The Lady and I made a brief trip back to NOLA because the bulk of our immediate families (both sides) would be in the same general zip codes for the first time since the hurricane. While in town I made some time to go and take care of a few minor errands at the old WHoReS<\/b>. Since I had to sledgehammer the front door off in order to get into the house last time, I had my faithful manservants Fiddy and GonzO go and install some boards over the gaping hole that used to serve as the front entrance (a bit slapdash, admittedly, but I don’t think neatness was an issue anyway). First and foremost I needed to paint my house number<\/b><\/a> on the boards since the originals were on the demolished door. I also couldn’t help but notice the newly acquired mounds of crap<\/b><\/a> in the front of the house that wasn’t ours, and consequently, the utter lack of crap that we threw on the lawn during the recovery operation.<\/p>\n I went to the back of the house to have a gander in the garage to see if there were one or two tools I could recover, and found none. As I came around the corner heading to the back door something caught my eye<\/b><\/a>. In the ocean of dead and brown vegetation there was a green mass<\/b><\/a> that stuck out like Mayor Nagin at a Clan meeting. I started to chuckle to myself, this was just too strange. "What is<\/i> this?" I asked myself as I approached for a closer look<\/b><\/a>. I stood there for a second, and as the realization of what I was seeing dawned on me, the evidence to back it up came into sharp focus<\/b><\/a>. I bent double, hands on my knees, and laughed for a solid five minutes. I laughed until my sides hurt and tears were streaming down my face. A pumpkin patch had sprung up in the back yard, just in front of DeJockamo’s little nook, and there were actual pumpkins<\/b><\/a> growing on the vines (a bit under ripe, but pumpkins none the less). The seeds were likely a remnant from the Halloween party \u2014 a full year ago \u2014 and I had been mowing the little sprouts down every time I cut the grass without much knowing it. I had noted what looked like a little pumpkin seedling when we went to scavenge the house last time but promptly forgot about it.<\/p>\n This was the perfect poetic moment. In the aftermath of a disaster that has wrought nothing but destruction \u2014 including the death of most all vegetation \u2014 the WHoReS<\/b> threw up it’s fists and shot the bird with both hands at Katrina. A final "fuck you too, cunt!<\/i>" from the spirit of the house that loved Halloween so much that it grew a full blown pumpkin patch just to defy that damnable storm. The WHoReS<\/b> got the final word, and it used its last breath to say it. This made me indescribably happy. It lifted my spirits, and put a spring in my step. Frankly, I think that little cluster of vines gave me some strange form of closure, exactly what I needed to say goodbye to the WHoReS<\/b> and move on a bit. The groovy thing is that there were lots of little blossoms on the vines<\/b><\/a>, and blossoms mean new pumpkins. I can’t wait to see what that patch looks like in a month or so. I hope that fucker takes over the entire back yard.<\/p>\n As I drove out of the neighborhood, I saw a few signs of activity. Folks were gutting houses<\/b><\/a> in preparation to rebuild. There were however still many signs<\/b><\/a> that a terrible force has passed through and left an indelible mark on the city and it’s residents.<\/p>\n We were invited to dinner and Christmas tree trimming by Lisa<\/b><\/a> and Slinky<\/b><\/a>. A wonderful meal, some wine and good company was to be had. At the end of the visit, there was a beautiful tree<\/b><\/a> to behold. I also learned a lesson: the old adage "let sleeping dogs lie<\/b><\/a>" is only true if you are sure the dog isn’t faking it<\/b><\/a>, and really, would a face this cute<\/b><\/a> lie to you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Lady and I made a brief trip back to NOLA because the bulk of our immediate families (both sides) would be in the same general zip codes for the first time since the hurricane. While in town I made some time to go and take care of a few minor errands at the old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmentd.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}