A Full Year
Turning the calendar page to March is actually hitting me harder than I expected. I’m not really sure why. As I wrote last week, some things are starting to get back to a new kind of normal. (I hate…
Author: Eve Crawford Peyton
It’s Been a Year
It’s been almost a year now. A year since I thought a quarantine sounded like a fun break. A year since I was mad that my March 17 conference in New York City was canceled. “It’s just like the flu,…
A Return to Sort of Normal
Between my work hours and my general low-key antisocial tendencies, I was sort of living like a hermit even before the pandemic. I mean, I’m not a sociopath or anything – I like most people, and I have a…
Vaccine Ethics
Back in late December, when I learned that anyone over 70 was soon going to be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, it was via a text that came from NOLA Ready to my cell phone. I immediately began trying to…
Back to School, For Real This Time
Yesterday, as many of you no doubt already know, New Orleans K-8 public schools reopened. My older daughter is an eighth grader at Lusher, but she hasn’t been in a school building since March 13 and has no desire…
Carnival Spirit
Picture it: A bleak and freezing mid-February Tuesday in Columbia, Missouri, the sky gray, the trees bare and brown, black piles of plowed snow lining the busy street. I pull on gloves and a hat and boots and double socks…
A Modern COVID Carnival
One of the last happy memories I have of The Before Times was hitting all the parades with my older daughter, Ruby, a true Carnival die-hard. This kid attended her first parade at 9 weeks old (that may have…
Hope for the Future
Jan. 6 was a good day for me personally. The violence at the Capitol sort of took the shine off of everything, but before that happened, I was just thrilled with the way the world was unfolding, and overall,…
Facts vs. Opinions
Georgia, my third grader, is studying facts and opinions right now. “Pizza is the best food”: Opinion “Pizza has many different kinds of toppings”: Fact “Dogs are better than cats”: Opinion “There are almost 200 different breeds of dogs”:…
My Solemn Duty
Every person in a family has their own role: the fixer, the clown, the rebel, the overachiever, the risk-taker, the bully. For the three kids in our blended family, for example, my stepson is the chill, cautious one; my…
Growing Pains: When Worlds Collide
Working at my former high school, Ben Franklin, provides numerous opportunities for what is, essentially, time travel. I’ll be working busily on some boring spreadsheet when suddenly I hear a snatch of an Alanis Morissette or Tori Amos or Counting…
A Traditional New Year’s Meal
I am an extremely superstitious person – I avoid sidewalk cracks and black cats, hate the number 13, pick up heads-up coins, and never open umbrellas indoors – so of course I always eat my black-eyed peas and cabbage…
Circle of Life
It’s always light and dark around here, life and death sort of flirting with each other. My favorite aunt – probably my favorite non-parental blood relative from my family of origin – died when I was pregnant with Georgia.…
On Honorifics, Copy Editing, Patronizing Men, and Homosexuality
I know different stories resonate in different corners of the internet as we all build our own online bubbles. A couple of months ago, I asked my husband over dinner whether he thought what J.K. Rowling had Tweeted was…
COVID Panic
Every year, for as long as I can remember, I get sick in the three weeks between Thanksgiving break and winter break. Usually it’s just a cold. Once I’m pretty sure it was the flu, although I never actually…
Growing Pains: Holiday Hurricane
I am a notorious pessimist. Sometimes I think this comes from a childhood of watching Saints games where they seemed certain to win only to blow it at the last second, but honestly, it’s probably just deeply ingrained in my…
Holiday Resolutions
My general inclination, even in a good year (which I don’t think I need to explain that this is not), tends toward Scrooge-like as the holidays approach. It all just feels like such a slog, honestly: the parties, the…
Thankful and Sad
It’s been a hell of a week. I suppose that can be loosely said of every week we’ve had since March 13, all of which kind of blur together into a hellscape smoothie, if you will, but this past…
‘Tis the Season?
It was the receptionist at my dad’s doctor’s office who gave me my first clue. “We’ll call you back right away,” she assured me. “In the meantime, have a wonderful day and happy holidays!” “Oh, uh … yeah ……
Living Blue in a Red State, Part 2
I wrote this four years ago after Donald Trump was elected president. I was hurt and angry … but I hoped we could work together as a nation. Now, four years later with a different outcome in the latest…
Election Days Gone By
I love voting. I registered at the DMV when I switched my residency to Missouri for college, just after my 18th birthday, and since then, I have voted in almost every single election, whether it’s a big one for…
Living in the Future
I’ve worked in the magazine world for quite a while now, and I know you’ve got to plan several months out. I always found it slightly jarring to be working on a Christmas issue while everyone in the real world…
2020 Vision
It’s funny the things you learn about people when you’re suddenly spending completely uninterrupted time with them. Even your own husband. Even your own children. For instance, although I certainly knew that Georgia had ADHD, it wasn’t until I…
Halloween During A Pandemic
There are, of course and unfortunately, many serious and tragic consequences of the pandemic and resulting quarantine: not only death and illness and grief, but also mental health concerns, social isolation, and economic impacts for so many families. There…
Out and Proud
Sunday was National Coming Out Day, and I chose that day to publicly celebrate my older daughter, who came out to me about a year ago. (With her permission, obviously; I would never out her publicly without her consent.)…
Autumn Enthusiasm
It’s no real secret that I think fall is overrated, but mostly, it’s just a grudge left over from my very first “real fall” in Missouri more than 20 years ago. At first, I thought it was beautiful –…
Tricks and Treats
There are, of course and unfortunately, many serious and tragic consequences of the pandemic and resulting quarantine: not only death and illness and grief, but also mental health concerns, social isolation, and economic impacts for so many families. There are…
The Days Are Slow; the Years Are Fast
The well-meaning older women in the grocery store line would always tell me it went by so fast, and I’d smile thinly while seething inside because it definitely didn’t seem to be going quickly. My baby was only 3…
Getting Back to Normal?
I think I’ve forgotten whatever social skills I once had – and I’ve always been an introvert, always the kind of person who heads straight to the bar immediately upon arriving at any large social gathering because I need…
Watching and Waiting
It’s a strange feeling, waiting for a hurricane that may or may not come. Time is lived in between the track/intensity updates at 4 a.m., 10 a.m., 4 p.m., and 10 p.m., time in which your plans keep shifting…
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.
