Happy Friday, everybody.

If you  are still sort of in lockdown mode (as am I), it probably feels like Saturday or Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday…

When I woke up this morning, it did not feel like Friday. It felt like Tuesday, and I felt a little crestfallen that it was already Friday. Where is August racing off to??

And I went down to the kitchen. It was still dark out, because it’s that time of the summer where things have definitely changed. It stays dark out just a little longer now. And the birds don’t start singing until about 6am — and there are maybe 3 of them, now, instead of 3000. So it’s just crickets now, during my entire breakfast.

But I stood at the kitchen sink, where I have a really great window. It’s really wide and tall. A great view. And I stared out at the dark yard and up at the sky, and I thought of that August 2 years ago, when the man was still alive and we were in the absolute thick of falling in love — which included some arguing, too, because I didn’t know how to be loved and so my constant insecurity kind of made him very frustrated.

Anyway, in my head this morning, I was talking to him and I said: Remember that August? When time stood still? And we didn’t even realize the summer was racing away?

And then after the cats were fed, and I was fed, and the many little dishes were washed, and I sat down again at the kitchen table to write in my Inner Being journals — he came through. Just like that. His words were in my head and they came out onto the page. He said hello, and that he loved me and that he did remember that August, and that he hadn’t wanted it to ever be over, but that we have evolved now (meaning both of us) and that nothing ever really ends. That’s what he “said” !

So, that made me super happy, gang. That man changed my life. My whole entire life. (If you’re new to the blog, he came into my life suddenly in July 2018, and died a handful of weeks later, in late September of 2018.) (He changed my life because he loved me, and he was actually the first person ever that I felt really loved me. Except for my grandma, but she loved me in a different way.  She loved me in a “grandma” way, and this man loved me in every other way.)

And once I finally believed that he loved me (after a few really intense shouting matches, that’s for sure) my whole life changed.

Well, anyway. This is a magical house. And my kitchen is a magical place. Oh — my Amazon firestick 4 arrived yesterday, and the AC power cord to actually finally plug the TV into the wall (!!), and the only place I could find to put it for now is in my kitchen.

It seems crazy to have it in the kitchen, but there it sits, all plugged in. And I moved the hardwired speakers for the iPad up to my bedroom, where I keep my iPad at night. So now I have my iPad with great speakers — instead of the Bluetooth speaker that only lasts one hour — crowded onto my night table.

It just feels weird. But here is a photo I took last evening to send to Valerie (she’s the culprit friend who persuaded me to buy the firestick 4 because it was on sale). I’m watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries here:

(oh — and I can get the PBS Passport app on the firestick so I’ll be watching Endeavor on the TV this year instead of on the iPad!! It starts Sunday!!)

This morning, while I was lying in bed (feeling like it was Tuesday), I started thinking about Endeavor and how this would now be Season 7. And I recalled so well when that show first started. It was 3 houses ago. I had something like 3 TVs back then — including a much larger flat screen TV in the bedroom. And I had cable  service, and premium channels, like HBO, Starz,  Showtime, Cinemax, etc. (And on my iPad, I had Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime.)

And down in the family room, I had a really big digital TV that was hooked up with the DVD player, and it had the DVR box, and all that.

And a free-standing bar was in the family room, complete with top shelf liquor and all my bar ware. And wall-to-wall, built-in bookshelves. And art on the walls, and framed photos of friends and family set out on the end tables, etc.

Just like how most regular people live.

And then everything really changed. Not in a good way, but I won’t go back into that. And I got fed up with drinking and with watching television. And little by little, I got rid of everything but the iPad, the DVD player, and Amazon Prime.

So having a TV in my kitchen now does not really sit well with me, but it’s okay. And it has a really good picture.

On a totally different topic. here is the Cave Things item (see yesterday’s post re: Nick Cave’s new merchandise page) I  want most (a silk screen thingie), but I can’t afford it so I’ve started a Kickstarter campaign so that you guys can help me buy it!! (I am totally kidding about that.)

I have to say,

Abstract Absurdity Productions is getting every spare dime out of me right now. Which reminds me, I took that webinar yesterday on equity financing versus debt financing for film funding, etc., and my brain did indeed explode by the end of the class. It was presented by 3 entertainment lawyers in LA, and it was an intense amount of information in just under 2 hours. Most of the basic liability information I had already gotten from my accountant, but there was still other stuff that just — well, it’s a lot to cram into this wee bonny brain of mine.

