Category: Music

Swithering turns into action.

Yesterday I decided I’d had quite enough of lying around feeling sorry for myself, especially after I realized that my last week of angsty angstiness was hormonally triggered.  So I got up and reorganized the hell hole that is the plastic container cupboard, cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, ran two loads of laundry and tidied my room.

Paul called around noon and said he would come over to sing and play for a while and then take me to Jericho.  This was an extremely welcome idea – he turned up around 4.   Paul put some very tasty ornamentation and frills of the guitar variety overtop Home on Derange and Lifeline on John’s old six string Guild; then he made a face and said, “These strings are dead!”  Yes, I made the natural joke, in exceeding bad taste, that follows on to this.  We examined our cases for replacement strings (my mando sounded like shite) and had a socially mandated “Not only do we tune because we care, we occasionally change the strings, too!” session.  Zow.  My mando, never quiet, now sounds quite brassy.  I am about to inspect it for how well it stayed in tune.  Funny side note…. I tried tightening the strings without putting the bridge back.  Bwa ha ha.  Fortunately Paul didn’t laugh; just advised me to loosen a bit and then see if I could slide the bridge in, which didn’t take too much effort.  I may have to adjust it a trifle as I never seem to get the octave to line back up when I change the strings.  The colour difference between the old and the new strings made me laugh.  Paul said, Recycle them, and I said, nope, they aren’t recyclable.  The chart on the fridge settled the argument, and he said, quite reasonably, that if the metal recyclers take them it’s odd that the city doesn’t.  So they went in the trash, but we tried.

I was having such a good time singing and playing I wanted to drag my feet and not go to Jericho; Paul was firm.  “After 4 days in the hangar I want to be out doing something” – so we went.

AS ALWAYS I was glad we went; there were (just in the opening acts): miniature bagpipe.  Banjo. Steel drum; tight three part a capella harmony; penny whistle; lovely folksongs, newly minted and strictly trad.  Although, how you do Barbara Allen on the steel drum might be one of those things ya can’t picture until you see it.  (Answer, very well, thanks, it was very well done.)  For once I didn’t play myself – didn’t feel the need.

Crashed at Planet Bachelor; woke in the morning to the sounds of Keith puttering and the divine scent of coffee.  Got up – no Keith; from the back door being unlocked and the dearth of cream I assumed he’d gone off to fetch breakfasty stuff.  He came back and was just so irrepressibly cheerful and productive as he made himself a yummy brekky (I had cherry strudel and coffee with floods of cream for brekky, bad me – Keith had eggs).

He has an interview Thursday.  I have a good feeling about it.  He’s off to Ted’s optical joint to volunteer and keep his customer skills up while he looks for work.

Sometime in the next few minutes birthingway should show up and drop off the clipping bag for the lawn mower, and if she forgets again, I will just smile and expect her next week instead.  I don’t feel unplugged from time – that’s hard to do when I talked to Unca Dave on the phone this morning – but I don’t feel the whirling urgent torrent of it the way I did when the kids were smaller and there was always something emergent.

While I was at Jericho last night LTGW called.  Things aren’t great at the old stomping grounds, but he has his parachute packed.  It was great to hear his voice; I don’t miss work at all but I sure miss the smiling faces of the folks, as was brought serenely home to me at Brian’s birthday bash.

Today, I jump on the cycle and do a shop, and then a family feast on the q, the whole fam damily plus Mike, and a huge couple of salads, and something sweet and cold for dessert.  And I should likely get more beer.  Later, Katie will come over.  And then True Blood again, cause that just never gets old.

Oh, and I got a Lone Wolf and Cub movie out of the library – maybe we’ll watch it, Mike and Keith are ENORMOUS fans of the series.  Mike even gave Keith his Lone Wolf and Cub t-shirt, which he prizes.

So I’m feeling better, but singing and playing with people always does that for me.

Salt, sand and sunjuice (the day at Wreck)

Mike picked me up around 2:30 – wearing his kilt.  Ten minutes later we were at Suzanne’s; she was waiting downstairs after I called her to come on down, and you should have seen her mile wide grin as she saw Mike’s ride pull up.  They introduced themselves.  We had a gorgeous, rather warm ride in Mike’s Mustang convertible.  We spent about ten minutes gossiping about family members – neither of us being too pleased with the respective number two childer in our families, nuff said, and then dispensed with further whining for the rest of the day. Continue reading Salt, sand and sunjuice (the day at Wreck)

Progress

46 songs are finished.

