It has been a busy weekend with piano competition, voice competition, horse show, high school dance, belly dancing class, Mardi Gras parade, and husband on call. Whew.

Son did great in his piano and got three ribbons at the horse show. Miss Teen sang well and enjoyed the dance.

Every Sunday morning I wonder why I agreed to drive yet another day to New Orleans to take Miss Teen to her belly dancing class. Today was a prime example of why it is a good thing. She and I were butting heads this morning. I can't speak for her, but I wasn't really looking forward to being alone in the car with her for the 40 minute drive. I had really had enough of the nebulous thing called "Attitude". But, while driving through New Orleans East (which still looks like a bomb went off yesterday...empty homes, falling down apartment buildings, dead trees, a shopping mall being demolished, debris trucks all over etc etc)....I wondered out loud how much longer I could stand to live in this area. We ended up having an interesting conversation about what makes a place a home.

On the way home we went down Carr Drive, a street that is right on the North shore of Lake Pontchatrain in our community. Some good friends of ours had a lovely home there right on the lake. After the storm all that was left was a stack of 10 bricks. We had not been over there in at least 6 months. While looking at the progress in the area (and the lack of progress too), Miss Teen told me that Katrina is what started her current distrust of the Bible, Christianity, and the idea of an all powerful God. She is very angry that she has been told that God promised to never again send a flood, and yet....

Then a miracle happened. She asked me if I didn't go to the church I go to, what would I be. She also asked me about what I believe about the Bible and whether it is factual and true. We talked for a good 30 minutes about what really matters in our personal faiths.

These conversations just do not happen between us when we are at home negotiating the minutiae of each day. We have to have time alone, on a day without too many "have to do"s in order to have the space and time. That is one of the reasons she takes belly dancing in New Orleans on a Sunday and I drive her there.