Thursday, January 22, 2009



I woke this morning in Leipzig after the first decent nights sleep I've had in 5 days to the first blue sky I'd seen in 5 days. Before I got out of bed things were already looking up from yesterday and the day before. I spent my time in Leipzig in my room, incapacited as I was by a day long headache, travel fatigue and the early phases of rapid onset winter depression. I joke about the reasons I had for moving to New Orleans; I was young and trying to distance myself from my parents and my past, it's the only place in north America where more than 12 musicians can make a living at once, my boyfriend had dumped me for the last time and I had nothing left to lose, 24 hour bars, a torrid love affair, so many reasons to move to New Orleans. They were all valid reasons to move somewhere and, in my case, every one of them true. But, in the end, I suspect the real reason I HAD to move to the south was because one or two more winters in the cold and dark and I'd probably have done myself or someone else in. That depression sets in on me like a heavy fog, like a thick blanket full of disease and poison. 5 days of gray skies and I'm hiding in my room feeling physically ill. It's just that quick. Then, the mere sight of sunlight got me out of bed with the promise of seeing more. And the promise was not a hollow one. Through the morning and into the afternoon the sky has been a bright winter blue, almost as if the sky were a giant luminescent screen lit from behind, so clean and uniformly blue it looks like a paintjob on a new car. A German sky if ever there was one. At the late hour of 3:45, the shadows grow longer on the streets of Berlin and the naked linden trees stand like giant broken umbrellas in the tangerine-tinged light of late afternoon. This is my favorite time of day because, no matter where I am, in this golden hour, every city suddenly looks like Paris.



The train from Leipzig to Berlin was less than an hour and a half and before I knew it I was out of the unknown and in to the familiar. Instead of languishing in the heat and humidity of a New Orleans July, I spent most of last summer in Berlin. For almost 6 weeks I lived with my kids in the Charlottenberg neighborhood, frequenting playgrounds during the day and doing a show with the Pfisters by night. We came to know where to eat breakfast, where to go on rainy days, who sold the best bread at the open air food bazaar in the church square on Wednesdays and Saturdays and which vendors at the flea market gave little gifts to good little boys and which ones yelled at you for looking at things too long. We went to Legoland and the zoo and by the time we'd finished our stay every waitress at the restaurant around the corner would put our order in to the kitchen before we even sat down at a table. Ben, Henry and I were the three amigos and, during daylight hours, we were inseparable. If there was someplace I couldn't go with them, I didn't go. At the time I felt strongly that I be there for them whenever it was physically possible so that, in this strange place under new circumstances, I could be their constant that made all the weirdness seem normal. Only today, walking around this town that we called home for over a month, did I realize that it was they who provided this service for me. Spending my days with them, doing what we pleased with no phone to answer, bills to pay, car to drive or schedule to keep, was my salvation. I'd have gone crazy here without them. It was a mleancholy day for me. I can't see anything here without missing them and I feel as though I don't belong here without them.



My day of reverie and simple pleasure was cut into by an hour to accomadate a rehearsal before sound check to add some new material to the set. Since the last performance is being recorded for the purpose of releasing a record with the results, no one reminds rehearsing so much. It's one thing to fake your way through a gig or two in front of an audience that doesn't know you and will, probably, never see you again. It's quite another to have your clams, stupid mistakes and half-assedness documented and distributed. Nothing haunts a musician quite so much as a recording for which he was unprepared.



SO we rehearse. It's only an hour but, in many ways, it seemed endless. Everyone has a different method by which they prepare and when divergent opinions on how to do it arrive at the same rehearsal someone always feels like they're not being listened to or having their time wasted. This rehearsal proved to be a saucy melange of all of the above. I've fought to control my temper and impatience with others for years. Even as a little kid, I remember being infuriated by kids who bitched when their mudpies fell apart, even after I'd told them they were using too much mud and not enough sod. As inclined as I may be to tell people, no matter what they are doing, that I know a better way to do it, I'm trying to evolve into the kind of person who will, if not let people do things their own way, at least come around to doing it my way on their own. And so, especially this early in a tour, I'm inclined to pick my battles, watch my tone of voice and walk away from anything that is more than I'm willing to handle diplomatically. This might be a good strategy to employ on a permanent basis but I'm not there yet. I kow that in the end I will be an easier person for other people to deal with and that patience is a virtue, but it the trade of is that rehearsals will take a lot longer when I'm holding my tongue. Which is, in itself, another frustration.




