My Mardi Gras vacation started at about 2pm yesterday when we finished our *half* day at the office. (I thought everyone around here went to Disney World with their kids this week, but apparently enough are still in town to get sick and see me.) The rest of the afternoon was spent dress and shoe shopping with Miss Teen so that she has something to wear to a friend's Sweet 16 party. My adopted daughter has somehow inherited the frugal gene of my side of the family. She found a party dress and a new pair of shoes at a 75% off sale and bought both for the whopping sum of $40.24. Wow.

When we got home, I sent both kids and husband out to a movie with the full intention of watching trashy tv alone. Unfortunately the first show I watched was Wife Swap and one family ate only raw food (including raw chicken) and believed that cleaning removed the helpful bacteria from their home. I was so grossed out that I had to clean my kitchen at the end of the show, including cleaning the oven.

Today everyone in the house slept until at least 9. (Yes RM, one day the kids will get older and they will sleep in some mornings). Even husband slept until 10, which is quite rare. Then son went to the barn and husband/Miss Teen went to a parade in another town up the road. I worked in the yard cleaning up, you guessed it, hurricane debris.

But the truly wonderful news is that I no longer have orange cable in my yard. When the cable company finally came and hooked up broken cable after Katrina they used orange cable to signify that it is/was temporary. Almost everyone still has orange cable snaking through their yards unburied. We got buried cable about a month ago when our service started to get really snowy, but the orange cable was still snaking through our yard. After 15 months the vines and grass had grown over some of it making it a challenge to remove. The rest was covered by broken limbs and junk left after the removal of the 63 large tree trunks that were lying on the ground after the storm. Today, I managed to get the orange cable loose and it is now gone. One small cable in the trash, one less ugly hurricane scar in my yard.

When I went to check on son at the barn, I discovered the place was crowded and that they were having a huge crawfish boil. YES!!!!! I LOVE CRAWFISH.

So, my Mardi Gras vacation did not include any parades or revelry. Instead through serendipity it was just what the doctor ordered.