Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993 TAG: 9306020188
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You know our type: We make to-do lists even on the weekends. We've never paid a bill late. Although David is a fierce monthly checkbook balancer (and I just can't stoop that low), I have been known to keep meticulous desk files and a color-coded calendar.
A wild-and-crazy thing for us is to call each other at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday to do the garage-sale circuit. While I can quickly fill up my VW Rabbit with $7 worth of stuff, I once witnessed David weigh heavily the pros and cons of spending 50 cents on a soccer ball.
Call us organizationally fixated. Anal-retentive. Probably the single reason I was able to lose 17 pounds two years ago on Weight Watchers was that it required keeping detailed food-count lists.
Alas, David and I would make great accountants.
This bothers us because, as David laments, what hides beneath each of our list-making exteriors is "the soul of a poet," a bad girl/bad boy just dying to break loose.
Which is why when my Hollins College friend Julia (a poet!) invited me to spend a week with her in New Orleans two weeks ago and David heard about it, he insisted I go. He not only insisted, he took up a collection for my airplane ticket. He even personally scheduled my flight -- unplanned spontaneity at its finest.
And so I've just returned from the Big Easy, and I'm here to tell you: There are two types of people in this world -- people who can live in New Orleans and people like me, who should just visit there and go home and write their thank-you notes, including one to God for getting them out alive.
Not that I had an awful, or even boring time. It's just that the older I get the less my vacations revolve around partying, and the more they revolve around good food, of which New Orleans has hands-down the best.
There was the mouth-watering muffuletta, the yummy catfish Po'Boy, the unforgettable Pasta Jambalaya, the tasty red beans and rice, the spicy crayfish, the beignets and cafe au lait. Julia and I had a perfect jazz brunch at Commander's Palace -- with a waiter assigned to each of us -- and then tried to walk it off in the cemetery across the street with the above-ground graves.
And speaking of vampires, we drove past novelist Anne Rice's new writing pad, an old Catholic girls' school complete with a chapel, a pool and enough space to stack every Vampire Chronicle book ever sold.
We had fun hanging out with Julia's boyfriend's alternative-rock band, named Evil Nurse Sheila -- for the ground-breaking Sheila Carter Granger Carter Forrester character on "The Young & The Restless" (though I was the only who admitted watching the show).
And we got ultra-silly speaking the New Orleans dialect they call "Yat," which stems from "Where y'at?" -- and is oddly similar to New York talk.
But all in all, I think I'll remain a one-time visitor to the Crescent City, which is just too chaotic, loud and messy for a person like me who appreciates, but has a hard time coping with, unplanned spontaneity.
Try as it might to be mystical and alluring, New Orleans reminded me of a more drunken, more run-down version of Myrtle Beach.
Especially the drunk man who tried to swing his fist at my friend Christi and me one night on a French Quarter sidewalk. Especially the man who just had to show us how well-endowed he was one afternoon on a French Quarter sidewalk. Especially the person who said he'd heard of three friends who'd been held up at gunpoint -- all last week.
Maybe it's just age, but I find myself drawn to more safer vacation spots than New Orleans, where even the most historic neighborhoods are full of scraggly barking dogs, potholes and alarms for both the house and car (and where a big landmark for the local traffic report is an adult video store).
My husband didn't get to come with me to New Orleans because of his job, and I missed him terribly. We're planning a trip of our own, though, for later this summer, a driving tour of New England and Eastern Canada maybe. Something semi-spontaneous: We'll have maps and AAA routes planned out, but no reservations made. We'll see where the road takes us.
We may even do some bicycling and camping -- if I can find the right equipment at the right price.
Which is why I plan on calling David first thing Saturday morning for some more pseudo-spontaneity: We'll take a thermos full of coffee and the newspaper classifieds, with the yard sales promising outdoor gear circled in red.
Then, like always, we'll throw the paper in the back seat and see where we end up.
by CNB