Home away from home

 The Coach and I took a little trip this month, something we don't do too often. But it was my birthday weekend, and I only wanted one thing -- a hug from my baby girl.

You see, it has been way too long since I've been able to wrap my arms around my daughter, who had the nerve to pack up her life and move all the way to Florida back in October. She and her new husband picked up and moved to live with his grandparents, who have a nice big house with a nice big yard. Since then, they've both gotten nice, well-paying jobs and are working on building a little nest egg for their future.

I'm happy for them, really. No, really. But my mama's heart was hurting. I needed to see her, to hug her. And she was pretty excited to show us her new home away from home.

So we packed up the car and even took the dog for the eight-hour drive to Crystal River, Florida.

It's a lovely little town in the middle part of Florida where the waters are sort of the color of my pool when I'm fighting the algae. But pretty! And it's where hundreds of manatees gather in the winter to chill -- literally. The water is 72 degrees. Always. 

Needless to say, there's lots to do around there, and well, our kid made sure we did a lot of it.

We arrived Friday night just in time to enjoy a nice steak dinner at a place called Cody's. No first-timer, Lora ordered a BAM -- Big Ass Margarita. But really, it was a rum punch that called itself a Margarita that was served in a big martini glass. We got two straws.

The next day, they decided to take us hiking. Sort of. First we stopped at this HUGE flea market that reminded me of The Grove at Ole Miss. There were tents and people selling just about everything you could imagine -- including puppies and kittens. From there we went to the Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park, a multi-acre sanctuary for endangered and, in some cases, injured animals. We walked three miles around the lovely bluegreen spring and saw a couple of manatees, some vultures, flamingoes, panthers, owls, gators and even a black bear.

It was rather warm, though, so after our exercise, we headed over to a waterfront restaurant called Crackers. There I ordered a real margarita -- a Three Sisters Margarita -- that kind of had me three sheets to the wind by the time I finished it on an empty stomach. Luckily, the fried shrimp and hush puppies soaked that right up. There was a musical ensemble playing music not too badly, but they did not know and could not fake "When I'm 64" by the Beatles on my birthday eve. 

Sunday was my actual birthday and Lora the Librarian had to work at the Floral City Strawberry Festival. This was no little country fair. This thing was huge with many craft vendors selling their wares, multiple food and drink stations and live music. We had to make another hike, a little shorter this time, to get to the Library's tent, where Lora was giving cute story walks during which she had to pretend to walk like a bear. (It was soooo cute!)

We sat under the trees and ate kettle corn and snow cones and I, of course, had an official Strawberry Short Cake for my birthday.

Dinner that night was at a place called Swampy's, a "Cajun/New Orleans" style restaurant on the Rainbow River. We couldn't see the river or a rainbow because it was dark, but we did hear, then see a few rather large alligators swimming in the water not far from us. Then, Gavin probably saved the life of a tourist who had kayaked to the restaurant and was trying to get back in it after having a few beers. It was dark. The bank was sloped and he had not seen the alligators swim by. Gavin made sure he at least got back in his boat. As for the food, well, the chef should take a weekend trip to New Orleans.

If you know you know that March the 9th is a bad luck day in our family. Bad things happen. Deaths happen. We all try not to travel far or schedule elective surgeries on this day. But we took a short trip to Wiki Wachee Springs to see the mermaids!

I had always wanted to go, ever since I was given a wanna-be mermaid as a child. For most of her young years, Lora would say she wanted to be a pink mermaid. Her room and my upstairs bathroom became a mermaid shrine with all kinds of all things mermaid. And even now that she has moved, it is still Lora's mermaid shrine.

Wiki Wachee Springs is another state park with a few attractions, many of which were closed on March 9th because of low water levels, the lasting effects of a recent storm, it being a Monday and only March. There were only three young ladies doing the show which, to be honest, is probably the same show some of our grandmothers watched in the 1960s. It's corny. It's kitchy. It ain't what it probably used to be. But that's OK. I may have been sitting next to my now-25-year-old daughter, but really I was with my 4-year-old who dreamed of being a mermaid.

