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Living, loving, laughing, and learning in the new New Orleans
Joie d'Eve

August 2011

Recipe Me

08/26/11

Recipe Me

“I don’t know how you bare your soul like that every week,” my friend and fellow blogger Tim McNally emailed me last week.

And I thought about it, and I don’t really know. Part of it is that I am just an oversharer by nature; it’s how I was raised, and no one in my family has much in the way of either secrets or shame. Part of it is that after surviving the awkward Perm and Braces Years between 1990 and 1997, I just don’t embarrass all that easily. Part of it is that – as anyone who has ever met me at a party can attest – I often talk without thinking, so writing is a relief to me; even if I bare my soul, I do it with words that I actually carefully consider instead...

Posted at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments: 4
Try, Try Again

08/18/11

Try, Try Again

I was a Type A child born to Type B parents. In grade school, while other kids earned $5 for A’s and $1 for B’s, my mom offered me $5 if I could make a B and be OK with it. I don’t think I achieved that until maybe high school. And even then, it wasn’t so much that I was OK with it as it was that it just couldn’t be helped: My brain cannot do geometry. 

I have always been a total perfectionist, and I know that sounds like bragging, but it really isn’t. My perfectionism is something I dislike about myself – it keeps me from taking risks, from pursuing things that don’t come naturally to me, like sports or music or, really, anything that doesn’t concern language. I loved biology in school, but it...

Posted at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments: 5
Yesterday

08/11/11

Yesterday

Wait, I’m sorry, but wasn’t it just yesterday that I was stuffing my newborn daughter into her pink going-home bodysuit, folding up the arm- and leg-sleeves because even the newborn size was too big for her? Wasn’t it just yesterday that I watched reruns of Gilmore Girls while she slept on my shoulder, every so often toggling around her huge newborn head? Wasn’t it just yesterday that I spooned rice cereal off of her chin? That I held her ankles gently together while changing her diapers? That she gave me huge open-mouthed kisses on the side of my face? No?

Well, OK then, but wasn’t it just yesterday that I took her to her first day of daycare here in New Orleans at the fabulous bright-yellow Kiddee Korner in Mid-City? That I watched...

Posted at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments: 5
Weighty Matters

08/04/11

Weighty Matters

It happened overnight. One day, my thighs were just there, just part of my legs, completely value-neutral. The next, I looked down at them, the way they spread out when I sat down, and I was disgusted at their pink pale flabbiness. I hated them. I couldn’t believe they were part of my body. I just wanted them to go away. I was 9.

More than 20 years later, not much has changed. High school was a blur of hating my body, showing it off and skipping lunch. Of bingeing on a can of vanilla frosting with my best friend and then vowing we wouldn’t eat for two days. Of skim milk-laced coffee for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was never any good at counting calories, but back then, I was entirely too good at fasting, and I went off to college weighing 90 pounds.

Posted at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments: 3

About This Blog

Eve is further proof, if any is needed, that New Orleans girls can never escape the city. After living here since the age of 3 and graduating from Ben Franklin High School, Eve moved to Columbia, Mo., where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism and became truly, unhealthily obsessed with grammar.

She had originally intended to strike out to New York City and work in the cutthroat magazine industry there, but after Katrina, Eve felt a strong pull to return home, to her roots, her family, her waterlogged and struggling city – and a much more forgiving work atmosphere that would allow her to skip a routine of everyday makeup and size 0 designer label business suits and enjoy the occasional cocktail or three with an absurdly fattening lunch. She moved back home in January 2008 and lives in Mid-City with her daughter, Ruby, 5; her 10-year-old stepson; and her husband, Robert Peyton. She and Robert are expecting their first child together, a daughter, in May 2012. 

In addition to serving as the editor of New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles and the managing editor of Louisiana Life and Acadiana Profile, Eve blogs about the joys and struggles of living in post-Katrina New Orleans, the unique problems and delights of raising a child in such a diverse and challenging city – including her experiences with the public education system – and her always entertaining and extremely colorful family.

Eve has won numerous writing awards, including the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society Gold Medal, the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence award for column-writing and Press Club of New Orleans awards for her Editor’s Note in New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles and for this blog.

She welcomes comments, advice, empty flattery, recipes, drink invitations and – most especially – grammatical or linguistic debates.

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