The hotel is big and beautiful, the most lavish so far in my opinion. Once again, I'm reminded of how to what extent I have slummed it where accomadations are concermed. I'm certain I will again, at least if I ever want to travel again, but it's a nice change to not just see, but to live like the other half lives, even for a little while. It's also a nice turn-about from the digs I had last time I was in Berlin. The apartment we stayed in was okay, not ideal, but livable. However, the conditions under which we lived there were almost more than I could bear and I still have moments of anxiety if I think about my run-in with the management by way of the housekeeping staff. Their lack of willingness to actually clean my room and accusations of damages to nearly the point of vandalism have forever colored my memories of that trip and made me vow to charge more whenever I work in Germany. It got so bad that I planned my entrances and egresses at the apartment with care to avoid meeting up with any staff member besides Peggy at the front desk. Every time I went into our room it seemed smaller and colder and every time I left I always hoped that, somehow, we wouldn't have to go back. It was, therefore, a spiritually redeeming experience to be greeted at my taxi this afternoon my a bellman who not only insisted on opening the door to the hotel but also closing the door of the taxi. After checking in and on the way to my room, I passed one of the maids and her cart in the hall. Before I could avert my gaze out of sheer habit, she smiled and chirped "guten tag!" as if she saw me everyday and was delighted to see me yet again. My first thought was that she must have missed the housekeepers union meeting where my picture was circulated amongst them so I could be placed on the "do not clean" list and recognized as the enemy, should I ever return to Berlin. Then I started to think that maybe her friendly demeanor was just a cover and that she was on her way to report that she'd spotted me and to convein a special meeting of the chambermaid gestapo immediately to decide a course of attack. Then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the people at the ArtAppart were vendictive assholes and that this was how I was supposed to be treated. Of course, just because you're paranoid doesn't always mean that people aren't out to get you, but I'm pretty sure that, in this case, they were just a bunch of douchebags who happened to be out to get me. It happens.

It's 6:30 am. I'm sitting on the floor of New Orleans international airport, waiting. Today I fly to Nashville to begin my new, if not limited, engagement with "world famous singing sensation", Tony Clifton.

Who is Tony Clifton? According to him, he's the greatest singer in the world and has been since 1969 when Andy Kaufman discovered him in Vegas and started riding his coat-tails (even though Andy wouldn't become famous or even recognizable until 1974). According to everyone else, Mr. Clifton is the creation of Andy Kaufman; an irritating, offensive, no-talent, fat, tasteless, potty-mouthed lounge singer who berates his audience and his band as a matter of course and entertainment. More than his singing, his rants and penchant for verbal abuse are the point of his performances And I, gentle reader, am his newest backup singer.

How did I get this gig? "Tony Clifton" and, more to the point, the powers-that-be at Comic Relief, wanted to do a benefit for New Orleans/Gulf Coast musicians, singers and dancers that were affected by Hurricane Katrina (You'd think we'd have gotten over it by now, huh? No. As I learned in Berlin, where they are STILL under renovation from the Allied airstikes, rebuilding takes time. That goes for lives, too.). They decided the best "benefit" would be supplying a handful of people with work; real, steady, good paying, high profile work. So, the "Tony Clifton Kiss My Ass Katrina Band" was born. My good friend, Josh Paxton, hooked the job of musical director and off they went, traveling by bus and semi all over America. They've been on the road, more or less, since the end of June. Rooms, transportation, per dium, and even some meals, all covered. Oh, and a salary. Musicians get paid in this little universe. There were a few personnel changes at first, as there always are in a new group of people, but a happy little family began among Tony and his Cliftonites.

This was all going along swimmingly, until last week. My understanding, as much as has been shared with me, is that Tony made some crack in rehearsal using a word beginning with the 14th letter of the alphabet. Now, mind you, this is a man who tells jokes on stage that go like this "How do you get a fag to fuck a woman? "You put shit in her pussy!! He's no boy scout and, to my knowledge, has never pretended to be. He also has no taste, no couth and no regard for social morays or taboos. In any event, he made a comment that didn't go over with his backup singers. Something happened in a performance that week that exacerbated the situation and, before anyone knew what had happened, the girls had taken their bags off the bus and gotten on a train headed home.

Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, I was having a serious professional crisis of faith. The Pfister Sisters most recent record, after 6 months of being ignored by local press, was finally reviewed, only to be the victim of lazy writing and less than passing interest in the material and group as a whole. That record was a great source of pride to me and, as you might guess, I was heartbroken. I went into a tailspin, contemplating everything from vandalizing the reviewer's bicycle to getting a job working on a chain gang where my soulful caterwauling might at least garner me some popular, if not critical, acclaim. I wish I weren't so needy for approval and kind words. I wish it didn't matter to me what people think and say. I wish I weren't so insecure. However, if I weren't, I'd have figured out a way to make a living without getting up on a stage, jumping up and down and shouting "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! As I tell kids who ask me if I think they should go into show business, "If there's something else you can do just as well that will make you just as happy, for the love of God, do that instead." Well, last Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent a lot of time contemplating taking my own advise. I felt like I'd painted myself into a corner and doomed myself to a life of obscurity in the only town on earth I'd ever really wanted to live in. Like I said, it was a crisis of faith, and it was as if every professional disappointment I'd shrugged off had come back in numbers to push me off the stage.

Anyone who reads my facebook page will recall the skepticism I was met with when I said I "was waiting for the big picture to reveal itself." Yeah, I knew how douchey that sounded when I wrote it but I really meant it.. I also meant what I said when I commented back that I thought it might have something to do with Harpo Marx. Decidedly the most talented one in the family, he was also the most magical, almost like a ghost and, because of this, the most easily overlooked. If you get up to go to the bathroom during a Marx brothers movie, you will, 9 times out of 10, miss his "moment". But he always gets one and, for me, it's always the highlight of the film. Through some plot turn, he will find himself alone in the presence of some musical deus ex machina; a piano, a harp, a set of chimes or bells. He will then sit down and proceed to play the living snot out of whatever instrument is at hand. For 4 minutes, you cannot take your eyes off of him or think about anything else. He IS music in every sense of what music can be: Moving, magical, hilarious, touching, confusing, terrifying, redeeming, soothing, glorious music! And, when he's done, he is relegated to his role of silence again and Groucho takes the lead in all his wonderful power and control and genius.. Later, though, it's Harpo you remember. In the midst of my crisis, I took shelter and comfort in the shadow of Harpo Marx. And so I waited in slence without so much as a horn to honk and hoped that, if someone put a harp in front of me, I'd be inspired to play something.

The very next day, Josh called me and offered me this job.

And now I'm on my way to Nashville for rehearsals followed by shows in Pittsburg and Chicago. Then it's back to my normal life for a while. I've got only a scant idea what to expect which is okay by me. Without kids or husband in tow, I don't mind the unknown. I can't remember the last time I went off into the world like this with no family, no Pfisters, no lover, just me. Maybe, like Harpo, I can shine alone.

It's almost 9 am in New Orleans or 3pm in Germany. I'm sitting at my desk in my kitchen, drinking coffee from my favorite cup, waiting for my favorite DJ to start his radio show on WWOZ. My well bathed children are watching PBS and playing with toys that have been out of their reach for so long that they actually seem new. I'll be picking Bowie up from Camp Holley this morning and maybe unpacking, depending how daring I feel. All in all, God appears to be in his heaven and most everything is right with the world.

I haven't much to report, just that we got in last night and none of us know what time it is, really. I've experienced so many different forms of high velocity tranportation, I still occaisionally feel like I'm on a moving train or plane. It reminds me of that post-rollerrink feeling where, long after you've left the disco ball and smell of floor wax, you can still feel the rental skates under your feet. Between the sleeper train from Berlin to Zurich, the 10 1/2 hour flight from Zurich to Miami, the 5 hour layover and the 2 hour flight to New Orleans, we were in transit for, roughly, 37 hours. Remind me to not use the Marquis DeSades travel agency next time...

