Day Thirty-Nine

Drinking: Nothing just now. Too early in the day
Eating: Curried rice and vegetables
Reading: House of Holes by Nicholson Baker (and I'm atill REALLY liking it)

Well, it has been a very full few days since I last sat down to write. Mostly good, some not so good.

The heat continues to be just terrible here in St. Louis. We're back in the triple digits, but unlike the first week of July when it was relatively dry, this time around we have both the heat and our region's usual humidity. So it's not only hot, it's moist. Yuck! I'm dealing with it, but not, I'm afraid, very well. Because it is so hot outside, I am spending more time inside and inactive. Even though I spend most of my time in the air conditioning, living in this kind of heat and humidity wears me out. That seems to be keeping me on the edge of being depressed and I just don't seem to have the energy to get over it. Of course, this is temporary. It will get cooler and we will get rain sooner or later. I just need to keep that in mind and I'll be fine.

I've actually been in a pretty good mood for most of the last few days in spite of the heat. I'm attributing this to keeping a positive attitude, as much as possible, and a couple of events that happened over the weekend.

Friday evening Jane and I went to a wine bar to meet some friends and celebrate another friend's getting a new job. It was fun and we both liked the place a lot. I'm sure we'll go back there. They have a good selection of wines and beers, the prices are reasonable and the smoked salmon appetizer was some of the best I've ever had. When I dropped Jane off at her house, I went in for a last beer of the evening. We talked and I brought up some doubts about our relationship and where it is right now. These are all, I realized as we talked, due to my insecurities and issues with past relationships. It was a pretty heartfelt conversation and some tears were shed, but at the end of it I felt we were both stronger in our committment to each other. I certainly was anyway. Jane reinforced for me that she loves me and is trying to work through some of the blocks that she puts up in her relationships. I did the same for her. I really do think this is going to continue to grow as a mutually adult, loving, and mindful relationship. I am very happy and grateful about that.

Saturday morning, I participated in a personal "virtual" retreat for peace in honor of Pema Chodron's birthday. It consisted of a three hour (I had intended it to be four hours, but life gets in the way) sitting meditation and it was wonderful. I set it up to do twenty minutes of sitting meditation followed by ten minutes of reading Buddhist texts, stretching, or walking meditation, followed by twenty minutes of sitting meditation, and so on for three hours. At the end of it I was so happy, clear, and relaxed that I was practically floating. I walked over to a local Vietnamese restaurant and had a bowl of vermicelli noodles with egg rolls, vegetables, and lemon sauce for lunch. It was delicious!

The result of that morning filled with peace, relaxation, mindfulness, and good food was that I had a feeling of wellness and no anxiety all day. And I was even more confident that things are going to be fine with Jane. That, in fact, because I can get to a place where I'm not attached to the feelings or the relationship, that non-attachment will allow the relationship to blossom and grow and benefit both of us in exactly the way it is supposed to.

Saturday afternoon, I went to an anniversary party for some friends. There was very good food that they'd cooked from their own garden and what they had picked up at the Farmer's Market that morning. Many of the people there were musicians, and I'd brought my fiddle and ukulele along. So, it didn't take much prodding to get the bunch of us to sit down and play tunes. The crowd was about half old-time music folks and half Irish music folks, so there was a good variety in what got played over the next several hours.

Later that evening, I met Jane at our favorite pub for drinks after she got off work at The Royal Dumpe. Jane has been one of the serving wenches there for 16 years or so. It's hard work, but she enjoys it and the money is good. We were both tired after a long day, but in good spirits and had a good time. I always like to hear about nights at the Dumpe. The stories she tells about the clientelle and the other wenches and players are usually about as entertaining and sometomes surprising as can be. Sometimes the way that people act in public is astonishing.

Sunday was mostly uneventful. I spent the morning doing my usual Sunday activities; laundry, house cleaning, marketing, that sort of thing. I made a big pot of curried vegetables and brown rice that I'll be eating for lunch all week. Jane called to invite me to O'Connell's for lunch with her, her sister-in-law, Karen and Karen's boyfriend. That was nice. Karen and Jerry are fun to be around. After that, it was back home to loaf around and watch a movie - 13 Assassins, an excellent samurai movie that reminded me of Akira Kurosawa's films. This may have been a little more simplistic philosophically and more violent than Kurosawa's stuff, but it was enjoyable, all the same.

