My weekend.

Friday night, I rode in Cleopatra.  It kicks off the Mardi Gras parades for the westbank of New Orleans.  It is my third year riding and I have more and more fun each year.  

 This was the float that I rode on.  This year's theme was "Hats off to Cleopatra."

 Of course, while waiting for our floats to arrive, we consumed some beverages and shots at Michelli's Bar in Algiers.  Jimmy Michelli, the owner, hooked us up!!!  

Toni, myself and Kristine at Michelli's.  Had a blast hanging with my girls.  Gave Toni my tutu and boa.  With the outfit that she wore, she rocked it WAY better than I was in there.  Cannot wait until next year!!!  

Saturday was a bit rough.  My daughter was marching in the Caesar parade in Metairie.  It was freaking freezing cold and had she not been marching, my butt would have stayed home, that is for sure.  I (nor the girls and other parents marching) have never been more miserable in cold/freezing temps than I (we were) was Saturday night.  I saw people out there with little ones and was thinking who would bring their itty bitties out in that kind of weather?  I certainly would not.  That is for sure.  Guess some people will just do anything to get beads and stuffed animals.

This is a picture of the girls before we started marching.  One parade down, two more to go.  Hail Thoth and Orpheus.  Thankfully, it looks like the weather will be warmer this weekend and not feeling like it is in the 20s like it did Saturday night.

 

I love Chris Rose and his quote here sums it up (for Mardi Gras that is).

"To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid.

Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge.

Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CD's in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year--people whose names you may or may not even know but you've watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they're not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year?

It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to.

Now that part, more than ever.

It's mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88's until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don't and promising yourself you will next year.

It's wearing frightful color combination in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who--like clockwork, year after year--denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one.

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once."

— Chris Rose (1 Dead in Attic)