beautiful, funny, sad & true

And now, finally, a little good news I felt I should share.

The song of Crystin Byrd’s that she and I are working on for the movie soundtrack is coming along amazingly well. I was going for an Elliott Smith kind of sound, like from “XO” or “Figure Eight.” Full band, dark and intense, with really low electric bass, drum set played with brushes, and hooky, sparse keyboards and electric guitars interspersed throughout.

The drums, bass, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, (including some weird guitar effects) and mellotron keyboards are done. We still need to do the real vocal track, the cello tracks, and maybe some piano or glockenspiel for a solo section. We’re trying to finish it by this weekend. The filmmaker has a deadline for an important screening, and far be it from us to make him miss an opportunity.

And speaking of opportunities, this song has been just what I needed to boost my sagging musical confidence. I can’t wait to hear it in the theater, and I can’t wait to be able to share it with you.

After spending a great couple of days in Seattle, and having a great couple of days recording with Crystin, I just found out my checking account is overdrawn. And that was as of Friday. I still have all the outstanding transactions from this weekend floating around in the ether.

I’m going to be so completely screwed tomorrow morning by overdraft charges. Luckily pay day is Friday, but this is really gonna hurt. And my car’s registration tags expire on Thursday.

What’s that sound? Oh. . .it’s the sound of the month of May going down the toilet.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Clearly I cannot be trusted with my own endeavors.

What a weekend it’s been already, and there are still two more whole days left.

I drove straight to Seattle after work on Friday, and had the easiest drive ever. I somehow managed to bypass all the traffic in Portland, and I-5 was moving along nicely the entire way up. I got to Seattle in record time, and after a bit of circling the block, got the best parking spot ever, right across from the movie theater.

“Paprika” was amazing. I was expecting a lot from it, and it totally delivered. If it plays in a theater anywhere else nearby, I’m going to see it again, and it will certainly be one to buy on DVD when it comes out. Jaw-dropping animation with plenty of surprises, a trippy mystery story with lots of twists and turns, and even a super-catchy theme song.

From there I went to stay up at LittleBrother’s house in Snohomish. It was midnight when I rolled in, but he heard me arrive, so he came down and we talked and played a couple of games of pool on their new pool table. We finally went to bed around 1:45.

At 6:45, I was awakened by Niece. She was already going a hundred miles an hour, which meant that resistance on my part was futile, so I got up and played with her and LitteBrother while BabyNephew was awakened and fed by Brother’sWife. Before they left for Yakima that morning, they each gave me a huge hug and said, “You’ve sure had a tough time lately. Hang in there. We’re really proud of you.” That just about made me cry.

Then, after feeling sick to my stomach all morning, I started to take a turn for the worse, so I went in and had a nice bout of. . .um. . .diarrhea. (Well? I did.) After that, I felt extremely weak, and after such an early morning of playing with Niece, I decided it was time for a little nap.

After said nap, I headed down to Seattle to meet my friend RoMo, who used to live here in Portland. We walked around in her neighborhood of Fremont for a long time and caught up on each other’s lives as we walked along the canal. Then we walked back up to my car and drove to the Ballard neighborhood, where we ate lunch at a sushi restaurant, where I had exactly one little bowl of miso soup and one piece of maguro nigiri before having to stop because my stomach was feeling so strange. She finished her sushi and beer and then we headed out. I coughed and said, “Wow. . .I barely kept everything down when I coughed just now.” She looked concerned and said, “Really? Do you need to go to the drug store across the street?” “I don’t think I’ll make it there,” I said, and walked into the alley behind the sushi restaurant, at which point the contents of my stomach erupted into the bushes three times.

We walked across to the drug store and I got some FamousPinkLiquid, which made the rest of the afternoon’s activities possible.

We explored a bit more in Ballard, then drove down to the Ballard Locks, a busy shipping canal, dam and fish ladder. It was all really beautiful and interesting. It’s easy to see that you could spend all day watching the different activities that go on there, plus the gardens and grounds are really beautiful too. In fact, we saw a wedding ceremony happening in a different section of the park.

So it’s already been quite a weekend, with an awesome movie, seeing family and a good friend for the first time in months, not to mention a whole bunch of cool sights and even some stomach difficulties to make for an eventful weekend.

Tomorrow, Crystin and I start work on the song for the movie soundtrack, and my neighbor and tango-band-mastermind Susan is leaving for Australia for three weeks. Right now I’m going to bed.

I don’t know what it was that hit me on Monday night, but it certainly laid me out. I went to bed Monday night, and pretty much stayed there for all of yesterday (except to post that blog entry and watch a movie, but I was lying down for that).