Then, just as I was about to go to bed, there's a knock at the door and who should be standing on my porch but Ian, Jane's roommate's ten-year-old. I could not imagine what he was doing there at that time of night and by himself, but I opened the door prepared for anything. Surprise! Jane was standing off to the side of the porch where I couldn't see her and jumped to startle me. They had been in the neighborhood on a pet sitting visit and decided to come by and see if I was still up. They stayed for about 45 minutes and we had a laugh watching a Batman cartoon on DVD.

Monday evening I taught my last dulcimer class of the session at The Folk School and stopped by my daughter's apartment to spend a couple of hours with her, her husband, and my granddaughter, Callie. Callie is just the cutest, smartest, most active little squirt. I am always recharged and joyous when I spend time with her. She's learning new things every day and delights in showing them off. She also has the best sense of humor and loves playing tricks on us. For now, snce she's not yet a year old, the tricks are pretty simple and easy to see through. I shudder to think what she'll get up to by the time she's nine or ten.

That's about it for this installment. It may be more than enough.

Day Thirty-Four

Drinking: Newcastle Brown Ale
Eating: Nothing right now. Maybe sushi later.
Reading: House of Holes by Nicholson Baker (and I'm REALLY liking it)

Jeeezus! What a crazy week at work. I've just been exhausted when I get home in the evening and haven't done much, including much writing. I still think I can finish off the play script I'm working on this weekend, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't get to it.

I did have one bright spot this week. I had folks over for a post-mortem meeting on West End Player's offering in the St. Louis Fringe Festival, and that was very good. Very positive. We did talk about improvements that we think can be made next year on both the festival's part and on ours. But there was nothing like complaining or bitching about things. It was all
"Well, this could have gone better."
"Okay, how do we make it better?"
So, that's a positive step.

I also got to hang out with my sweetie at O'Connell's a little bit, and that was good.

Now, I've got to figure out what to do tonight. There're so many options that it's a little paralyzing. St. Louis is such a busy city these days! I could call Jane up and we could go to the outdoor film series at the Art Museum where they're showing Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Or go to The Half-Way Haus to hear some friends of mine, The Sins of the Pioneers are playing. Or just go over to a great little restaurant and wine bar, Ernesto's, and enjoy a bottle of wine and the summer weather on their back patio.

Wish me luck in deciding.

Day Twenty-Nine

Drinking: Newcastle Brown Ale
Eating: Tomato and avocado salad with basil & balsamic vinegar dressing

Rain! At last, it's pouring down rain. Thank goodness. We've been going through a real drought around here, along with the ridiculous heat. So, it's good to see the rain coming down, soaking the earth and cooling the air. Fantastic.

And it seems that along with the weather breaking, my bout with writer's block has broken. I've been working on a short play for the last year or so, collaborating with a good friend, one of my favorite people in the world. I think the work we're doing is good, considering it's our first try at this. But I've been blocked for the last three months and unable to do my part working on the script. I got back to it today in a very small way. Only a page or so, but I think it's good and I have ideas for the remainder of the scene. I'd have finished it this evening, but I got so tired. I hadn't written much, but just was unable to go further. Rather than push it, I stopped, put it away and made a promise to myself that I'll work on it again before bedtime on Tuesday.

Yesterday, I held auditions for This Wide Night, a play I'll be directing in the fall for West End Players Guild in the fall. The auditions were great. About twenty women showed up to read for the plays two roles and, almost without exception, they were good. I could have cast the show six times over from the women who showed up. I am now so psyched to get started with rehearsals and design meetings that I can hardly wait.

Day Twenty-Five

Drinking: iced coffee
Reading: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

So, it's the fourth of July. Our nation's Independence Day . Somehow, it feels a little hollow to me. It could be that it falls in the middle of the week, or it could be that I should have gotten out of town to make it feel more like a holiday and less like sitting around waiting for things to happen.

Our heatwave in St. Louis continues. Today's high temperature is supposed to be 105 degrees. With this in mind, I decided to get out of the house and get some exercise before the sun got too high in the sky.