95 – give or take – remain.  Of those, about ten have been started, but they presented difficulties so I let them slide.  No more for today, I’ve been revising and reprinting songs since 6:30 this morning and my brain is fried.

Anyway, I’m one third done the writing the songs down part.  Next is getting all of them recorded, however badly, in MP3 format.  Then, getting such of them are worthwhile, into youtube format.  Like I say, maybe it looks to you that I’m frolicking and playing on my time off, but this stuff is a) hard and b) boring.  Like, at least as boring as going to work.

Writing songs is easy.  Playing them is easy.  Writing them down is hard, not least because once they are written down they are ‘fixed’ and songs are organic and change all the time.  Here’s the list, with notes.

An evening of serious drinking (Written for Jerome’s bday_
Bela Lugosi is the king around here (Mentions Alan, whose mother lived next door to Bela Lugosi)
Bruise (I think this is one of the best breakup songs of all time)
buy me  a beer (an instant classic, also on youtube)
Catnip on my shoes (I wrote this the same day as Some Words Before We’re Through)
Chance met (wrote this walking around the oval at Cariboo with Peggy and Paul)
Didn’t he die? (written in honour of Dennis Rivett – a very lively jig)
Don’t put too much sugar in the bottles (Remembering the time pOp put too much sugar in the Root Beer)
Erica’s Song (a love song I wrote for somebody else.  Tellingly, the two lovers are no longer on speaking terms, but the song remains…)
evening news (I was told by Paul Schmidt this is a classic folk song)
Freedom (John’s second or third fave song of mine)
F]ck You Jack (I wrote this on the connector coming back into New West from the ferry)
Give me five – give me ten (wrote this during my year in the Cornerstone building)
Happily Married Song (Wrote this for Tom and Peggy but sung for many other couples since)
homeon the derange (The theme song for a western show)
housewife’s lament (My tune, post civil war lyrics)
I must admit it troubles me (I didn’t know I was writing this for Glenda, but I was.  I found out afterwards that she died while I was writing it)
Imagination (I left the lyrics off…. it’s just a tune now)
John’s Song (written May 9 2009)
Just call me Clem (written for an underappreciated character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Lady of Komarr (I am VERY fond of this filk tune – and it covers the story well, too)
Lifeline (wrote this for Paul during happier times)
Like a Drum (written in Toronto when we were living on the Lakeshore)
Miss Manners has her say (I love this song…. it’s so… rude.)
Mother’s Day (unabashedly feminist and anarchist)
Mr. Nippleoff (a little rhyme for when Keith was a nurseling)
My version of the golden rule (extremely brief, and rude)
one of these days (extremely brief, and has never gone out of style)
She (My one attempt at classic arena rock.  NOT to be played by me, to be played by guys with big electric guitars and even bigger hair)
Slimfast and methadone (on youtube.  I love how “and the story isn’t over yet” is so so true)
The cairn (Why angry women stay in crappy marriages)
The dream in fragments (an instrumental)
The Exchange I Make (A hymn to depression)
The Merman Lover (a traditional folk song, wait, let the ink dry)
The pirates to do list (debuted on LJ.  V Cute)
The Tapioca Song (we all cotched infectious tapioca)
The tickle song (a rhyme to allow kids to control how much adults tickle them so they don’t feel overwhelmed)
Wear a Condom or Beat it (a cute song pretending to be by the owner of a condom store)
weekend’s over (written for ScaryClown’s bday)
Welcome Sophia (otherwise known as ‘wisdom’)
Whatcha gonna do (an irresponsible song hymning multiple drug use)
When are we going back to the moon (20 July 2009 – my latest)
Willie P’s Lament (an instrumental on the mandolin I wrote after his death)
Words fail (This is the instrumental version, I haven’t done out the lyric version yet – AKA the Telecom song)
World’s bright edge (brief little tune)

The housewife’s lament

Those of you who have heard me sing more than a couple of times will have heard me sing this song – I wrote my own tune for it because I was so struck by the lyrics.

Well, I found the original tune!  It sounds like a cross between a dirge and a hymn and it sounds like this.

Thanks, I prefer mine.

