One of my musician friends hates the phrase ‘mixed bag’, but I’m going to go ahead and use it (albeit with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek), because that’s what this week has been. After a debilitatingly sad couple of weeks, I’m finally feeling able to go and do all the things I normally do. Wednesday night was the play-reading group, and I feel like that’s what brought me back to life. The play we read was the story of a quirky pianist (so naturally I played piano) who had lots of children, and the story was set in an Irish Catholic neighborhood of Chicago, around the time of Prohibition. Very well-written and humorous, and I got the honor of reading the lead role. After that, two of the guys from the group and I went out and talked, and shared a basket of French fries, and caught up on each others’ lives. It was nice, and genuine, and I appreciated it.

Thursday I raced over to my favorite new sushi place to meet Genie-Wa. She’s here visiting her mom and interviewing for jobs so that she can move back here again, which I for one am very glad about. Her rental car was a white convertible, and after some trial and error, we finally figured out how to put the top down. Perfect timing, too, because the seemingly interminable months of shitty, depressing weather are finally starting to break here in Portland, so I’m sure she’ll have plenty of opportunities to race around and enjoy it.

As we were heading our separate ways, my hospitalized friend called. Since she doesn’t have a phone in her room, she has to walk clear across the building into a public area, and sometimes there are people milling around, and other times the place is empty. Sometimes people are using the phone, so she has to walk clear back to her room and try again later. She spends most of her days sleeping. Weekends are particularly long, because the doctors aren’t on duty, so I’m going to go visit her this morning, actually, before my afternoon cello gig and evening accordion gig. These will be the first shows I’ve played in over two weeks. I had to back out of four different gigs since this happened, but now I feel ready to play again.

Last night I went to Slabtown to see three bands; Lasers All The Time, Shim, and Hockey. All amazing. I already had Hockey’s CD because the drummer works with me. I first listened to their CD in my car, and I was so impressed with it that it stayed in constant rotation (as they say in radio jargon) for two weeks.

I was supposed to meet my dad for breakfast at 9:00 this morning. Around 8:00 I heard a strange tapping on my door. It wasn’t a knock, but it sounded like someone was tapping my door with something wooden, or maybe metal. Freaked me out, because strange knocks that early in the morning, particularly in my hidden apartment, are almost never because of good news. So I nervously opened the door, to find my dad on my doorstep. “Would you believe. . .I’m early?” he asked. Sheesh. Naturally, my place is a complete disaster area, because I haven’t been home for the last three nights, and I just rearranged my furniture and everything, so I felt nervous about the early-morning knocks, and also about the disarray of my place.

The visit went okay, though. He asked about my friend, and asked a bit about what our relationship was like, and how she was doing, and seemed (somewhat uncharacteristically) empathetic and understanding. But again, he was nice, and genuine, so I certainly appreciated that.

I’ve noticed quite a few blog visits from two different places recently; one of which is in the Portland area, and the other is in the Bay Area. I have a pretty good idea of the places that the regular readers are from, and of those of my friends who read this blog, but these are both new ones. If you’re one of the long-term readers of BFST, you’ll understand why I raise an eyebrow at sudden bursts of energy like that. That’s all I’ll say about it.

Took my cello in for a quick and easy repair the other day. It has a ‘wolf’ tone, which is a common affliction for cellos. It’s hard to explain, but certain notes make the body vibrate excessively, and the horrible, warbling tone it produces when that happens is called a wolf. I don’t know why it’s called that, but I’m just glad that it’s minimized now. They never completely go away, apparently. The repair guy said that the cello instructor at the main university here in town has a cello that’s worth nine hundred thousand dollars, but it has that wolf tone, which was minimized by sticking a piece of a wine cork down between the body and the tailpiece. So funny, and now I have one there too.

And now it’s time to drive out to the hospital.

OneYearAgo