Tag Archives: Nick Cave

Have You Noticed that She Goes from the Sublime to the Ridiculous?

July 8, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes — if you must know — I bought more dishes yesterday. A set of four stoneware appetizer plates that look like this:

I know. Don’t look at me like that. I am fully aware that I never, ever, ever entertain anymore, and that I already have something like 25 appetizer plates, most of them porcelain, Limoges. Some that look exactly like this:

And others that have charming depictions of Provence on them. Still others that have just various French farm logos and windmills and cows and ~~cocks~~ roosters and stuff. And, yes, I have some covered in flowers, but none that look exactly like the ones covered in flowers that I bought yesterday! So you can readily see why I needed them.

I’ve already stated plainly — right here on this blog — that it is an addiction, this problem I have with buying dishes. And an addiction is sort of like a disease. So, you know, some compassion would probably be cool right now…

But, honestly, they were reduced for clearance. And I loved them. And I had to have them. And so I bought them. And, no, I can’t imagine a moment in time when I will ever use them at this point, because I live in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of cats, and perhaps, soon, a bunch of AI sex robots that look like Henry (probably around 30 of them) (and, actually, in that case, I will have almost enough appetizer plates!):

Henry es el robot sexual que cambia de pene y dice lo que quieres oír — See some previous post about the insane budget proposal for shooting “Lita’s Got To Go!” and how, for the same amount of money, I could purchase 30 top-of-the-line Henry’s from Realbotix.

Anyway.

Yesterday, I also bought — yes — a treadmill.

(This is where the title of today’s post likely comes from!!)

I am just so tired of it. While I had the virus, I gained 10 pounds. Once the virus was gone, and I could get out of bed for more then 2 minutes a day, I lost 8 of those 10 pounds immediately. However, even though I always eat exactly the very same organic vegetarian non-GMO boring things every single darn day — I put all the weight back on!!

So I started to do the aerobics, which helps, but its nowhere near as effective as seriously moving around every day, which I haven’t really done since the quarantine started here in mid-March. And even though the glucosamine supplements seem to have fixed the problem with my hip joint, I’m still really squeamish about walking too far from home and then maybe having the hip problem start again and have to walk all the way back in all that awful pain.

I love treadmills. And, in fact, in the days when I was always at the country club (I know!! I’m absolutely white!! But, hey, that’s where I met Gus Van Sant Sr and my whole life changed!!). Anyway, I was always on the treadmill at the club. I just love those things. So yesterday, I decided to get one of those really inexpensive ones, that, unlike Henry, has no bells or whistles, and folds up for storage. This way, if I do have any pain in my hip joint, I can just get off the treadmill, sit down at the kitchen table and stream something really delightful on the iPad!!

Which is sort of a way of saying that I am still loving that Belgian crime procedural, Professor T. Jesus, what a fun show. I am almost done with the available episodes. There was still one more season that was made (Season 3), which I’m guessing PBS will add to the stream next summer. (Currently you can stream Seasons 1 &2)

And that reminds me that the new season of Endeavor begins in August!! I had read it wouldn’t air until June of 2021, but this was erroneous information. It will actually air next month and I can’t wait. It is truly one of my very favorite shows.

But, regarding the treadmill — we’ll see how it goes. I was a little leery of buying any more workout equipment because it’s always so hard to get rid of it when you don’t want it anymore. (In the past, I’ve had a rowing machine and a stationary bike.) But I am so fed up with this COVID 19-related metabolism thing. It clearly looks as if it will be 2021 before I will really be able to go anywhere and do anything. And I had to do something. I absolutely cannot stand to put on weight. It makes me insane.

(Which reminds me, the director of Tell My Bones and I are considering putting together some sort of staged reading of the play, but in very short, edited segments and using local professional talent — of which there is actually quite a lot out here; there’s a lot of professional theater in the next town over, where the director has his summer mansion-on-the-hill, and certainly a ton in Columbus. However, we have to wait for the lockdown to be truly over in order to even think about that.)

Then the other thing I did yesterday, was: I deleted TikTok from my phone. I had been hearing that India banned TikTok and, honestly, I had no idea why and I kept meaning to investigate that, but for some reason I thought it was related to the many many many scantily clad young men doing all those amazingly provocative dances.

It turns out, it was more sinister than that. When I saw that Australia was getting ready to ban TikTok, as well, I saw a new piece on the BBC about it and was kind of stunned. China is just really off the charts. (China freely monitors you and tracks your data through the TikTok app.) So, just to make it a non-issue, I deleted the app.

It was a fun app, but honestly, I spend way more than enough time scrolling through Instagram!!! It’s kind of gotten ridiculous during this pandemic — the amount of time I spend on Instagram.

What’s ironic, though, is that scrolling through all those little TikTok videos really helped me pass the time while I recovered from the fucking virus — also a gift from China…. (And I am still so enraged about them forcing those Uyhgur women to have their heads shaved and then trying to sell us their hair!! If anyone ever shaved the hair off of my head, even if I weren’t forced into an internment camp while they were doing it, I would feel so demoralized. )

Oh, crap. Anyway.