It’s not all that different from when I was running multi-media production companies 20 years ago, but this is on a much larger scale.

Anyway. Every spare fucking penny is allocated right now.

Hey. Look at this! I found this on an external hard drive while trying to find some Word files for the new Muse Revisited Volume 4 collection. It’s the house we had in Cleveland from 1966 until July 1971 — just weeks before my 11th birthday.

My bedroom was the window at the top left, behind that tree.  It was a truly wonderful house. It really was.  It had a big back porch off the kitchen, that had a big wooden swing hanging from the ceiling of the porch. And up above it, running most of the length of the back of the house, was a sun porch. There were 2 fireplaces in the house. And a den that had built-in bookcases on 3 of the 4 walls and a  built-in desk. And the whole house had plenty of windows. We didn’t have central AC yet, but it was a really wonderful, breezy house.

Unfortunately, this is the house where my adoptive mother really started to unravel, so I have a lot of intense & terrifying memories from this house, as well. I also had my first orgasm here (I was 7), and I got my first period in this house — and I was so angry, because I was only 10 (almost 11) when that happened.  And so none of my girlfriends were anywhere close to getting their periods yet. I hated that.

I was not a big fan of menstruation, in general, gang.  And wasn’t sad to see it go at age 46. Although I was devastated to know for sure that I was never going to have children, other than that, I didn’t mind menopause coming so early.

Anyway. Beyond that lovely stuff — I loved that house and I loved my bedroom and I loved my little desk and I loved my big bed and I loved my record player and all my records and I loved the late 1960s. (That’s the house we lived in that summer they walked on the moon. And that’s the house we lived in when my dad was still kind of “around” and not a millionaire yet  and was still really nice and we watched “Star Trek” together on the TV in the living room and I remember that it scared me! I watch that old TV show now and find it so funny that it used to scare me. Anyway. I got my first pair of fishnet tights there, and my first mini skirts. My first maxi-skirts.  I lived there when I first learned French and Hebrew and learned how to ice skate and roller skate, and when I took dancing lessons and had tap shoes and ballet slippers. And I lived there when I learned how to read music and to play violin, piano, and guitar. How to ride a bike. I lived there when I fell in love with the Beatles, and with David Cassidy, and the Monkees TV show. And I lived there of course when MLK and RFK were assassinated, and George Wallace was gunned down, and when Johnny Cash had his TV show and the Everly Brothers, and the Smothers Brothers, and the Beach Boys all had TV shows. And I lived there when “Hair” was a huge scandalous hit on Broadway. And I lived there when “Laugh-In” was a huge scandalous hit on TV. And I lived there when the Beatles broke up. And when our dog got epilepsy and had to be put to sleep and I was heartbroken. And I lived there when “In the Heat of the Night” was a huge hit movie and we saw it at my dad’s drive-in theater and there was a naked woman in the movie and my little jaw fell open!!  And I lived there when I started to fall in love with girls, and my little friends told me that it was a really weird thing to do. And when I lived there, every night after dinner, on the news Walter Cronkite would tell us how many US soldiers had been killed in Vietnam that day.  It was quite a house. When my parents bought it, it cost something like $35K. The last time it sold, a few years ago, it went for something like $550K. Inflation is really just insane. Anyway. There was a lot to love about my childhood.)

All righty. I’m gonna get going here. It is Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town day so I am very excited to see what new stuff hits the page for the new novel.

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy what’s left of your Friday, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with another song from Lou Bega’s A Little Bit of Mambo album (1999). This time, it’s “Can I Tico Tico You” (“Tico” is a general term of endearment used by people who live in Costa Rica.) Enjoy, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Can I Tico Tico You”

Baby you’re my freak once in a week
we gettin’ kind of deep in my ’86 jeep
I don’t play no tricks you know the bomb ticks
the only style I play is my self-made hits
and it kicks like that yo’ it really does
was it number one hell yo’ it really was
I got the swing the king is back in the ring
ladies throw their bras when I start to sing

[Chorus:]
Can I rock it can I knock it
can I lick it can I kick it can I top it
you make me hazy you make me crazy
and baby I don’t know what I can do

We can start somethin’ fantastic that you never knew
forget you live in plastic when I keep my eyes on you
I can’t cool down because it’s gettin’ too hot
so please baby please baby never let us stop
and it kicks like that yo’ it really does
was it number one hell yo’ it really was
I got the swing the king is back in the ring
ladies throw their bras when I start to sing

[Chorus]

© 1999 Lou Bega