No Music, No Life

Daily writing prompt
What would your life be like without music?
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The answer to this question is simple. Without music there would be no me. My life would be 100% different and completely unrecognizable. Music more or less defines me. We can’t have one without the other.

When I was little I liked to listen to my parent’s record collection. My father had a copy of The Beatles Sgt Pepper that he won from a radio station. He wasn’t much of a fan, but I loved listening to that record. When I was about to start fifth grade I started taking saxophone lessons through school. Before the start of ninth grade I started taking trumpet lessons though school. Before the start of 10th grade I started taking guitar lessons through a music store in town. When I was in high school I started playing guitar in bands with friends and we started writing our own songs. We also played the occasional gig. When I first went to college I was a music major playing saxophone and studying audio recording. My main focus was playing guitar in bands and writing songs though. I was hooked. I still am. Completely.

Starting in elementary school, fifth grade or so, I started developing obsessions with multiple bands. Fandom in the extreme. Rush, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Cream, a few others. The older I got, the more bands I added to my obsessive fandom list and the more varied genres were represented. Rush was the king of all obsessions though, by far. They are still top of my list.

All of my closest friendships developed either directly through music, or partly through musical fandoms. That includes my wife. We met online and one of the things we bonded over were our love of The Beatles and Rush. In fact, we went to see Rush together a whole ton of times at various locations throughout the US and on one occasion we actually left the country to see them. We had tickets to see them in Hamilton, Ontario. We made it to the city in time for the show but hit a snag once we got there and didn’t actually get to the show, but we tried.

These days, at age 52, my primary creative outlet is still making music. We’re trying hard to get the band back up to speed in a post covid world (ironically, as I have covid right now), but even without the band I still play the guitar as much as I can, and I still write and record music as much as I can.

So in summation, I would not exist without music. Apart from my family it is the primary love in my life. Apart from my family it is my primary interest. It’s vital to my existance.

So no music… no me.

9:26am on Day Four

A recap of some exciting stuff from the last hour or so…

  • 8:40 – I did something crazy. Something out of control. Something unheard of for sick people. Yikes, even! I took a shower! Woah! I can’t say I feel any better after standing in a borderline scalding hot shower for 10 minutes, but I sure don’t feel worse. Also, I feel a whole lot less greasy, so that’s a big positive.
  • 9:00 – There were two chores I wanted to try to do this morning but I got sidetracked briefly. I saw the bluetooth bathroom scale on the floor and figured why not step on it and see how things are looking. It’s a couple of weeks early, but why not, right? The results? Epic beyond words. I haven’t done the math yet to see what the total losses are up to, but my current weight is 200.8 pounds. I am less than one pound away from the mythical ONEDERLAND. The land where one’s weight is below 200 pounds and thus in the one hundreds land. Holy Crap! I actually reset the scale to zero and weighed myself a second time because I didn’t trust the results but it came out the same the second time. Amazing. I even took a screen shot of the app when the 200.8 popped up on my phone, so I could continue to enjoy the happy feeling it brings my dumb ass.
  • 9:05 – I didn’t have this very small chore in mind when I started this journey but when I saw it sitting there, I just had to do it. I made the bed. Jen hasn’t slept in a neat bed for three nights but tonight she will. Enjoy, my love. I wish I were sharing it with you. Kiss my ass, Covid. An added bonus, or slight annoyance, is that Lily the cat thinks that making the bed means playing with the blankets. She jumps on the bed and attacks anything that moves. It’s absolutely adorable, especially when I bury her under a blanket, but it does make the process more difficult than it needs to be.
  • 9:10 – This one is going to take all day and it will probably wipe me out long before I finish it, but I started the laundry. I haven’t done any laundry since last Wednesday, the day we flew to Florida. It’s backing up pretty bad and needs to get done. I’ll try to do a couple of loads today, but going up and down the stairs repeatedly might be too much for my sick ass self. We’ll see.

Now that I’ve actually done some stuff today I can concentrate on the important things like vegetating on the couch and hoping the whole Covid-19 thing pisses off and leaves me alone. Here’s hoping for progress.

4:30am on Day Four

What is it about 4:00am that makes me wake up every day? This is three days in a row where I was awake either a little before, or right at 4:00am. I’m still exhausted, and I got at most five hours of sleep each night, but here we are awake and up and at ’em at 4:00am again. I don’t get it. I need to sleep, and yesterday I think I took three naps that were up to two hours each. Come on, body. Sleep!

For the second day in a row I woke up covered in sweat. Did the fever come back in the night and then break again? Maybe. Maybe I was just really hot under my one measly little blanket on the couch. Yeah, probably not. I don’t know. A fever breaking is a good thing, of course, but if in my fantasy of recovery I was hoping to wake up feeling a little better on the fourth day, I am a bit disappointed. I feel pretty much exactly the same as I did last night. Here’s hoping my symptoms start improving today and I’m well enough to work tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Wish me luck.

8:23pm on Day Three

How’s everyone doing tonight? Day three of my Covid-19 journey is almost over and I’ve been so focused on my own situation that I have been ignoring all of you, gentle readers. Everyone good? I hope so.

The good news is that while my wife and I are both still feeling awful, she thinks she might be able to manage going to work tomorrow. Working from home, of course, but still working. Here’s hoping she continues to improve and can pull it off. Fingers crossed.

As for me, I am definitely going to need another day. I slept a lot today. I’m still coughing a lot, and my nose is still completely stuffed up, and I am exhausted all the time. I feel like I slept for most of the day, but it was probably only 3-4 hours worth of napping. I am a little concerned that all the extra sleeping today will make it hard to sleep tonight, but we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. I have hit my gastric bypass food and water goals for the day, obliterated them actually, and I have taken all of the meds I am supposed to take too. I am set for the night. I do want to have something to eat before I sleep so that I don’t have to sleep on an empty stomach. That shouldn’t be a problem. I am good to call it a night whenever, but I will probably stay up for an hour or two at least.

Here’s hoping things start clearing up tomorrow. I could really use some happy health news, know what I mean?

Nurses

The cats have mostly steered clear of me since I started feeling sick. They did come and visit this morning for a few minutes. I think it probably had more to do with their water bowl being low than with trying to nurse me back to health. Oh well.

20/365
20/365

2:20pm on Day Three

I woke up around 4:00am, had some water and some meds and went back to sleep.

Woke up at 8:00am, had some water and some meds and some breakfast and went back to bed.

Woke up at 12:00pm, had some water and some meds, had a kids meal from Chilies via DoorDash for lunch, did the dishes, scooped the litter box, topped off the cats food and water bowls… and I am thinking about going back to sleep. I’m thinking of having a little more water first. I still have five minutes to wait before I am cleared to drink anything. After that I might take another nap. Or, I might just watch TV for a while and see how things go.

I am definitely feeling like crap today, but being exhausted is the biggest symptom right now. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep it off a little. We’ll see.

Holidays

Daily writing prompt
How do you celebrate holidays?
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Alert! Alert! Bad Question Alert!

Who said we celebrate holidays? Well, depending on the holiday, of course. How does one “celebrate” Veteran’s Day for instance?

Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, we do all the standard stuff. I guess the only way to answer this broad, vague question is to say that I celebrate holidays with family. Jen at least, but the kids come home for the big ones. There are some holidays we more or less ignore. Easter, for example. We don’t celebrate Easter at all.

So this was a bad question. Too broad and too vague and just bad. It’s been a while since the daily prompt was as rough as this. Here’s hoping they follow it with a streak of good, fun prompts. Fingers crossed.