I'll write more when I've gotten my feet back under me. In the meantime, I hope that any of my NOLA friends who read this will give me a call cause I'm looking forward to getting some of my life back and catching up with everyone. For now, though, I'm going to enjoy Tom Morgan's jazz roots show, finish my cup of Joe and see if I can remember how to drive a car.

 

 

 

 

I'm posting this to see if I can kick start the myspace messaging robot to start sending out blog notifications for me. The last one went up yesterday and still has yet to register on the subscription radar. So read on MacDuffs.

 

This is a purely informational blog to let the world, or at least my 12 faithful readers, know that I am going to be in New Jersey for a week starting today. For you New Orleanians, that means I will not be at my regular gigs (Marigny Brasserie, Spotted Cat) nor will I be at the gig at Snug Harbor tomorrow, a regrettable scheduling glitch that was not the fault of the Pfister Sisters or me. NOT to lay blame, and that's all I'm going to say about that, but when you register your complaints about there being a sub on the gig, don't blame us girls. There.

For you New Jersey-ans, that means I'll be close to you. Close enough for carousing if you choose. Granted there's no live music to speak of anymore and everytime I go home another of my old haunts has been converted into a Hooters or something equally reprehensible like a parking lot or an Irish Pub, but still, I'll be around. We can go to the drive-in and drink beer or go apple picking and drink cider or go somewhere and just drink. Yeah, I know it sounds like I've already got an agenda but I remember what New Jersey was like. When in Rome... So call me and we'll hang out and do whatever it was we used to do. Well, maybe not everything we used to do. Smoking lots of pot and screwing in the woods is not really my thing anymore. At least it's a little further down my "to do" list. A mark of my age I guess. Sunrise, Sunset....

And for those of you who live neither in NOLA or NJ I guess this means nothing unless it somehow matters to you where I am. Some people care that Amy Winehouse has gone to rehab or that Angelina Jolie is visiting Cambodia even they they don't know these people in question. Now, I'll grant you, I'm not plugged into the collective world-wide conciousness like Angelina and Winehouse but, upon a moment's reflection, I see that my trip is like a combination of both of theirs. In fact, I think the Garden State needs a new slogan for their lisense plates; "New Jersey: Somewhere between Rehab and Cambodia." You laugh, but at one time Born to Run was in line to become the New Jersey state song. It's a long shot for sure, but I'll be paying a visit to the chamber of commerce. Bank on that.

I glanced at my friend ticker on my page today and, wonder of wonders, I have 3,333 at most recent count. I hesitate to approve any more requests because this is such a groovy number. I only have 2 unapproved requests floating right now so, unless they come to their senses and approve me, I'm gonna keep my threes for a few days.

In the long time past since my last entry, I've been approached on several occasions by different people, some real life friends, some myspace friends, all of whom have told me how much they enjoy this blog. More than one said, "you know, so-and-so told me that I should check out your page and read it so I did and they were right because it's so " whatever people think this blog is; clever, silly, touching, snarky, what have you. People have even been quoting particular passages, which is particularly weird, especially as the mother of a three year old who, I swear to god, doesn't hear a word I say, regardless of how many times I repeat myself. I guess it's the authority of the written word that commands attention and demands validation of the viewpoints expressed there-in. Either that or everyone who reads these things gets really stoned before hand and to that end thinks I'm some sort of fucking genius, because people, in general, seem pretty impressed with this little diary of mine. Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure that in real life, the majority of people don't care one way or the other what I have to say. Writing a blog has the comfort of relative annonimity, kind of like singing in the shower; it's something you do just for you and if anyone else cares to listen it's their fault if they don't like it because, well, you're in the shower. It is then a much greater compliment to receive praise for the work accomplished there in because praise wasn't the point, but rather expression and honesty and being true to your thoughts or art or whatever. It's validating and encouraging and a real ego stroke and gives one hope of things and thoughts and words to come...

So, of course, I haven't written a thing in 5 months.

 

A lot has happened, that's for sure, most of it too exhausting to allow energy to write about it. Also, recently I've had my hands, figuratively and literally, too full to write more than one or two emails. But now that I have people telling me they're actually "fans" (their word not mine) I feel obligated to tell you why I haven't written. Since the pressure to write something witty and insightful is really on, I feel confident that this particular installment can do nothing but disappoint. So don't think of this as a blog, more as a list of excuses for the conspicuous lack there of. This is my life, or at least some of the more disruptive and/or entertaining bits of it, and some of the reasons why you've heard so little from me lately.

