Nothing Since Last Wednesday? Really?

I can't believe it has been nearly a week since my last post. I meant to make several by now, but, well, you know how things go sometimes. All, or mostly all of my excuses are reasons, and most of them are good.

Besides all of the writing I've been doing on Book Three (or for Book Three, I should say, as it's mostly research, notes, and character interviews), I got a new web job that's pretty exciting, and a lot of fun. And I've started getting ready for Lynette's reception a week from Saturday, following her book signing. The only bad thing is that I'm having a little trouble getting my body adapted to the new meds I'm on, but that's a learning experience anyway.

Ville and I took Dr. Kielbasa to the airport in Tulsa this morning, and that's always fun because when the three of us are together, we create our own little sitcom. I've gotten to where I actually like taking him to the airport. Fun little road trips with friends. What could be better? Even when you feel like crap on a cracker. I figure I'd rather feel crappy with my friends than all by myself, so I never back out at the last minute (even when everything in my being screams, "Tell them you just can't do it this time!".

I admit this is short, but I have some things to do. Until next time!

What's Your Blues Name?

Mine is "Blind Boy Bailey".

Two More of My Weird-Assed Dreams

Dream #1-Friday: I was in New York City, dressed in black velvet and a big, droopy hat. I was sitting in a little cafe in the Village, listening to some cat at my table going on about how he touches fire -- I think he was Jack Kerouac. I took a sip of wine and looked out the window at the city and thought, "I could live here." Kerouac continued talking, his words becoming a pleasant drone that lulled me into a state of deep contentment. A guy at the table with us dealt some cards and asked me to breathe on them. I did, and I woke up.

This one turned out to be prophetic. The "touching fire" was the pain I've been in. The cards represented the "hand I've been dealt" concerning that pain. The breathing on them was my ability to breathe after receiving pain meds later that day.

Dream #2-Today: I was at Frank Sinatra's house and he was getting ready for a party. I and some other people were in a smaller room, like a den, and I was showing off, singing The Lady is a Tramp, really vamping it up, dancing a humorous bump-and-grind, and everyone was laughing. When it was over I fell back on the floor, laughing so hard, covering my eyes with my hands. Suddenly everyone stopped laughing and I looked up to see Milton Berle smiling down at me.

"Oops," I said, and he held his hand out to help me up off of the floor.
"Not bad," he said. "Did you ever think about getting on television?"
I rubbed my butt and replied, "Yeah, but it burned my ass."
He burst out laughing and I woke up.

The dancing represents my new pain-free condition due to the meds. The laughter is my happiness about that. Easy-peasy.

Get Back

Fifteen years ago, in California, I went to my doctor about some low back pain that had begun to bother me. It wasn't extreme pain, but enough that I thought it warranted a visit. He took some x-rays. When he brought them into the examination room to discuss (imagine that! No radiologist, no separate visit, no waiting for results!), he said, "I have news that I hate having to tell anyone who's so young." (I was in my 40s back then.) He showed me where two discs had begun to deteriorate, and a large, hook-like bone spur on one vertebra. "This is Degenerative Disc Disease," he explained, "and I'm afraid it's not going to get any better. In fact, you could be in a wheelchair by the time you're 60 if it's not taken care of."

Of course I didn't like hearing this, so I asked him what I could do to slow it down. He showed me some gentle stretching exercises and gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory. Within a week I began to feel better and that progressed for about three months when it stopped working altogether. Around that same time, I moved back to Denver and lost my health insurance, but I was able to manage the pain a bit with over-the-counter meds.

Within a year, however, in 2001, it came back with a vengeance, sometimes landing me in bed for a week. It was excruciating; I couldn't stand for very long, or sit at the dinner table for more than thirty minutes. I couldn't sit on a bar stool! I'd moved here to Stillwater by then, so I went to my new doctor as a self-pay patient. She confirmed my previous doctor's diagnosis and told me to use hot and cold packs. That's it. Nothing else. Not having medical insurance and no money for "luxuries" like doctor visits, I dealt with the pain with OTCs, and all kinds of smelly lotions and oils that Nettl massaged into my back. Not to mention my ongoing struggle with Hashimoto's Disease and fibromyalgia.

Years passed and the pain slowly got worse. Over the past year it became intolerable and I've spent most of my daily life sitting on my bed, looking out the bay windows at a world I used to be a part of. I became a semi-invalid. Finally, I went to my doctor a few months ago and she said that unless I got x-rays, she couldn't really treat me. Fair enough, but I couldn't afford x-rays. She gave me a prescription for some pain relievers, but only enough to get me through the first half of every month; the second half was misery. I dealt with it though, as I had been, until Nettl could no longer take seeing me in so much pain. She vented about it in Fb one day and one of the authors we do work for (and who also has the same back issues that I have) sent us a check to cover the cost of x-rays. I had them done on Thursday.

Yesterday I got a phone call from my doctor's nurse, who told me that I have Degenerative Spine Disease and that I need surgery. "HA! Right!" thought I. "Where do you think I live? In Mexico?" (In Mexico, the yearly, all-inclusive premium for excellent health care is a whopping $250!) She then told me that they'd called some prescriptions in to my pharmacy and we went to pick them up. Pain relievers AND anti-inflammatories. Real relief at last!

I have now started the process of applying for Disability and early Medicare, which a friend of ours who is a professional Social Security advocate says I can get right away. She is so certain of this that she has taken on my case gratis.

So sometime soon I'll be having back surgery, and I welcome it! Fifteen years is too long for anyone to have to live with chronic pain. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Needless to say, we're dancing for joy around here. Well, I'm not dancing, but you know what I mean. Still, the meds I'm on have already started to work and I feel human again. Get Back to where you once belonged, indeed!

Art by Sam Carter

Peace, At Last

I never paid any attention to Etta James until one summer night in Kansas many years ago during a long trip I made in my VW van. I met a guy who collected records--LPs--vinyl, mostly the blues. I loved this song so much, I asked him to copy it onto a cassette for me. It was nearly all I listened to all the way back home to California.

Thank you, Ms. James, for all you gave us.

Just Wow!

Here's a video of our own Bob S-K's group, Avante. They're fabulous! Bob is the author of three books, numerous articles, and a blog called Neither Clever Nor Witty. Worth mentioning is the fact that the photos used in the video are the only ones I've ever seen in which Bob isn't mugging for the camera. Until today, I'd never seen what he actually looks like--and we've been blog buddies for ten years!

No Way...

Every now and again I just have to post stuff like this because it's just so freakin' unbelievable.

I know. Sometimes I'm only about 14 years old. But one of the best things about getting older is that people expect it of me!

The Essence of Yo

Once upon a time, back in the '80s, I amassed a collection of yoyos. I remember how it started, too. I was working as Masetro Salazar's assistant with the Ventura County Symphony at the time and one night at a Nutcracker rehearsal, the guy who played the bass clarinet pulled one out and began using it. It was like a meditation. Beautiful, fluid, calming. He didn't do a lot of tricks, or show off, he just... yo'ed. I enjoyed watching him so much, he gave me that yoyo. We were, all of us, sitting in the orchestra pit and things can get kind of chummy down there.

I was composing a lot of classical music in those days and I found that yoyo to be quite helpful when I got stuck on a passage and needed to unleash my subconscious a bit. I'd get up from the piano, pull out the yoyo, and walk around my music room while sending the gliding object into the relentless force of gravity. It was indeed meditative.

That BC Rainbow up there was the model the clarinetist gave me and, although through the next decade I collected many different styles, it remained my favorite, probably because it was made of inlaid wood rather than plastic. It felt good in the hand. Solid, smooth, natural, warm. You could feel the little stripes of color.

Later, maybe two years, I saw the Smothers Brothers in concert and Tommy did a segment by himself as The Yoyo Man. He talked about the Essence of Yo and I learned that a lot of people use these toys for meditation. And Tommy Smothers made it fun, too.

