New Orleans (Part 3)

Trip 8 to New Orleans has a weird backstory. My sister-in law Lisa and I had never had a great history. We first met in 95. Shortly thereafter we had a "getting to know you" lunch where we exchanged horrible in-law stories and she promised to be my friend. Yeah, that didn't happen. I'd have to say it was a constant downhill progression peaking (I guess bottoming out makes more sense) at Christmas of 2000. It boiled down to the fact that I am not a morning person nor have a giant interest in seeing someone else's kids get their Santa gifts at 7:00 am Christmas morning. By this time my daughter was 16 and I had had a lifetime of Christmas morning for kids. I thought it would be better to swing by later that afternoon to bring our gifts. About 4 days before Christmas we were "disinvited" to do that. Basically if we weren't coming for the crack of dawn thing, we couldn't come at all. So we didn't. I was pretty mad, after all, we had just married about 2 1/2 weeks earlier - I was officially family now. My Sweetie (MS for short) finally called and put his foot down about her unreasonable behavior. After that we were just coolly sociable at family events. I don't know what happened on her end, but about 3 years ago she finally decided to make an effort to get to know me. She would come over alone and hang out with us. The walls finally started coming down. Spring of 2004, she called me and asked me if I would go with her to New Orleans. I was kinda anxious at the idea, but we made plans for Thanksgiving.

I think I've mentioned several times that I drink a lot of beer. In all the earlier years Liz never drank around me at family events but would occasionally call MS and talk about her great buzz from Margaritas or whatever. That was another thing that irritated me. Well what happened was somewhere in there, (fall of 2001 or so) she and her husband split up. I guess that's when she started spending more time with us. Especially after she met her current husband in 2002. We started doing a lot of stuff together. I guess she wanted everything to be different this time. She would drink and laugh and was pretty funny. So anyway, we had gotten used to each other and I knew my husband was tickled to death about our new "friendship."

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but with only 3 exceptions, I always stay at the same hotel every time I go to Vegas. Conversely, when I go to New Orleans, I always stay at a different hotel. This time I picked the Monteleone on Rue Royal. They even have room service, which in case you didn't know is not that common in the French Quarter. We left Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, and came back on Sunday. It was very interesting. I just decided to be myself and have fun. We had some good laughs like the time the bartender at that little bar across from Cafe du Monde asked how we knew each other and I said, "She's my husband's wife." I do that A LOT. When my brain has two thoughts at once such as "I'm her brother's wife," and "She's my husband's sister," things come out all mixed together. The bad part was Lisa does not know how to drink. Actually I should say "did" because she not only no longer drinks, but even goes to AA all the time. So I just drink beer all day (slow and steady wins the race) but not Lisa. She would wait til around 3:00 and then start kicking back Crown Royal shots. Fortunately I was able to water those down with some Peach Bellini's and some Bloody Mary's, but by ten or eleven at night she was pretty much a goner. I am a night owl. Thursday night I sat in the room and watched TV for a couple of hours, but Friday and Saturday night I was alone at Harrah's. Now that may sound fine and normally it would be. I've even gone to Vegas by myself twice and one of those times I had a broken foot. But if you know New Orleans, Thanksgiving weekend is the Grambling State Bayou Classic. I didn't know they would be closing the streets after the game. Lisa crashed about 7:30 pm. She said it was just a nap and to call her around 10:00 and she would meet me at Harrah's. I took a cab, no real problem. I called at 10:00 and got no answer. I waited until 10:30 to call again. At some point I remembered I needed to take my crazy pill at 11:00. She said she would see me there and bring my pill. Finally about 11:30 I went out to go back to the room. The streets were crazy. There was to be no taking of cabs. I figured she found this out and changed her mind. I walked quite a clip up Canal St. to the room through the teeming masses of crazed football fans. I got to the room and Lisa was sound asleep. I was quite revved up from the walk, took my crazy pill and decided to walk back to Harrah's. It was about midnight and I was alone. So I took my Swiss army knife and held it in my hand in my Levi's denim jacket pocket and walked briskly down Canal, singing and talking to myself the whole time. I was trying to look like a crazy person and I guess it worked. I played some more poker, won some more money and then made that crazy walk back up Canal St. around 3:00 or so. The crowd had thinned and that was actually scarier. We left the next day. That was my last trip.

So I had 8 trips that actually happened and the 2 that did not. I was supposed to go on the 29th of October, 1998, with my Dad. It was going to be our make-up trip for when he had broken his foot. He died on the 9th. And if you read the earlier post you'd know my daughter and I were going to go October 10th. That one will also not happen. Hurricane Katrina has suggested we go to Vegas instead. The picture above is Liz and I (in blue) at the Besh Steak House at Harrah's. We made friends with that couple at the next table and talked away at dinner and then never saw them again. That's what vacations are all about.