Well, I did do some editing on The Guitar Hero Goes Home yesterday, but as I leaped back in to editing Chapter 7, it became apparent that too many weeks had gone by since I had begun the final edit on the novel and that it’s probably a good idea just to go back to page 1 and do a final final edit. I had sort of lost the momentum of the voice – if that makes sense. And since the entire novel is just one man talking, staying on track with that voice is key. So I’m going back to page 1 today.

Sample of the cover art but this is not finished

And while sorting through the mound of papers on the floor next to my desk (underneath the always-growing mound of photos of Nick Cave that I print off of the computer and put on the floor next to my desk), as I was searching through that for the newest edits of The Guitar Hero Goes Home, what to my wondering eyes should appear but — yes — the new pages of Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town!! I had totally forgotten, for a moment, anyway, that I was one-third of the way in to writing a completely new novel.

So. On we go — right, gang??

And on that note, I guess I better scoot!! I hope you are having a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with another old song from my wee bonny teenage girlhood.

I recently began following Stephen Bishop on Instagram, and was, of course, reminded of this amazingly lovely sad poignant song of his from when I was 16. (Talk about a perfect song for a melancholy 16-year-old girlhood!!) If you’re too young to know this song, it is really lovely — all about heartache (with which I have yet again been struggling here). So listen and enjoy — or cry or whatever suits you!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“On And On”

Down in Jamaica, they got lots of pretty women
Steal your money, then they break your heart
Lonesome Sue, she’s in love with old Sam
Take him from the fire into the frying pan

On and on, she just keeps on trying
And she smiles when she feels like crying
On and on, on and on, on and on

Poor old Jimmy sits alone in the moonlight
Saw his woman kiss another man
So he takes a ladder, steals the stars from the sky
Puts on Sinatra and starts to cry

On and on, he just keeps on trying
And he smiles when he feels like crying
On and on, on and on, on and on

When the first time is the last time
It can make you feel so bad
But if you know it, show it
Hold on tight, don’t let her say goodnight

Got the sun on my shoulders and my toes in the sand
Woman’s left me for some other man
Aw, but I don’t care, I’ll just dream and stay tanned
Toss up my heart and see where it lands

On and on, I just keep on trying
And I smile when I feel like dying
On and on, on and on, on and on
On and on, on and on, on and on
On and on, on and on, on and on

Life Not Only Goes On, It Gets Better!!

June 11, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 1 Comment

Well, if you saw last evening’s post, you’ll know by now that we had intense thunderstorms around here, and even a tornado near by. But it blew out all the high heat and humidity that was keeping me from being able to breathe all day yesterday.

PLUS!! My new dust buster arrived yesterday afternoon!! I mentioned it in a previous post this week. I got one of those high-powered ones, to hopefully make it easier to deal with all the cat hair around here (and cat litter that flies everywhere, too).

And it works like a charm!! I love this fucking thing. It keeps its battery power for a long time, and it truly is high-powered. It was kind of astounding to see how much filth it was picking up from deep in the carpeting.

If you’re sort of a cleaning-freak, like I am, you can no doubt relate to how cool I found that high-powered suction thing, and it made me just want to clean and clean and clean!!

So I did!!!

And it doesn’t disturb the cats nearly as much as the vacuum cleaner does, so I hope I won’t have to bring that out as often anymore. We’ll see!

So the combination of an awesome breeze blowing throughout the house at dawn this morning, and coming downstairs to a thoroughly clean house and cool temperatures… there’s just NO WAY this isn’t going to be a great day.

Okay.

Well, the other day, I bought an online course about the theology of Martin Luther and the complicated launch of the Protestant Reformation, beginning in 1517 A.D. I’ve been listening to it a little bit every night before I go to sleep.

I studied the Reformation in Divinity School, of course. And I’ve also done a ton of studying on my own about the various sects that also sprang from that era. Plus, my ancestors were not only alive in Germany at that time, but they were living in that region of Germany that was directly affected by Martin Luther’s tumultuous change of the Church. And they were definitely practicing Protestants, there are surviving records to prove it, so I find it really interesting to think about them and what it was like to live through those times of enormous change. (It wasn’t “just” the Church that changed because of Martin Luther; it was the scope of the Western mind.)

Anyway. The course is fascinating. And no disrespect intended, but, man, Martin Luther was really kind of nuts!!

I’m (sort of) just kidding, gang. But before he settled on his theology of the Gospel, his teachings went to some seriously dark and masochistic and impossible places.

When I was 13, there was a cinematic version of the play, Luther (written by John Osborne), that I saw in the movie theater, so I was at least aware that Martin Luther was extreme. But now that I’m way, way, WAY older, and a minister and all that, I understand now just how extreme that man was. Wow.

I find that kind of stuff so interesting, gang. I really do. Even though it’s safe to say that I don’t adhere to any of those Lutheran ideas or beliefs, I’m still fascinated by the religious arc of the Western mind over the centuries. I just never get tired of learning about all of that.

