Month: July 2021

Dusty Hill

Dusty Hill, the bass player from ZZ Top died. I cannot say that I was ever a ZZ Top fan, but I can say that I have been thinking about them a bit lately.

ZZ Top to me was the awful cartoonish characters from the ’80s. The beards, the terrible videos, the over produced synthed up crappy songs. I had no interest at all. The small number of earlier song that I knew were okay. Tush (which Lizardfish was playing when I joined), and Cheap Sunglasses were good songs. There were a couple of others that I liked too. They were really just a blues band, which might be why I was so put off in the 80s, but I think maybe they were a little too Texas and not enough Chicago for me. I never really thought of it that way before, but that might be exactly it.

Over the last few months I have been wondering to myself if I should go and give their first few records a try. The main reason being my recent obsession with cool guitar gear. That’s kind of embarrassing to say out loud, but there it is. ZZ Top’s guitar player, Billy Gibbons, is a Les Paul guy. He’s known for playing a 1959 Standard that he named Pearly Gates (apparently after the car he was driving when he went to pick it up? Is that true?). Seymour Duncan sells a set of pick ups called Pearly Gates that are supposed to be cloned from the PAFs in Gibbons’ Les Paul. Hearing other people talk about his guitar and the gear based on his guitar, and knowing that they weren’t absurd comic characters in the 70’s, and also knowing that the band existed for over 50 years without ever having a line up change (which is pretty amazing), has been making me think that their first 2-3 records might be worth a listen.

And then yesterday it was announced that Dusty Hill died. I gave Cheap Sunglasses a spin in the car on the way to work today in his memory. There was a quote from Billy Gibbons saying that Hill wanted the band to continue without him and they will honor that request. So I guess they will finally have that line up change after all. Maybe I’ll give Tres Hombres a spin today too. Maybe it’s worth it for this Chicago (albeit via London) blues fan to dip his toe into some Texas for a bit.

Rest in Peace, Dusty Hill. Someday when my band gets back together I’ll see if they want to play Cheap Sunglasses.

It’s not Sundowning When the Sun is Still Up

Yikes, that was a weird one.

It was just after 4:30 in the afternoon. My mother asked me what time work ended. I am working from her dining room table right now so I assumed she meant me. I told her 5:30. She said she thinks she’s done at 4:30. Okay, maybe her last job let out at 4:30. She said the best part about getting old was not having to go to work anymore. I figured that was the end of the topic.

That’s when it went off the rails. She said that the house we are in right now, the same house that has been her home for 50 years, was just where she worked and that she had to go home. I told her she was already home. She said she had to go to her mother and father’s house. Ummm… She hasn’t lived there since 1967, as far as I know. I told her that her parents were gone. She then changed gears a bit. Yes, her parents are both dead, but her sisters are still at their house. I told her that her brother and sisters all had their own house. She said no, she had to go there to see them. She said she really needed to see them. There was a break in her voice that sounded like it might have been the start of tears, or a little desperation, or maybe just frustration.

Damn. I know she talked on the phone to her younger sister the last time I was here. Her older sister, my godmother, is in Alabama and I’m not sure what kind of mental state she’s in. Her brother is still around, with a slew of health problems of his own, and he has always sort of kept to himself. Not in a bad way, we just never heard from him as much as from my aunts. Needless to say, none of them are living in their parents’ old house, and none of them are expecting a visit today.

I tried to bring her around to something she talks about regularly and eventually I did and it seemed to ground her again, though I am not sure she actually realized it. One of her go to subjects is her parents’ deaths, and another is where her kids’ names came from. I said her father died when I was a baby. She came back with he died in 1972. Yup. I asked if her mother died in 1998 and she said yes. She asked if I was working here then. No, I was living here and I had just gone back to college. I was 27 and I had a Sociology final exam on the day she died (I think… it might have been the day of her funeral). She said her brother was near her when she died. I said one of her brother’s daughters was actually with her.

She looked a little surprised and asked how I knew all of this. I told her because I was her son and her brother’s kids are my cousins. Really? Yes, really. Back to this again, I thought. Who is your father? Your husband, I am named after him. Really? That brought us back to the other go to subject. I told her that when she was a kid she decided her first born son would be named after his father, and her second son would be named after her father. That’s exactly how it worked out. I was first and am named after my father, and my brother was second and he’s named after our grandfather. That lead to a discussion of where my sister’s name came from and how it was Dad’s suggestion. After that she seemed to be back to normal.

So to sum up… Yikes!

Not Like the Old Days

My mother has The Price is Right on the TV in her room. She’s not watching it, she’s reading the paper. I’m working down the hall from her and I can hear everything.

They just had the contestants bid on a pair of trips. One was to Utah and the other to Rhode Island.

Utah and Rhode Island……

I know it’s just a bidding round and not a showcase showdown (I cannot believe that I still remember that name) but come on… Utah and Rhode Island?

This is not the The Price is Right that I remember.

