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
Parenting Advice
My daughter Ruby told me last week that there’s a rumor going around her school that I’m a teen mom. She was offended on my behalf; I was wildly flattered. “Do they really think I look that young?” I…
King Cake Conundrum
You know you’re getting old when you get excited about a new calendar, but here I am. I got a brightly colored calendar for 2020 that features hand-drawn pictures of food with hand-lettered recipes (this month is borscht!), and…
Ringing It In, Quietly
New Year’s Eve is right up there with Valentine’s Day in terms of being overhyped and loaded with false significance and forced romance. I don’t hate them, but I try not to imbue either of them with much meaning.…
The Tyranny of the Elf
Christmas is a lot, folks. The shopping, the wrapping, the baking, the parties, the decorating … and throughout it all, the relentless pressure on parents – and these are typically moms – to make everything extra-magical. From minute to…
Christmas Tree, Revisited
When I wrote this almost six years ago, everything still felt kind of new and exciting and painful and raw. I was two years into my marriage. I was four years out from my divorce and the death of…
Daring to Say “Happy Holidays”
I agree with Errol Laborde on many things – although notably NOT shrimp, which I hate and he loves – and he is one of my favorite humans. And I know Errol loves Christmas, traditions, and especially Christmas traditions.…
A Baker’s Dozen
Every year when the calendar page turns over to December, I have the same initial thought that most Americans have – the only significance December held for me for 26 years: “Oh, hey, it’s almost Christmas!” This means buying…
Easy as Pie
It’s almost Thanksgiving, so this is a story about a pie. Well, not just a pie. A pie and a long friendship. Jordan and I, we sometimes joke, met three last names ago (or two marriages each ago) – in…
So Lame
My almost-teen daughter, Ruby, stepped in front of the TV while I was simultaneously pedaling frantically to nowhere on my exercise bike and trying to watch Ina Garten make something obscenely rich and fattening for the holidays. (“My mom…
Getting Schooled
I never really wondered where I’d go to high school. If I got in, I was going to Franklin. If I didn’t, we’d worry about it then. I got in, so that was that – and I had four…
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Tom Robbins famously said: “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.” I’m not really in my Tom…
Candy Counting
In most things, Ruby is nothing like me. A natural extrovert, she loves parties, people, team sports, cheesy inspirational messages, sleep-away camp, and group hugs – all things that range from making me vaguely uneasy to making my skin…
A Game of Telephone
The internet is fond of telling me that I, born in 1980, am part of a micro-generation known variously as Generation Catalano (for the dreamy Jordan Catalano of "My So-Called Life"), the Oregon Trail Generation (for the ubiquitous video…
Watered Down
Another day, another boil order. As the kids say, “I can’t even.” Two things happened Saturday related to the Sewerage & Water Board. First, I got a bill for $286 for a single month. The typical U.S. family spends…
Autumnal Yearning
My older daughter is very into the word “aesthetic” these days. I’m sure it’s something she picked up from Instagram, but suddenly, everything is an aesthetic. VSCO is an aesthetic. She wants a certain aesthetic for her birthday party…
Middle School Chic
“Oh, yessss!” my daughter squealed a couple of weeks ago, flinging down her phone. “Izzy A. just texted that tomorrow we’re all dressing up as VSCO girls! Love it! Gonna pass it on! Sksksksk!” I stared at her with my…
Bundle of Nerves
Our family is an anxious family. It can’t be denied. I personally like to think that it’s linked to our collective high IQs (Ruby once told me, “I hate being smart because it makes me able to realize just…
Birthday Bummer
I’m not normally prone to bouts of self-pity. Yes, I have bad days like everyone else. Sure, I get frustrated and overwhelmed and lose my temper from time to time. (OK, a lot of the time.) But I don’t…
Going Too Fast
“I can’t wait till I have my own room,” Ruby said wistfully the other day. Her stepbrother, Elliot, is a senior this year and will be going to college next year. Since she was maybe 8, she has been…
The Very Long Weekend
I can’t be the only one – please tell me I’m not the only one – who starts a holiday weekend with such joy on Friday night only to find myself praying for the normalcy of the school-work routine…
Asking the Crowd
Sometimes the internet tells me about things it thinks I will like that I do not, in fact, go on to like. The Popeyes chicken sandwich…
Brace Face
As Ruby starts her first full week seventh grade this week, I have been going back in time to my own middle school experience. I remember the excitement of getting a locker and the (much more short-lived) thrill of…
Bittersweet Back to School
I’m always melancholy at the end of summer, an old habit that never left me even though I am no longer the one who has to go back to school (if only because now I never leave). I’ve bought…
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.
