The Ubiquity of King Cake
It’s a frequent lament in this city that king cake season, starting on Jan. 6, is pure sabotage for anyone trying to start the new year off with a resolution to eat healthier. I get it. I don’t even particularly…
Author: Eve Crawford Peyton
Fake It Till You Make It
I’m trying really hard to pretend everything is OK. That I feel fine and normal and am back in a routine and finding comfort in it. And I guess that’s partially true. I like having my kids back in…
Making Peace
I had my first actual COVID-19 exposure this week. Up till now, I’ve had sort of fleeting scares but nothing that actually left me feeling at risk. I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, I mask everywhere I go, and I see…
Year In, Year Out
It will surprise no one to know that I was a weird kid with weird interests, some of which I have carried into adulthood. My grammar obsession started early - my mom found an old typewriter at a yard…
New Year, Same Old Me
This has long been one of my favorite weeks of the year – I’m off work, the stress of Christmas is behind me, and I have no real obligations to do much of anything beyond maybe catching up with…
A Christmas Memory
My mom came over on Christmas Eve last year, and I wasn’t even all that happy to see her. I was busy trying to wrap the last of the presents, and I was so scared of COVID-19 that I…
What Truly Matters
Last Friday was Grandparents’ Day at Georgia’s school, her first one since losing my mom, her beloved Gigi, this spring. At first, she was nothing but excited about the day – her godmother and her grandfather would be attending,…
Vaxxed and Relaxed
The last time Georgia had to have bloodwork done, she head-butted a nurse in the stomach while trying to flee the room, so it says a lot that she willingly rolled up her sleeve to get her second dose…
A Calendar Turn
I keep humming Counting Crows’ “A Long December” to myself, but I don’t know if it’s out of a sense of hope that “this year will be better than the last,” or if it’s just simply ’90s nostalgia brought…
Driving Toward Acceptance
I remember, when my pregnancy with Ruby progressed to a point where I no longer worried every second that the pregnancy would end in miscarriage like my first one did, I suddenly switched gears and became terrified of labor…
Holiday Heartache
It was “Feliz Navidad” that did us in. Georgia and I were driving to school yesterday morning (she has two days of school this week – thanks, Hurricane Ida), and we were both cheerful – me because I am…
Thanksgiving Test Drives
It’s the happiest time of the year for me, and I definitely don’t mean Christmas. The weeks before Thanksgiving are my absolute favorite because I start trying out recipes for the big day. Some recipes are standard and not…
Vaxxed and Fabulous
Georgia hit two big milestones this past week. First, thanks to the CDC and FDA and scientists and miracles, she is now eligible for the COVID vaccine, which she received last night. My gratitude and relief are immeasurable. Second,…
A Season of Giving Thanks
The turning of the calendar page is forcing me to try to move into a new season. It’s true that 2021 has been the most brutal year I’ve ever endured, but it’s also true that, to some extent, happiness…
Holiday Heartache
It’s Thanksgiving season, the season of reflecting on one’s many blessings, but it seems hard, sometimes, these days to find things to be grateful for. I know that’s just my mindset, which is admittedly pretty bleak lately, and not reality,…
Working Overtime
Grief is a full-time job – and every bit as boring and stressful and somehow predictable and unpredictable all at once as a real 9-to-5. Just as I have a routine of washing my coffee mug and making my…
Baby’s First Quarantine
Well, we survived our first quarantine. I don’t really know how we managed to make it this far, honestly, although I assume it has a lot to do with the fact that we basically dropped out of society for…
Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler… ?
Yesterday’s blog post by Errol Laborde got me thinking about Mardi Gras, which isn’t something I usually do in the dead-center of October, but these are definitely unusual times. So I started contemplating: Do I want Mardi Gras parades…
Normalized Abnormality
It’s been almost 19 months now, and the craziest thing, I think, is that none of this even seems crazy anymore. My kids and I all get in the car with masks looped around our wrists like scrunchies. My…
Evacuation Blues
Some things go together well. Chocolate and peanut butter, for instance. Bourbon and ginger ale. Oreos and milk. Lime juice and fresh mango. But then there are some combinations that are terrible or even dangerous. Toothpaste and orange juice. Ammonia…
Crazy Time
I don’t even know what a normal year looks like anymore. After almost exactly 39.5 years on the planet, I had a sense of seasonal trends and rhythms when the pandemic hit in March 2020, as well as the…
The City I Wish Care Would Remember
Maybe I’m just getting old – after all, I am now (as of last Thursday) 41, making me not just 40 but officially in my 40s – but I had no interest in attending the trash parade this past…
Our Ida Saga
I keep saying I can’t possibly take another thing: COVID, my father’s illness and continuing decline, two car accidents in as many months, seeing my rape translated into 15 languages and on the front page of the New York…
Cake with a Side of Tears
I knew September would be hard. Hard because grief is all-consuming, but anything all-consuming is boring after a while. I’m tired of writing about my grief. I’m sure you’re tired of reading about it. I’m definitely tired of doing…
Shot in the Dark
They say compassion is the key, and I understand that. They say shaming gets us nowhere, and I agree. In fact, I know it to be true in my own life: When I kept wearing my mask in public…
Conflicting Emotions
“I’m so bored,” Georgia said last week, kicking an abandoned toy across the floor. “You’re back at school. Sis is back at school. All my neighborhood friends are back at school. I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL!” “I know,”…
Ready or Not
I cried the first time I dropped my child off at day care when she was 9 months old. I didn’t know if she would eat baby food (she had terrible reflux) or whether the day care provider could…
Living in Fear
I wrote about COVID last week and immediately got an email to the effect of, “Aren’t you sick of believing all the lies? Aren’t you tired of living in fear?” And you know what? I am tired of living…
New Year, New Me?
Most of the jobs I’ve had since becoming an adult have warped my sense of time. When I worked in book publishing, we always planned and designed our fall catalog in the spring. When I worked in magazines, we…
COVID Redux
Ugh, we were so close. Once I was fully vaccinated in early April – and even more so once my older daughter was fully vaccinated in June – I had started running into the grocery store without my mask,…
Joie d'Eve
Living, loving, laughing, and learning in the new New Orleans
about
Eve is further proof, if any is needed, that New Orleans girls can never escape the city. After living here since the age of 3 and graduating from Ben Franklin High School, Eve moved to Columbia, Mo., where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism and became truly, unhealthily obsessed with grammar.She had originally intended to strike out to New York City and work in the cutthroat magazine industry there, but after Katrina, Eve felt a strong pull to return home, to her roots, her family, her waterlogged and struggling city – and a much more forgiving work atmosphere that would allow her to skip a routine of everyday makeup and size 0 designer label business suits and enjoy the occasional cocktail or three with an absurdly fattening lunch. She moved back home in January 2008 and lives in Mid-City with her two daughters, Ruby and Georgia; her stepson, Elliot; and her husband, Robert Peyton.Eve blogs about the joys and struggles of living in post-Katrina New Orleans, the unique problems and delights of raising a child in such a diverse and challenging city – including her experiences with the public education system – and her always entertaining and extremely colorful family.Eve has won numerous writing awards, including the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society Gold Medal, the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award for column-writing and Press Club of New Orleans awards for her Editor’s Note in New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles and for this blog, most recently winning the award for "Best Feature Affiliated Blog."She welcomes comments, advice, empty flattery, recipes, drink invitations and – most especially – grammatical or linguistic debates.