Yes I cried. And also wanted to punch the mom behind us who never stopped trying to gentle-parent her kids.

From there we grabbed sandwiches from Costco and went to a real 72-degree Crystal River spring with a little beach. Lora, Gavin and Marty waded out to the middle of the bluegreen water while I stayed closer to shore. Oh, I got my feet wet! 

Now we all needed naps.

But first we exchanged thank yous to the grandparents for taking in our daughter with her husband, dog and three cats, and gave our last hugs. I tried not to cry. I almost succeeded.

I don't know when we'll see them again, if we will drive back to Crystal River or they will come back home to us someday. Holidays? Maybe. Just because? Maybe. Another birthday perhaps. If we do go back, we might need to be in better shape. Or, we can just say, "Nah. We've been there and done that" and relax a little more.

But I'll definitely need more hugs.

Mardi Vieux

Everyone has heard of Mardi Gras.

It's Fat Tuesday, the day before the start of Lent, when everyone -- Catholic or not -- indulges in all kinds of questionable behavior before (presumably) giving it all up for the 40 days leading up to Easter. Supposedly, it helps you get into Heaven.

 In Louisiana and some other southern outposts, Mardi Gras is a paid holiday when just about everything closes -- stores, schools, shops. That's to give everyone a whole day to enjoy their indulgences while sitting on the side of the road, waiting for a parade. The parade is a small flotilla of floats and/or trucks filled with people who also are partaking in their indulgences, and they throw things at us. 

 But in New Orleans and the surrounding areas, Mardi Gras isn't just one day. It's several days and even weeks of such behavior, along with glitzy balls, beautiful tableaus, king cakes with and without cream cheese, clothing of weird color combinations, costumes, house parties, crawfish boils, tourists, nightmare traffic and lots and lots of alcohol.

Now don't get me wrong. All of those things are fun, and I have done probably more than my fair share of all of the above. But, eventually, you get over it. 

Instead of celebrating Mardi Gras -- Fat Tuesday --  you start to celebrate Mardi Vieux -- Old Tuesday. That's when you stay home and watch the parades on TV so you can drink iced tea, laugh at the silly costumes, and pee in your own bathroom instead of some stranger's. Or a bush.

Hey! It happens. Even the most ardent Mardi Gras fan gets old. Nobody wants to see your booty or your boobs anymore, and neither will get you any beads anyway, so you end up in some shiny-sequiny-feathery outfit that makes you look like the wacky old lady you now are, in comfortable shoes you really don't want to get dirty. 

My late mother-in-law Jane, her sister Alice and their cousin, Dottie.

The thought of packing up the car is daunting. You need blankets and jackets because it might be cold, it might be hot. You need a cooler with ice, and a couple of kinds of beer, and a couple of kinds of soft drinks, and  a couple of bottles of water. Mardi Gras is a marathon, not a sprint. 

Then you need snacks and, of course, some Popeye's fried chicken, but the line is always too long, it always takes forever, and they always, always, always get the order wrong. 

 Now you have to decide where to go. The Krewe of Chad (the privileged) have already staked out their Uptown spots with ladders and tarps so there's no place to go, really. If you're lucky, you have a friend who has a house along the parade route. But it's still going to take you an hour and a half to get there and another 40 minutes to find a place to park that is both safe and legal. If you're incredibly lucky, they have parking. At the very least, you'll now have a place to pee. 

 But you're still old with a bad back, knees and feet. There's no way you can stand on the side of the road behind a wall of ladders for hours on end, screaming and waving and hoping to get the attention of one guy sober enough to spot you in the crowd. And maybe he'll throw you a bunch of beads and you'll feel like a Super Bowl champion for catching them -- but then what the hell are you supposed to do with them when it's over? 

Unknown float rider.