Later, in 1997, I moved into my 1914 penthouse in Ventura and met a guy who lived in the building across the alley. We became quite good neighbors. I comforted him when someone poisoned his cat and he helped me open a bottle of wine. He climbed into my utility room window when I'd locked my keys in the house and I introduced him to the girl downstairs. He was much younger than I, and a surfer. Very spiritual, very sweet, and he could yoyo like a devil. I found out only much later that he was Tommy Smothers, Jr. He never said anything about it, except when he was opening the wine bottle for me. When I thanked him he said, "It's cool. I've opened a few bottles, my family is into wine." Indeed.

Of course, my collection of yoyos got lost in The Big Dump of 2001. I haven't thought about them much--I lost things of much greater sentimental value, after all: family pictures, all of my musical instruments, every single musical score I ever composed, thousands of LPs, family heirlooms, my dad's ashes... Yoyos just didn't count. But now I'm thinking that I'd like to start a new collection, and I will begin with a BC Rainbow. It may take a little while because money's tight and there are more important things, like food, but this is where I'll begin. I'm sure I can locate one online somewhere.

I could use a little Essence of Yo in my life!

Streamline and Drag

Many years ago (24, to be precise) Maestro Frank Salazar taught me a lesson. Well, the six years that he mentored me were stuffed with lessons, but I can only handle them one-at-a-time these days.

When I first met him in 1986, his house was kind of tired looking. The house itself was fabulous, perched high on the Ventura riviera overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but the interior hadn't been decorated since the 1970s. Green and yellow shag carpeting, sagging open-weave drapes, some lackluster color on the walls, heavy art. It was shocking. I think I worked there him only a handful of times before it changed.

One afternoon I showed up as I always did when he called me to work, and I hardly recognized the rooms I walked into. The carpet had been pulled up to reveal beautiful hardwood floors, the drapes had been taken down to reveal a gorgeous wall of glass beyond which lay an outdoor, enclosed patio full of mature plants, flowering vines, and a slate walkway. The walls had been painted a soft white and "down" lights had been installed to spotlight lighter pieces of his extensive art collection. In the center of the room sat a tan, suede sofa and a heavy glass coffee table, two sleek leather chairs whose wood arms had been polished until they felt like peach skin, and beneath this lay a thick Persian rug. Here's a picture of his son Phil's bluegrass band jamming there. Doesn't do it much justice. Sorry. That's Phil, playing fiddle.

Anyway, when I commented on the changes, Frank said to me, "When you get my age, you want to streamline everything. Material and mental things begin to drag you down and you feel the compulsion to lighten up." Frank was then the age that I am now. Yeah, I know. It twists my brain, too.

Since the turn of the new year I've started having urges to streamline. Cut the fat. Chop the deadwood. Defrag the old hard drive. Whatever you want to call it. And I've already begun. Some things that were sentimental for me for decades have lost their hold on me. That antique "brothel" lamp, certain wall pictures and chotchkies, even my beloved monster speakers that have traveled with me since 1974. If we move to England--or wherever--I'll have no trouble letting go of a lot of stuff that only a few years ago were so very necessary to my happiness.

With me, it starts in the mind. I need to declutter there first, so I made a huge decision and decided to change Alla Breve Design to just Alla Breve Books. Last year I merged them, but this year one of them has to go, and web design, after all, isn't my first, or even second, love. I spent today revamping the website. This decision has been a huge relief, but the greatest satisfaction came when, on my computer, I zipped up all of my client website files and moved them to storage. Ahhh! My computer felt better for it too!

Last year I took on a number of blogs, both for myself and other people, and some of those are being cut as well. I just don't have the time or the motivation to keep diversifying my energies--I'm streamlining them.

Armchair Circumnavigator: Stranded at Sea!

When I'm especially tired following a couple of months of steady merry-making--like now--I like to play hidden object pc games. I've played a ton of them over the last couple of years. I don't like those whose theme is vampires, ghosts, werewolves, Jack the Ripper, or other murder-and-mayhem, fearmongering subjects, but I also don't like the cutesy fairy tale kind that are geared for pre-teen girls. The kind that I like have to have beautiful graphics, nice music (doesn't have to be mind-melting, I do like some soundtracks that are more intense, too), and a reasonable story line. Mostly, I just like to disappear into the game's world and imagine that I'm actually there. That's what has brought me to this post.

