enough!

The man at the seafood market assured me that two people could eat 15 pounds of crawfish - but these two Texans couldn't begin to eat that much.  So I shelled the little left over critters like shelling black-eyed peas.  In no time I turned 8 pounds of cooked crawfish into a half sandwich bag of peeled crawfish tails. Hmmm.

 Here we are boiling away under the cypress trees.

 Cajun seasoning is great for clearing the sinuses. 

We reminisced back to the first time we ate crawfish,

at a festival in downtown Dallas with our girls. 

Heather's crawfish talked to us (as did most of her food).

We actually found a talker among our catch.

He's saying "Hello, all you Texans and North Dakotans. 

Wish you were here."

Someday, when my Father calls and says,

 "Hey, Girlfriend. It's time to go home",

I hope I feel like I've done enough.

Loved enough

Served enough.

Learned enough.

Taught enough.

Given enough.

Of course, today.  I haven't done enough.

In spite of how I feel, I know that

He loves me enough.