Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

Went to New Orleans this weekend. Had a bachelorette party for "the bride". Well, not so much a bachelorette party as just a girls weekend. My brother asked me if he'd be seeing me on the next "Girls Gone Wild" video. That prompted many thoughts & questions in my mind...

First......What's he doing watching a Girl's Gone Wild" video? Yuck!
Second...I think at the age of 38 I no longer qualify to be called a "girl". At least I don't think the sleazeballs who create those videos would consider me one...
Third... If I did "go wild", I'd have enough sense not to do it on a video.
And fourth.... If he knew anything about my friends at all he'd realize I am the wildest one of the bunch, even if you consider them all collectively, which means there is absolutely zero chance of a video ever happening.

We must be the only women on the planet who've gone to New Orleans to celebrate a pending nuptial and went there to enjoy the food, art, culture, and weather. As boring as it sounds, we toured art galleries (my favorite was Galleria Bella on Royal street - check out Randy Cooper's wire mesh shadow art. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen. The shadows cast by the wire mesh actually show more detail than the mesh sculpture itself.) My favorite artists there are Antonio Gravina, David Chandler, and Marso Savaro. I also think I like Ann Copelan, but I'm not sure.

At a place called "the Brass Monkey" (yes, I know that sounds like a dive bar but it's actually a cool antique artifacts shop) I discovered Sabino glass, a type of glass made with milk. It has a blue-ish milky hue and it feels soft, like soap. I've been wanting to become a collector of something. You know how people collect teapots or mugs or thimbals or (if they're like my ex-husband) comic books. Well I've decided I'm going to collect Sabino glass! I decided to start my collection with the Rabbit. He's the little fellow you see up top of the post.

For years now rabbits have been becoming a sort of good luck charm for me. Whenever I see a rabbit something good is happening in my life. I first noticed it happening back around 2002. I would see a rabbit.....and then something good would happen. Or vice versa...something good would happen and then I'd see a rabbit. There's an old wive's tale in North Carolina that on the first day of the month you wake up and say "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" (with the proper accent of course) and it will bring you good luck. It doesn't matter what form the rabbit comes in. Sometimes they're stuffed. Sometimes they're real. last week in Wyoming I was working with one of the switchmen, sitting outside in the truck waiting for trains to go by, when I saw three white rabbits in the snow. First one appeared, hopping back and forth over the tracks, and then another, and then another. They were barely visible against the snow. As if to make sure I didn't miss my rabbits, the Universe sent me another one. We left our spot and drove over to where my car was parked. There in the grass in front of the building, near my car, so close I could have walked up and petted him, was a brown rabbit. He was just sitting there, not even afraid when we walked near him. I think I'm going to collect both bunnies AND Sabino glass.

The highlight of the weekend was having custom perfumes created for each of us at Borboun French Parfums. We got to name them. I named mine "Lyrical". I also have another scent but I don't want to reveal its name here. Anyway, they both smell heavenly, and the cool thing is that each of our perfumes smells exactly like us. That is, each scent matches the wearers personality. And amazingly, considering we made them all together, in one sitting, at the same time, none of the scents fit any of the rest of us nor do they smell similar to each other. I also had two amazing discoveries:

1. Almost anything smells good on me. Ok not almost. Everything smelled good on me. (I like to think it's because I am a happy person so my body chemistry created happy smells) And..
2. No matter what scent she put on me, after leaving them on a while they always combined with my body chemistry to end up smelling the same.

Another cool thing about this is that once they have your scents on file, they keep the formula. So friends and family can call or go online and actually order perfume, lotions, shower gels and whatever else they carry, either for me or for themselves, all in either of MY two signature scents. It's like the ultimate gift registry.

Not to worry, we did get our groove on at Bourbon Cowboy. There's nothing like walking past a wide open club full of people doing their version of dancing to some great R&B/Hip Hop sound to pull us in so we could "show 'em how it's done". Yes, the bride wore an "I'm the Bride" sash. And yes, we got up on one of the platforms and "performed". At one point we were joined up there by three other girls, so there were six girls dancing in all, three white and three black, all in sync, in a very small space. But the interesting part about this was there was not a drop of alcohol among us. None of us had even had so much as a glass of wine. We're just cool like that.

But what would a weekend in New Orleans be without jazz? We started the weekend on Friday night with dinner at Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, followed by a live performance in the back room of the bistro by Ellis Marsalis, the grandaddy of the great Wynton Marsalis and the first family of jazz. We finished our weekend with brunch on Sunday morning at the Ritz Carlton hotel (we didn't stay there, we stayed at the adjoining Iberville suites which were much cheaper). The garden was beautiful. in all my trips to New Orleans I've never noticed how many beautiful courtyards there are. We had some time before our flight left Sunday afternoon so we decided to get in some shopping. Real shopping this time, not the art-browsing, "we're not actually here to buy anything" type we'd done the day before.

My friend, "the bride" got into a huge bruhaha at one of the stores where we were buying our designer knock-off purses. She had, against my advice, bought a Juicy Couture knock-off the night before, and then had carried it around to the various places we went, including dancing at the Bourbon Cowboy. I'd advised her against it, not because I was worried about the purse, but because one of the earliest rules you learn when you go out with a group of girls is "every girl watches her own purse", which as you grow older translates to "never carry a purse out dancing" to which was later added the corollary: "especially to a bachelorette party".

As she was buying the purse I had flashbacks to my early college years when I was still young and naive and I'd gotten stuck sitting at the table because I was watching the purses. It didn't take me long to figure out that the sooner I got up and got out on the dance floor, the less likely I was to be the one benched for the night. Hence the rule. The one thing all good bridesmaids know is that the rules don't apply to the bride, so I knew if she wanted me to watch that purse, I'd watch it. I was going for prevention. But here's the thing: Her maid of honor is her twenty-six year old sister. I'm not sure at what age you write the rules in stone, but I know it's not that young. The sister/maid-of-honor who outranked me insisted that she buy the purse RIGHT NOW. I don't know what the hurry was, but the bride bought it (both the advice and the purse).

The next morning when we went back to buy the fake Coach I'd wanted she noticed a rhinestone was missing from her purse and she demanded her money back. The store clerk pretended he couldn't find her original receipt (it mysteriously turned up later). There were all kinds of things wrong with this picture. The important thing to know is that while all of this was going on I noticed that we had thirty minutes left to get our luggage out of the hotel before my credit card was going to be charged for an additional half-day. While she was still arguing with the store clerk and waiting for the owner to arrive, I raced back to the hotel (20 mintes), up to our room, finished packing everyone's stuff, and had it packed and was loading it on a cart (10 minutes) when the bride and her sister returned. All my travelling experience came in handy. They had packed a lot of their stuff already but there was still a lot left lying around. I have packing down to an art science. I even knew who's stuff was who's and which pocket in which bag to put it so it's owner would find it. The girls walked in and checked. I hadn't missed a thing.

As we were leaving on Sunday, we were sitting in the New Orleans airport after our flight was delayed. The inbound flight at our gate de-boarded, and there strolling off as cool as you please as if he weren't the least bit famous, we spotted the great Mr. Ellis Marsalis.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit....