Flotsam, jetsam, seaglass and shards

There's a mosaic in my future.

All around my house, in glass vases, copper boxes and bowls that once belonged to Bedouins and Buddhist monks, are bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam from bodies of water, sidewalks and trash piles around the world, and I value these as highly as any travel souvenirs I've collected.

Someday, when I have nothing to do, I'll gather in one place these intriguing chunks of detritus, along with my scores of stones and seashells spirited from dozens of beaches, and I'll design a mosaic that gives each nugget a special spot in some big, bold picture.

Each piece brings me back to the place where I acquired it: water-worn teacup handles and porcelain dinnerware shards washed up on Lake Como's rocky shore; a hunk of marble paving stone from an old Lisbon sidewalk; pieces of painted wall tile from a junk heap beside an 18th-century Porto home undergoing renovation; black rocks with white circles in their middles -- eyeball rocks, I call them -- found on the French shore of Lake Geneva; charms that once hung from strands of Mardi Gras beads thrown from floats navigating the streets of New Orleans; shells and coral from the Red Sea; shells and salty stones from the Dead Sea; fragments of pottery and pavement from Petra and ancient Argos; cooled lava from an ancient eruption of Chile's Mount Osorno; and green, white, blue, amber and yellow seaglass from oceans and lakes around the globe.

I'm thinking my mosaic will be a map of the world.

www.LoriHein.com

The pineapple at the end of the bed

Houseguests: it's nice when they come. And it's nice when they leave. A weeklong visit is OK. Longer? Well, let's just say that stays exceeding seven days might call for a pineapple.

In colonial America, the pineapple was a symbol of welcome and hospitality. Since pineapples came at great expense by ship from the Caribbean, if a hostess served pineapple to her guests they felt honored, knowing she'd spared no expense on their visit.

But, as I learned on a tour of Louisiana's Oak Alley Plantation, the pineapple was also used to kick guests out.

If you were a houseguest who awoke one morning to find a pineapple sitting at the foot of your bed, it meant you'd overstayed your welcome.

Such a versatile fruit.

LoriHein.com

Acme Oyster House: Down the hatch

The other night the Travel Channel ran a show wherein the host ate his way through New Orleans. The puffy gentleman popped into the kitchens of about a dozen Big Easy establishments, sampling crawfish and po'boys and all manner of boiled, barbecued, gumboed, jambalayaed and deep fried culinary staples. As we watched, I said to Mike, "I bet he goes to the Acme Oyster House." Since the show was all about excess -- stuffing one's face at each sitting with food enough to feed a family for a day -- I bet that the biggest pig-out of all, the acme of this eating orgy, would take place at the Acme Oyster House.

Sure enough, after the final commercial break, our jowly host entered Acme, sat at a table covered with one of Acme's signature black and white-checked tablecloths, and geared up for his attempt to down 15 dozen oysters in under 60 minutes, which feat would land him a place on Acme's oyster eater wall of fame. (He did it, with 20 minutes to spare, and it was disgusting to watch.)

On our cross country trip the kids and I spent a marvelous four days in New Orleans, and one day we went to Acme for lunch. This excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America takes you there:


We called Mike from the Acme Oyster House in the Quarter to tell him what we were eating. Dana gave the report: “Hi Daddy, it’s us. We’re in New Orleans. Mommy is eating gumbo poopa, Adam has a po’boy, and I’m eating hush puppies.”

The stall door in Acme’s ladies’ room advertised a product I’d never heard of – one that must sell well here. A poster touted Alka-Seltzer’s MORNING RELIEF: “Fast Hangover Relief. TONIGHT You’re Feeling Goooood. TOMORROW Feel Better Than You Should.” Necessary equipment in the Quarter, where even quiet, polyestered couples walk around with cups of beer and tropically flavored alcohol in long neon-pink glasses, filled and refilled at “To-Go” bars.

Hollywood was shucking oysters as we read Acme’s Wall of Fame.

“Those the champion oyster eaters?” I asked.

“Those’re the fools.”

Hollywood told me that the name of the new Leader of the House hadn’t been put up yet. “Jes’ las’ week a guy et 41 dozen. He’s goin’ on the Wall. An’ you know what he et after that? Sof’ shell crab. Raw.”