So, as it so often turns out, the medicine they had prescribed my dad when he got sick last week, only ended up making him sicker. So the doctor told him to stop taking the medicine yesterday, and he’s at the doctor’s office right now, this morning. So, here’s hoping he’s going to finally be back to normal here soon.

He’s the kind of person who will only listen to a doctor, you know? We both knew the medicine itself was making him really sick, and I really wanted to tell him to stop taking it, but I knew he would just ignore me because I’m not a doctor! So I was relieved when he finally called the doctor and the doctor told him to stop taking it!

I find it so amazing, honestly, how some people treat doctors as if they’re actual gods and as if medicine, simply because it’s prescribed by a doctor, holds some special inalienable power. Meaning, that their brains are just so locked into that kind of reverent thinking, they can’t even bring themselves to question it.

I’m just so not like that and never have been. I guess because I have to question and ponder everything. (Which, of course, can get really annoying to the people around me.) But if I’m going to be forced to consider another human being to be “God,” I’d rather just give in and call Nick Cave “God,” as so many Europeans are wont to do!!

(I am, yet again, sort of just kidding…)

Another cool thing that happened — now that I currently have no main barn door on my barn, that storm last evening blew through the barn and blew open one of the side doors of the barn, and also the shuttered window on the other side of it. There’s no glass in the window — just wooden, hand-made, 110-year-old shutters!

I can see that side of the barn from my kitchen window. And this morning, when I went out there to the barn to close the shutters, I saw that there are some old eye-hook type things at either side of the shutters, so I can keep them open if I want to.

And do you know what that means??!!

Yes!! It means I can get yet another window box, plant flowers in it, put it in that barn window all summer long and see the flowers from my kitchen window!!

I’m so excited. (I’ll also be able to see Kevin’s vintage 1965 VW camper van through the open barn window all summer long, not quite as exciting, but still…)

The one draw back is that it’s a long trek from the kitchen, where I’d have to get the water every day to water the flowers. I’m not sure how excited I’ll be about doing that, every single day, all summer long. I already have to make 7 trips a day, in and out of the kitchen, to water all the flowers on both of my porches…

Anyway. We’ll see. I just felt really excited when I realized it today.

I read on Deadline Hollywood yesterday that Johnny Depp’s documentary of Shane MacGowan, Crock of Gold, has been picked up by Magnolia Pictures in North America. Which means we’ll probably get to actually see it!!

I love Shane MacGowan. And I loved The Pogues, back when he was the driving force of the band. And it’s one of those things where I am continually astounded to discover that most Americans (especially if you’re not Irish-American) have never heard of Shane MaGowan or The Pogues. In NYC, especially back in the 1980s — back then, at least, NYC was an intensely Irish town — The Pogues were really popular.

I had all of their albums and EPs, up until Shane MaGowan essentially drank his way out of the band. At this point, though, after decades of having to jettison more albums with every move I’ve had to make, I’ve only kept Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God. But they are two incredible albums, gang. I’m so excited to see that documentary.

Okay. I’m going to get started here now. I hope that Thursday is just as beautiful where you are today, gang!! Thanks for visiting. I’ll leave you once again with two listening options today:

The song that, when Nick Cave sang it solo on his In Conversations tour, caused people all over the world to call Nick Cave “God.” The song is, in fact, titled “God is in the House,” from the truly timeless and amazing Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album, No More Shall We Part (2001).

And then one of my favorite Shane MacGowan songs, which couldn’t be more different than the Nick Cave song: “Sally MacLennane,” from The Pogues album, Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash (1985). Compare and contrast!! Listen and enjoy, gang!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“God Is In The House”

We’ve laid the cables and the wires
We’ve split the wood and stoked
the fires
We’ve lit our town so there is no
Place for crime to hide
Our little church is painted white
And in the safety of the night
We all go quiet as a mouse
For the word is out
God is in the house
God is in the house
God is in the house
No cause for worry now
God is in the house

Moral sneaks in the White House
Computer geeks in the school house
Drug freaks in the crack house
We don’t have that stuff here
We have a tiny little Force
But we need them of course
For the kittens in the trees
And at night we are on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
For God is in the house
God is in the house
God is in the house
And no one’s left in doubt
God is in the house

Homos roaming the streets in packs
Queer bashers with tyre-jacks
Lesbian counter-attacks
That stuff is for the big cities
Our town is very pretty
We have a pretty little square
We have a woman for a mayor
Our policy is firm but fair
Now that God is in the house
God is in the house
God is in the house
Any day now He’ll come out
God is in the house

Well-meaning little therapists
Goose-stepping twelve-stepping Tea-totalitarianists
The tipsy, the reeling and the drop down pissed
We got no time for that stuff here
Zero crime and no fear
We’ve bred all our kittens white
So you can see them in the night
And at night we’re on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
Since the word got out
From the North down to the South
For no-one’s left in doubt
There’s no fear about
If we all hold hands and very quietly shout
Hallelujah
God is in the house
God is in the house
Oh I wish He would come out
God is in the house

