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.