I am in the process of proofing and reprinting all of my previously entered songs.  By noon today I should have a final count for how many are finished, how many are incomplete, and how many remain.  … excepting the ones I remember after I’ve done the count, because I’m still tripping over tunes.

video and audio

I found a tape of me and John singing, at a coffeehouse or something.  Don’t know how old it is.  He starts off singing Demon Java.  Jeff is going to transfer it into more easy media for me.

The house is a LOT more secure (good luck trying to kick the doors in) now that the locksmith has done his thing.

I forgot to mention that one of the really amazing things about the Cavalcade of Cheese on Tuesday was the soundtrack.  Patricia’s friends make AMAZING mix tapes.  I’m so old I still call them mix tapes.

Butter chicken, height-of-summer salad and rice pudding with strawberries and nectarines last night.  It was a darned good meal if I do say so.  Height-of-summer salad is purple onion, peppers of various colours, mango, and tomato, all chopped into even(ish) pieces in a raspberry dressing.  For the rice pudding, I cut up the fruit and briefly soaked it in rum, allspice and sugar, then turned it into the pudding and cooked it.  Jeff om-nom-nommed like a good thing.

Jeff predicted (but I note in my blog of April 29th that I don’t mention it was his idea) that NCIS LA would come to pass, and so it has. The new series debuts 22 September.

Here’s video of the Wednesday night fireworks.

Wreck yesterday

<snippets>

In the morning I loafed and lazed, squeezed in a grocery shop, and then reverted to dawdling and doodling; around 1 Mike came and fetched me in the convertible, and then we went down to New West to get Katie and Kashka.  (One half of the reality show girls).  Kashka is covered with ink from her ears to her ankles, including Betty Boop as a skeleton, which is freaky, because Betty Boop’s skull looks exactly how I would imagine Margot’s skull to look.

It was very pleasant on the beach.  There was a kicking breeze all day, and it was not from the usual angle, and pushed the incoming tide up the beach.

At first Mike tried to fly his approx 4 square meter kite but the breeze was so stiff he was getting dragged 10 and 15 meters down the beach, which I watched with the kind of chill consternation which is all you can muster when you’re feeling so mellow.  Then he tried smaller kites, which was much more successful, and provided us all with much in the way of aesthetics.

Liz, Kashka’s ex, joined us.  I’d met her when we were still living at the Augur Inn and really liked her; I still do.

As the tide came in (Mike always checks the tide tables and parked us WELL up the beach) the breeze shifted until it was straight onshore.  Surf’s up kids!  The girls were bobbing up and down in the waves several times – they’d come back out to warm up and then go back in.  I asked Katie if it was awkward to go the the beach with mom and she just laughed and said after ten years she was used to it.  And it’s been ten years since we started going as a family.

Odd, isn’t it?  I got in to waist height and let a couple of waves slam into me, because I wanted to say I had gone in and had some idea of the physical exhilaration of it all, but I’m 50, and the idea of trashing the bottoms of my feet and then having to climb all 407 stairs (counts vary!) had very little appeal, and at the end, the girls complained that their boobs had been thrown around so much they were all sore.  Mmmm… My kind of fun doesn’t have that kind of toll, but that’s just me being lazy again.  Also, Mike and Liz and Kashka and Katie all complained about how much salt water they swallowed.  Ick.

A man with t shirts and beaters went by; one showed a parody of a Starbucks logo with beers and WRECK BEACH instead of STARBUCKS, and the mermaid wearing sunglasses.  Kashka leaped up and said, “I want one!” so I obliged her.  I laughed, “All your mother’s many kindnesses to Katie are coming back for YOUR benefit, how annoyed Suzanne will be!”  But no probs, I’ll be seeing Suzanne later this week to catch up on the buzz.  Katie is living rent free at Kat and Kashka’s, so I am being politic.

I ate the best hotdog ever on the beach.  Those three jalapeños I added made for just the right amount of heat.

I wrote a song on Mike’s parlour Larrivée – no lyrics yet. Which reminds me I should pick up my guitar and make sure the tune is still there.   I believe so.

The GVRD but not the cops were on the beach.

All in all, it was a lovely, lovely day, and I got home around 7:45, very crisp around the edges. Tonight, off to see Patricia for the long promised Cavalcade of Cheese.

The bed, she is together

I remembered the ballad of Frank.  Frank was the plasterer at Amedeo Garden Court some 30 years ago, and he taught me a lesson without ever saying a word.

He worked so deliberately that he looked like he was surfing on molasses.  He never stopped.  He never, ever stopped, until a stopping point came.  He started ready to do the job and he kept at it, taking his mandated breaks, from 8 until 4.

