The Things We’ve Baked
When Ruby left to spend the summer with her dad five weeks ago, Georgia and I spent about an hour moping around the house. Then, to cheer ourselves up, we got drive-thru Taco Bell and took a walk at…
Joie d'Eve
Room for Argument
There are a lot of things that I think are fun to argue about. Some of them are incredibly low-stakes and yet still get me fired up. For instance, a couple of years ago, I was in a Facebook…
Worry Spiral
As the anxious mother of two anxious daughters, I try to share as much hard-earned wisdom and life tips as I can. One of them is that dreading something is almost always worth than the actual thing itself. When…
Back to Work
I’m writing this on Monday night, but by the time you read it, I will have been back in my office for the first time since March 13 (except for the time I briefly ran in, probably mid-April, to…
Amplifying Other Voices
There are, clearly, more pressing issues in the world right now than my usual topics of baking, parenting, and grammar. Trying to write about summer camp or cupcakes or semicolons seems embarrassingly trivial in the face of what’s happening…
Graduation Reimagined
It’s entirely possible that you’re not as crazy and neurotic as I am – for your sake and the sake of the wider world, I certainly hope so – but when deciding on a name for my children, I…
Birthday Bust
Georgia turned 7 on May 30, 2019. On May 31, 2019, she began planning her eighth birthday party. This, I think it’s safe to say, was not part of how any of us planned it. Back when the lockdown…
A Big Step Forward
Change is hard. No one can deny that. But change can be good and exciting. Right now I’m taking a step forward in life and I’m hoping it will be a great new experience. I’m not going to lie…
Quarantine According to Milo
I’m all about the quarantine trends – I’ve either embraced them, have always done them, or plan to do them soon. Sanitizing, hand-washing, bread-baking? All in. Sourdough starter? Yep, bubbling away happily in the back room, started it six…
Pandemic Ethics
The highlights of my week – and this is sad but true – are thus: I found a completely addictive and fun color by number game that I can play on my phone while I supervise my younger daughter’s…
Quarantine Contentedness
The days are blurring for me now, more than ever before. April has somehow both lasted forever and flown by too quickly. I mark time by the days I know the trash and recycling go out – and by…
Sourdough Chronicles
Much like hand-washing, I was into sourdough bread before it got trendy. In grad school, I had a sourdough starter that I used to make a garlic-cheese bread that was always a hit at potlucks and dinner parties, but…
COVID-19 Lessons
Things I’ve learned in the past three weeks: How to make sourdough bread How to change the humidifier bottle on an oxygen concentrator in the dark How to teach multiplication facts to a 7-year-old with ADHD and anxiety in…
Inner Strength
“Not everything needs to be shared, Eve,” someone once commented anonymously on my blog – I think it was one about my divorce. “Some thoughts and feelings are private and can be kept to yourself.” And yes, that’s true…
A Day in the Life
Hi, my name is Ruby, and I am 13 and in seventh grade. I’m sure we can all agree that this whole coronavirus thing has been really stressful. From a kid’s perspective it is very difficult. The part I dislike…
Home-School Hullabaloo
Every so often, I get frustrated with some aspect of my life and make stupid, unrealistic pronouncements. “We’re all becoming nudists!” I’ll declare after spending an entire Sunday afternoon washing, drying, folding, and putting away laundry. Or: “We’re just…
Pandemic, Week 1
Well. Huh. We’ve reached a stage where I am scared to say anything because as soon as I say it, it’s immediately dated. Two weeks ago, I was loving the increased emphasis on hand-washing – but still planning to…
Introvert’s Fever Dream
With the first presumptive positive for COVID-19 in the Greater New Orleans area, I continue to live out my introverted, germaphobic fantasy. I can now, without looking as weird as I really am: Refuse politely to shake hands Open…
Lather, Rinse, Repeat
I’ve never really been hip or cutting-edge. In grade school in the ’80s, when the popular kids were tight-rolling their stone-washed jeans, I wore my favorite pair of pastel-striped culottes at least once a week. In middle school in…
Carnival Calories
I got through Hurricane Barry evacuation this summer without eating any of the hurricane snacks. I got through my birthday with only the tiniest piece of cake. I didn’t eat a single piece of my kids’ massive haul of Halloween…
It’s Carnival Time
So for those who might be wondering: I did take Ruby to Krewe du Vieux this weekend, and she loved it. We laughed at the floats, we caught some blinky rings and some…
Krewe du What Do I Do?
Just a few weeks ago, I posted advice for newbie parents, giving my take on things from the perspective of someone who’s been doing this parenting thing for more than a decade. A few days after that, a friend on…
The Nature of Public Grief
As the nation mourns Kobe Bryant, I am as sad as I am when any celebrity dies, which is to say “sad but not sad in the way a personal friend would be.” When Prince died, I listened to…
Chapter & Verse
Georgia has hit a milestone – one that excites me way more than first steps or lost teeth. Georgia has started reading chapter books! Ruby, in her time, hit this milestone with great reluctance, not liking any of the…
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.