I was too weak to hold up a book, so I listened to endless hours of NPR, with my ridiculous hat on, huddled under a full load of blankets. I slept a lot too, for three or four hours at a time. I slept really well last night too. Woke up in a pool of sweat, just in time to call in sick to work and go back to sleep until eleven. Despite having not eaten since Monday night, I still wasn’t hungry, but I was feeling extremely weak, so I decided I should eat something. Scrambled eggs and soy bacon were just the metaphorical ticket. Oh, and ‘mountain berry’ juice, made from real mountainberries! Isn’t this an exciting blog entry?

I think what it all comes down to is that I’ve had a few really big emotional blows this month; girl-related and music-career-related. It doesn’t get bigger than that. One would have been quite enough, thank you very much. Hopefully the worst is over.

Today I have the blinds up and the windows open, I’m taking a shower and putting on real clothes, and I may actually go run an errand or two. But I’m feeling sad, weak, and just plain crappy, and I could really use some good news for a change.

Luckily, there is some. I’m driving up to Seattle this weekend to see the movie Paprika at the Seattle International Film Festival. I don’t want to miss a chance to see it in the theater, even if it means going by myself. My brother lives up there, and I have a couple of friends there, too, so it should be a good weekend.

In more better news, Crystin Byrd and I are starting work on a song of hers for an upcoming movie soundtrack. We get the ending credits all to ourselves.

I’m home sick again.

Last night after I got home from the store (where I ran into Luke!), I suddenly felt cold all over. I started shivering almost uncontrollably. I didn’t want to get up from the sofa, because it was warm, but eventually I did get up and go to bed. I was so cold that I slept in a hat and pajamas, despite the fact that my apartment is perfectly comfortable.

I pulled the covers over my head and eventually warmed up enough to sleep. I kept dreaming about being warm and sweating. I also kept waking up to find that the dreams were true. But if I pulled the hat off or pulled the sheets back, I got too cold again, so I decided that, given the choice, too warm was better.

I think it’s time to go back to bed again. I’m sore all over. I wish I could at least read, but I think it’s going to be NPR time for a while.

One of my friends at work has a little can full of little sayings by authors, philosophers, spiritual people, transcendentalists, people like that. Every day, we pick one and read it aloud. Here’s mine, from last week.

On this day, twenty seven years ago, Mount St. Helens erupted.

At the time, my family lived in Yakima, Washington, which was the first decent-sized town in the path of the ashfall. The eruption happened at about 8:30 a.m. We were just pulling up to St. Johns Episcopal Church, where my dad was the vicar, when someone called and said, “I just heard on the radio. . .Mount St. Helens erupted!” The handful of us who were there sat and thought for a few minutes, but when we saw the whole horizon turning black (on a cloudless morning), we decided we should try to get home if we could.

The ash cloud hit us halfway home. Instantly, visibility went to about two feet. It was like a warm, grey snowstorm, and it smelled horrible. We were driving about ten miles per hour, but we still almost hit a turn divider and ran off the road because we couldn’t see.

We did make it home safely, and good thing, too, because the ash fell for the next day or two. We ended up with about an inch and a half of ash everywhere. It killed plants and pets. It choked the fuel systems of cars. (Interestingly, I remember that people were able to drive their cars by stretching pantyhose over their carburetors. Isn’t that ingenious?)

I was nine years old, and I wasn’t scared at all. That’s the perfect age to be during something like that. Old enough to remember it, but young enough to be mesmerized by it.

The town completely shut down for about a week, while people shoveled their driveways and sidewalks, and street cleaners ran day and night. My brother and I would stand under the awning on the back patio and watch the ash falling for a long time. People were saying things like, “Don’t let the ash touch you, it’ll melt your skin!” and “If you breathe it in, it will kill you!” So when we did venture out, we wore those little breathing masks and sweltered in our winter coats, at least until we realized that it wasn’t THAT hot, and we could catch it in our hands.

I’ll never forget the video of the gigantic logging trucks being washed down the Toutle River, or the huge logs destroying bridges, or the picture of the newspaper photographer’s car buried by boiling mud.

One of our friends in the neighborhood drew a volcano in ball-point pen on a bunch of white T-shirts with a caption that said, “Mount St. Helens–a pain in the ASH!” O, the hilarity.

The local news had a field day with the eruption, as you can imagine. “WILL VEGETATION EVER GROW BACK?? WILL THE VOLCANO KILL YOUR PETS?? TUNE IN AT FIVE TO FIND OUT.” Well, most of the pets lived, and before too long, trees and plants were growing back stronger than before. I still remember the pictures in National Geographic of the first little sprouts growing up out of the ash.

It was an amazing experience, and one that I’ll remember as long as I live.

I got my heart broken tonight, by a song.

I’d be a hugely unprofessional a-hole if I went into any more detail about it, but make no mistake; my heart is broken.

What a month this has been.