So the ballad of Frank is, when you have a job of work in front of you, gather your materials, mentally prepare yourself, and don’t stop until it’s done.  Which I did.  I counted the pieces, counted the hardware, read the instructions, cast them aside except to consult them as to which kind of hardware I should use next, and took just under four hours to assemble it, stopping only to remove most of the crap out of my room for construction space, and to stay hydrated.  Please remember, I was assembling it alone and you know that awkward little bit at the beginning when you’re trying to get the fracking dowels to line up…. I let go of the footboard and it stood on its own.  So did the other end.  That really helped.

Margot came in and was an entire pain in the ass, chasing screws around, patting them through the holes, and then when I dropped a piece of hardware on the other side of the footboard I said, “Be a love and pass that over here,” which she obligingly did, and how I long to have taped that.

It is an Ikea style single/single bunk bed two shades darker than the floors.  One of the pieces of assembly hardware is so cool I fell in love with it.  And I had to assemble the drawers from 6 pieces plus much screwing, hell now, there were like twelve screws in those bloody drawers.  They ain’t comin’ apart again, by gar.

And I had to screw down the slats (I didn’t put in all the screws supplied, mostly because squirmy eight year olds will not be sleeping in it).  As I affirm to an uncaring universe, if a small child moved in with me I would definitely screw those slats down as much mischief is avoided if the bed is more solid.  And there was the ladder to assemble with count’em TWENTY dowels, plus screws, plus mounting bolts, and the extra screw for the baby rails on the top bunk on three sides, and the getting the two beds lined up on their little metal posts (that was actually the hardest and most awkward part).

So…. tired.   Must sleep now.

Oh, and I finished Imagination and Don’t Put Too Much Sugar In the Bottles.  The short ones go fast.

Finally! A job I can do!

Reddeer sends me the following link:  Get a Job in Wookey Hole!

I can cackle! Anybody knows I can cackle.

Yesterday I made up the downstairs bed, made banana bread, added a new verse to “Give me Five, Give me Ten”, made an appointment to get Miss Margot’s stitches out today (I chickened out of doing it myself), found a FREE LAWNMOWER (now that was a good day’s work) which now I have to borrow a car to collect.  I also filled up more bookshelves, bought some more of the Santa Cruz lemonade – Gosh I love that stuff, and so does everybody else who comes into this house and drinks it all; made Thai Basil Beef for supper, had an idea for a science fiction short story, had a FANTASTIC idea for the McGuffin in the zombie movie, thought very sadly about a friendship – if I can call it that – I have, which I am going to have to jettison (all in the “Allegra, stop hurting yourself on things that you know hurt you” vein), talked briefly to Mike, visited with Paul, managed to call my son without making stupid noises about how it’s his 23rd birthday today and how does he feel about that, discovered his potential job (he’s on tryout this week) is working out, so far as he can tell, practiced guitar for a while, played with the cats – all of them, they appeared to be in a good mood and much more kindly disposed to me these days, and shot, edited and uploaded a youtube video; and I slept in a different room than my laptop, and thus slept way better and longer.

Today I am going to FORCE myself to finish Grieg so I can work on Give me Five, Give me Ten, which seems to want to be worked on a bit more.  And take Margot to the vet.   She’s not gonna like it.

Lovely email

I sang Careless at the housefilk and Carly asked me for the tabs.  I may turn into a musician at this rate.  A lot of people love John’s songlist.