And after the last float has passed, you have to hurry up to get out of the way of the street sweepers, lugging your chairs, blankets, jackets, cooler, and all of your loot back to the car. Do you remember where you parked? And you have to hurry because you probably blocked someone in who is in a hurry to get to the Interstate, where you both will sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour or so, and you really need to pee. 

And then you'll get home with your beads, a plastic sword, silk roses and light-up sunglasses. You'll throw it all in a pile in the corner for now because you have to run to the bathroom. You'll check your shoes to see how much damage was done and if they can be salvaged. You'll grab one of the last beverages from the cooler and a cold drumstick from the Popeye's box and sit and reflect on the day. 

Because there really is nothing like Mardi Gras, whether you're young or old. If you grew up with a family and friends who loved it, you're lucky. If you only got to experience it once or twice, you're still lucky. And if all you have left are the happy memories of those wonderful days spent with parents and siblings and aunts, uncles, cousins and friends -- or strangers -- well, you're really one of the fortunate ones.

Because everywhere else, it's just another Tuesday. 

A million thanks

At an unknown hour on an unknown day in the last week, this little slice of literary heaven reached an amazing milestone.

Someone, either accidentally on purpose, visited TheLyonsDin.com and became its one millionth visitor. I wish I could say they were greeted with confetti and balloons but, alas, they were not. They either scrolled around and read a couple of blog posts about me, my daughter or my husband, or they said 'Oops!" and left. It is highly probable that they Googled 'big tits and mardi gras" and landed here. It happens more than you think.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that magical number -- 1,000,000. One million people somewhere in the world discovering my little blog. There is a little map on the bottom right of this page that shows where my visitors are from. I think it still works. For a while, I was very popular in Russia. I now know they were bots and were probably scraping my English content for nefarious purposes. 

I also want to state publicly that absolutely no money has been made from this blog. I had a few offers to put ads on my page, but none worth entertaining. Sadly, no big conglomerate has offered to buy my domain either -- not that I would want them to. I've seen the results.

I was encouraged to write a book after a posting about the week our daughter was born. I did, but it hasn't made much money either. 

You don't need to pay to read me or even subscribe. I let people on Facebook know when I've posted something new and, somehow, that works. And Google. 

So how did we get here? Well, before there was Facebook, there was America Online. And I, having just adopted the most precious baby girl in the world, needed a way to share things with my family, friends and a host of other women who had gone or were still going through the difficult infertility journey. I posted a few pictures and cute quotes on my AOL Hometown.

Then, one day, AOL decided it didn't want to be in the blogging business and moved us all over to Blog Spot. That eventually was bought by Google and became Blogger.

And a little blog was born.The Lyons Din. A din is a loud noise. A co-worker of mine said if I ever had a column in the newspaper we worked for, I should call it that. Instead, I used it here.

I started slow, writing small -- what today might be called a Facebook post -- about Lora, The Coach, weird or funny things that happened, a fun link here or there.

That was 2006.

Then in 2010, the Men in Ties decided to bench me. Moved me from fulltime female sports writer to female clerk who also writes about crime in a Louisiana parish where the crime rate is lower than the current president's approval rating. My creative side was stifled. I needed an outlet. I had The Lyons Din.

Then, when I was laid off in 2012, it became my solace. You know 2011 was a bad year because I wrote more than 100 posts.

In all, I've written 374 (now 375) posts. Posts about my life, my jobs, my lack of jobs, my search for jobs, my daughter, my husband, my stepchildren, our crazy blended family, our dogs, our mamas, life, death and baseball. It's certainly more than a million words. I guess I've had a million ideas.

I wrote one about Mardi Gras which, to this day is the most seen and read, with more than 37,000 views.

The one about rescuing my friends from the Spillway after a tornado interrupted the Warrior Dash reached 26,000.

The one about the first fight with my mother-in-law after she moved in and I became her full time caretaker got 8,600.

