It's so hard to leave you, Lafayette. Now I know where I belong...

Guess who couldn’t handle the Louisiana summer heat?! Matt’s trusty corolla, that has carried him through every puppet tour, dutifully logging nearly 300,000 miles, no longer had the stamina to face the tropical heat. After a couple of weeks of faltering, the car’s AC finally gasped its final breath. Matt has frequently told me that he’s going to drive this car until the wheels fall off. Well, the wheels were still on there, so he drove it, convinced he could finish out the summer, or at least the time in Louisiana, before getting the AC fixed.  He sweated through his shirt. He took off his pants and drove in his boxers, determined to make it. At the end of each day, he crawled in to the house like a dog looking for a place to die.

That lasted two days.

He finally broke down and brought it to the shop. Then the baby and I carted him around to his Lafayette shows, which were well received, and attended by many friends (who were obligated to laugh and clap)!

We spent the last of our days in Lafayette hanging out with people we loved and hitting up all of our favorite Acadiana food joints. We cooled down by visiting a liquid nitrogen ice cream joint, and a splash pad at Palmetto Island State Park. Here’s a fun fact: Lafayette is near the ocean, but far from the beach. Matt would always be surprised when I told him I didn’t grow up going to the beach.  “But you’re so close to the ocean,” he would say. “What do you see if you just drive south from Lafayette?” The swamp. And alligators. That’s what you’ll find at Palmetto Island State Park.

Fortunately, you’ll also find a splash pad, offering visitors a safe refuge from the heat. Because you should most definitely not jump in the swamp. When we visited, I was actually a little worried that my nephew might do just that, so I told him to be extra careful near the water, since someone had just gotten eaten by an alligator. That story wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t fully contextualized. I don’t feel bad. At the end of the day, no eight-year-olds had been eaten on my watch. That’s a good day in my book.

We were sad to leave the bayou, but before we did, we got to meet the newest member of my sister’s clan: *drumroll* Rhydian Niilo Constantine Gmaz-Finlay! The man with 5 names! The baby of all babies! Destined for greatness, or at least, a guaranteed job as an NPR journalist!

*cute baby photo taken by mother of the baby, Taylor Gmaz*
And now to round out the summer with a trek through Matt’s homeland – the boro of Green.

Like you give a little speed to a great white shark on shark week

Matt has enjoyed doing shows in South Louisiana. Everyday he drives to some cajun town he can barely pronounce (e.g. Opelousas, Breaux Bridge) and meets a librarian with a name like Trahan (TRAW-haw/n/) or Saucier (SO-syay) and tries to curry favor by telling them he makes a mean gumbo. If he were traveling to towns this size anywhere else in the US, his lunch options would be limited to Taco Bell, but here he feasts on muffalettas and poboys and fresh delicious coffee.

Of course, the weather here in Louisiana has been fabulous. I mean, you know what they say about summer in South Louisiana? Oh, you don't? Well, let me enlighten you. It lasts from April until October and it's two parts swampy plus one part sauna. It's not just hot, it's sticky hot. It's a heat that gets up on you. It's like you're a girl at a dance club, but instead of gross strangers dancing all over you, it's a cloud of steam. Sometimes when it rains (and it has rained every day here), steam rises off of the ground. That's how hot it is. What can I say? South Louisiana is another planet.

We took a break from the South Louisiana summer to enjoy a Sandbank Family vacation. And where else is better to vacate to than the shark infested waters of North Carolina?! That's right! There has been a terrifying uptick in Carolina shark attacks, but our beach vacay was already planned. The baby loves to swim, but she is basically a potato chip to a shark, so we had to navigate the ocean carefully. Fortunately, we only needed to venture ankle deep into the ocean before she was up to her neck in tidal waves, so we were able to give her some swimming time without giving the sharks an all-snackcess-pass.

Even without swimming, we still found plenty of ways to relax. We went for long walks on the beach, played ping pong, ate delicious meals together, and broke out the Sandbank Family Edition of Clue. PROTIP: When you're playing a game of Clue that has been personalized for your family, and you get your SECRET cards, don't look at them and remark on the nice photograph of the hall.

In the end, I declared that it was Dad in the sun room with the almond milk, though I'm still not sure what the crime was. If you asked him, he'd probably say it was paying absurd amounts of money to dilute your coffee with almond juice.

We would have loved to hit the pause button and live at the beach forever, but those puppets aren't going to puppet themselves. We headed back to South Louisiana, just in time for Matt to perform shows at the newly renovated downtown Lafayette library. This place used to be covered from floor to ceiling in shag carpet, so I'm eager to see the renovation, as well as the fervor with which the locals embrace the Sandbank Shadow Factory.

 *Amazing beach photos taken by the talented Drew Arthur.