The new champ’s name would join the likes of Bill Poole from Berkley Heights, NJ, who downed 32 dozen while watching Super Bowl XXIV in 1990, and Edna-Sara Lodin who carried back to Stockholm well-earned tales of ingesting 16 dozen Louisiana oysters on May 29, 2000. Way to go, Edna.


(To order a copy of Ribbons, see the right sidebar.)



www.LoriHein.com

A Cajun 4th of July

It was the first 4th of July after September 11, and the kids and I spent it with some fine people in Louisiana. An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America:

On the 4th of July, we found ourselves at Avery Island, home of McIlhenny’s Tabasco Sauce factory. Being a holiday, the factory was closed, and the workers had a day off to crab. We hung at the dock outside McIlhenny’s with two-year old Trey, his mom Tracy, dad Doug, his grandma, and his “nanonk,” Uncle Travis. (I wondered if nanonk owned Nonk’s Car Repair back up Route 329 in Rynela, near the trailer of the lady that advertised “Professional Ironing.”)

Trey, in his little jeans and bright red rubber Wellingtons, held his hands on both sides of his head and, with eyes wide as plates, told me about what was “in there.” Turkey necks tied to strings and weighed down with washers were the bait of choice of all the crabbers on the dock, and a four-foot gator had decided to come and help himself. He’d just been shooed away and waited on the other side of the canal.

Trey had his own cooler filled with crabs. His parents had a second cooler, so full that when they opened it, crabs spilled out. Tracy and grandma sat on chairs under striped umbrellas and tried to keep Trey from climbing the dock’s fence. Nanonk said, “If’n you fall in, I ain’t goin’ in after ya. Gonna let the gator git ya.”

That night would be America’s first 4th of July night since September 11. All through Louisiana we’d seen evidence that people planned to celebrate with spirit. Fireworks stands were busy. But there’d be caution, too. I’d seen a Times-Picayune story titled “United We Plan” about security measures to protect celebrations large and small around the country. Americans would be out on Independence Day, but with their guard up.

We stood on the balcony of our Bossier City motel and watched fireworks from Shreveport, just across the Red River. Inside the room, James Taylor and Ray Charles entertained on TV from New York City, and two giant crickets tried, unsuccessfully, to elude me.

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A year after Katrina

A year has passed since I posted this story, and not much has changed in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Leadership, at all levels, is still lacking (it takes a year to hook up utilities for FEMA trailers?), but people create and cling to their own brands of hope:

A year ago I wrote:


Only today (would I have made it to today?) are bits of organized, effective, life-saving relief beginning to touch the tens of thousands who haven't had a piece of food or a sip of water in half a week.

Because I like harmony, I avoid, except when I simply can't, injecting opinions about politics and other divisive subjects into this blog. I'll get back to travel stories in my next post, but I simply can't, at this moment, avoid expressing my disgust at the ineptitude, inaction, finger-pointing and buck-passing at all levels of American government since the moment the levees were breached and New Orleans began to disappear.

Allow me this post to vent.

The epic failure to quickly and decisively deliver food, water and medicine to our fellow citizens in their time of crisis is a breach worse than a levee failure. It's a massive breach of faith. Like so many, I watched and listened, increasingly stunned, as people died, languished and pleaded, and no one took responsibility, no one took charge, no one took action.

If news crews, private relief organizations and country singers could get into and out of the city center, then why couldn't all the might of the United States get vehicles -- trucks, tanks, buses, vans, RVs, SUVs, jeeps, Hummers, airboats, rowboats, wheelbarrows, little red wagons -- laden with emergency rations that would keep people from dying into that same city center?

Something was made terribly, awfully clear in the past three days. We are, at all levels of government, unprepared to keep our people alive in the wake of a massive disaster on our soil.

When disaster strikes elsewhere, we look effective and heroic. But elsewhere, we're not in charge. We are not responsible for righting everything. We quickly send people, supplies and money, but our government doesn't have to run the show and make the decisions. Nor live with the consequences. We perform well in supporting roles.

The utter lack of leadership that forced American citizens to survive like animals in a hellhole while bureaucrats in suits talked and talked until I could stand their talking no more, scares me upright. I watched, on all the news channels, a reality show. The reality is that in the event of major disaster, we will, like our fellows in New Orleans, be on our own.

