Phantom Babies, Brad Pitt's Boxers & Employee Discounts

The night Ashley and I arrived in New Orleans, we unloaded about half of my belongings from the car. It was too hot and I was too tired and sick to be bothered with more. We drove around to find a parking spot and I grabbed a few more random items—including Edie's dog bed—to bring into the land-lady inhabited apartment.

Before retiring for the evening, I insisted we commemorate my arrival by ordering our first ever take-away cocktail so I dragged Ashley into the place across the street, Fiorella's. Ashley and I ponied up to the bar and I exclaimed I had just moved into town and we would like to initiate a ritual. The staff was incredibly friendly and, despite the fact that they were actually closed for the evening, offered us a drink on the house to welcome us to the neighborhood.

They had a bottle of champagne sparkling wine open so they volunteered mimosas and even though it went against our core principles to drink mimosas after 1 pm, we indulged their generosity.

As the only other customers in the restaurant paid their tab and exited the restaurant, they stopped by the bar and said to me, "I'm sorry, but didn't you like, have a baby when you came in here?"

"What?" I asked confused.

We simultaneously looked down at the empty dog bed I'd placed on the stool next to me. We laughed at the misunderstanding and they acknowledged they had been purposely keeping their voices down so as not to disturb my phantom baby.

As Ashley and I ordered our second drink—this one to go—and paid our tab, the bartender, Troy, also asked, "Hey didn't you carry something in here with you? Didn't you have like a... baby in a basket?"

This really got me thinking about what kind of lady they thought I was. Not so much the part about bringing a baby into a restaurant but the part about propping it haphazardly onto a stool only to ignore for the next 45 minutes.

My (baby in my) baby basket

This first night friendship has blossomed as Kady and I weekly commemorate the tradition Ashley and I started Monday, August 22, 2011—$2 Martini Monday. No really: any martini you want. Two dollars.

The two managers are Glinda and Eugenie and it feels good to have these Mom-figures looking after Kady and me as we wave to them when entering our apartment, exiting for a run, or while enjoying our dinner on our balcony... even if one of them is most likely a compulsive liar who claims she delivers take-out to Brad and Angelina and Brad answers the door in his boxers and Angelina is a huge coke-head b-word. But we like them. And I promise it has almost nothing to do with the 20 percent employee discount they give us.

View of our apartment from Fiorella's

Fiorella's: view from our balcony. Nothing special to look at but special to us
(I mentioned the $2 martinis and employee discount, right?)

Our street: View to the right side of Fiorella's from our balcony