© – 2001 Nick Cave

“Sally MacLennane”

Well Jimmy played harmonica in the pub where I was born
He played it from the night time to the peaceful early morn
He soothed the souls of psychos and the men who had the horn
And they all looked very happy in the morning

Now Jimmy didn’t like his place in this world of ours
Where the elephant man broke strong men’s necks
When he’d had too many Powers
So sad to see the grieving of the people that he’s leaving
And he took the road for God knows in the morning

We walked him to the station in the rain
We kissed him as we put him on the train
And we sang him a song of times long gone
Though we knew that we’d be seeing him again
(Far away) sad to say I must be on my way
So buy me beer and whiskey ’cause I’m going far away (far away)
I’d like to think of me returning when I can
To the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane

The years passed by the times had changed I grew to be a man
I learned to love the virtues of sweet Sally MacLennane
I took the jeers and drank the beers and crawled back home at dawn
And ended up a barman in the morning

I played the pump and took the hump and watered whiskey down
I talked of whores and horses to the men who drank the brown
I heard them say that Jimmy’s making money far away
And some people left for heaven without warning

When Jimmy came back home he was surprised that they were gone
He asked me all the details of the train that they went on
Some people they are scared to croak but Jimmy drank until he choked
And he took the road for heaven in the morning

© – 1985 Shane MacGowan

With Great Sadness

June 8, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I honestly cannot believe I’m having to post this, but it is looking like my play about the painter Helen LaFrance, Tell My Bones, is being shelved indefinitely due to my being a white writer and the play is about a black woman.

Since the Black Lives Matter protests have taken over the country, no one wants to be perceived now as racist or as politically incorrect.

I’ve worked on Helen’s life story now for 8 years — as a screenplay first, then as a play with music.

I’m devastated. I can’t really even think straight. This has been going on since last evening, so I’m really just a mess. My nerves are destroyed.

Naturally, I got no significant work done on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. And today — in between bouts of crying, I’m just worn out. Just wanting to vomit.

A bright note — the other day, I found a first edition of the photo book Fish in a Barrel, in excellent condition at list price. These are photos the photographer Peter Milne took of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on tour, and it came out in 1993. It includes some of my favorite photos of them.

The book arrived in today’s mail. I’m happy but I’m also sad because I don’t know how 27 years flew by so quickly. This all seems like yesterday.

Don’t forget! If you live in Copenhagen, or can get there, Stranger Than Kindness, the Nick Cave exhibit, opened today!!

And on another sad note, my best friend Paul, who died from AIDS in 1999, would have been 61 today. I like to feel that he’s hanging out with me a little bit today, but honestly, I just don’t know anything anymore.

Have a good Monday, gang, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, I love you guys. See ya.

Gotta Be Brief, Gang!!

June 4, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, well, last night’s post — Memory Lane — is actually going to be today’s post, too! If you didn’t already read it, you can scroll down to the previous post (Memory Lane) or use this link.

I am almost done editing Peitor’s book, about 50 more pages to go, so I want to get that finished here this morning and get it back to him, then get back to work on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.

But I wanted to alert you that, if you’re a fan of any of the stories linked up there in “From the Vault,” that whole section is being removed. I am doing new editions of The Muse Revisited Collection, including print-on-demand options to buy them in trade paper, so none of the stories will be available through the home page of this site. If you have direct links to any of the stories, they will still work, you just won’t be able to find them linked here.

So, just FYI.

Okay, I’m gonna close and get started here! However, I wanted to leave you with this very cool & very short video, for Nick Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibit, FINALLY opening in Copenhagen on June 8th!! Enjoy!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!!

It Can’t Possibly Be All The Booze…

May 3, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I used to love to drink and drinking used to love me — until I was about 42, or something like that. I don’t know. Somewhere around there, it stopped being fun.

Still, it doesn’t account for something astounding that I discovered yesterday. Because back in NYC when I was a songwriter — I never drank while writing. Nor did I ever do any drugs. I didn’t even smoke. I never wanted anything besides maybe caffeine to assist my brain while I was writing.

Although I’ve always kind of secretly wished I could be like Kerouac, or Philip K. Dick, or Stephen King in the early days, and just get really fucked up and see what came out. Take a bunch of speed and just start churning it, you know? However, I was never like that. Even though I did at times do a ton of speed and a ton of drinking when not writing.

Anyway. I was fooling around with my guitar yesterday afternoon and I couldn’t remember the chords to a song I’d written back in 1984 — a song that I played live for years. I was drawing a complete blank.

So I went to the storage closet and found the files that had all my old songs in them. And it was such a weird thing: there were quite a number of songs in there from the later days of my songwriting that I had no memory of whatsoever. And according to all the set lists I had stuffed in the files, too, I played those songs live a lot.