I got up early, had some iced coffee and a couple of eggs and then headed over to the zoo about 8:00, hoping to get a look at the new sea lion pool and viewing area that opened this past weekend. The joke was on me! I got to the zoo about 8:30 and found it was already crowded with other folks who had the same idea as me. I also found out that the sea lions don't come out of their night time enclosure until around 9:15 to allow the keepers to clean up the outdoor enclosure and get ready for the day.

The new pool is pretty great. Much larger than the old one. And it has a tunnel that goes for about 30 feet under the pool where visitors can look up and see the animals swimming around overhead. I understand that the new digs are better for the sea lions as well, now having a cooling system that keeps the water at 65 degrees year round whereas the old pool was just a 10 - 12 foot deep pool with no facility for cooling the water. It must have been pretty miserable swimming around in that on days like today.

A couple of minor complaints: The rocks in and around the exhibit are man-made and look it. They're supposed to mimic the rocky shores along California's coast. But, while they are artfully done, they don't look natural. They look like some molded concrete/fiberglass compound and not like natural rock. It may be that after a while they'll "wear in" and look less manufactured. I hope so,anyway. The other downside is that there were so many people trying to get into the tunnel at 9:15 that it would have been another half hour or so before I could have gotten through the crush (not really a line and with a lot of rude, pushy, hot people to contend with). So, I decided not to try and to come back in a few weeks when the weather should be better and the crowd should be thinner.

While walking around the zoo, I stopped in at the bird house, mostly to kill time while waiting for the sea lions. The birds are beautiful, as is the architecture of the building. And it is cooler that outside today. While I was walking and looking at the birds and listening to their whistles, calls and cries, I noticed an older couple walking through the house. They appeared to be in their seventies and so happy to be in each other's company. They held hands while walking, laughed, read facts from the exhibit signs to each other and talked about what they were reading with great interest. The man was intent on making sure he found each bird in each cage, regardless of how well they blended with the foliage. And the woman was just as invested in him finding them and pointing them out to her. Their interaction was so joyful and respectful.

I so much want to be part of a couple like that when I'm their age. I want to be with someone who I love and who loves me in a gentle, kind, supportive way. I want to be with someone who is happy to be with me, but doesn't need to cling and doesn't want to be clung to. I think I have that kind of relationship now with Jane, but because of my own issues/baggage, I am not trusting it as completely as I should. It will take work on my part, but it is possible and I'll get there.

More later....

Day Twenty-Three

I had tried to post last night, but for some reason, my computer decided to delete what I had written and it never made it to being published. By that time, it was late, I was tired, and it seemed like maybe the computer had made the better decision by sending my written thoughts into limbo. As a result, rather than try to recreate the whole thing, I opted for another glass of wine, listening to a little Bach and going to bed.

Now I'm back at it this afternoon and we'll see what happens.

It's been brutally hot here in St. Louis St. Louis with temperatures between 100 and 110 for a week. Fortunately, the humidity that we're usually cursed with has been low and, as a result, the heat has been reasonably bearable. But this has made me less willing than usual to get outside or to drive to friends' houses or meet them at restaurants and bars. I've been mostly holing up at home.

I did get out to visit my daughter and her husband and my granddaughter. The little squirt has just turned ten months old and if she isn't walking by the end of this week, I'll be very surprised. She's cute as a button, happy as can be, and smart! She's beginning to talk and has a vocabulary of about a dozen words. I got to spend a little over an hour with the bunch of them before they all had to run off to visit with another set of relatives. It's a day later and I still feel pretty happy and positive about the world. Maybe all we need to improve the world is to spend more time with happy babies.

Of course, if that's the correct prescription for a better, happier world, we'll also have to spend more of our time making sure that more babies are happy, healthy, and well cared for. Otherwise there won't be enough happy babies to go around. It seems like a worthwhile effort, though.

More later....

Days Eighteen & Nineteen

Eighteen

What a great evening! As usual on Wednesdays, I headed over to Bob's house to play old-time tunes with an assortment of friends and band-mates. Much to my delight, Curtis and Dennis Buckhannon were there. They're not only great musicians - in my opinion, Curtis may be the best old-time mandolin player around - but all 'round nice guys. I never laugh as much as I do when I'm in Curtis' and Dennis' company.

The bunch of us played a lot of great tunes, listened to Curtis and Lindell play more, recalling the hey days of Cousing Curtis and the Cash Rebates, reminisced and groaned at the torrent of awful puns. I wish it had never ended. But we're all old guys (except guitar-player Ellen who is neither old or guy) and the fun can't go on all night anymore.

