New Orleans brings out the best in me… and the worst

In case anyone was wondering, I’m invincible. How so this time? Well, I’ll tell you. I made it out of my house, on a plane, on another plane, and into New Orleans with ZERO panic symptoms. I KNOW. I’m shocked, too.

Maybe you’re like Hank and wondering, Wait, I thought that’s why you’re bothering with the whole super fun ‘not drinking’ thing — no more panic? Well, yeah, no more panic — under NORMAL circumstances. But in abnormal circumstances? Like, say, getting on a plane and leaving the state of Florida for the first time in over one point five fucking years? I’d say that’s fairly abnormal. And to say that I was having a bit of anxiety about having anxiety would be an understatement. I’ve pretty much spent the past month keeping myself up at night worried that I’d have a major panic attack and ruin my whole New Orleans weekend and then convince myself that I’m physically incapable of ever travelling again. Thus you can imagine how thrilled I am to announce that I wasted that whole month of sleep for no good reason. Bring it on, world — I can do anything now.

Wait, you chose New Orleans as your first foray back into the rest of the world as a fledgling sober person? Sure, why not? Why run the 5k when you can sign up for the marathon with no prior training?

Okay, fine, so maybe I wasn’t that cocky. Maybe I was a little nervous about how it’d all go. All in all? Not too shabby.

Turns out, I only really miss drinking when I’m not at a bar. Let me explain. Previous trips to New Orleans always looked like this: bar, bar, bar, restaurant, walk around, bar, walk around, bar, bar, bar, restaurant, walk around, bar, pass out, repeat. When you remove all those bar stops, you’re left with a LOT of free time. What to do??? I can only eat so much. And while I love walking around (and did plenty of that this trip), that, too, gets a little old. And so it was that Hank and I would find ourselves playing the “what do you want to do?” “I don’t know; what do you want to do?” game a few times a day. And it was during those times that I’d sullenly think to myself, “if only I drank… I know what we could do right now.”

But all the times we actually were at a bar? I was fine. Turns out sitting there drinking a diet Coke isn’t all that different from sitting there drinking a beer. Ditto for wandering around aimlessly — as long as I have a beverage in my hand, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much what it is. Guess you could say I stayed well hydrated.

I even tried a non-alcoholic gin for the first time ever! Hank wanted a night cap at Columns on Saturday night, and rather than order yet another DC or club soda, I asked the hipster craft cocktail professional to whip me up a mocktail. And whip he did! Out came the zero-proof gin and a bunch of other random shit. I’d hesitated to try the stuff before because I figured it was just an easy way to spend money and calories on something that would NOT give me a buzz, so why bother? Turns out it’s just a way to spend money — no calories — and not get a buzz. Tasty, though.

Speaking of tasty, I still somehow managed to take in almost double my daily allotment of Weight Watchers points each day without consuming alcohol. Makes me shudder at the thought of what I was consuming on previous trips.

My goal this trip was to drink as much good coffee as humanly possible. At the end of it all, I only managed to get in two or three cups a day, but the only souvenirs I bought myself the entire trip were six bags of coffee. No art, no jewelry, no decor. Just coffee. We’ll see how long that lasts me at home.

Ultimately, the real goal of the trip (other than to get me the fuck out of the house and reintroduce me to the rest of the country) was to explore all of New Orleans and start to consider which neighborhoods we may want to move to. And if, in general, we’d want to move to New Orleans.

It’s a whole long, convoluted thing, but the short version of that story is that now, thanks to working from home becoming permanent, we can live wherever we want. And maybe that place isn’t Florida. Or is it? I DON’T KNOW. Here’s an idea: maybe we shouldn’t be asking the bat shit insane girl who, depending on the day, is either going stir-crazy with cabin fever from being imprisoned in Florida for over a year, or she wakes up and identifies as partially agoraphobic and would rather not leave the house for longer than an hour if humanly possible. And then, to fully douse that campsite in kerosene, let’s not forget to mention that regardless of her mood swing that day, she’s still struggling to understand how life is supposed to work when you don’t have a chemical crutch to help you over every speedbump. Yeah, LET’S ASK THAT BITCH TO MAKE A MAJOR LIFE DECISION THAT IMPACTS HERSELF AND OTHERS AND WILL LAST FOR YEARS. Genius.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So now that I wasn’t going to be drinking all day, it seemed like a good time to rent a car. And see all of New Orleans. I thought you lived there for five years? How have you not seen it all? Look. I was there from the ages of 17 to 23. You know who aren’t known for their critical thinking skills and worldliness? 17 to 23 year olds. Also, recently sober agoraphobic people begging to get out of the house. But I digress.

Nay, turns out that Haley and I really didn’t take proper advantage of living in New Orleans. We thought we were. Oh lordy, we thought we were the shit and that we lived like queens. Turns out we lived like queens who never left the same two neighborhoods and frequented the same three bars and three restaurants over and over. As I drove Hank into the Lakefront neighborhood Sunday morning, I’m ashamed to admit that my tour spiel went like this: “This is the Lakefront. I’ve only ever been over here two or three times before. To go to Joe’s Crab Shack.” JOE’S MOTHERFUCKING CRAB SHACK. IN NEW ORLEANS. It’s a small miracle I wasn’t banned from the city for life many moons ago.

Other places we drove around Sunday that I’d never been to before: Gentilly (would not recommend), Bywater (adorable), Ninth Ward (less adorable), and Algiers Point (adorable but on the wrong side of the river).

Much like this blog post, the weekend saw us meandering all over the place with no real plan or agenda. We ended up in Mid-City like, four times. Four times! That’s about four times as many as I’d typically venture over there in a single year when I lived in New Orleans. As we sat the first night at Tracey’s in the Irish Channel (home turf) and discussed potentially driving ALL THE WAY to Mid-City, I was shocked to look at Waze and see that the restaurant we were targeting there was just three miles away. Let me tell you: in 2004, those three miles felt like 30. And 30 may as well have been 300. Way too fucking far.

Not only would we not drive anywhere beyond our little bubble, but fuck — we wouldn’t even walk anywhere. We would drive to our neighborhood bars every time. Granted, this probably had more to do with our choice of footwear back then than it did with our general level of laziness, but still. We were very lazy. Hell, I remember sometimes skipping a class if I couldn’t find parking close enough to the building. I’d circle the block five times and then say, “welp, I tried,” and go home. We were the worst.

I know. But anyway, are you more or less inclined to move back to New Orleans after this trip or what? What part of “let’s not let the crazy girl make decisions” was unclear to you? Sigh. I don’t knoooooow. I’m so torn. On the one hand, I still love New Orleans oh so much. But on the other, I love the home we’ve made for ourselves in Florida. The sad truth is that any item in the pro column for New Orleans doesn’t exist in Cape Coral, and vice versa. There is no common ground. New Orleans = walkability, liberal happiness, urban living, diversity, charm, amazing architecture, tons to do, tons to eat, amazing community spirit. The Cape = quiet, affordable, friends, beaches, boats, Disney World up the road, our house, our pool and lanai and garage (not sure the cats would approve of a house with no outdoor space and not sure Hank would approve of a house with no storage space).

Suffice it to say, I’m not sure this trip moved the needle all that much for me on where I may call home in the future. But at the very least, I’ve learned that I’m invincible, learned that I can hang in New Orleans without needing to drink, and learned that the Bywater is super cute. All of that will have to do for now. And in the meantime, I’m looking forward to getting home to my cats and my large house with a garage. And then not leaving it for awhile.