-Matt Perrine and Friends: a solo record-

My husband, the lovely and talented Matt Perrine, recently released a solo cd, that is to say a record of his creation and artistic thrust.( I learned to explain this distinction early on the production process as the phrase "solo tuba record" tends to elicit the same reaction out of everyone who hears it, a confused "really?" accompanied by a look like someone is holding a fresh turd under their nose. )  I was inlisted to do the graphic design and layout for the project. This inlistment occured, apparently, during a conversation of which I have no recollection because, when Matt came to me during the first week of January asking how it was going and would I be ready by the end of the month I responded with the same head-cocked raised-brow look my dog gives me when I ask him to perform long division. Needless to say, I began scrambling like mad trying to assemble all our artwork and figure out format, which is basically fancy nomanclature I use to disguise the fact that, just because I picked out a nice color for our living room walls didn't make me qualified to produce a professional product of the caliber that was most certainly expected of me. Some people work in clay or watercolors, my real artisit medium is bullshit and I'd somehow painted myself into a corner this time.  Through some miracle, I broke the learning curve on my photoshop-ish software, assembled all the names for the "thank you's", concocted a bunch of sincerity for the liner notes and sent it on its way. I'm happy to say it looks really awesome if I do say so myself and it's gotten some really great reviews, of course, they tend to be mostly about the music, but what can you do. If you'd like to visit Matt visit Matt or buy the cd I encourage you to do so and I promise you won't be sorry.  Who knows, your name might be in the Thank You section and how else would you know? Besides, I've got a solo record to do so you need to buy Matt's so I have money for my budget. Seriously, though, you can put your "turd-face" away; it's a really kick ass cd!

 

-Glue Your Courage to the Sticking Place-

 One morning in spring, I awoke with an unusual bounce in my step and determination to get things done. I made breakfast for Ben, took a shower, got dressed, put in a load of laundry, let the dog out and cleaned the kitchen floor. I was very pregnant, due any day, and was glad to finally be feeling the "nesting instinct". It meant not only that I'd be having the baby in the next week or so, but also that I wouldn't feel crunchy bumpy things on the soles of my feet everytime I walked to the fridge which was almost as often as my trips to the john. Good news all around. I drove Ben to pre-school and returned, intent on doing a hundred little projects I'd been putting off before my O.B. appointment later that morning. Matt was still asleep and, with no one to bother me, I set in to my first task.

In hindsight, it hardly matters what my little project was, what matters was that it involved crazy glue. I found a previously opened tube in the junk drawer and opened it carfefully, not knowing how close to the tip the glue had been pushed. "Thank goodness," I thought, "it didn't stick my fingers together". I put the tip to the object in need of gluing and squeezed gently. Nothing. I let go and scraped the tip with my fingernail and squeezed again. Nada. I turned the tip to face me  keeping it (what seemed to be) a safe distance of about 3 feet and squeezed gently once more to see if the tip was blocked with dried glue. In the single moment it took me to think "should I get a straight pin to clean it out?", the tube sprang forth with a mighty spurt of super glue that shot, I'm not kidding here, DIRECTLY into my open left eye. The eye figured this out a nanosecond too late and shut just in time to close the glue inside the lids instead of keeping it out. My left hand, also fraction of a second late, sprang to the ineffective rescue of my eye, just in time to slap against the fresh glue that had been squeezed to the surface of the closing eyelids. The right hand sets the tube of crazy glue down carefully and then races to the aid of the involved body parts, unsuccessfully trying to pull the left hand free. I have now, in the blink of an eye so to speak, have glued my left eye shut, glued my left hand to my face and my right hand to my left hand. It occurs to me now that perhaps I've done enough damage and could use some help. I decide to wake up Matt. With no free hands to shake him, I have to stand at the foot of the bed repeating his name in the calmest tone of voice I can muster so as not to increase my sense of danger. He finally wakes.

"Matt, you have to take me to the hospital. Now."

