June 22, 2009

9:44 a.m.

Waiting for a "Close" Call

In an unprecedented turn of events, Rose has had to go home from work early on a busy Monday because her entire left forearm is bright red, swollen and blistered from poison ivy. It's weeping now so it's not only scary to look at, but messy. She went on Prednisone for five days and, for the first time ever, it made no difference. This is the worst breakout I've ever seen, and my bandmate Carol's had some doozies. And Rose never misses work unless she's dead.

That doesn't even begin to touch on how painful it is. My heart is going out to her!

I might go over in a while and do some Reiki and sound-vibration therapy on her.

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So. Waiting to hear about closing. The lender had gone for the day on Friday by the time we'd faxed all the requested documents over to the attorney, so they have to look at everything today and decide whether we can go forward with closing. I'm a little on edge, thinking I should be ready to leap out the door at any moment, so I think I'll go get dressed and make like it's going to happen this afternoon. Weird feeling!

I did a lot yesterday, though; brought all the paint cans back to the basement, took stock of what's down there that I'll need to remove, took the kitchen table and my bed frame apart (not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be), and finally dealt with the 300 or so CDs in the stairwell whose boxes had been damaged months ago by a seeping leak in the basement. I just ended up vacuuming the loose dirt/grime off of them and re-boxing them. I'll need to wipe each one more carefully before I can sell it, if I ever sell CDs again... that was a joke... I hope. Anyway I'm trusting they're salvageable without removing the shrink wrap. At least they're off the stairs. I also finished packing the closets.

I had a great, long chat with Carol yesterday as they were on their way back from a friend's wedding in Virginia. They made up a funny version of "Makin' Whoopee" for their friends, but there was this guy who played mandolin a couple of times during the ceremony or the reception or something, and he was a friend of the couple of course but he wasn't really a professional player. When C&C started their Makin' Whoopee parody, he decided to join in spontaneously on the mandolin. However, he only knew the song in a different key, so he played the whole thing in the wrong key AND of course had no idea that C&C had built in pauses and special funny things in their arrangement, which he completely ignored. It was a bit of a fiasco and Chris was mightily pissed afterwards. Why do people who can't jam, insist on jamming with people they don't know -- and, more importantly, how can they not HEAR that they have no idea what they're doing, they're not following the players, and at someone's wedding, for heaven's sake? That just makes everybody look bad.

Then we talked about how nice it would be to become an a cappella band. That maybe we'd get a few more years out of ourselves if we could lighten the load. I confessed that one of the things that made me weary about touring was having so much stuff. She heartily agreed. There are vast possibilities in a cappella music. It could be the new direction that keeps me interested.

Anyway, that's something to start thinking about or researching around August. For now... get through the closing.