I can now sing, or sing and play When you’se a viper, Careless, That godforsaken Hellhole, Long Black Veil, 2&20 Blues, A Christmas Carol (Tom Lehrer), A Fierce Unrest (Don Marquis and Ananias Davisson),  Absolutely Bonkers (Brenda Sutton Three Weird Sisters), Acts of Creation (Cat Faber), Ain’t No Cure For Love (Leonard Cohen), Anna Marie, Cats in the Dawn (Heather Rose Jones), Clem’s Song (Just Call me Clem, Allegra Sloman), Columbus Stockade Blues (actually I got John singing that!),  Demon Java (Steve Key/David Goldfinger), Dirty Movie (Steve Sajich), Don’t Go Looking For Trouble (Steve Goodman), History is Made By Stupid People (The Arrogant Worms), Honky Tonkin’ (Hank Williams), I Can’t Get Over You… (Nate Bucklin), I Pop Pills (Nate Bucklin), I Will Not Sing Along (Actually it’s called the Anti-Singalong Song), I’ll Fly Away, I’ve Been All Around This World (and GOSH did I like Creede Lambard’s version at the housefilk), Jack Frost, Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon, Let’s Go Down to the Water (Willie P Bennett), Livejournal Shanty (Brooke Lunderville), Lost Highway (Hank Williams), Mind Your Own Business (Hank Williams), Nessie, Come Up (Dr Jane A Robinson, the singing paleontologist, who is now James as of 2004), Never Set the Cat On Fire (Frank “You Scum” Hayes), No High Ground (Leslie Fish), One Meatball, One Time Only (Tom Paxton) which I also think that I encouraged John to learn… and nautilus3 and Loki will remember it well, Paint me A picture (David Essig), Paradise (John Prine), Pornographic Pictures of Queen Victoria, Ramboing, Rastus Brown, Show Us The Length (Bob Bossin), Some Other Planet (Joe Hall), Tapioca Song (Allegra Sloman), That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home (Austin Lounge Lizards), The 20th Century Is Almost Over  (Steve Goodman), The Jig of the One-Celled Organisms – anon, but John and Paul taught it to me, We Didn’t Know – Tom Paxton, The Word of God (Catherine Faber), Horizontal – Original Sloth Band was who he learned it from (Ken Whitely) but no idea who wrote it.

And I keep updating the songlist, because man o man he knew a lot of tunes.

The Censorship jig (before I forget the words) edited again on June 4

As I walked the thoroughfare communing with me soul

I heard an ugly, grating voice that issued from a hole

I don’t care what I look like, so I bent down to see

It was an ugly, ugly troll who remonstrates with me.

“Your walk, your laugh, your mode of dress –

you’re going straight to hell!”  “Damn straight,” says I

“I’ll see the friends I loved in life so well”

Says I “That’s your opinion! and it has not been proved..

But I’d die for your right to say that crap

and I will not be moved.”

Chorus

So swift to say shut up, so swift to say no fair

So swift to claim the firmament with nothing but hot air

Be careful who you censor, be careful who you squelch

And slow to mar the human rights of anybody else!

 

The troll was most offended, and said I misconstrued

his words and his intent and that besides I was quite rude

I said he had a kingdom that ended at his nose

And my support of his free speech was not some moonbat pose.

I can’t expect imagination from a common troll

Nor yet appreciation – that would be something droll

But if you can’t agree with me, try something on for size

And make a proper argument and not just yell out ‘Lies!’

 

Chorus

 

The troll was even more put out, in fact he was quite pissed

and then remarked as homo sap I was quite prejudiced

When troll boy came out with this tosh I laughed most heartily

And said “I read SF and think – it’s all the same to me!

I’ve no right to deny you rights, so kindly think it out

With the gift of speech you also get the benefit of doubt

As long as we are talking, we may be hopeful still

So let’s go get something to drink, and put it on my bill.

Don’t be so fast to shut me up or tell me I’m not fair

I’m really not that bad a sort It’s not like I don’t care

Be careful who you censor, be careful who you squelch

Be slow to mar the human rights of anybody else

 

And now there is a coda

The flourish at the end

Harsh words will make you enemies

and very rarely friends

But when I speak of censorship

I know too well the cost

For if you have to censor me….

you have already lost.

Like I didn’t have enough planned

I told Tom and Peggy and Paul last night that I wanted to learn every song John used to sing.  They obliged by teaching me two; one was Careless by Nancy Freeman which turns out to be super easy and frikkin awesome, and the other is way harder, because Dave and Tracy’s Gentle Arms of Eden (which I also long to parody, may the Goddess strake me privily) is played at breakneck speed with chord changes to match.  My finger tips have almost completely calloused up again.  It’s like they learned how to get calloused when I was young (I took up guitar at 11) and now when I return to it they get busy.

My embroidered dragon has been located; John’s shirts and his superhero cape have gone back to Lady Miss Banjola, who startled the living mucus outta me by the sudden dramatic change in her appearance.  Yes, she has allowed her sister the hair stylist to apply yellow and orange to selected portions of what’s grown back of her hair, and she looks fabulous, and I mean it.  If I could change my hair like that and look that fabulous I would – well, I’d probably be south of 30, for starters.  I immediately wanted to run out and do the same thing, which is how I frequently feel when Lady Miss B does something… you know, the OOOO SHINY response.