I even looked at the bottoms of the lyrics pages to see if maybe they were covers of someone else’s songs, but they all had my copyrights on them. Clearly, I’d written them.

It felt so fucking strange. And reading over the lyrics — they were good songs. Although they looked like they leaned more towards country than folk, but still good lyrics. And yet I had no clue what the melodies were that went along with them. It was like I’d never seen those songs before in my life. And yet there were lead sheets printed up and stored in there and everything.

It turns out that every song I ever wrote from 1974 (!!!!!) until 1994 — when I finally stopped the songwriting and focused on fiction writing exclusively — are in those files. There are songs in there from the early 80s that I never actually performed because I didn’t think they were very good — those songs I still remember perfectly — melodies and lyrics. I remember them; I just never really liked them. So the fact that a bunch of songs that I thought were good enough to perform (all the time) in the early 1990s– and I don’t remember them at all?

It felt like maybe somewhere in there, I became another person. You know? Like I split off into some other probable reality. Something like that. I’m serious. It really felt like that. What woman who had my name wrote and sang those songs?

All the songs –except for one — that I wrote between 1970 and 1973 are gone forever because I lost that notebook somewhere after moving to NYC in 1980. The one song that I still have from 1970 (yes, from when I was 10), I still have only because it was actually used in a short film that my Girl Scout troop made about air pollution for a huge conference on the environment that was held in downtown Cleveland that year. And the lyrics were also printed in the school bulletin, which my parents kept and then gave to me years later. (It’s a rather political song, as perhaps you can guess, since it was about the environment. Cleveland had horrific problems with pollution. We had steel mills and the auto industry back then. Cleveland is also notorious for having had an actual river that was so polluted it caught on fire — yes, a river that caught on fire.)

Help light Ignite, a celebration of the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire ... — Cuyahoga River on fire in Cleveland, 1969

So that one song survives. And I don’t think I really need to see all the many songs I wrote from when I was 10 until I was 12 that are lost now. It would be cool, I guess. But I don’t really need to ever see them again.

That said, though, the songs I looked at yesterday from 1974 — when I was still only 13 — were interesting enough, thank you. Jesus. And then I found songs in there from 1975 — when I was in the mental hospital for 5 months. That’s when I closed the files and walked away.

Until yesterday, I had no clue any of those really old songs were in there. I’d thought that anything before 1981 was lost for all time. I glanced quickly through the old songs but I didn’t have the stomach to actually read them — especially those ones written in the mental hospital. I was only looking for chords for that one specific song from 1984, anyway — which I never did find. Although I found the original lyrics, which look like this:

Song in progress, 1984. NYC. I even made a note there that my grandfather was in the hospital back home in Ohio and that a cousin was having another baby. Knowing me, I probably wrote letters to them. I was always a big letter-writer (still am), even though almost no one ever wrote me back.

So yesterday was really very interesting. I will probably look over those files again today, because I know the chords to that song must be in there somewhere. And I think I might force myself to read over some of those lyrics from over 40 years ago. Plus, I even found the lyrics to 3 songs that Peitor and I wrote together back in, like, 1986 or something like that. One of those songs is one we always really loved, it’s titled “(I Can’t Help It If) I’m Still In Love With You.”

The demo was quite plaintive and little-girl-sounding. Tons of reverb on my angelic vocal and on his piano, and it had some sort of rain sound in the background, and the ubiquitous drum machine from those days. And the lyrics were essentially: you suck, the world sucks, my whole life now sucks because I met you in the first place and now you left me but I can’t help it, I’m still in love with you.

That kind of thing — but not in those words, of course. Peitor and I had a blast recording that. It was funny to us but, you know, it was actually good. It wasn’t a funny song — just funny to us.

Anyway. I guess it’s good that I saved all this stuff. I can’t imagine what if anything it really means to me all these decades later — to who I am as a writer. But I’m glad I’ve got them.

On the virus front: I’m feeling really good today…So here’s hoping. One of these darn days, I have to be actually really well. Right?? Maybe today will be the day…

Okay. Here is the cover art for the forthcoming Marc Bolan tribute album, AngelHeaded Hipster (produced by Hal Willner who I think just died in NYC from the virus). This is the album where Nick Cave sings “Cosmic Dancer” — and sings it so beautifully. I don’t even know how many times I’ve already watched the video. I just love it.

And I’m still loving that Bad Seed TeeVee. I’m still finding stuff on there that I haven’t seen yet — or even seen before, ever. It’s just so cool.

And on a somewhat unrelated music note– have you noticed that everyone’s buying ukuleles again? I mean, like, everyone’s buying them. And they have all different colors now, all different price ranges, too. Of course, the one I like best is the Epiphone Les Paul tenor acoustic-electric ukulele (below) — I’m not certain of this, but I don’t think there’s a more expensive one out there, so of course it’s the one I love. I’ve come close to buying it several times already…

Anyway, on that note… I’m going to get Sunday underway over here. I hope yours is a good one, wherever you are in the world. I leave you today with probably the most famous/favorite ukulele song, ever. From the late Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole; “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Enjoy, gang. And thanks for visiting. Make it a good one, okay? I love you guys. See ya.

