Our strengths are found where heart and mind are bound.

Our time in Tulsa ended finally and we headed to Dallas for a brief stay in a New York Loft style hotel.  Sometimes the hotwire gods really smile upon us, and when that happens we celebrate with our “awesome hotel dance”. Putting that in quotes makes it seems like a thing—that’s because it is. We open the door of the room and throw down our suitcases

whilst simultaneously shouting “YASSSSSSSS!” Then we do our best touchdown dance while singing the name of the hotel. There are many tour rituals that we are reviving this summer.

As I’ve mentioned before, the baby isn’t exactly a road warrior, so we couldn’t get to our next destination in a single day. That meant we needed to stop somewhere, and where better than Natchitoches, Louisiana?! Natchitoches features many banners which boast that is the oldest city in Louisiana. This is technically true, if your definition of “city” is “a place with more than one stop light”. If you set the bar any higher, Natchitoches certainly does not qualify. It is a meaningful place to me because it is the location of the boarding school where I completed high school. Consequently, my glasses were tinted slightly with the color of nostalgia, and as we drove through I waxed poetic about the Texaco where I used to buy blimpie sandwiches, and Matt tried not to roll his eyes. You could call Natchitoches a small town, but Matt would probably use more choice words… like wastehole… or… a place where dreams die.

Since Natchitoches isn’t really on the way to anywhere, we rarely get a chance to visit, so I was excited to stop in and see my old friend and mentor Prem, and his wife Raj. Prem has been a residential advisor at this boarding school for nearly two decades. During my time at LSMSA in Natchitoches, he guided me with blurry metaphors, literary references that were definitely over my head, actual homemade chai tea, and delicious Nepali cuisine. Prem and Raj told us of their upcoming visit to Nepal, and showed us the ever growing green room, where Prem nurses the dying house plants of irresponsible high school students back to life. Before we left, we snapped a few pictures. As you can see, the baby is a big fan of Raj, maybe a bit skeptical of Prem.

 

On we drove, until we finally made it to Lafayette, my hometown, and more importantly, the location of our storage unit. Our clothes were overdue for washing, and the baby only had mismatching shoes left to wear, but we were finally able to take all the crap out of our cars and eat a homemade dinner. Matt began his block of Louisiana shows, and I attended one today to get this video for you. This is a UFO skit that Matt has had in the show for years, but when he performs it here in Cajun country, he adds a couple of common Cajun phrases to the skit.  You’ll hear him say “mais gah de don!” which loosely translates to “well look at that!” and “Oy-yai-yai!” which sort of means “ouch”. Apologies for the shaky cam. It’s not super easy to handle a toddler and video a puppet show!