He says nothing, but gets up and nervously looks for something to put on. It's only when he walks past me and actually looks up that he stops and says "wait, what the hell is tha matter with you" (remember what I look like at this point). It's only now that I realize he thinks I'm in labor and knows nothing of what's happened. I also realize, as I'm telling him what happened, that this chain of events makes me look like the worlds biggest spazz and hope I can laugh about this one day, assuming I don't go blind or go into labor and deliver my baby with one eye glued shut.

It's not important how I got myself unstuck, only that I did it without going into labor or losing all my eyelashes, though I've got a terrific bald-spot on my lower lid, a great conversation starter. Also, I gained a real working knowledge of the ways of crazy glue and when, just two days later, my son came home from a bikeride gushing blood out of a gash in his head, I knew just what to do. They've been using dermabond (read, crazy glue) to close superficial wounds since the Korean War and if it's good enough for Hawk Eye, it's good enough for me. Besides, I'll do just about anything to stay out of the emergency room with a screaming bleeding 3 year old.

-Push It Real Good -

I had a baby 7 weeks ago which is an exremely simply yet overwhelmingly complex endeavor from conception to delivery. On the one hand, it starts as cell division on a very basic level leading up to expelling the baby through a passage that was designed specifically for this purpose. On the other hand, it involves genetic information of exponentially infinite combination possibilites, leading up to passing an object through an orafice which, when not in use,  is roughly 1/2000th the size of the object. Whenever people, usually men, make the mistake of trying to equate childbirth  to something they consider painful like getting kicked in the pills or something difficult like moving a piano or suggest that childbirth is nothing but a beautiful joyous time of thanksgivng and reflection on the cycle of life, I have worked out a little metaphor that seems to shut them up. Carol Burnette said childbirth was like pulling your bottom lip up over the back of your head. She also said it was like trying to shit a watermelon. Both are pretty accurate. I say it's like trying to blow an eight pound pot roast out your nostril. It seems like something so large should be able to find another way out and yet...

I won't bore you with the gory details. Suffice it to say he did come out. His name is Henry and he was born on April 9th at 5:52 am at 7 lbs 11oz. He's quite adorable and he makes faces like Don Knotts which cracks me up so much I almost can't stand it. Ben loves his baby brother and has now taken to saying things like "I need to snuggle with my brother" and "Henry needs to get big so we can eat ice cream". It's what I always wanted for him but never thought could realistically hope for. I also never ralized how much I'd enjoy having a second child. With one kid, everything scared the daylights out of me because I didn't know anything. Is he too hot? Am I holding him too much? Not enough? Can he choke on that? Will he stop breathing in his sleep for no reason? On and on it goes. Slow Down! Don't eat that! Sharp! Hot! Voltage! Don't touch! Stop! No! Get down! Let go! Come back! What are you doing?! Such was my mania. The moment I had a second baby, however, something in me clicked. I still ask Ben what he's doing but now, unless the answer involves the words "kerosene", "rooftop" or "cross-bow", I don't get too worked up anymore.

Of course I don't sleep and breastfeeding all the time is perhaps the most exhausting activity on earth besides soccer. Who cares? I've given up wondering when I'll get a good nights sleep or be able to cook a nice involved grown up meal because the answer to both is never, at least for now. My brain has turned to goo and I have no short term memory to speak of. It's like living in a P.O.W. camp run by very short people with shrill voices and, because they're my children, I've had Stockholm Syndrome from the very beginning. If they wanted me to divulge government secrets in exchange for 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep I'd be spilling my guts like a 7 week old baby for the privelige. But I'm oddly happy about all of it. I've got two beautiful, healthy children, a husband who's happy and successful in his field and enjoying the success of his latest project, and I'm told that breatfeeding burns more calories than a spinning class, so I'm optimistic about life in general. It makes not working so much seem like an okay thing for the moment, though I do miss singing, I know I can go back to it. It will be there waiting for me in relatively the same form the moment I am ready for it. Babies aren't small for long and there's a long life ahead where neither of them will need me as they do now. The grown up things I miss like late dinners out, music at a club, spontanious sex, long showers and going to the movies to see people curse, get shot and screw, all these things are available to me forever. A child that cares what I think of the picture he drew or has chosen today to smile or laugh or speak for the first time will only be mine for a little tiny while. One day they'll be glad to see me walk out the door. That day is not today. Lucky me.

