Sticky, Sweet, & A Little Overdressed

So I guess I haven’t posted in a while.

It’s not for lack of stuff to write. In fact, I should probably be journaling like crazy through all of this because, as I explained to over the phone a few weeks ago, I could write a freakin’ book about how weird and surreal this whole process has been — and strangely comic at times, believe it or not. But the energy to journal just isn’t there, so I’ve been skipping it.

But let me see if I can explain. No, it’s too much to explain. Let me see if I can summarize.

My dad is dying, but typical of my dad, he’s being stubborn about it. If the doctors say he has days, maybe a week, then by god, a week comes and goes and he’s smiling and having a rare good day at the end of that week. If we get the impression, as we have several times, that this day might be his last, then by god, the next day he’s alert and nearly talkative, and we’re left scratching our heads and drying our tears and just trying to ride out the emotional tidal waves.

My mom and I went to meet with the people at the funeral home a few weeks ago. Fortunately, my dad already made all his arrangements six years ago when his cancer was first diagnosed as malignant. Unfortunately, it was like a freakin’ Keystone Cops routine with these guys at the funeral home, and although I found it all absurdly funny, I know my mom didn’t see the humor in the ordeal.

If there’s one bright spot in this whole sea of darkness, it’s that my sister and I have largely reconciled. It’s a long story, but it comes down to what my coworker and friend Keith described as sounding “like a Lifetime original movie.” A significant letter that apparently never arrived at its destination, a conversation where both participants had completely different understandings of what was said, that sort of thing. And that’s the basis of what’s been keeping us distant for lo these last nine years. So although things aren’t perfect now, there are signs that our relationship may improve with time, and I think my dad has been coherent enough to realize that, which must help him feel a little more at ease, since I know the strained relations between my sister and me have bothered him terribly.

For a long time, I think my brother didn’t get the whole thing — he’s developmentally disabled, borderline retarded but still basically functional and normal-appearing — but several people within and outside of the family have made efforts to clue him in. Now he’s acting out in ways that suggest he gets it and he’s not handling it very well. He’s supposed to be on Medicare but that benefit is currently being contested, so getting him psychological help of any kind is not easy. He’s having to tough it out on his own, and I hate that for him. I sure wouldn’t want to be going through all this without the benefit of Prozac — let alone without being equipped with the emotional maturity to process even comparatively simple issues well.

And my mom is struggling hardest of all. Her husband of 40 years, her closest and dearest friend by far, and clearly the best companion the universe could have ever invented for her, is becoming — or perhaps has already become — unrecognizable to her, and she’s still feeding him, bathing him, and performing plenty of other thankless tasks out of love and duty and determination to see him die with whatever dignity is still possible at this point. Her dilemma breaks my heart every day, and as stressed out and wound-up as she defininitely is, she bears it all so much better than I can ever imagine doing myself.

And Karsten — well, what can I possibly say about Karsten that does him justice? After losing his mother seven months ago, I’m sure it’s suffocating for him to be in an environment where the reality of parental death is thick in the air. But he knows I need him with me, and he’s there for me. We’re in this together, after all, and thank whatever gods there may be for that. This man is like oxygen to me — I simply can’t imagine breathing without him. Especially not right now. And he’s consistently the one person who can relax me, who can always make me laugh, with whom I can just walk and walk and walk for hours and talk about anything or talk about nothing — and it’s the only kind of therapy that could possibly do me any good right now. He soothes my soul.

So there it is, in a nutshell. The cast of characters, the somber scene, the barely-crawling pace of it all. It’s draining as hell, and I feel like I’m in limbo no matter where I am, but I’m trying to make the best of it and find the moments of levity, the revelations of truth, the opportunities to draw closer with the people from whom I’ve moved away so many times — and trying to laugh and love as much as possible at all times. I think that’s all there is to do. I think that’s all there is for any of us to do.

Health and happiness to you all. I’ll update again when I can.

Months ago, a songwriter named Kirsti Manna (whom country fans may know as the writer of the Blake Shelton hit “Austin” as in “…P.S. if this is Austin / I still love you”), when Karsten asked her if she could recommend good pizza in Nashville, preferably Chicago-style pizza, recommended Vinny’s Pizza in Hermitage. Karsten has been begging to go there ever since.

So finally, tonight, we went. 28 minutes there, 28 minutes back. And for what? For cracker pizza. I kid you not. Wafer-thin crust, extra-crispy at the edges and soggy in the middle, with barely any sauce or cheese on it. The veggies were nice, but I could’ve been happy with grilled veggies sans cracker crust, thanks.

After this experience and many others like it in the past year and a half, I can only conclude that Nashvillians don’t understand pizza.

Which is sad, really. I love Nashville for many reasons; I plan to be happy here for a long time. But I must now plan to rely on homemade pizza and trips to Chicago for any chance at decent pizza from a restaurant.

