Mardi Gras Madness part 4

This is the last Mardi Gras entry. I swear!!!

Mardi Gras Day. This is a daylong event that started at 5:30 in the morning. That’s when I got up. C and I packed the car and got on the road by 6:15 or so.

Our usual parade site on Mardi Gras day is not located in New Orleans proper. In fact, we celebrate Mardi Gras day out in Jefferson Parish, not Orleans parish. For those of you not familiar with New Orleans vernacular, a parish is like a county.

On Mardi Gras day, the Krewe of Argus rolls in Metairie. Following it are two other parades but they are not professionally decorated floats. Instead, it’s comprised mostly of families and friends who get together and decorate a truck float. It’s called a truck float because the floats are pulled along the parade route by 18-wheelers instead of tractors like traditional floats. There are prizes involved and a whole lot of “political” stuff regarding the Krewes, but it’s all good fun. The truck floats consists of at least 70 floats PER PARADE. That means at least 140 floats plus Argus rolled on Tuesday. In actuality, it was more like 160+ in addition to Argus that rolled.

The Grand Marshall’s of Argus were Hoda Kotbe and Al Roker. Mom actually caught a cup that Al Roker threw to her! Well, she tried to catch it but it fell. I saw it fall and grabbed up a folding chair, folded it up and stood on the barricade to “draw” it in so I could pick it up. Mom actually has a cup touched by Al Roker. She can now die a happy person.

I’m totally joking about the reverence in which it sounds like my mom has for that cup. In reality, it was just a passing moment of coolness after which, the cup was promptly lost. It’s probably still on Severn or in some big landfill somewhere.

Anyway, it…again…was a great day. The weather was perfect. A little hot but not too unbearable. Tons of sunscreen was rubbed on tender body parts but I was able to stave off sunburn on both light of my life and myself.

We did have a bit of excitement that morning. C and I were the ones who were going ahead to secure our daylong parade site. When we got to Severn (we always stay in the neutral ground on Severn at Vets), we found a spot that seemed ideal. There were two people sleeping on a blanket but the area to the side was completely free of anything.

Background info: when you save a spot for your friends and family at parade sites, it’s customary to either rope off the area (and pray the cops don’t come to cut it down) or surround the area with fold up chairs or lay a blanket down on the ground. We usually do a combo of all those choices (usually not a rope but it’s been known to happen).

Back to the story: We unloaded EVERYTHING. I left C with the stuff and went and parked the car. When I walked back, I started helping C set up. The a$$hole work up and started complaining because we were setting up in HIS spot. I wanted to deck that mo-fo so bad, I could taste it. I calmly (how on earth I pulled that off, I’ll never understand) explained that I could not see anything that “claimed” the area as his. He countered back that the barricade that he pulled over was his way of claiming the spot. O.k., first things first, those barricades belong to Jefferson Parish and the cops WILL get pissed if you mess with them. Second, because they are police issued barricades, how the hell were we supposed to know at 6 AM and with them sleeping and not awake to shoo off interlopers, that the barricades were not put there by the JPSO but by them. Huh? Can you answer me that, oh Amazing Kreskin?

Long story short, I decided to back off the argument. For two reasons: one, even if I had dug in my heels and forced the issue, it would have made for a miserable day and that’s not the point of the whole day. Who wants to be miserable on Mardi Gras? Two, we found a better spot closer to Vets.

So, we moved. And enjoyed the day. As usual.

That wraps up Mardi Gras 2008. I hope everyone enjoyed the trip.

Later,

Mama Dawg

P.S. I think I've got B and L convinced to join us next year. I think they (and their girls, of course) would have a blast as they've never been before.