Perhaps we should let the Red Cross, magnificent and fast-moving in this as in all disasters, run homeland security. "Who's in charge? Where's the Rudy Giuliani for New Orleans?" cried one radio commentator.

I listened to a National Public Radio interview this afternoon with Kermit Ruffins, beloved New Orleans jazz trumpeter and vocalist and leader of the Barbecue Swingers. After each hometown performance, Ruffins would treat his audience to barbecue prepared on a pit rigged up in the back of his truck. "My truck's underwater now," he said. "I probably won't see it again." But, asked if he'd get a new truck and start singing and cooking again, he said he sure would, even if it took a year or two to get it all back together.

The jazz funeral is a New Orleans tradition. A ritual. A rite of ultimate passage. A blowout and grand farewell that turns death into a celebration of life. The interviewer, speaking of all the deaths and funerals New Orleans will have to bear in the near future, asked Ruffins whether jazz would be part of those, or whether it was inappropriate at this time because it's "too overwhelming." "It's too overwhelming," whispered Ruffins. "But," he continued, "once everybody gets back into New Orleans and settles down, there's gonna be a jazz funeral like you never seen."

If you've traveled in the South, you'll recognize in Ruffins's words and spirit and hopefulness the deep faith that's part of the fabric of life there, especially among the poor who need and use it as basic, everyday soul fuel and sustenance. This isn't in-your-face religion that's worn on the sleeve and shouted loudly from anything that might metaphorically be a mountaintop. This is the real thing -- quiet, abiding, tolerant, gentle and true. It's a beautiful thing to be around, and I saw and felt lots of it in New Orleans. People who have the least materially, are often the richest spiritually.

I saw it as the kids and I drove our van, New Paint, on the thin, levee-side roads that would carry us into the city. An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America:

New Paint meandered toward New Orleans on small roads dominated by oil and petrochemical plants and punctuated by sleepy towns, churches, cemeteries, antebellum plantations and sugar cane fields. Being Sunday, Pinnacle Polymers and Dupont Elastomers were quiet, but churches were open all day for business. We passed one in Ascension Parish about 3 p.m., and members of the congregation, dressed to the nines, were gathered in the parking lot, chatting and socializing. The same at Mt. Calvary Church, where the men wore pressed dress pants and crisp snow white long-sleeved shirts, buttoned up proper even in the stifling heat and humidity. The women’s dresses were jubilant statements in red and orange. The church sat near Pecan Street and looked directly onto the massive levee that hid and held back the Mississippi just beyond. You knew the river was there when a barge or tanker passed, showing only its top as it slid by.

I just watched the news and listened in awe as a young man, trapped for days in the horrific convention center and still with no way out of the city, sat on concrete steps in the sweltering sun and uttered a jubilant statement as he was handed one small bottle of water from the back of a just-arrived supply truck.

He tilted his head back toward the sun. "We'll do alright. We takin' it one day at a time. Thank you, God!"


www.LoriHein.com

New Orleans: One jubilant statement

After my last post, I tried to write a regular travel story today but found I couldn't leave New Orleans just yet.

Only today (would I have made it to today?) are bits of organized, effective, life-saving relief beginning to touch the tens of thousands who haven't had a piece of food or a sip of water in half a week.

Because I like harmony, I avoid, except when I simply can't, injecting opinions about politics and other divisive subjects into this blog. I'll get back to travel stories in my next post, but I simply can't, at this moment, avoid expressing my disgust at the ineptitude, inaction, finger-pointing and buck-passing at all levels of American government since the moment the levees were breached and New Orleans began to disappear.

Allow me this post to vent.

The epic failure to quickly and decisively deliver food, water and medicine to our fellow citizens in their time of crisis is a breach worse than a levee failure. It's a massive breach of faith. Like so many, I watched and listened, increasingly stunned, as people died, languished and pleaded and no one took responsibility, no one took charge, no one took action.

If news crews, private relief organizations and country singers could get into and out of the city center, then why couldn't all the might of the United States get vehicles -- trucks, tanks, buses, vans, RVs, SUVs, jeeps, Hummers, airboats, rowboats, wheelbarrows, little red wagons -- laden with emergency rations that would keep people from dying into that same city center?