A Break in the Weather!!

March 28, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, so far, it’s only been mild rain so no more of my bathroom ceiling has landed on my bathroom floor.

(Btw, I don’t have an actual leak in the roof — there is a seam between where the roof meets the side of the house that needs re-sealing, and when extended torrential rains come with high winds, the water blows down in through that seam and then collects in the ceiling in my downstairs bathroom, and then — voila! Ceiling meets floor! Well, at least the plaster lands on the floor; it’s not the actual ceiling. But it does make a big fucking mess and now the ceiling needs re-plastering, too.)

Anyway, it is incredibly lovely here in Crazeysburg right now. The sun is up and the birds are singing and the temperature is mild enough to have several of the windows open already. The cats are quite happy with this development! But by midday, we are supposed to get more rain…

If you follow my Instagram feed, you will no doubt have noticed that my joyful new coffee cup arrived yesterday!! “I like pretty things and the word Fuck”. (You can see a photo of it down on the left there, if you’re on a computer, that is.) A woman artist, named CynthiaF, created this coffee cup design. She has many designs, in fact, that are quite flowery and that prominently feature the word “fuck” and they all make me laugh. But this one just really spoke to me, gang! (Other close favorites are: “Yippee Ki Yi Yay, Motherfucker!” and “Fuckity fuck fuck” and “She believed she could but she was TOO FUCKING TIRED so she didn’t” — that last one is a play on a popular girl-empowering slogan: “She believed she could so she did.”)

I’m gonna wait until after Easter to use my flowery new cup, though.

Also in yesterday’s mail, I got a collection of old photographs that my dad wanted me to have. I absolutely love photographs. Actually, even if I don’t even know the people in the photos — I love photographs.

Here is one that really startled me, though, gang. And not really in a good way. I remember this tree really well. This is back in Cleveland, summer 1968. I don’t remember the photo being taken. I think it’ s a sort of wistful picture of my older brother. Although I don’t remember him ever having bangs! (aka “fringe”) And I love the fact that he climbed that tree barefoot.

What startled me, though, was how sad I looked. And it’s obviously a candid shot; I’m not trying to look one way or another. And looking at the photo yesterday only reminded me of how intensely intense my whole fucking childhood was, because every single moment of it was determined by the unpredictable, wildly-swinging moods of my adoptive mother. I hate to say that I’m glad it’s over — there is so much about my childhood that I loved. But I guess I’m glad it’s over — all the relentless stress of it.

Me and my older adopted brother, summer, Cleveland, 1968

And speaking of the 1960s in America… WOW, is that new Bob Dylan song, “Murder Most Foul,” amazing, gang. I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to it already. It is just chilling.

I’m guessing you need to be a Bob Dylan fan to like the song, and maybe you need to be of a certain age or era, to fully appreciate the many, many cultural references. And maybe you even need to be an American to get all of the horrific references to the conspiracy behind Kennedy’s murder. Still, it is just a staggering song. After my first listen (the song is 17 minutes long), I felt like: Okay, I guess I can die now because this is the scope of my whole life, summed up, right here.

It really felt that way.

I know a lot of people hate Americans. And I personally know a number of Americans who hate Americans and America, even though they still live here. But I have always loved being an American, even with all its turmoil and all its terrible things. I still love America. And “Murder Most Foul” really captured for me the paradox of that love.

But one of the truly exciting things for me was that the song “Nature Boy,” by Nick Cave & the Bad seeds, is referenced in the song. I was so fucking thrilled. They are now part of that landscape for all time.

So. Abstract Absurdity work did not happen yesterday. It just never got off the ground. Which is okay. We have time. There is no need to force it, you know, when emotions are high there over the virus stuff.

I got a text from Sandra yesterday that new pages of revisions on our other play will be coming my way starting today. (The Guide to Being Fabulous, which is now back to its original title of Hiding in Plain Sight. Although I kind of get the feeling that a third, as yet unknown, title will ultimately be chosen. We will find out!!)

But I’m excited to get back to work on this play. It is still set to go into production later this year in Toronto — of course, the timing will now hinge on how long everything in the world is held captive by this virus. Eventually, though, the world will get back to normal, and, as they say, the show will go on! And I, for one, am living for that moment!!

All righty, gang. I’m gonna get started here. Still not sure what I want to work on regarding my own stuff. We’ll see. (And now I really look forward to the evenings around here because I am really enjoying those reruns of DCI Banks!)

So things here are good. Tomorrow I need to go back into town, though, to go to the market. So we’ll see if I have another paranoia attack over everything I touch when I get home. (The county where the market is located has 3 confirmed cases of the virus now.) Regardless, I’m guessing tomorrow will be all about washing, washing, washing!! But today will probably be a nice, quiet one.