Off to church now.  Keith was over at Jeff’s last night… Katie and Paul and I stayed at Planet Bachelor (singing in the evening and church in the morning = I didn’t want to go home). Katie is in good shape – we played cribbage yesterday, and because she learned to play from Doug and Elly, she whipped our butts.

Dax’ car got struck TWICE by other cars, in the last two days; one was a hit and run, t-boned at a red light.  I will now maintain a discrete silence.

Singing and playing for two hours completely re-set my brain.  And the sun is shining the way it did when I was young, before anything ever hurt me.

Quit my job yesterday

June 19th is my last day.  I’m walking down the road to Jericho Beach Tuesday night and thinking “This is nuts.  How much more pondering do I have to do to know I don’t want to be doing this anymore?”  I phoned Katie and told her, and she provided consoling words.  Then I turned the corner and there was the biggest rainbow I’ve ever seen.  I’d post the pics but rainbows need a good photographer and a hefty lens, neither of which I had.  Then I enjoyed the show at Jericho (Brighter Lights Thicker Glasses, and I can’t recommend them enough) with Peggy (after playing John’s Song and That Godforsaken Hellhole I Call Home), and then came home and told myself I’d sleep on it.  And I did, and I went to my brother and said, “I’m quitting my job today,” and he said “Great!” and then I went in and told NewBoss and then everybody in the building knew and I had a stream of miserable engineers and unhappy techs come by and ask if it was true.

Why?  Because John died.  I knew, after Brian C. quit, that something very fundamental was gone and not coming back.  I knew I was not giving it my best.  And time’s winged chariot is outside my front door honking.  I have an immense list of stuff I want to do and no energy or heart to do it as long as I’m working full time.

Daughter Katie came over last night so I could help her with her job hunt.  I fed her and Jeff chicken thighs in mixed herbs and bouillon, peas, asparagus and tater tots.  Mike came over.

While they were here, Miss Margot jumped up on the keyboards that I have negligently and sloppily left in the living room, and I turned them on, and then Jeff coaxed her into walking up and down the keyboard a couple of times. Katie and I knew, and Jeff and Mike did not, that the keyboard splits and is percussion sounds on the left and piano on the right.  So we were laughing – I laughed until I was gasping for air, and we were all crying and hooting in a most unseemly manner – because she walked to one end of the keyboard sounding like she was trying to compose the climactic piano music for an artistic horror film from the sixties – and then she parked her butt on two keys and just sat there, eyeing us with something resembling resentment and puzzlement, her butt making a chord the whole while, for at least a minute, possibly longer, while Jeff tried everything to get her to walk up the keys.  Then Mike did something that got her attention, and she walked toward the other end, writing a very beautiful and unusual song as she did so, and I ran to get the camera, and all I got was her walking on some percussion and dismounting with a “Bam-dum KISH!” exactly like she was finishing off a comedy sketch.  It’s not long enough to post and the light level is very low, and I’m SCREAMING with laughter and shaking the camera.  I wish I could have gotten the whole thing, it was just about the most amazing thing I’ve seen lately. And it happened in my living room.  Katie, wiping her eyes, said that was the hardest she’d laughed in a very long time.  Miss Margot is a really remarkable animal.  I mean, a cat who eats oatmeal?

You know, if I quit my job, I could train Margot, the clown cat.  I wonder if I can get a false nose fitted for her.  No, some ideas are better left unrealized. Hey, I DID quit my job! But taking a year to train a clown cat, THAT has income possibilities.  I should set the house up for camera operation in every room.  Oh, Jeff!?  Wifi webcam throughout the house?  I know Miss Margot won’t be little and cute forever.

I need a root canal. I hope I can make it through the weekend.  The poison from the abscess is affecting my jaw and tongue.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

You can read my Mother’s Day homily if you feel like it… it’s the most topical thing I have lying around the site. I remember reading portions of it aloud to John while I was working on it. I remember a lot.

The song for John is more or less finished.  In the song I pretend to be John, commenting on his own funeral.  Paul came by late last night and I woke up from my exhausted, tear stained sleep to feel him giving me a hug, so of course I just started crying again and recited the lyrics to him.  He was quiet for so long afterwards I thought he’d gone to sleep.  We talked for a bit and he took Keith home.

Yesterday was the worst.  The floodgates opened, and I’m crying again now as I type. I’ve got to get up and start doing something, anything.