[Incidentally, the one perk that driving to Bumblefuck and back affords is this: during such a long trip, you might get to hear nightfly's voice on the radio, as I did. Which is cool. (I think it was that Opry Mills "shut up and drive" spot again, but I only caught the tail end of it so I'm not sure.) ]

I’m back at home now, sipping hot cocoa, feeling full but disappointed. Oh well. They can’t all be Gino’s East.

I’ve been a total slacker on songwriting this weekend, but I forgot to mention that on my way home from work on Friday, I came up with an idea for how to finish a song I started months ago. True to my usual auspicious beginnings (which mostly end up sitting around unfinished), I had come up with a great hook and a tentative chorus for it, which, when I showed it to Karsten, got him excited enough about it to write a truly inspired chorus melody. To which I said,

“Oh, shit.”

Nothing seems to freak me out more than having to write lyrics to an existing melody — especially when the melody is so fantastic. ‘Cause then there’s no wiggle room, no way to say, “Well, I can’t think of an eight-syllable way to say ‘I wish I knew the real you like I know the fake you’ in pentameter with an ending anapest, so I’ll just go with that line and he can rewrite the melody to accomodate it.” (What a weird example. I wonder what nether reaches of my subconscious that little gem just came from.)

Anyway, this one was freakin’ me out big time. And Karsten kept dropping hints that if I wanted to work on this song, he was open to discussing anything or helping me talk through how it was going to go, and all that.

Still, no progress for months.

And then Friday, boom! The story flow occurred to me, and as soon as I had that, I knew how to write the song. So I raced home, nodded hello to Karsten, made a beeline for my desk, and wrote the whole thing out.

It’s not Lennon, it’s not Simon, but it’s a start. And it’s good enough to give back to Karsten so he can finish the melody.

3 down, 27 to go.

Note that the house is actually under renovation now, but we already know we won’t like a good many of the changes. (For example, they’re installing carpet over the hardwoods. Mind you, the floors aren’t in great shape, but they’ve got character and I despise carpet.) But we found out that the seller had already received an offer like the one we were originally thinking of making: “here’s 6% less than asking; now stop the renovations and step away from the property.” But the seller’s agent said that the seller wanted to continue the work she’d already contracted. Hooookay. So we made a full-priced offer and we’re allowing them to finish the renovations. It’s weird, but hey — at least some of the work is bound to be worthwhile.

Anyway, you can see throughout most of these pictures that the renovation is underway, as there are tools lying around and there’s dust everywhere. And for whatever reason, the seller still has loads of junk piled up throughout the house and out on the back porch and driveway. Part of the agreement is that she has to remove all of it, but it was all still there when I took these photos.

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Check out this beautiful ichneumon wasp I saw at Cheekwood. Here’s more about the ichneumon (only they call it a fly). I’d never even heard of it, but Nature Boy Karsten knew what it was right away.

We received word from our apartment property manager yesterday that they were doing some work this morning requiring us to move our car from the lot by 8:00 AM, so it seemed like a good morning to go out for breakfast. Headed over to Murphy’s Loft Cafe (formerly the Red Rooster Cafe) for day-old muffins (only $1!) and coffee & juice. We enjoyed the opportunity to sit outside and leisurely sip our drinks.

Then, since all clothing at Salvation Army is 50% off on Wednesdays, it was time to do a little thrift shopping. Didn’t really find anything, which is just as well since I just bought a zillion new-to-me articles of clothing a few weeks ago.

Alright, now this is kind of embarassing. I had a coupon from the back of a Kroger receipt for a week free at Curves, which is right down the street. I thought, hey that’s convenient — I won’t have to go the office and I can still work out. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know! I thought it was a gym. It’s not a gym. It’s some kind of demented 30-second rotation half-hour fitness program and weigh-you-in and take-your-measurements thing. I listened politely to the woman give me the tour of the place but as soon as she said “Alright, let’s take your measurements!” I said “I don’t think I need to waste any more of your time. I don’t think this is right for me. I thought it was a gym. I was looking for treadmills. Cardio equipment. Things like that.” And she said, “Yeah, I can look at you and see you don’t need to lose weight, but I didn’t want to say anything.” She didn’t want to say anything? Until what? Until I actually did lose weight? That place is weird. Weird weird weird.

So anyway, I left, but I was all psyched up for a workout, and now I had to decide if it was worth it to me to go to the office and risk feeling stress on my vacation just to work out. And then it dawned on me that I could run in Centennial Park instead! But I was nervous about that because I haven’t run on pavement since my injury. And then I remembered that I had my rollerblades in the trunk. So I got good and warmed up by rollerblading five laps on the mile loop and then felt comfortable running two laps.