Something was made terribly, awfully clear in the past three days. We are, at all levels of government, unprepared to keep our people alive in the wake of a massive disaster on our soil.

When disaster strikes elsewhere, we look effective and heroic. But elsewhere, we're not in charge. We are not responsible for righting everything. We quickly send people, supplies and money, but our government doesn't have to run the show and make the decisions. Nor live with the consequences. We perform well in supporting roles.

The utter lack of leadership that forced American citizens to survive like animals in a hellhole while bureaucrats in suits talked and talked until I could stand their talking no more, scares me upright. I watched, on all the news channels, a reality show. The reality is that in the event of major disaster, we will, like our fellows in New Orleans, be on our own.

Perhaps we should let the Red Cross, magnificent and fast-moving in this as in all disasters, run homeland security. "Who's in charge? Where's the Rudy Giuliani for New Orleans?" cried one radio commentator.

I listened to a National Public Radio interview this afternoon with Kermit Ruffins, beloved New Orleans jazz trumpeter and vocalist and leader of the Barbecue Swingers. After each hometown performance, Ruffins would treat his audience to barbecue prepared on a pit rigged up in the back of his truck. "My truck's underwater now," he said. "I probably won't see it again." But, asked if he'd get a new truck and start singing and cooking again, he said he sure would, even if it took a year or two to get it all back together.

The jazz funeral is a New Orleans tradition. A ritual. A rite of ultimate passage. A blowout and grand farewell that turns death into a celebration of life. The interviewer, speaking of all the deaths and funerals New Orleans will have to bear in the near future, asked Ruffins whether jazz would be part of those, or whether it was inappropriate at this time because it's "too overwhelming."

"It's too overwhelming," whispered Ruffins. "But," he continued, "once everybody gets back into New Orleans and settles down, there's gonna be a jazz funeral like you never seen."

If you've traveled in the South, you'll recognize in Ruffins's words and spirit and hopefulness the deep faith that's part of the fabric of life there, especially among the poor who need and use it as basic, everyday soul fuel and sustenance. This isn't in-your-face religion that's worn on the sleeve and shouted loudly from anything that might metaphorically be a mountaintop. This is the real thing -- quiet, abiding, tolerant, gentle and true. It's a beautiful thing to be around, and I saw and felt lots of it in New Orleans. People who have the least materially, are often the richest spiritually.

I saw it as the kids and I drove our van, New Paint, on the thin, levee-side roads that would carry us into the city. An excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America:


New Paint meandered toward New Orleans on small roads dominated by oil and petrochemical plants and punctuated by sleepy towns, churches, cemeteries, antebellum plantations and sugar cane fields. Being Sunday, Pinnacle Polymers and Dupont Elastomers were quiet, but churches were open all day for business. We passed one in Ascension Parish about 3 p.m., and members of the congregation, dressed to the nines, were gathered in the parking lot, chatting and socializing. The same at Mt. Calvary Church, where the men wore pressed dress pants and crisp snow white long-sleeved shirts, buttoned up proper even in the stifling heat and humidity. The women’s dresses were jubilant statements in red and orange. The church sat near Pecan Street and looked directly onto the massive levee that hid and held back the Mississippi just beyond. You knew the river was there when a barge or tanker passed, showing only its top as it slid by.


I just watched the news and listened in awe as a young man, trapped for days in the horrific convention center and still with no way out of the city, sat on concrete steps in the sweltering sun and uttered a jubilant statement as he was handed one small bottle of water from the back of a just-arrived supply truck.

He tilted his head back toward the sun. "We'll do alright. We takin' it one day at a time. Thank you, God!"



I will donate half of my book royalties to the American Red Cross for an indefinite period -- $2 per copy if purchased through me or Booklocker and $1 per copy if purchased through Amazon or other online merchants.

A city, gone

America has, effectively, lost one of its great cities.

The area of devastation from hurricane Katrina along and inland from the U.S. gulf coast is now estimated at 90,000 square miles, larger than Britain. Millions of lives and the face of a nation changed. The reports and pictures are unutterably sad, and conditions for tens of thousands of stranded poor are going from bad to unspeakable by the hour.

To find ways to help, check out these links provided by National Public Radio or America Online.