 I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about web analytics. I don't know exactly how to read all the graphs that show peak traffic or how to maximize it to my benefit.  I'm just a blogger. A writer who has to write. Or die. 

Some would call me a "mom blogger." 

Well, I tried to be. I tried to model The Bloggess, Scary Mommy, Hot Mess Mom and others. Scary Mommy sold her blog to a conglomerate and now is battling brain cancer. A couple have migrated to Facebook. A bunch of them just quit.

I'm still hanging on. 

People say people don't read blogs anymore. Maybe I'm proving them wrong. I hope you keep visiting once in a while.

Thank you all! I wish I could give you all cake!

Lo

Gone Girl

 

I always knew that one day she would fly the nest. Everybody told me. It's in all the parent books. I mean, it's The Goal, right? Good Parenting 101. Love them, raise them, teach them well, send them on their way.

I was fortunate that she never really went to many sleepovers. Like me, she preferred to stay home.

She was in school when she went to her first and only sleep-away camp. I drove her the five hours away and left her at a college dorm for a week. I don't know if she knows that I had to pull over and cry on the way home.

A few years later she went off to college, another school five hours away from home. We bought all the things and packed all the cars and followed her north to set up her dorm. She let me carry it all in on a blistering hot Louisiana day. She let me make the bed. And then I had to just leave her there. Alone! It was nearly the hardest thing I ever had to do. I'm pretty sure she knows I cried most of the way home. 

Turns out it was a bit of a false start, though, as Covid interrupted her freshman year and sent her back home just a few months after she left.

But then things settled down and she flew again ... and again ... and again... until she came home with a diploma. But, truth be told, she pretty much dropped it off, along with some dirty laundry and all the college paraphernalia she no longer needed, and moved in with her boyfriend. Turns out, all those times were practice for the real thing.

But even though she wasn't in my nest any longer, and her old bedroom was finally clean and tidy, she was close. She could come over to raid the fridge or borrow something to wear. I could invite her over when I made chili, lasagna or vegetable soup. We could entice her with a nice Sunday roast. Her friends actually enjoyed our pool. 

We had a routine. She lived in her space with her boyfriend -then-fiance-then husband (same guy!), a dog and three cats and I didn't have to clean up after her. It was nice. Hugs were easy to request and to receive.

Then she lowered the boom. 

Just a few months after her lovely summer wedding, she announced that they were moving all the way to Florida. The plan was to live with Gavin's grandparents to cut expenses and save some money to get steadily on their feet. 

OK. Sure.

Yes, I was in denial. I convinced myself that it wouldn't really happen -- right up until the day it did.

She got a job interview in Florida, started packing up everything she still wanted, tossed the rest, loaded up the dog and now two cats (rest in peace, Flea) and drove off to chase her dreams.

And she just left me here, in my empty nest, surrounded by a bunch of her stuff she doesn't want but doesn't want me to get rid of either. Her wedding dress and bouquet. Her high school letter jacket. A couple of guitars she never learned to play. Books she read and loved. The start of her vinyl collection. A bunch of BTS memorabilia and a whole lot of clothes.

Then there's the stuff she doesn't really want but I don't want to get rid of. Her Grow Up Girls. The box of keepsakes from the day she came home from the hospital (including a pink bubble gum cigar). The keepsakes from the day the judge officially declared she was ours. 

But, there's also a bunch of stuff that we have no place else to put since Hurricane Ida took our garage. There's a full-sized ice chest in the corner and a ceiling fan I can't find anyone to put up for me. A couple of bag chairs and a Tulane tent. I keep rearranging things to make it easier to look at, but there's still a bunch of wedding paraphernalia I'm trying to get rid of.

It's all now traces of someone who used to live here. A room that used to be hers. It's not a shrine or anything, just a glorified storage unit. She won't return someday like some heroine in a Hallmark Christmas movie to find her room just as she left it. I mean, the bed will be made.

But if she needs a jacket, she'll be able to find one in her closet.