Got back home, showered, dressed, and went out with Karsten to Kalamata’s. I ordered their baba ghannouj for the first time, and it was wonderful. Nice and smoky, just the way I like it.

Went furniture-browsing (”furniture-ogling” is more like it) at Nouveau Classics and 2 Danes. Must get rich so I can afford cool mid-century modern and contemporary Scandinavian furniture in my home. Someday.

Dinner at Tayst. Yum! We started with the Chickpea Cake, which was served in some kind of delicious sauce. I can’t remember how it was described on the menu and I know I can’t do it justice, but it was unbelievably good. Followed that with the Bibb Salad with (I think it was) fennel-infused walnut oil vinaigrette. For the entree, we split a very elegant baked potato with vegetable spears marinated in a ginger sauce and served in a half-red, half-yellow pool of gazpacho and ginger sauce. I finished with a scoop of raspberry-black licorice sorbet, which was just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted. It was spectacular, although Karsten says it was a bit dada for his preference. Still, he had to admit that the service was outstanding and even if the menu was a bit pretentious, the service certainly was not.

After dinner, we decided to swing by the Commodore Bar & Grill, which is one of the writers’ nights venues that became popular after several of the other ones mysteriously shut down last year within several weeks of each other. Anyway, after all this time, we’d still not checked it out. We ran into a friend who was playing a feature set tonight, so that was a nice surprise.

And then it was back home. And now I’m getting sleepy. It’s been a good, long day.

I miscalculated. Last week, I anticipated that I’d be eager to do really long workouts this week, and Karsten and I planned that he’d skip his daily run for the week as his vacation and I’d do super-long workouts each day as mine.

There’s just one problem: the gym is at the office.

Now, I knew this, of course. But I still figured it would be no problem. After all, the gym is in a different building from the one where I work, and if I went there a little later than my usual time (no reason to start my workout at 6 AM when I’m on vacation) I probably wouldn’t even run into the usual crowd, and so no one but the security guys at the front desk would need to be the wiser.

But I woke up this morning — well, more to the point, I slept in until 7:30 and then woke up this morning — with no desire to follow the same patterns I do every weekday morning. I feel like working out, but I want to do it here. Or outdoors, nearby. Work’s not far away at all, but it’s the fact that I’d be driving the same route that I do every day… you know. It’s tedious.

So I dunno. I’ll do my usual stretching/yoga/dance thing that I do throughout the day every day, and maybe I’ll do a concentrated dance workout or something. But for today, at least, I’m not going to the gym.

I’m sure I seem to be making a big deal out of nothing, but it’s incredibly, stupidly difficult for me to find ways to relax. I thought the extra-long workout would be relaxing, but it seems that it’s more relaxing to not have to drive to the office. At least for today. There’s always the rest of the week.

I’m counting yesterday as the start of my vacation ’cause that makes it seem longer.

Spent a lazy morning organizing my MP3s. I deleted a bunch I never listen to and swapped in some new workout music onto my Clie.

Went out for lunch at Cafe Coco. Disappointing. Greasy. Pricey. Small portions. (I only ever eat small portions, but I like to take home leftovers.) But we sat outside and that was nice.

Next stop: The Great Escape outlet and the main store. Finally found The Thorns CD and for only $3.99! Also picked up some super-cheap DVDs and a book on how various songwriters got inspired to write certain songs. I love books like that.

Quick trip to the zoo for Ice Day! Many of the animals got frozen treats appropriate to their diet, such as bloodsicles for tigers and fishsicles for otters. (The otter looked as eager for the treat as Karsten was to see the otter eat it.) Karsten’s favorite animals there are the meerkats and mine are the clouded leopards — and neither of them seemed to have been given any icy treats that we could see, so that was kind of a bummer.

Picked up our holds at the library, some goodies at Kroger, and then swung by Big Lots for some English muffins. Karsten noticed that they had the Kellogg’s Strawberry Mini-Wheats with the AAdvantage miles again, so we bought all 25 boxes of them. I felt like Adam Sandler’s character in Punch-Drunk Love buying all the yogurts or whatever… but it really makes a lot of sense when you break down the cost per mile. And you’re getting all that tasty cereal, to boot!

Cooked up some homemade pizza for dinner and watched “Nicholas Nickleby,” which was OK, but not fantastic.

And now I’m posting this update while munching on Strawberry Mini-Wheats. I have enough of them to eat them all the time.

Last night we kicked off our Nashvegas vacation by hanging out on the Demonbreun strip. For non-Nashvillians, this strip (pronounced something like “duh-MUN-bree-un” or “deh-MON-bree-un” — no two native Nashvillians pronounce it the same way) is what used to be a line of so-tacky-they’re-funny gift and souvenir shops. Now they’re so-trendy-they’re-not-even-cool bars and restaurants. Like Christopher Pizza Company, where we ate dinner, and Caffeine, where we had coffee and juice afterward. It’s great people-watching, though — some of the best this town has to offer. And last night, Gary Allan was scheduled to play at an outdoor concert series for one of the bars, so the strip was mad packed.