 

So, there you have it, my life in a nut shell, where I suspect it belongs for the moment. It's up to you to decide whether this is a blog or a letter from home excusing me from the writing of same. As always, I promise to be better about writing though, as I review and proofread, I realize that this little tome is the result of about 19 hours of on and off writing, yeilding about 7 minutes of readable material. Part of me can see this only as a disappointment, not only to me as the writer who'd like to be focused enough to make that kind of time count where quantity is concerned, but also to you, gentle reader, who has waited so very long for so very, very little. However, there's another part of me that says, up yours, I'm in the shower! 

I found myself thinking about Jesus this morning. I was thinking, however ironically or not, that he's the only Capricorn who's birthday doesn't get at least a little underplayed or disrupted because of Christmas and he's not even alive to enjoy the distinction. Maybe there's a lesson in that, however oblique. For as long as I can remember, my birthday always got fouled or forgotten in the holiday hoo-ha. I'll grant you, 11 days after Christmas is a lousy time for anything including being born. Everyone is broke and bloated and tired and in no mood for, well, anything at all. When I was a kid people, distant relatives mostly, would try to pull the old one-two christmas-birthday punch, parlaying their Christmas gift into a combination Birthday present. Regardless of how old I was, they always did their shpeal as if I was a slightly deaf 4 year old, and it went something like this; "Merry Christmas!....Oh! and it's almost your BIRTHDAY isn't it?!?!  Well HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOO!!!!" Enthusiasm and conversational use of exclamation points does not a birthday present make. You bastards with birthdays from February thru November know what I'm talking about, eh?

It's easy to get drawn into the self-pitying birthday quagmire anyway, what with the getting older, the inevitable self-evaluation, fear of ones own mortality, etc. Nevermind if you can find a way to bring yourself into league with Jesus, the one guy who perhaps had a right to feel sorry for himself. ("let's see, on the plus side, I've got the only-son-of-god, water-into-wine, leper-healing, sight-restoring, water-walking, loaves-and-fishes-type divine superpower thing going for me. That's cool. On the down side, I'm totally fucked and there's no way out of it.") Well, Jesus died when he was 33 years old which is, admittedly, quite unfair. For all his heavenly party tricks, he was still betrayed and tortured and killed in a manner most unbefitting someone so cool. Unless there's some horrible end in store for me in the next 12 months, I don't feel too sacreligious in saying that I'll be having a better year at 33 than Jesus did.

Today, gentle reader, is my birthday and, while it used to be my style to get rip-roaring drunk on this day, I won't be doing that this year, cheifly because I'm pregnant. I don't know if I really announced that before now. If you haven't seen me in a while you wouldn't know this, though if you have seen me and didn't say anything, fear not. It IS a baby. I didn't just get really fat really fast. So yeah, I'm due in April and that's a really good thing, a blessing, some might call it a sort of miracle. It's not transubstantiation or anything, but it beats the hell out of pulling a quarter out of someones ear. So I've got that going for me. I also used to get melancholy on my birthday either out of necessity or sheer habit. That whole Jesus thing notwithstanding, a birthday can be a depressing thing, especially when you live far away from most of the people who know you well enough to know it's your birthday (I'd like to send big shouts out to Melissa who was the first to wish me a happy- God bless you. I was starting to slip yesterday). It's easy for anyone to get a little mopey, even more-so when they can't tie on 11 or 12 in honor of getting one year closer to death.

But guess what? I'm trying something new this year. I'm going to try being grateful. I understand gratitude is a great healer and, if nothing else, it makes you feel like a bigger person when things don't go your way. And birthdays are famous for undershot expectations and grand disappointments, especially when you dream bigger than most people can indulge, no matter how much they may love you. I've got a lot to be glad about. My life is pretty fucking charmed, overall, and between the getting fetal kung-fu kidneys kicks and drinking coffee from my favorite cup, I'm having a better morning than most people I know.  I've given up on a big party or a pony or a trip to Bermuda or Tom Jones singing happy birthday on my doorstep. They'd all be nice but, even without them, I'm still in for a better year than Jesus. Of course, if someone wanted to give me a foot rub for an hour or so, that'd be fine.

And a pony.