Don't ask

Don't ask me how I'm doing.

Not if you don't really want to know. Not if you're in a hurry or on your way to an appointment or there's ice cream melting in your car or your kids are waiting for you at school or you have to pee or you really were just being polite and you really don't care.

Don't ask me how I'm doing.

Because, like it or not, I just might tell you.

I just might tell you what it feels like when the company you've worked for and that gave you a career you loved for 26 years tosses you aside like a two-day old newspaper with no reason, no explanation and then pretty much ceases to be. I might just tell you what it's like to not only have to find a new job, but an entirely new career. And how it feels to go through the classified ads and realize that you are qualified to do virtually nothing and  to be rejected for half-a-dozen positions.

I might just tell you how terrifying it is not to know what you want to be.

I might just tell you how much fun it is to stay home every day and take care of an ornery  82-year-old woman with a beeper, who can barely walk, who has a sore butt from sitting all the time, who wants her grits just a bit runny, her oatmeal a little soggy, her toast burnt and her eggs soft boiled. Who bruises when you touch her and lets you know it. I might just tell you that it's just like having a baby again, who needs a sippy cup and a bib and her food cut up and to be lifted into and out of the car three times a week to go to dialysis.

I might just tell you how guilty it makes me feel when people tell me what a good person I am for doing it.  That I don't always do it with a smile or a soft heart. And that I tiptoe around my house so I don't wake her up.


I just might tell you how miserable I was throughout Super Bowl week in New Orleans. That it was hell for me -- not because I was downtown working my ass off, but because I wasn't. But all my friends were. All my former colleagues and co-workers were downtown in this massive media center with television personalities and professional athletes and celebrities, and I was making oatmeal. They were writing award-winning stories about the boy I covered in high school who came home to play in the big game and left with a Super Bowl trophy clutched in his hands, and I was making oatmeal.

I might just tell you that the one day I did get to go down there to "visit," they looked at me like I had two heads, and the only "famous" person I got to see was the guy from "Swamp People."

I might just tell you how frustrating it is to want to drag my snarky tween to a Mardi Gras parade or a concert or a movie, or to go out out to dinner with my husband -- or just upstairs -- but we can't because he's living at the ballpark now and there's no one else to sit with Grandma most of the time because everyone else has a life even if I don't.

I might just tell you that I'm losing my mind. Because I am. That I'm stuck, because I am. That I don't know what I'm going to do, because I don't.

And I hate that I'm this person who just might tell you all of this, instead of just smiling and saying, "I'm just fine! How are you?" That I'm the kind of person who will look you dead in the eye and lie to your face. Who wishes you would just hug me. Or buy me a drink. Or two. Or fly off with me to the beach. Where we would have a drink. Or two.

So, don't ask me.

Unless you're willing to listen, and let your ice cream melt.

Dis and Dat

Flags are flying from houses, from car windows. People are installing flag poles just for the occasion.

People are shoe polishing their own car windows.

And grown women are wandering the aisles of Barnes and Noble wearing football jerseys. On a Saturday afternoon. The week before Mardi Gras.

In New Orleans.

There is definitely a phenomenon going on.

It's called Who Dat Fever, and the city of New Orleans certainly has it. So do the suburbs.

On my street alone there is a house with Who Dat spelled out in Christmas lights, there are several "Who Dat Nation" yard signs and a giant plywood Who Dat adorns a front lawn. Then, the local A/C repair company installed a giant flag pole yesterday -- to run up a Saints flag.

I even have my own little Saints shrine in my front window.

Yesterday I saw the gas man in his Saints jersey and he didn't stand out at all. So are all of the shoppers in the grocery store and all the kids at my kid's school.

And every woman in the city owns at least one Fleur de Lis piece of jewelry.

A drive to the city today was like being in a summer all-star parade. Shoe polish doodles spell out "Geaux Saints" and "Who Dat" on every other car window. Those that don't have either a Fleur de Lis decal on the back or black and gold flags flying from the windows.

The New Orleans Saints are in the Super Bowl for the first time ever, and it is an amazing experience.

We are savoring it. Every second of it. Because it took us 43 years just to get here and we know not if we will pass this way again. People we know didn't live to see this. Will we live to see it again? Is this truly an historic event?

It certainly is for the Who Dat Nation. I have friends in Miami for XLIV, co-workers and colleagues who are writing their dream stories for their papers and their blogs and their networks and us fans.

I have friends in Miami who scored dream tickets to the dream game.

I have friends in Miami who are just getting drunk.

And we are spending a sleepless night because we are excited. But we also are a little worried. They are saying we can't win. They are saying we won't win. They are saying there is no way we can beat the son of the most beloved quarterback in our team's history, who is currently considered the best in the game. They are saying we will be crying on Monday.

And we likely will be.

But we've been crying for 43 years, over every loss snatched from the jaws of victory, over every missed field goal, every fumble at the goal line, every Hail Mary pass thrown against us.

But we've been crying for two weeks, ever since that goofy looking little kicker clutched out and kicked the most historic 40-yard field goal in football history, ever since my friend Jim Henderson screamed at the top of his lungs that pigs were flying, ever since we punched our ticket to the big game for the first time EVER.

And we've cried each and every time our brains try to wrap themselves around the thought, "The Saints are in the Super Bowl. OUR Saints."

And win or lose on Sunday, we'll be crying some more.

Pigs are flying, Hell has frozen over and the Saints are in the Super Bowl

It was a long time coming.

Too long.

Some said it never would happen. Some believed it had to -- eventually.

And millions of us waited. And hoped. And, yes, prayed.

For 43 years Saints fans young and old, black and white, rich and poor, have lived and breathed and bled for the Black and Gold -- living for the good times and dying a little at each and every bad time.

We agonized through the humiliating defeats where we never had a chance and the games that gave us hope only to slip away in the final minutes. We learned to hate the Atlanta Falcons and the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers who sank daggers in our hearts so many times.

And yet we continued to watch, continued to hope, continued to love and continued to buy tickets. Like the puppy kicked every week by its owner, we always came back for more. Some wore bags over their heads to do it, but still they came back.

Because we believed.
Because our parents and grandparents believed and taught us how.

So when Garrett Hartley's 40-yard field goal split the uprights to give the Saints a 31-28 victory over Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game and propel the Saints into Super Bowl XLIV, the citizens of New Orleans sent up a joyous noise to the heavens.

And we shouted out to the grandfathers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and friends and neighbors and local media personalities who did not live long enough to see this day, and who won't be with us on our sofas in two weeks to watch the New Orleans Saints play in their very first Super Bowl. The one that so many thought our team would never get to.

We so wish they were here to see it. We so wish we were here to share it. We so wish we could hear them say, "Who Dat?" just once more.