As I did after the Asian tsunami, I'll be donating half of the royalties from my book to relief efforts ($2 per copy if purchased from me or from Booklocker, and $1 per copy if bought through Amazon, Barnes & Noble or other online merchants). My donations will go to the American Red Cross, for an indefinite period.

It's beyond hard to grasp that New Orleans is, essentially, gone. A pulsing, teeming city with lore and history, traditions and stories, culture and color, gone. What will rise where it stood? Time, years of it, will tell.

Adam, Dana I became acquainted with the nooks and neighborhoods of this wild, watery city during our journey across America. We walked, drove, rode river boats and chugged along on the St. Charles Streetcar (above). This excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America wasn't written to be a remembrance of something lost, but now is. When I read it, what once made me smile now makes my heart ache.


A storm brewed as we entered the Big Easy on the concrete bridge that crosses Lake Pontchartrain. The black cloud that swallowed us, and the ugly swamp and decrepit railroad bridge running next to us made Adam whisper, “VOODOO!” Then, “I’m gonna try it.” He asked me if it works. I said I hoped not, and asked, “Who ya gonna do voodoo to? It better not be me.” The first thing he bought in New Orleans was a voodoo kit. The next day, when Dana’s $160 in trip money, saved up over nine months, went missing from our hotel room, Adam told us one of the sticks he’d played around with in his voodoo kit had read, “You will lose a lot of money.” We didn’t see much more of the voodoo kit.

New Orleans is a steamy ethnic gumbo, equal parts rough and refined. An hour after we discovered Dana’s money had been stolen, a store manager gave us free pralines because the cashier had charged us too much sales tax. Bawdy Mardi Gras beads hung from wizened branches of ancient trees, from elegant railings, from the handlebars of locked bicycles.

We called Mike from the Acme Oyster House in the Quarter to tell him what we were eating. Dana gave the report: “Hi Daddy, it’s us. We’re in New Orleans. Mommy is eating gumbo poopa, Adam has a po’boy, and I’m eating hush puppies.”

The stall door in Acme’s ladies’ room advertised a product I’d never heard of – one that must sell well here. A poster touted Alka-Seltzer’s MORNING RELIEF: “Fast Hangover Relief. TONIGHT You’re Feeling Goooood. TOMORROW Feel Better Than You Should.” Necessary equipment in the Quarter, where even quiet, polyestered couples walk around with cups of beer and tropically flavored alcohol in long neon-pink glasses, filled and refilled at “To-Go” bars.

Acme’s oyster shucker was at work behind the bar as we read the Wall of Fame.

“Those the champion oyster eaters?” I asked.

“Those’re the fools.”

The shucker told me that the name of the new Leader of the House hadn’t been put up yet. “Jes’ las’ week a guy et 41 dozen. He’s goin’ on the Wall. An’ you know what he et after that? Sof’ shell crab. Raw.”

The new champ’s name would join the likes of Bill Poole from Berkley Heights, NJ, who downed 32 dozen while watching Super Bowl XXIV in 1990, and Edna-Sara Lodin who carried back to Stockholm well-earned tales of ingesting 16 dozen Louisiana oysters on May 29, 2000. Way to go, Edna.

We fell in love with the Quarter and returned many times, leaving the late evening and nighttime hours for revelers. We enjoyed early morning and late afternoon walks down Chartres and Decatur, watching the play of sunlight on bougainvillea hanging from the doorways and gleaming iron balconies. Down Royal and Iberville to take in the sherbet-colored facades and long hunter green shutters that hid windows that met the pavement. Down Bourbon and into Jackson Square to see the characters and watch the palm and tarot readers and hear zydeco and Cajun music spill onto the sidewalk from air-conditioned souvenir shops. I pointed out the “horse carriages” lined up to take tourists around and was duly educated on the differences between horses and mules. Dana was amused I could mistake one for the other. Even after the thorough equine identification lesson, it remained tricky nuance to me. I was glad there wasn’t a test.

For a genteel view of the city, we rode the Garden District’s St. Charles streetcar to the end and back. We got a slow, rolling narration of the sights - wedding cake mansions, beautifully painted shotgun houses, shady Audubon Park, the venerable side-by-side campuses of Tulane and Loyola - from a funky little lady who’d ridden the trolley down to Harrah’s on the river, where she’d played the nickel slots. She’d spent 15 cents and won 10 dollars. “I’m rich!” she laughed.