Wednesday Morning

Happy Wednesday everyone. I’m not sure why, but I woke up pretty convinced it was Friday. I even checked YouTube to see if there was a new episode of That Pedal Show. That is not what I would call a positive omen for the remainder of the week.

I posted already that mom was asleep before 9:00pm last night and that one of the mouse traps was tripped without catching anything. I was asleep by 11:30 and hoping that I might be able to snag a six hour night. Not quite.

I woke up about 1:45am. I’m not sure what it was that woke me up, but my mother was awake too. She got up to turn off the light in the kitchen (the same one that she leaves on most nights) and when she saw that I was awake she asked for a pain pill. I was pretty nervous that the boom was about to be lowered right onto us but she did go back to bed right away. She didn’t go to sleep. She sat up in the dark for a while, then turned on the light, then after a short time turned it off again. I sat up waiting for some sign that she was asleep. It didn’t really come. I was still up at 2:45 and made the judgement call that things had been quiet for long enough that I could sleep.

I woke up once more, about an hour and a half later, but fell right back to sleep. The alarm woke me up at 6:00. I’ve been taking overnight nana sitting shifts since… April? I think? That was the first time I have needed the alarm. Every other time I’ve woken up at some grotesquely early hour and just stayed up. While it’s true that the alarm on my iPad scared the ever loving shit out of me when it went off, it was nice to have needed it. I still only ended up with about 5.5 hours of sleep. I was really hoping to hit six. Six hours is a bit of a magic number. 6.5 is noticeably better, and 7+ is the goal, but six is nice.

Anyway. It’s almost time for work. The doors have been switched from alarm to chime, the 8:00am pills have been taken (though she’s complaining about pain already… come on morning pain med, kick in!), the mousetrap has been reset (though I think the trigger was bent a little when it snapped closed last night and it seems to be hanging on by a thread right now. Is that good? Does that mean it will take less pressure from Mickey to close again? Or is it bad because Mickey won’t be in a good position when it goes off and he’ll get away again?), and the universe has been updated with the goings on at Chez Parental.

Time for work. Have a good one, everyone. I’ll check in later. I’m sure you can’t wait.

Bedtime

My mother was asleep by 9:00 tonight. Thank goodness. There was no pain outbreak. Now we just have to hope she sleeps through the night.

One of the mouse traps was tripped about an hour ago. Nothing in it. There is still at least one Mickey among us. Great. I paid for a single but I guess I have a roommate.

I’m going to sleep. Fingers crossed I can get 6-7 hours of good sleep. Yippee.

Patiently Waiting

Here I sit, patiently waiting…

Patiently waiting for the severe thunderstorm to wipe us off the map.

Patiently waiting for my mother’s pain issues to come out and play for the night. She has already shown the initial signs.

Patiently waiting for Covid to go away so that we can go on vacation. Jen and I had a precious few minutes together after work and before I had to leave and we spent it watching a Disney World youtube channel. I wanna travel again.

Patiently waiting to go home, but I’ve got about 22 hours or so before that happens.

Okay, it’s time for the 8:00 o’clock pills. I’ll check in again later. Happy trails.

Don’t Wanna

I don’t want to go to my parents house tonight. I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go I don’t wanna go.

*sigh*

My brother was there last night and he had a rough time. Not for the usual reasons though. There was a power line down just a little way down the road from the house. I heard it actually caused a fire. Power was out for hours. That means no air conditioner. No fan. No wifi. Hell, in other words. Mom’s pain went bad right after the power outage started too, just to make things worse.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease don’t let things go that bad for me tonight.

I got six hours of sleep last night, which is okay, but there was a full hour of being awake stuck into the middle of it all. That means I’m tired today. I’m feeling all the stress. Even the stress that I normally manage to keep at bay. It’s all hitting me right now and I haven’t even left the house yet. Shit.

I don’t have any 50/90 music ready to be worked on tonight. I can’t play guitar there, and everything that has guitar and needs vocals already has the vocal parts written. If I’m to get any work done it’s going to have to be new bass lines. Oh well.

I’m tired and I’m stressed and I just want to go to bed for 18 hours or so.

Smoke Alarm

I went to sleep at 11:00. At 1:00 the smoke alarm in the hall outside of our room went off. It blared about three times and then it stopped. I spent 10 minutes wandering the house trying to see if there was anything going on and then it went off again. 3-4 beeps and then it stopped. I took it down, blew some air into it to try and dislodge any dust or whatever, and sat up until 2:00 to see if it would go off again. It didn’t. It’s 8:24 and it still hasn’t.

What’s up, smoke alarm? You just messing with us?

Litter box changed
Trash taken out to the street
Lake Asshole in the cellar vacuumed up
The dehumidifier in the cellar emptied
The wet vac that cleared up Lake Asshole emptied
The first of probably two loads of laundry started

30 minutes until I punch in to work. It’s a nana sitting night so I need to get all my shit together before the work day ends. I’m still super sweaty from the Lake Asshole experience. I should have taken a vacation day today. Then again, I kinda wish I could take a vacation day everyday but what can you do, right?