All righty. Thanks for visiting! I hope good things are coming your way today, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with “Nature Boy,” from the 2004 hard-to-spell double-album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. If you’ve never heard it before — enjoy! (I guess, if you have heard it before, enjoy it again!!) Okay. I love you guys. See ya!

“Nature Boy”

I was just a boy when I sat down
To watch the news on TV
I saw some ordinary slaughter
I saw some routine atrocity
My father said, don’t look away
You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now
He said, that in the end it is beauty
That is going to save the world, now

And she moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
She moves something deep inside of me

I was walking around the flower show like a leper
Coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair
Up against the pink and purple wisteria
You said, hey, nature boy, are you looking at me
With some unrighteous intention?
My knees went weak,
I couldn’t speak, I was having thoughts
That were not in my best interests to mention

And she moves among the flowers
And she floats upon the smoke
She moves among the shadows
She moves me with just one little look

You took me back to your place
And dressed me up in a deep sea diver’s suit
You played the patriot, you raised the flag
And I stood at full salute
Later on we smoked a pipe that struck me dumb
And made it impossible to speak
As you closed in, in slow motion,
Quoting Sappho, in the original Greek

She moves among the shadows
She floats upon the breeze
She moves among the candles
And we moved through the days
and through the years

Years passed by, we were walking by the sea
Half delirious
You smiled at me and said, Babe
I think this thing is getting kind of serious
You pointed at something and said
Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing?
It was then that I broke down
It was then that you lifted me up again

She moves among the sparrows
And she walks across the sea
She moves among the flowers
And she moves something deep inside of me

She moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
And she moves right up close to me

Nothing Beats Home Sweet Home!!

March 27, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 4 Comments

…day after day after day after day…

[UPDATE: Wow. Bob Dylan’s new song, “Murder Most Foul,” is incredible, gang. See below.]

Yes, gang! Here I am again. When I awoke this morning, I decided: What the heck — it just looks like more rain, so I think I’ll just stay home today!

My goodness. It is starting to feel a little endless.

I don’t mean any disrespect to any of my readers who might have the virus. I know for sure that a couple of you are quarantined in Europe with family members who do have the virus. So I don’t mean to be disrespectful of what any of my readers are going through. However, here in Muskingum County, we still have no confirmed cases of the virus (and a couple of the counties next to us that are also primarily farms do not have the virus), but of course the numbers from the urban areas all over Ohio go up daily and there are pockets of hysteria caused by the TV news media.

And here where I live, even while we’re also on Stay at Home orders, absolutely everything is exactly the same as it was.

So the strangeness of it all can get unbearable — the numbers of people getting sick, the amount of people dying, the news trying to get people to panic, it seems, since they don’t focus on any of the thousands of people getting tested here who aren’t sick — or even the daily listings in the online newspaper from the nearest city, how many people die there every day who don’t have the virus. You know, people are just dying anyway.

And still Crazeysburg is absolutely the same as before. It is hard to process.

So, I slept ten hours last night. That is just unheard of for me. I usually sleep about 5 or 6 hours. But I am trying not to get depressed. So, every time I awoke and felt those creepingly bad thoughts at the edges of my brain, I forced myself to go back to sleep and not let my brain go in that direction.

It seems to have worked. I’m in a much better frame of mind here this morning! And even though I overslept, I can’t really tell myself that “the day is half gone” because tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow [Is that one of the best soliloquy’s of all time??!! — Ed.] will more than take care of any time I think I might have lost by oversleeping this morning.

And all that oversleeping gave me the chance to have a really strange dream about Nick Cave — over and over and over. I kept bringing him the same 3 bottles of white wine. One at a time, I mean. One at a time, I kept bringing him 3 bottles of white wine. I don’t know what kind of wine it was — they were each in a Bordeaux-shaped bottle. Still corked. Ice cold and sweating. One time I actually brought an ice bucket. But other than that, it was just on repeat, forever it seemed.

I personally don’t like white wine. Plus, I’m not sure that he even drinks anymore in real life. So I have no clue what was going on with that endlessly repetitive dream. But there you have it: my rest-filled night.

Today is an Abstract Absurdity Productions day. I hope. It didn’t go so swimmingly on Tuesday. Our phone meeting lasted less than 2 minutes. And even while I am prone to exaggerate, I am not exaggerating at all about that. It was quick and brutal and awful.

So here’s hoping today is better. I really don’t want to go for the entire quarantine not working on Abstract Absurdity stuff with Peitor. But I also want to give everybody all the space they might need right now, since everyone in the big cities has so much more on their plate right now than I do.

Plus, I also need to find a way to turn off the many voices in my head these days, because it is really interfering with me being able to write anything at all worth keeping. The words come but they don’t feel very inspired, so I don’t keep them.

It’s something I really want to start working on, beginning today — tuning in to words that can be productive and creative right now, since God knows, I’ve got all the time in the world to work on everything.

If you’re a Bob Dylan fan, he dropped a new song during the night. I haven’t heard it yet. It is called “Murder Most Foul” and is available on all streaming platforms. It’s about the Kennedy assassination and is apparently 17 minutes long. I will check it out momentarily.

