We went to New Orleans this past weekend for a wedding. We stayed in the French Quarter at the lovely Hotel Monteleone. It was an old hotel right on Royal, but it has been updated recently and was really nice. The Carousel Bar was beautiful and on Thursday we stopped in for a drink before going to dinner. It reminded me of our favorite bar in New York City where you can watch people walk by on the street while listening to live music and sitting on comfy sofas and chairs enjoying libations. I was hungry so I declined a second cosmopolitan, but I told Tim I wanted another before we left New Orleans, it was really well made and I was so comfortable and relaxed! As it turned out, we never got to sit in there again due to crowds, but I did enjoy the moment.
After a wonderful dinner we went to the casino. Tim likes to play cards, but I was once yelled at by a dealer in Las Vegas so now I am scared to play anything where there are other real people involved. Give me a hidden slot machine where I can lose my money in peace. So Tim headed to a black jack table after we agreed to meet in one hour. I found a relatively desolate area and sat at the slot machine that “spoke” to me. In case you don’t know I am rather superstitious. Well, superstitious might not be the right word. Walking under ladders and black cats don’t faze me, but I do wear certain “good luck” jewelry to football games and I have my lucky shoes for auditions. If I wear a dress and have a terrible time I might as well give the dress away. If I have a great time you will see me in that dress a lot! I try to figure out the deep hidden meanings to my dreams and I think everything is a “sign.”
When I sat at the slot machine I began to see how it paralleled life. You put in your money, then you sit back and hope something amazing happens. One time I got the little winning symbol and the machine played this exciting music. I was excited! Then the second set of tumblers stopped and the music stopped. It did not match the first symbol so the excitement was over. Have you ever been so excited about something and then when it finally gets here it really isn’t very exciting after all? Another time I got triple bars in the first column and then triple bars in the second column. Kind of like a good first audition and then a good call back. But when the third column spun around it was empty so I lost. The third column was when you never hear anything from that director, even though you were sure you would! When the three lines do match up and you win it is a great feeling, but just like in life it only takes that one more spin to once again lose and feel crappy.
Eventually Tim and I joined back up and went to a video poker machine. We played awhile before I accidentally hit the screen while pointing at something and evidently it was a touch screen of some sort and what I hit made the machine come alive. It gave me the option to do something new and although I was unsure exactly what to do, I tried and won. It gave me the chance to do it again for double and I did. Again I won. It went to a 4X, then an 8X, then a 16X. Each time I tried and won. Then I stopped. I was so unsure of what was going on that I got scared. I do that in real life too. I think things are going so great I get scared and think something must be wrong. I feel kind of out of control and often quit before I totally get freaked out by my good fortune. I cashed out and we moved on, but I kept wondering if I had gone on would I have won even more or would I have lost everything? Tim tells me all of the time to quit with all of the what ifs. But that is what I think about a lot of the time- what if?
Later we played a Family Guy game. We would normally never do that, but Jon loves Family Guy and he was not with us, so we decided in his honor to play. It was a crazy game and made no sense. It was not logical and when you won you could not figure out why. When you thought you had won, you hadn’t! At one point I got frustrated and actually mashed all of the buttons at once. I waited for someone to come out and arrest me or for the machine to explode, but neither thing happened. Instead the machine took over the game from me. It gave me lots of “wild cards” and 30 free spins. It ended up during those spins winning back my money plus a little. Again, just as in life, when I get frustrated and try something radical, things take an amazing twist. And how often have I felt so out of control, only to have something wonderful happen!
You never know what life has to offer. You never know what the next day holds. And when you plan too precisely, things go out of your control, sometimes wonderfully, sometimes not so great. Just when you think you did a good job you don’t get cast and when you think you stunk, you do! (Sometimes you really just stink and don’t!) I am not suggesting our lives are a big slot machine and randomly happens. That thought makes me really nervous. But I certainly never know what to expect from day to day.
We ate good food, saw some good friends we hadn’t seen in awhile and had lots of fun. I would say that was a successful weekend. And now back to real life and whatever the future might spin our way.