Then, as I was driving home and just three blocks from there, who should pull up behind me flashing her lights, but my sweetie, Jane. She'd jsut gotten done with a late night pet visit in my neighborhood and saw my car as I drove past.

We headed over to my place where we sat on the deck, had a couple of glasses of wine, and I listened while Jane poured out the tale of her long and stressful day. From there, we talked about what's going on with some of our friends and the play that I'm getting ready to direct. Really a wonderful conversation. I only wish she didn't have to get up so early so she could have slept over. Even so, I can't think of a more pleasant or relaxing way to end a beautiful evening.

Nineteen

Wine I'm drinking: Cupcake Pinot Noir
Book I'm reading: This Wide Night by Chloe Moss
Dinner tonight: Green salad and a chicken sandwich

Wow! Is it ever hot around here! As I left work this afternoon, the radio said it was 109 degrees fahrenheit. Fortunately for everyone here in Missouri, the humidity was so much lower than normal that the extreme heat was bearable if you didn't have to be out in it too long.

All in all, though, it was a good evening. After work, I headed out to Maplewood, one of our inner-ring suburbs to meet with people from The Folk School of St. Louis to talk over some plans that they have for expanding the reach and community of the school. After talking with them, I have some concerns. But, I think that may be due to an inherent resistance to change. In all honesty, I can see that this set of changes has the potential to be very good for an organization that is dear to me.

After the meeting, since I was already near my mom and dad's house, I stopped by there and helped my sister with some computer problems she was having. Really simple stuff, but if you don't work with the computer every day, these kinds of things can be mystifying. Stopping in gave me a chance to visit with my brother, sister and mom. For some reason, I wasn't as frustrated by the family dynamic as I usually am and was able to laugh at some of their usually annoying idiosyncrasies. Maybe I'm maturing about it. Maybe I'm just generally happier these days. Maybe I was just worn out from the heat?

While at mom and dad's, I was surprised by a visit from my daughter, China! Always good to see her. She's just the best kid around. China is taking a water aerobics class at a nearby municipal pool with my sister and I think it's doing them both worlds of good. So, we got to visit briefly before she had to run off to her class. She relayed that her almost-10-month-old daughter, Callie, the best grand daughter in the world is now saying "fish" as well as her previous vocabulary and playing a "what's that" game. She apparently also thinks that her dad is Barack Obama. I mean, her dad is a tall black man, and a pretty good guy, but he's no President of the U.S.

Speaking of the President, how about that Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Health Care Act today? Pretty great if you ask me. And President Obama has a lot to be proud of there. Now he's got to get the message out that this law will be good for the country, good for the economy, and is just plain the right thing to do. His work is cut out for him! I've been following the news coverage on PBS (when I wasn't watching Doc Martin) since I got home and had some dinner. I've just been beaming about it the whole time.

Now, I'm darned tired and am going to read a little before going to sleep. 'Nite all.

Day Sixteen

Mondays are my night to teach at the Folk School. This session I'm teaching a class in mountain dulcimer and one called "Fiddle Repertoire". For the latter, I'm just teaching fiddle tunes that I know and a little bit about the sources for them. It's a good way for some intermediate students to add to the number of tunes they know and build some confidence in their playing with other people. They seem to be enjoying it and I feel good about that.

Both of the classes are fun and I'm really enjoying myself with them. A couple of the students really understand what we're trying to do and that makes it even more fun. This session will be over in a couple of weeks and I'm hoping that the classes will make again in the next session. Teaching gives me a real sense of accomplishment and lets me feel like I'm repaying all of the hours people have spent with me giving me tunes and letting me steal licks from them. Now I'm doing the same for these students.

After I got home, I cut open a watermelon I'd picked up a couple of days ago at our local farmers' market. It was wonderful. I ate a quarter of it this evening and am going to work on a quarter a day until it's gone.

Also got good news from daughter China. She and Tom have an opportunity to rent a house and get out of the cramped little apartment they are in. Callie, my granddaughter, gabbled and sang the whole time I was on the phone with China. I'm glad that she'll now have a little more room to crawl around in! I must say that grandkids are the best thing in the world.

So, it's been a good day. I have a lot to be thankful for. I think I'll finish this off and go to bed.