Laissez les bon temps roulet.

Kind of.

(Oh. That’s “Let the good times roll” in French…or Cajun.)

(And that’s just lagniappe – “something extra” – since I’m really not writing an entire blog on the oddities of the Cajun language.)

My family, as most families are, is an interesting bunch. Relationships, history, and culture are confusing and complicated, so I will limit this post to the more understandable parts of our weekend.

My cousin got married in Baton Rouge on Saturday, so John and I drove down for the wedding. In case you’re curious, that’s a seven-hour drive from Dallas with a few stops to, you know, eat, visit the toilet, and use internet access at rest stops to send important e-mails so that Friday doesn’t really have to count for an actual vacation day. With all the driving, it was a whirlwind of a weekend.

Let me take this opportunity to sum up the wedding experience:

1. I do not see my distant relatives too often, mostly due to distance issues. The last time I saw my cousin was at my grandpa’s funeral, I think. This weekend was a great occasion to see almost everybody on my dad’s side of the family.
2. My cousins and uncle are NOT Cajun; they have just lived in the New Orleans area for a good long while, actually for the entire lives of my cousins.
3. My cousin married a girl from a good Cajun family.
4. The wedding was at The Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge, outdoors, and it was quite pretty, but HOT. The wedding was at 3 p.m. About 6 p.m. it started feeling cooler and someone stated that the wedding should have been at 6 or 6:30. Then someone else commented that the wedding should have been in March or February. To which I added, the wedding should have been in an air-conditioned building. OK, I know. It wouldn't have been nearly as pretty in a building.
5. John learned how to correctly pronounce words like Atchafalya, Natchitoches, boudin, Pontchartrain, and crawfish.
6. John also got to hear real live people speaking Creole in the United States. He’s been to Haiti, so he’s heard the language there, but he honestly didn’t know people in South Louisiana actually speak it today.
7. The biggest glitch occurred when, during the reception, another wedding was supposed to be taking place in the gardens, so the band was asked to stop playing for 15-20 minutes out of courtesy for the other wedding. Without being told, the other ceremony started an hour late, so the band at the reception only got to play for about 45 minutes tops. At a Louisiana wedding this is a BIG glitch. Thankfully, all the major wedding dances were danced.
8. And my mom tried learning how to line dance in the brief period the band got to play.
9. Jambalaya, Smoothie King, and seafood were main staples of the weekend.
10. On a blue-sky day in June, from the inside of an air-conditioned vehicle, the bayous in Louisiana are really quite pretty.
11. I am sufficiently worn out after all the driving in a three-day time span, all the family, all the heat and humidity, and the wearing of dresses and heels.
12. It was hot and humid at the wedding. Did I mention that? Oh well, it deserves a double mention in the list, even though I was quite prepared beforehand for this possibility, er, certainty. (After several hours of the heat, mais, I want to axe for a hose pipe and a deaux deaux!)

I lived in a suburb of New Orleans for three years in high school. I am quite content not ever living there again. For some reason, the humidity, while close to what it can be in Dallas, is ever so much more oppressive. And understanding the dialect of English spoken in South Louisiana is a skill I have admittedly lost.

So, I have visited family, attended a wedding, eaten well, seen the Louisiana landscape once again, and am grateful to be home again.

Fini and merci beaucoup.