Yesterday, I finished playing Escape the Emerald Star. Not a stellar game, mind you, but I was too fatigued for one with difficult puzzles and hard-to-discern shapes and colors. The story is simple: I'm on a liner like RMS Queen Mary I, crossing the Atlantic Ocean. One morning I wake up to find that all of the passengers and crew have mysteriously vanished. I have to somehow escape. But as I played I began thinking. What if I don't want to escape? For one thing, I can't lower a lifeboat by myself, and even if I can somehow manage it, do I want to leave the ship only to float adrift with nothing but storms, sharks, exposure, thirst, and starvation to greet me? No way! I'm staying with the damn ship! That got my survival instincts into an uproar as I began to problem-solve the situation. In my head, of course. This is imagination after all. Here's what I came up with:

• First things first. Find the main deck and start calling out on the ship's P.A. system to find out if there's anyone else aboard. There isn't.
• Find the radio room and start sending out an SOS. Remember, this is a ship built in the 1920s, so there's no satellite communication and no auto-navigation system. This is where I added a hitch to the scenario: I can't contact anyone and no one is going to ever find me.

Okay, so here I am all alone on a ship that was designed and built to hold over 5000 people, including the crew. Here's what I do:

• Go to the restaurant galleys and move as much of the perishable food that I can to the freezers as quickly as possible.
• Start bottling water.
• Learn where the medical facilities are. I already know where the library is, silly.
• Clear out some of the potted plants on the pool deck and use the planters to grow root vegetables: carrots, onions, potatoes, etc. As I eat fruit and other vegetables, I'll use some of those seeds and preserve the rest for future crops.
• Reclaim grey water for the plants.

I think I can live a pretty secure life in this way. The real challenge is electricity and heat. The QMI's energy was created by diesel engines, so fuel isn't endless. Besides, little me just can't manage the engine room by myself. I think I'll read up on how to make my little area solar and wind powered. By now, I've moved into the Royal Suite, of course.

In the game there are a bunch of cats and a couple of dogs on board, so I have some company, and their food is most likely all in cans anyway, so their food situation is fine. There's always storms to consider, but living in Oklahoma for 11 years has taught me to be rather philosophical about surviving scary weather: if it's my time, it's my time.

So I'm putting it to you. Am I on track here, or am I doomed to die within months? Hey, at least I have access to all those musical instruments, books, movies, and bars! What would you do if this happened to you? No radio, no rescue ships, no nothing. The purpose of this isn't to plot an escape, but to discuss how long someone could survive. And, yes. I know that eventually the ship would run aground, but not in my scenario.

2011's Personal Best & Worst

Best Party: There've been so many this year! The best though? The wine party we threw for Micah and Allen.
Worst Party: Is there such a thing around here? No way!

Best Casual Get-Together: One night when Allen dropped by and we all sat around the kitchen talking and laughing.
Worst Casual Get-Together: There's no such thing.

Best Dinner: Boxing Day.
Worst Dinner: A horrible thing I made from odds and ends in the pantry when we couldn't afford to buy food. Ugh.

Best News: That Nettl was getting to go to Bordeaux to see Lauren.
Worst News: The death of my lifelong friend, Deni.

Best Reaction: Holding up to the news of Deni's death while alone (Nettl was in France).
Worst Reaction: Writing a Facebook status about being hungry and having no food. I deleted it rather quickly though when I realized how pathetic I sounded.

Best Creative Endeavor: Finishing Book Two of my trilogy. What a labor of love that was!
Worst Creative Endeavor: All of those scenes that had to be cut from Book Two.

Best Physical Feat: Getting through Christmas!
Worst Physical Feat: Raking a mountain of leaves and killing my back.

Best Laugh: The Jiz & Whiz. 'Nuff said. Ask Ville.
Worst Cry: Tired of my family being hungry. It was a cry of feeling futile and helpless.

Best Blog Entry: Things I've Learned From Being Broke. Insight. And it even got printed in the local paper as the Sunday editorial!
Worst Blog Entry: You See, I Just Don't Care. A whiny piece of tripe.

Best Picture: (Boxing Day)

Worst Picture: (Wine party -- I have no pride...)

Happy New Year, everyone!