b.rox

One of the most frequent questions I field as a new dad are various inquiries into my sleep patterns. People seem mystified or nonplussed when I assert that I have never slept better in my life. It’s not a joke, though. Xy feeds the girl at night and usually sleeps in her room as a [...]

Sometimes it’s worth it. All the trouble, the endless meetings, the grant proposals, the paperwork, navigating bureaucracies, building consensus, wrangling volunteers, the phone calls, the e-mails, did I mention the meetings?
I started the Mid-City sign project last year, when I was serving as Communications Director for the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization. We wrote a grant to [...]

I’m back at work today after a three-month leave. It feels weird to be sitting in my office instead of taking care of baby or sweating some renovation details.
It seems today is also my boss’ birthday. Funny thing, her husband is a local blogger, but she doesn’t read his blog as a rule, just like [...]

Title: Infinite Jest
Author: David Foster Wallace
Published: 1996
David Foster Wallace, you’ve gotten the better of me.
I started reading Infinite Jest shortly before my daughter was born. I’ve continued to plug away at it for three months.

We’re just wrapping up a three-night visit from my parents.

I put my Dad to work installing brackets for an ambitious shelving project. We installed 35 brackets total.

But of course the real reason behind the visit was to see their new granddaughter.

Mom brought some yummy homemade rhubarb pie all the way from Indiana.

I’ve never noticed lovebugs around New Orleans before, though they’re supposed to be common all along the Gulf Coast during certain times of the year. Then again, New Orleans isn’t really on the coast — though the coast is getting closer every day.
Anyway, I’ve been seeing the lovebugs here for the first time over this [...]

We took Persephone in to Xy’s school to visit some of Xy’s students. As she predicted, it was a mob scene.

I’ve posted the pix as a set on Flickr. I recommend viewing it as a slideshow.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School, 3700 Tall Pines Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana 70131

A mysterious fungus sprung up in one of our flowerpots this weekend. It looked creepy and beautiful and smelled terrible. What could it be?

Turns out it’s a Stinkhorn, a Columned Stinkhorn, to be exact: Clathrus columnatus. A tip of the hat to Lisa Mulvey for the quick ID.

I think this is the best photo I’ve taken in a while. Somehow phallic and vaginal at the same time. Best viewed large.

Yesterday seemed to be getting off to a good start. I’d set my sights on completing a project that I’ve been postponing and procrastinating on for over a year and a half. Nineteen months actually. That’s when Xy smashed a window out in our kitchen with her bare hand, in a blind drunken rage.

I’m just [...]

Dear Persephone,
People kept telling me we should “enjoy this time” with you. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this advice.
A couple weeks ago I said to Olivia: “She’s only six weeks old. All she does is sleep and eat and poop. Oh, and occasionally she cries. What moments are we suppose [...]

I don’t know if there’s a name for this style of infant apparel. We call them “ghosties.” Here’s Persephone in her favorite ghostie.

“There’s no reason for anyone to worry.”
So sayeth Section Chief Brett Herr of the Army Corps of Engineers. He’s a talking about a wee small leak that’s been discovered at the 17th Street Canal floodwall.
This is one of the floodwalls that breached and flooded the city back in 2005. These floodwalls were designed and built [...]

It was a beautiful day, so we packed some picnic snacks, loaded up the baby stroller, gathered up some neighbor kids and headed down to the bayou for Super Sunday.

Only Super Sunday wasn’t quite as super as I remembered. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time. And the Indians we saw were absolutely [...]

When we tally up the list of people who’d helped us out or given us stuff recently, it’s quite impressive. More than sixty. I didn’t know we had so many well-wishers.

We’ve been trying to make sure everybody gets a card to express our gratitude. And slowly, slowly, we’re sending them out. I really hope we [...]

Whenever people see her, they invariable make two remarks:

She looks like me.
She’s cute.

It doesn’t take a logician to leap to the obvious conclusion, namely, that I must be kinda cute myself.

Today her umbilical stump fell off. To celebrate, we made a pilgrimage to Bayou St. John.

She’s definitely growing. Her loose folds of skin are filling in with baby fat. Xy has been breastfeeding, and the results can be seen daily. Funny, by sheer coincidence we watched The Life of Mammals just before the birth. Mammals [...]

Keep N It Real Social & Pleasure Club was in our neighborhood today. It ended just two blocks from our house. Actually we missed the parade, but we caught these fabulous DIVAS (acronym for something but I forget what) just as things were breaking up.

From our friend MF in China comes the following awesome weirdness:

It’s a hand-embroidered bib with a gun that says “poop” on it.
No, I don’t know what it means either, but you’ve got to admit it’s cool.

We took our first stroll around the block yesterday.

Many of the sidewalks are impassable, so we had to push the stroller in the street. On Iberville I saw a renovation underway; they were sanding, with clouds of lead-based paint dust going everywhere. (I’ll be placing a call to the city’s Department of Environmental Health tomorrow [...]