Mardi Gras, Second week

My sister called yesterday and busted me.

She says, "So, your Mardi Gras entry was sort of, uh, weak. Are you leaving stuff out?"

"Yeah," I told her. "The second week was pretty intense and action-packed. I haven't gotten around to blogging about it because..."

Because...I've been putting it off. But now I have some pictures ready and I think I know what I'm going to say about it.

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The second week of Mardi Gras began on Friday, February 16th. The day was filled with last-minute construction stuff for us to do since we were at least expecting my friend from KC, Carolyn. We were also expecting Keven the drum maker from Escalante, Utah...we just didn't know when he'd show up. We were pretty certain he may swoop in after midnight, but he could arrive at any time.

At around 4 p.m. our phone rang and my friend was in a cab on the way to our place. We waited outside while the usual parade crowd began to gather for the 6 p.m. parade. The cops would come out and start wandering the street, parking places began to disappear, and the energy level just sort of switched into parade-mode, for lack of a better term. Then, out of the blue, I saw my friend walking across St. Charles pulling her luggage. She just appeared; we never did see the cab or anything. She told us that she was dropped off since she was "cab-sharing" with a guy going further uptown. That was easy!

We got caught up and I settled her into the guest room. Right as the parade began at about 6:20, the phone rang. It was our friend Keven from Utah. He was in town at I-10 and some street some where, shunted off because St. Charles was closed. Shit. It was spectacularly bad timing for him to show up right when the parade began...where would he find parking, or would he even find us at all? About 20 minutes later he rolled in and parked. It was amazing. He walked upstairs, took a piss, and walked right out to the parade. Incredible luck! Typical for him, really. He is charmed in that way, I think. He got really drunk later and tried to dance with a girl in the parade. The police didn't like that...and told him to stay out of the parade. It could have been worse. I'm just glad he got the hint...
The rest of the weekend begins to sort of all melt together in my memory from that point...my brother and sister-in-law showed up at some point on Sunday night, right when a parade began as well...we went out for my husband's birthday on Monday and got some really strong drinks in the French Quarter, then more parades Uptown later, then Tuesday, Mardi Gras, arrived. At this point we had viewed every parade on St. Charles; we were on parade number 21 or 22 when the Rex parade rolled by. After this much bead catching and goody jockeying, I really didn't care to catch anything more. The plastic stuff was beginning to get on my nerves and seemed like a supreme waste of, well, plastic stuff, aka petroleum products, that would mostly end up in a landfill somewhere. I personally had caught over 50 pounds of necklaces.

I talked to my 3rd cousin (in-law) about all of this, and she being the consummate native New Orleanian offered that it was better to be born here and work up to the stamina of 20-something parades, as opposed to just jumping in cold...kinda like drinking heavily...you have to work up to it. I found it to be a brilliant piece of wisdom...she's a fantastically smart person and has all kinds of trivia and recipes to share.

There really is so much more about the second week of Mardi Gras, but I have to protect the innocent AND the guilty here, so if you know me personally, call up and ask me what happened and I'll give you the straight story...otherwise, you'll just have to wait for my memoir.