How much snow do YOU have?

I’ve become a porch-sitting, mother-taunting, NOLA-flaunting pain in the ass. It’s true. Just ask my mother.

I’m sitting on my porch wondering where I am. In all seriousness, I know exactly where I am, but my senses are still slightly skewed. February in New Orleans feels like June in Pennsylvania.

Our weather over the past few days (I’m obsessed with weather) has included forecasts for rain, hail, tornados, etc. The one thing it hasn’t been? Cold.

I called my mother again today, knowing that she was snowed in, having never made it to work and never even leaving the house.

She hates me. But in a good, jealous, motherly type of way. She loves New Orleans almost as much as I do. (I say almost because I get to throw in the additional argument that I was already forced to evacuate once and came back.)

She wants to move here too. She wants to get away from the cold, hard north to come down here and embrace the culture of creativity. With my writing, I inherited a tiny part of my mother’s creativity. She can do so much more.

So I’m sitting on my porch, working on my second glass of wine and watching a gecko cavort on the bare bush next to my apartment, leaping from bush to tree and back again, and listening to the jolly strains coming from the ice cream truck. Can you imagine? Ice cream in February? People passing by see me perched with laptop and glass of wine, shoeless and comfortable, and they say hello. They ask how I am.

I have many days when I suffer the pangs of regret over the things and the people I gave up to come here, to come back and feel this way. Today is one of those precious days, those rare days, when I have no pangs. When I am guilt-free. When I am teary-eyed but in the best way to be teary-eyed…not from sorrow, but from joy.

And I wish today would never end.