Leaving New Orleans, we drove the eerie gauntlet of Metairie Cemetery’s above- ground tombs, which line both sides of the highway. An endless sea of bright white, cross-topped houses for the dead.

A Cajun Fourth of July

We're heading up to our place in New Hampshire for a long 4th of July weekend. We'll celebrate the holiday in the idyllic village of Hancock, incorporated in 1789. The main street is lined with centuries-old brick and clapboard homes and the Hancock Inn, New Hampshire's oldest inn, which serves a mean Shaker cranberry pot roast. For the 4th, the town puts on an ice cream social in the old church and lights up the sky over Norway Pond with a great fireworks display.

I won't be blogging from the New Hampshire woods, so I thought I'd share a short Independence Day-related excerpt from Ribbons of Highway. On America's first 4th of July after September 11, the kids and I had wound our way down deep into Louisiana's Cajun country:


On the 4th of July, we found ourselves at Avery Island, home of McIlhenny’s Tabasco Sauce factory. Being a holiday, the factory was closed, and the workers had a day off to crab. We hung at the dock outside McIlhenny’s with 2-year old Trey, his mom Tracy, dad Doug, his grandma, and his “nanonk,” Uncle Travis. (I wondered if nanonk owned Nonk’s Car Repair back up Route 329 in Rynela, near the trailer of the lady that advertised “Professional Ironing.”)

Trey, in his little jeans and bright red rubber Wellingtons, held his hands on both sides of his head and, with eyes wide as plates, told me about what was “in there.” Turkey necks tied to strings and weighed down with washers were the bait of choice of all the crabbers on the dock, and a four-foot gator had decided to come and help himself. He’d just been shooed away and waited on the other side of the canal.

Trey had his own cooler filled with crabs. His parents had a second cooler, so full that when they opened it, crabs spilled out. Tracy and grandma sat on chairs under striped umbrellas and tried to keep Trey from climbing the dock’s fence. Nanonk said, “If’n you fall in, I ain’t goin’ in after ya. Gonna let the gator git ya.”

That night would be America’s first 4th of July night since September 11. All through Louisiana we’d seen evidence that people planned to celebrate with spirit. Fireworks stands were busy. But there’d be caution, too. I’d seen a Times-Picayune story titled “United We Plan” about security measures to protect celebrations large and small around the country. Americans would be out on Independence Day, but with their guard up.

We stood on the balcony of our Bossier City motel and watched fireworks from Shreveport, just across the Red River. Inside the room, James Taylor and Ray Charles entertained on TV from New York City, and two giant crickets tried, unsuccessfully, to elude me.

Zydeco, gators and hamburger buns

No Atkins foolishness for this Louisiana gator. That's his tenth hamburger bun in half as many minutes.

BootsNAll Travel recently published an excerpt from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across America . Boots' editors introduced the excerpt with "Lori Hein knows she's in for an adventure when her alligator tour operator claims they don't keep track of the toursits they've lost in the murk." Click here to enjoy the excerpt. And keep your hands in the boat.



(Charlie, a blog reader who lives in Texas but hails from Cajun country, sent me this note about the excerpt: "I enjoyed your story so much I had to thank you. One correction: the man from California [that's John -- you'll meet him in the excerpt] was only partially right. Man, i.e. the Corps of Engineers, keeps the Mississippi River on its present course so New Orleans won't go dry. The town that would be flooded would be Morgan City, which sits right on the Atchafalaya, which would be the course the river would take if it weren't for the lock and levee system near Morganza, Louisiana. I was raised in New Roads, which is about ten miles from Morganza and am well-acquainted with the system. My brother just retired as an engineer with the Corps in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where most of the research takes place for not only the Mississippi River, but for all the river systems and estuaries in America." Thanks, Charlie, for all the great info!)


And, my race went well. Thanks for asking and for sending your good wishes. My knee felt perfect, the park was glorious, the weather was brilliant, and I turned in a 4:17, a time I'm very happy with. Let's wish the Boston Marathon runners a great day next Monday. I'm going to enjoy watching that one on TV, legs up, feet nestled in cozy slippers...