After a fun weekend full of food and alchomohols, it was time to work. NEMO has an employee benefit called Go Help that supports up to 16 hours of volunteering. Bill, Tess, Bryan and I happily returned to LowerNine.Org, our favorite nonprofit in NOLA that promotes equity through home ownership in New Orleans.

*I am the queen of sanding and painting now that we* *own a house*.

We worked on two different job sites painting, sanding, and mudding. Our second day was miserably humid, and there was a weird electricity in the air. That night, we started getting warnings on our phones about severe weather, messages like “hey, stay inside” and “hey, don’t go out to the bar.” We obviously went out to the bar.

*The Spotted Cat being the Spotted & Drenched Cat.*

We tried to go to The Spotted Cat to see Meschia Lake but it was very much closed, so we popped across the street to DBA. It was pretty dead in there besides a band doing sound check and a few staff.

Rain started coming down hard. Water was bubbling up from the storm drains and Frenchmen St. was flooding. There was a nervous ha-ha energy in the bar that was immediately ratcheted up when all 20 of our phones simultaneously blared an alarm:

Oh shit! The sky was turning green outside and things were flying by the window. There’s no basements in New Orleans so we half jokingly discussed where to take shelter if things went sideways. (Under a load bearing wall behind the bar was decided). There were shots and toasts and the band pledged to keep playing “until the end.” (This sounds embellished but legitimately happened. It was very Titanic).

There was a TV with the news on, and it cut to a live stream… of a tornado. In New Orleans. And it wasn’t a cute little tornado. It was a voluptuous and chunky tornado with a sassy arm spout whirling off its side.

The bar got quiet and people were buried in their phones. We watched the tornado march across the TV screen as the wind continued to blow outside.

And suddenly, it was over. The rain stopped and there was a noticeable shift in the energy of the air. We headed back to our neighborhood and hit up Kajun’s for some stress karaoke.

The next day was crisp, clear, and beautiful. Bryan and Tess regretfully headed home. I worked remotely for the rest of the week, and my friend Rachel came down. We settled into a cute routine of taking video calls in our sunny AirBnB by day and eating our way through the city at night.

evening return to bacchanal

*i picked up a violently colored sweatshirt*

daiquiris at the franklin

catching meschia lake at buffa’s

rock & bowl zydeco night!!

sneaking in lunch at who dat cafe between meetings

a surprisingly delish meal at elysian bar

sparkles burlesque and crème brûlée for our final night

It was a stellar couple of days & nights in my favorite city. Bill often joined Rachel and I for our galavanting. One night, we took a sobering drive to see the tornado damage in Arabi. It was wild- one side of the street would be pristine, and the other side wrecked.

We missed the damage by three miles… the above picture is from the same street we stayed on. The EF-3 tornado (up to 165 mile winds) was not a “big enough disaster” to qualify for FEMA funding, but local orgs like United Way Southeast Louisiana have stepped in to help. I donated to their Tornado Relief Fund, linked here.

Like many trips to New Orleans, this was an exciting, humbling, occasionally depressing, and consistently inspiring adventure. I was grateful to spend a week in the city surrounded by good people, good music, and good food. I know I’ll be back.

P.S.- the city is FILLED with kitties. One day I saw 10!!

where: new orleans, LA//ancestral lands of the choctaw and chitimacha
when: severe weather march
how: volunteering with lowernine.org, highly rec

tornado in NOLA

dress quest

back to the big easy