We got bored with it eventually and couldn’t think of anywhere else we were dying to go, so we went home and watched our DVD rental: “Along Came Polly,” which was OK, but it was very obvious that it was the same screenwriter who did “Zoolander” and “Meet the Parents” — he rehashed a good many gags. Jennifer Aniston was great, though. She made a role that could have been a little hard to get across — someone flakey and commitment-phobic — seem endearing and credible.

Oh, and I gave myself a mud mask facial last night, too. That was nice. Except Karsten made fun of my mint-green face. Bastard.

Not sure what’s on for today yet.

“Everybody always laughs at love
but what they want is to be proven wrong”
- Allen/Hall/Oates, “Did It in a Minute”

It isn’t just that this is a great lyric (though I certainly think it is). It’s the way they wrote the prechorus/build melody to go with it: drawn-out, punctuated, really driving home the meaning by making the listener wait for it. That must have been one hell of a cowriting session. I would love to have been a fly on the wall.

It’s tougher, in some ways, to write lyrics in a void. Sure, I always have a working melody while I’m writing lyrics, but it rarely ends up being anything like the melody we end up using for the song (thank goodness). Something like the Hall & Oates example above would be nearly impossible to achieve in the kind of writing arrangement we primarily use.

But there are advantages to our arrangement, of course: I’m unconstrained by any existing melody as I write the lyrics, which leaves me limitless room to move and turn around, change my mind, scrap whole sections, and invent new structures. Of course, when I do the latter, as I recently did, I make it very challenging for Karsten. But hey, that’s what he’s good at, so I’m comfortable leaving that to him.

And we do the real-time co-writing thing every once in a while. Enough to remind us that it’s not the way we prefer to work. I think we learn a lot from each other and from the experience whenever we do, and I hope we never stop doing it, but I never plan for it to be more than an occasional change of pace.

So perhaps the greatness of the above example of collaboration will forever elude us. Or maybe we’ll find our own ways to attain greatness. Maybe we’re already finding them, and they just need enough repetition to produce quality results. To paraphrase the line, everybody always laughs at Hall & Oates, but what they forget is the 6 #1 singles, more than a dozen top 40 singles, and 19 gold and platinum albums. I’d like to be that laughable.

Cozy photo taken this afternoon.

That’s Baby Clyde the Wonder Potto curled up in Karsten’s arm nook.

And the detractors say cats are distant. They’ve never spent a quiet Sunday afternoon at our home.

Several of our nicknames for Baby Clyde involve the word “potto” because his wide, round eyes and somewhat pointy nose remind us both of a potto. He also has the longest and most dense fur of all the cats, and he sheds like crazy whenever we pet him, which is many times throughout the day. So Karsten came up with a new nickname for him.

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I’m working late, and my boss gave me permission to order some food and expense it. So I got some Chinese delivery and invited Karsten to bring his portable keyboard and stuff and come have some food too, as he sometimes does when I stay late at the office.

So anyway, I just ate two platefuls of greasy, delicious broccoli with spicy garlic sauce, and I mean it really was good, but I feel gross! I can’t remember the last time I ate that much grease in one sitting. Yeesh.

But did I mention how good it was?

OK. Back to work. (But bleah! But mmm!)

I left the office at lunch to work from home the rest of the day, and while we were eating lunch, Karsten mentioned that he had a craving for sweet corn muffins. So I made them. Vegan ones. They were not very sweet, though, so maybe I’m not such an ideal wife, unless it really is the thought that counts.

Last week, our friend Lair invited us to a Halloween party. Yesterday he told us he’d canceled it and that he’d be playing a writers’ round that night, and that everyone would be in costume anyway. Good thing, too, since already got his costume together and I’d hate to see it go to waste. He’s going as a “country & western hockey player.” Hey, absurd is his middle name. Well, actually, it’s Ocelot, but it should have been Absurd.

Me, I’m going as a naughty school girl. Yeah, I know, it’s so Britney and so done, but according to my sources, these kinds of things are still shocking in Nashville and I can’t resist something with that kind of shock value.

My boss’ boss just asked if and I could house-sit for her this weekend. Um, yeah? She lives in Belle Meade, which is the toniest section of Nashville, in a gi-normous house with an unbelievable master bedroom and bathroom suite. Including a jacuzzi.

The catch? She has two incredibly hyper, needy dogs that we have to walk every few hours. But that’s not such a big catch, really. The walking is fine, of course, and the dogs settle down eventually. Sort of.

And she said she just bought a case of wine and the freezer is stocked with food. Looks like a little party for me and my love.