Colleen Kane

So much freedom

Before I get back to posting about our European vacation, a little about our fourth of July.

The f and I drove back from Texas Friday from a week visiting with family, not especially eager to get back to Baton Rouge and looking for distraction along the way. He wanted to stop at one of those fireworks stands to stock up for the holiday, and the temporary emporium we stumbled upon, shortly after crossing back into LA, was a doozy.

The BaRou Experiment

Morning all--Typepad is starting a new interface with a percentage of their users and seems to have lost the intro front-page parts of my past few posts since the new interface began. Guess what, Typepad, PROBLEM.
Lemme try to reconstruct that intro quickly. Grumble.

This first week of relative isolation has been another busy one full of lessons, challenges, and surprises.

For one, I wandered into the living room the other night and rested my chin on the sill of a high open window. That cat has an odd gait, I thought. It was a raccoon. Oh, the suburbanity! I haven't seen one of those since Jersey. I watched him make his silent rounds from yard to yard.

I  was not expecting nature to be so in my face (and in my house) when I moved down here. So far Little Pink has been the unwitting host to a lizard, colossal flying cockroaches, dragonflies, fleas, spiders, uh...various colors and textures of mold I've never seen before. I wouldn't be surprised to find an alligator squatting in the tub one day. Maybe that's what was pounding on my door the other night.

Anyway here's the latest indoor visitor.

Three less eggs to fry

I probably shouldn't post this for the preverts of the world to read, but the f recently departed for Europe for an unspecified amount of time. So far since he's been gone, I'ts been a pretty action-packed couple of days. I've been hit on by a stranger, cowered in fear at a potential home invasion, gone on an unintentional shopping spree, and gotten almost no writing done. Sorry, feminism, sometimes I can be such an unproductive girly girl.

Friday Roundup, buggin edition

Thankfully, enormous flying cockroach season here in Little Pink was brief, and now we're on to dragonfly season.

That dragonfly isn't the only insect Coopy's been trying to chomp lately. He has been absolutely tormented by mutant fleas for a month now, maybe even longer.

So far we've tried Frontline (these mutants are immune), Advantage (immune), yelling at the fleas really loud, feeding him garlic, putting on a flea collar, washing and spraying all bedding, drenching him in a natural pet & bedding anti-flea spray, flea-killing shampoo, and this:

Within the hour after swimmy fun time, he was scratching again.

Not letting him outside is not an option. (You try sitting here all day while he's scratching the door.) I looked at the yard and indoor sprays on the PetCo site, did a little Google-aroo, and learned their active ingredient, permethrin, has been classified by the EPA as a carcinogen. Wow, how is this still such a common active ingredient?

So departing from that site, I found one natural solution where you introduce nematodes into the yard, which eat the flea larvae. Once I get over the slight ickiness of distributing literally 5 or 10 million critters that eat other critters, this seems much preferable to bombing everything with toxic chemicals. Has anyone tried this tactic?

And then maybe we can just have the dog hang out in a baby pool out there all day?

Weekend, part one: crawfish carnage, part two

This weekend was jam-packed full of activities, one of which involved buying a vintage Louisiana food-themed trivet, and not realizing I'd purchased a souvenir of this place until afterwards. Immediately after that, it was back to being gobsmacked by the ever-expanding local usage of purple and gold.
Later, a very special birrrthday paarrrrty, which was another crawfish boil.

Friday blase roundup

In Baton Rouge, it's pretty when you don't mow the back yard! This place encourages you to be lazy at all turns.

Sooo, I haven't commented too much on the BR scene lately not just because I've been traveling, but because I'm more accustomed to it. I get it: every month there's some new holiday/season/festival with different traditions than I'm used to and weird foods I haven't tried yet. The latest now that Easter's over, according to props and context clues at the supermarket, is crawfish season. Anyway, I'm sure I'll try crawfish dumped in a pile on a picnic table with corn and spice or whatevs they put in there, at some point. And the colors of items I own such as bicycles, minivans, lawn chairs, refrigerator magnets, and hair will continue to fade faster in the stronger sunlight. And I'll still miss my friends and the city. And life will go on.

Along with my not needing to blog as much, is my needing to not blog for free as much. (Unfortunately, since I enjoy the community of blogging immensely.) So I'll still post a few times a week, but you won't be seeing any epics like that last post for awhile.

Friday tidbits and Internet stuff, after the jump.

South for the winter

As per winter tradition, February is low-profile time for CoKane. I say winter, but here it already feels like spring, flowers are blooming, and I have the door open to the yard most days, but I still haven't been getting out much, except to purposely walk to keep in some semblance of walking shape.

When I do go out, I typically fret that in freelancer super-casual gear, I may be accidentally not wearing some item of clothing necessary to be outside. But worse, I still get the sensation, pretty much every time I leave the house, of being in a waking dream. And it's not a good dream. It's not a nightmare, but it's an uneasy dream. Like, Oh yeah, this is still going on. I'm still in this foreign place.

But it ain't all bad! Some of my favorite local things lately, after the jump.

Super Fat Tuesday Gras

Today's also apparently known as Shrove Tuesday and Pancake Day.

So, here's a video taken around brunch-fixin' time on Saturday (the local jazz station was playing parade-appropriate music) showcasing new heights in ridicularity with Cooper the yellow Labrador. He likes trying to dance. 

Mardi Gras: There will be blog

I write this blearily while the rest of the brood dozes. You see, it is Mardi Gras break down here in Loosiana. School's out til Thursday.

Sooo...I went to Spanish Town Mardi Gras on Saturday.

A whole new ball game

I'm going to be Captain Obvious and start off by stating: People in Louisiana know how to party.

The fiance and I went to the Spanish Town Mardi Gras Ball on Saturday. My social benefactor, let's call him Bill K., or better make it B. Kelley, had invited us to the ball back in November, and I was ready for the new experience, but was less psyched about the $30 ticket price, especially since the ball would happen right after Christmas and traveling expenses. But he and our table organizer Rebecca eventually persuaded us to go.

At first we weren't sure what the hell we were supposed to wear...formal stuff? There was some talk about flamingos and wearing pink, and maybe Mardi Gras colors (purple green & gold) as well... But after meeting up with Rebecca to shop, my confusion about the affair began to turn to enthusiasm. This was like Halloween! I love Halloween!