Month: August 2021

Muddy

I’ve been listening to a lot of Elmore James lately. Tonight I switched it up and went with B.B. King but the playlist I found was skewed heavy on the cheesy pseudo-soul shit and I had to switch to something else.

I went with some Muddy Waters. For some reason I always neglect Muddy Waters.

After tonight, I need to promise myself I’ll listen to more Muddy. Tonight was like rediscovering something magical. I don’t think his chops are in the same league as B.B. or Elmore, but the attitude… the passion… the fire… the sheer nerve…

Holy shit his music is good.

Baby Step

Looking toward the future, my father just sat my mother down and had a talk about some next steps. The response was positive. Not perfect, but good. Let’s call it progress of the baby steps variety. Another, slightly more impressive, step will happen tomorrow while I’m at work.

Raise a glass to forward momentum. May a wave of good news wash us away to a newer, better, safer place because I really need this to end. I can handle a lot, and I don’t think I am quite to the snapping point yet, but it’s getting close. Way to close for comfort.

Oh, gentle readers, could you do your humble narrator a solid and cross those fingers and keep ’em crossed? We need all the help we can get.

Outside

Remember when newspapers were still a thing? I just went outside to get the newspaper. I had a paper route back when I was 11 or 12 years old (I think? Maybe a little older? I can’t remember, it was hundreds of years ago) and does going outside to get the Sunday paper bring me back?

No. No, it doesn’t.

The view from the porch:

I’m pretty sure there is Poison Ivy in there somewhere.

Blissfully Quiet Night

My father turned off the television a little after 10:00. He went to sleep pretty much right away. My mother turned off her television a little before 11:00 and seemed to be asleep a short time later. I had my CPAP machine setup and the lights were out around 11:30 but I didn’t get to sleep until just after midnight.

I woke up at 4:30 because my mother was up and walking around the kitchen. She was making breakfast. I got up to check on her and she was fine. She told me to go back to bed. I tried, but I couldn’t sleep. So four hours of sleep is it for me today.

It’s worth it if things keep up the way they did last night. Fingers crossed.

I’m not working today but I have set myself up at the dining room table as if I were. The home health worker is coming at 8:00, and I assume my mother is going to want to chaperone (I’m only kidding a little) so they will all be spending most of the day in the living room. There isn’t really enough room for four people in there these days, so I will bow out. I’ve got lots of music to work on, and lots of The Orville to watch. The Red Sox are on at 1:00. I’ll probably try to find a way to sneak myself into the room so I can watch the game with my father. Other than that, I hope I can be a fly on the wall today and just be here to help my mother with whatever.

After I closed my exercise ring last night I sort of made the conscious decision to go to bed without finishing the laundry so that I would have an excuse to go downstairs and sneak in some walking in place today. It’s 7:23am and 71 degrees outside. Inside I think it’s already around 80 and the humidity is at about 99.9%. I haven’t even started walking yet and I am already drenched in sweat. Hooray.

My mother is watching local cable right now. I think she might be asleep, but the TV is on. It is the Tewksbury Memorial High School Senior Awards presentation. I graduated from that school in 1989 and I don’t recognize any of the voices of the staff, but every time someone comes on to sing the praises of some TMHS athletics program I just want to vomit all over the house. They are still the arrogant pricks they were 30 years ago, and the team name is still the insulting racist bullshit too. Some things never change.

Okay, laundry and exercise, then pills and letting the health care pro inside. Talk to ya’ll later.

Song Number 17

Today’s 50/90 progress was impressive (to no one on Earth but me). Four vocals, one rhythm guitar, five lead guitars, and one mix…

Today was the listening party for the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month thing. I forgot to submit a song back in June, and I forgot again for July. Sorry. This song here was written and recorded entirely in August so that means I am still up to date on R.E.M. even though I haven’t submitted a couple of times. I have written and recorded at least one song each month since the challenge started in March.

As for 50/90, 17 songs down and 33 to go.

The Ravioli Incident

My mother made a bowl of ravioli for my father for dinner. He ate about half of it and then dropped the bowl. Ravioli everywhere. Some of it splashed onto his foot so we had to get him a change of socks. Mom grabbed him a pair while I cleaned up the mess. There was a moment there when I thought he was going to have a melt down. It was like all of the shit he’s been going through was about to overflow, but we talked him back from the edge.

Selfishly, the upside to the ravioli incident is that there is laundry that needs to be done tonight. He only has two pairs of grippy socks and one of them is covered with tomato sauce. That means I have to go back and forth to the laundry room in the cellar. The laundry room is really the only place in the house that I can do my walking in place “exercise” without feeling like I am going to collapse the entire house. That means there’s a good chance I am going to close all three AppleWatch Activity rings today. I’ve already got two of them closed. Nine more minutes of exercise and I finish them all.

I really want to go home. I really need this to end. I don’t want to have a nervous breakdown, even though for all I know it might be fun. I just don’t wanna.

Ninety

I spent a solid 90 minutes tracking guitars today and I feel a tiny bit better about the state of the world right now. Granted a tiny bit better than OH MY GOD WE’RE TOTALLY DOOMED AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE RIGHT AGAIN is… well… relative, dig?

I put rhythm guitars onto one song as a bit of a warm up and then went nuts doing leads. Five songs. The four that got vocals this morning and one more that was left over from last time I did leads.

My finger tips are killing me right now. I really need the band to get back together so I can get my fingers into regular shape again.

Four

I managed a little car music this morning. I put a load of laundry into the washing machine, jumped in the car, recorded vocals for four songs, and got back into the house one minute before the wash cycle ended. I kinda felt like a genius.

Obligatory drive home ugly clock picture:

The pipeline now contains five songs ready for lead guitar, five songs ready for rhythm guitar, and three that are just little noodles and still need everything. That’s all on top of the 16 songs that are already finished.