The rehearsal went great again today! Really productive!!
Unfortunately, the heat was god-awful today. Valerie from Brooklyn drove into Manhattan and met me at the hotel for an early dinner, but she was really done in by the extreme heat. (Almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit.)
So we had a nice dinner but we did not hang out at all after dinner. I was worried about her getting home as soon as she could. I didn’t want her to faint behind the wheel.
But at least I got to see her for about 2 hours. And the day, overall, was another really good one.
Tomorrow, the heat won’t be nearly as bad so I’m hoping to maybe get to take a little walk around the neighborhood after tomorrow’s rehearsal. We shall see!!!
Meanwhile… the view from my hotel room window just now.
I hope everyone had a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!!!
The rehearsal was GREAT! We got so much done. Most of it was on the music side of things— our first time in the same room with Jo Lynne, the Music Director.
Then dinner up in the rooftop restaurant with Wayne!!
And now I am exhausted, gang, and it isn’t even 8PM 😂!! I’m not used to the big city anymore!!
Another guest here at the hotel recommended The Smith, across the street on Broadway, for breakfast since there is no breakfast served here at the hotel.
So I went to The Smith and the food was incredible, gang! (I’m 2 for 2 — incredible dinner last night, incredible breakfast today!)
I was going through the side pocket of my flight bag just now and I found an old receipt in there!
7 years ago! From Los Angeles. I guess I bought some Altoid mints and a bottle of water at LAX 😆
I’m heading out for breakfast now.
I have to say, gang, that Sandra is not going to be happy with this hotel. Remember the No-frills hotel I stayed in over on W.48th Street back in November? This hotel is way more expensive but has even LESS frills. Nice rooms, but absolutely zero amenities. Not even a little coffee maker. And even though they have an expensive rooftop bar/restaurant, they have no room service.
Okay. Well. I slept TEN hours last night!! Straight through. It felt incredible to just sleep so deeply. In air-conditioning. Wow. I miss the cats, of course, but it’s been 3 months since I had no little kittens waking me all night.
All righty. I will probably post again later. Today is our first day of rehearsals, then dinner with Wayne!
Plus!! I finally got a room with a view!!🥰 (Lincoln Center is out there!)
Nick Cave and Colin Greenwood played their second sold out show in Paris earlier and it looks like it was even more spectacular than the previous! Not sure that’s possible! I think Paris even outdid Hamburg!!
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Well, for me, everything went smoothly today!! Got to the airport in plenty of time. Landed at LaGuardia on time. Both of my Uber drivers were great. And I just had dinner (a table for one) across the street at Cafe Fiorello. The food was fantastic.
You know, gang. As reluctant as I am to even think it, because I really do care about my clients so much, it is such a relief to not have to be taking care of anyone for the next 6 days.
Okay. Since Sandra won’t be getting to the hotel until tomorrow morning, I’m just going to chill in my room now and maybe even watch TV!!!😮
Hope your Sunday has been swell, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting.
Jeepers McCreepers, gang. The kittens just won’t quit this morning.
Can you say:
“Jesus fucking Christ, do NOT tell me you just knocked over my ENTIRE cup of Coffeeee!!!!”
“Jesus fucking Christ, will you STOP chewing on my phone charging cord??!!” (times 4)
“Jesus fucking Christ, who the fuck just THREW UP??!!”
That’s a little bit of what it’s been like around here this morning — in my room. The rest of the housecats are as quiet as little mice.
I had so much extra time this morning and I was planning on really just relaxing in bed with my cup of coffee before heading out for my shift.
But I had to switch over to Plan B and I have no real clue what Plan B is…
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Anyway.
Yesterday turned out to be reasonably okay, regarding having to work a double on the 4th of July.
My 94-year-old Japanese man and I will go get sushi/sashimi today, because Peony Bistro was indeed closed for the holiday yesterday. But we had a nice time just hanging out in his air- conditioned living room, chatting about Hong Kong, Tokyo, NYC — and all his many memories from the past.
And, as always, my shift with the woman who has returned from Florida flew by in a nano second. I left there just as fireworks were getting ready to start all over the place. (And I even got to see some fireworks as I was pulling up into Crazeysburg — one of my neighbors was putting on a really impressive show in his backyard.)
So, I’m just trying to face forward, you know? And hope that things come together soon and I can stop having to work on holidays, and I can start just sitting at my desk again and writing everyday.
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Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand File yesterday about his songwriting process. It was very interesting — and very different from any songwriting process I ever experienced. He said, in part:
“The hard part for me, the most agonising and uncertain part, the part that keeps me up at night and makes me a complete pain in the arse through the day, is in the initial creation. That is, the unpredictable arrival of those first two lines….”
Tonight and tomorrow night in Paris!! TWO sold out shows, neither of which can you attend if you don’t already have your precious ticket!! Alas…
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Okay. I don’t have much to post about today. I’m not only focused on trying to get my suitcase packed as minimally as possible, I am also a little out of sorts mentally, since my prized morning Cup o’ Joe ended up all over my night table AND all over 3 brand new books!!!
But here’s what I’m grateful for– the coffee didn’t spill all over me in the bed, and the coffee mug didn’t break… because I only have about 17 million other coffee mugs to choose from…
I’m going to be out of here early tomorrow morning, in that Uber heading to the airport (an hour from here), but I will probably post something from my hotel tomorrow evening.
Enjoy your Saturday, wherever you are in the world.
Thanks for visiting.
I love you guys. See ya!
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Not me this morning… but it’s something to aim for.
A song I have LOVED since the very first moment I heard it on my AM radio.
It’s been an interesting time since I was last here on the blog!
Here are a couple of things:
I came to the sudden decision that I was going to give ALL the cats (except my own and Little Blackie, and Billie Jo, who’s missing her 2 back feet) to the Animal Shelter for adoption. I wanted my life back.
After about a day of thinking this, I decided I’m only taking them to the Shelter to get low-cost spay/neutering. That there’s no way most of these cats will ever get adopted because they are too old now (people tend to want to adopt kittens) and the thought of them living in cages indefinitely broke my heart. (Out here in the Hinterlands there are TONS of cats. In fact, I know of 2 other women here in the village that also have 16 cats. I find this astounding. And they both seem completely okay with having so many cats.)
Anyway. The cats consider this their home — especially the fosters, who have been here well over a year — closer to two. They are so happy to no longer be living in a car. They are really happy, loving cats.
So I will figure out how to have a life (not the old one I used to have) but a life, nevertheless!
You know, when I used to take care of that 99-year-old blind lady — she had 3 very large Labrador Retrievers and 2 cats. Her doctor told her that taking care of all of those pets was keeping her mentally sharp and emotionally involved.
So maybe that’s why all these many cats found their ways to me — to help me, well, not “stay young” but mentally engaged for years to come! We shall see! (I mean, this is aside from the fact that I ADORE all of them.)
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Okay. The other cool thing!
I finally got a chance to chat on the phone with my birth mom. It had been a while since we actually spoke on the phone (Christmas) — just texts and greeting cars, etc.
She said she was just on her way out to Walgreens to buy me a birthday card. So I said–
ME: “Do you know how old I’m gonna be???”
SHE: “No… not really…”
ME: “65!!! I started Medicare on July 1st.”
Dead silence.
Then —
SHE: “Shit. I can’t believe it. Are you serious? You’re 65?”
So it was kind of nice to share that feeling of utter disbelief with my own mother. You know, the fact that BOTH of us are now really old…
Me and Cherie in a bar in Jackson, Ohio, 40 years ago…
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Tomorrow!!
Nick Cave and Colin Greenwood! The tour resumes in Paris. 2 sold out shows, back-to-back.
There are still tickets available for an upcoming show in Italy on July 16th. You can buy tickets here.
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Also!
The other day, I was trying to find the password for my WIFI router. I searched through all my desk drawers trying to find it, but what I found instead were about 10 years of my life that I had sort of forgotten about.
Notes from my dad. Tons of Christmas and birthday cards from family, friends, a few from people whose names I no longer even recognize.
Many pages of notes from when I studied basic Greek; and from when I studied Galilean Aramaic (similar to Hebrew — it’s the language Jesus of Nazareth spoke); and TONS of notes from various French lessons. Yes. The French never stops. But what is curious is that I used to know LOTS more conversational French than I remember now, even though I still study a little bit of French every morning… It’s insane.
It was also kind of heartbreaking, going through these desk drawers — this feeling that I’m losing track of most of what has been my life.
But then, yesterday, I was with my favorite client who is back from Florida and she said something remarkably similar (at age 88), about how we can’t go back and re-live our lives, and we’ve already lived most of what we intended to experience, and we can’t know what the remaining future is bringing.
It really sums out how I feel these days. She and I had a good talk about all that and I felt a little better about things, in general.
I’m working a double today — yes, 2 shifts on a National Holiday. (heavy, heavy sigh.) And tonight I will be with her again. It’s the last time she’s on my schedule for the rest of the summer!!
I’m not going to tell her that, because I don’t want to disappoint her. But if they ask me to take any last minute shifts with her this summer, I certainly will. We’ll just see how it plays out, gang.
I can’t stress enough how, being with her, just never feels like work. We talk for hours about the most amazing stuff and the time just flies.
Anyway.
The trip to NYC is looming large! I leave for the airport Sunday morning. AND– as luck would have it, I will be alone in the hotel until Monday.
Aaarrrghh….
Sandra wasn’t able to get a train ticket between Rhinebeck and Manhattan because all the trains were sold out!! Holiday weekend!!
Darn it. So, we’ll see how it goes. I’ll have an afternoon and an evening all to myself in a neighborhood that I used to know very well (just off of Columbus Circle). I will probably get too nostalgic, but that’s just me, I guess. No escaping it.
This is how Columbus Circle looked back in the 1980s:
In the 1980s, I worked for Ralph Ginzburg’s publishing company. The offices were about one block from Columbus Circle. I often spent my lunch hour roaming around the neighborhood. (If you don’t know NYC, this area is also really close to Central Park.)
Ralph Ginzburg was a great man to work for. I really, really liked him.
He was the last US citizen to serve time in a federal prison for publishing/selling pornographic literature. (The actual charge was using the US Mail to ship obscene materials — even erotica was illegal back then.)
Anyway. I have tons of great memories from that neighborhood. I was also doing my singer-songwriting thing in the West Village back then, in the evenings and on the weekends. It was a huge part of my life when I worked for Ralph. So this area I’ll be staying in will be just FULL of so many memories, and I will be all by myself for one day/night.
Needless to say, I will post to the blog from my phone while I’m in NYC.
Me, in NYC, during the time I worked for Ralph, in the mid-1980s — and, btw, he was VERY supportive of my songwriting. He and his wife both thought I was a great songwriter:
And here’s a popular song of mine from that era:
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Okay. I better scoot or I’m gonna be late. I’m seeing my favorite 94-year-old Japanese man today! It’s sushi and sashimi time! Assuming the Peony Bistro is open on the holiday!
If you live State-side, enjoy your 4th of July!!!
Otherwise, have a great Friday, wherever you are in the world.
Marilyn's Room 