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Lear Jets And Cigarettes
Sometimes you wish you could jump on a Lear Jet and bop on down to Miami for a few days, to clear your head, but why even waste your time imagining such unrealistic things? Oh, because fact is stranger than fiction?
No babe, you go on, I can't make this one, I say into the mike on the stage of that imaginary world, as the palm trees and sand and leggy nearly naked women fade to darkness.
I am on a mission of filial importance, in Dallas Tx.
My mom fell down in the bathroom of her new home in Arlington but there is an emergency cord in there so she pulled it and the staff came and got her and she went to the emergency room and had X-rays. She's been eating Blue Bell ice cream every day for years so the calcium rich cream might be given credit for saving her from broken bones. Just bruised.
As the baby and chief long time miscreant of this family I benefit from not being taken over-seriously. I could not be part of the invading force that moved her out of her home and put her in this facility. There is nothing in my past to imply that I could be part of such a team, even though, in the recent past, whenever she asked was I on that team (of six children conspiring against her) I would always say, yes. When I left my mom's room yesterday, she said, "will you take these people with you?" She was motioning with a dismissive backhanded wave, at my sister, and my sister-in-law, who have lately been taking the brunt of her discontent because they have been doing the bulk of the frontline work. My sister has been holding up admirably, except for that out of the blue crying jag at mom's former house in North Dallas, yesterday.
I started smoking again when I returned to New Orleans, in October, because all the other kids were doing it. I took to it eagerly, like a fish seven years out of water. I don't know how people do that controlled smoking thing, only smoking when they drink, or one cigarette after a meal type thing. I gots to be sucking on them all day long, from daybreak to midnight. My biggest goal was to keep myself to just a pack a day, which I did, more or less.
Now I am two days into a cessation attempt and I'm using some of that nicotine gum this time, although I have always been a proponent of cold-turkey, no anti-smoking aids, because that's how I did it last time, seven years ago. I'm at least two weeks away from being really confident about my possible success, but have high hopes, which is better than a sharp stick in your eye.
If you are in New Orleans though, and smoking happily, but are on a budget, let me suggest you bike yourself over to Terranova's grocery on Esplanade, near N. Lopez, across the street from the still boarded up Circle K, because cigs are only three dollars a pack there. At the Chevron, Canal and Broad, near my Rocheblave house, cigs are four dollars a pack. At the Royal St. Grocery in the French Quarter, they are four dollars fifty a pack, and at bars everywhere, they are five dollars a pack. If you travel to NY they will be seven a pack. So, smoke em if you got em, but be a smart shopper.