Meanwhile, I guess I will get started around here. I hope the day is good to you, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with something appropriate for all this rain we’re getting here, as well as a sort of reminder that we’ve been through Hell before and we’re still here. Okay? (The great multitude of lyrics are in the video.) All righty! I love you guys. I might check in again later. We shall see!

A Fond Goodnight to An Interesting Day!

March 21, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I spent almost the entire day working on In the Shadow of Narcissa, trying to outline it, actually. Sort of “do the math” on it. It covers my childhood in 3 houses, over the space of 9 years, and I want it to be less than 40 pages.

So it seems like there could be a tidy math equation in there that could help me structure it.

I’m still a bit stymied, but I think I’m at least focused in the right direction. I’m feeling like I’d like to get that book finished and start circulating it with publishers by late Spring.

Well, okay.

Here in Ohio, the virus has ballooned to 247 confirmed cases today. Most of them seem to be in the northern part of the State, or concentrated in nursing homes. 3 elderly people have died –aged between 76 – 91. If you don’t live in America and don’t know Ohio, it is densely populated — about 11.75 million people live here (although almost no one lives in Crazeysburg). And even though there is a lot of farmland in the State, just a heck of a lot of people live in the main cities (i.e., Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus). And each city has (or had until recently) a busy international airport.

I’m hoping my dad won’t go out now for a few days. He has people to buy him groceries so he shouldn’t need to go out. But he is going really stir crazy. It just feels like the virus is peaking now, though, and he is almost 90.

This evening, I started watching a new version of Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse (BBC). For some reason, it got bad reviews, but I’m really loving it. It’s nothing at all like the original but I think it’s really fun. And the acting, of course, is through the roof. As it usually is on all these BBC whodunits. (And a lush budget, of course — the cars, the costumes, the sets!). It’s a nice way to pass the evening.

I cannot remember now why I was thinking about this, but earlier today I was thinking about that song called “Sodomy,” from the Broadway musical Hair. It’s a really short song but it’s full of nothing but dirty words. When I was 8 years old, I knew that song (and almost all the songs from Hair) by heart. I had no clue what any of those songs meant, although my brother seemed to know. (My older brother and I played that record all the time and for some weird reason, our mom let us.)

(It’s so strange, when you think of how intolerant she was about so many things, but never about art or theater or science.)

Well, today, it struck me as really amusing that I would sing that song at such a young age, even though I had no clue what any of the words meant. Not at all. I was just singing the sounds of the words, you know? I liked how the words sounded. But I must have sounded just hysterically funny to any adults who might have overheard me. I mean, I was 8, with long brown hair, my little stretchy hairband, big brown eyes. Little saddle shoes, knee socks. The works. And I had one of those high soprano voices and I would sing my heart out!

I eventually re-discovered that song in my teens and by then, I knew what all those words meant and I almost died when I realized what the song was about.

Anyway, I have no idea why I was remembering that today, but I was. Clearly, I was destined from birth to fill up my entire life with dirty words.

Okay! I finished that poetry book I bought recently — the award-winning chapbook I mentioned, where the poet had written the best inscription ever. Anyway, it’s really good. It’s called Acadiana, by Nancy Reddy.

It is inspired by folklore and hurricanes in Louisiana, so it’s intense. And it has some incredible imagery involving the folklore of girls that I just loved, even though a lot of it was sort of starkly merciless and maybe emotionally brutal? Not sure if that’s the right word. But I really liked it.

(Actually, the imagery often reminded me of Nick Cave’s novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, except that Acadiana is only about 29 pages.)

All righty! So that’s Day 7 for me in quarantine. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, right? Have a good night, gang, wherever you are in the world!! Sleep tight. I love you guys.

“Sodomy”

Sodomy, Fellatio, Cunnilingus, Pederasty
Father, why do these words sound so nasty?
Masturbation can be fun
Join the holy orgy Kama Sutra
Everyone!

You’d think she’d just dig the fuck outta this…

March 21, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

This idea that the entire Universe is forcing me to stay home and write, you know? You’d think I’d just fucking love that.

And in a way, I do. Because, thankfully, I’m really healthy. Although yesterday, when we had that brief burst of mild Spring weather and I was able to open a couple of windows — man, that fresh air felt so incredible. I really, really miss the fresh air.

But I do really enjoy being alone. And writing. (Although, I would of course prefer being with that guy I’m totally trying not to love, but since that’s utterly impossible — just more impossible than you can possibly imagine — I just enjoy the fuck out of being alone…) (grumble grumble grumble)

But the sameness of the days is getting sort of weird. A little too “Groundhog Day”-ish, you know? Except for the fraction of a second that I interacted with the gals at the pizzeria, and the few moments standing 6 feet away from the guys at the Granville Inn — aside from that, I’ve been alone in here for 168 hours.

Thankfully, I talk to Peitor a lot. Or we text (constantly). We get a lot of creative stuff accomplished, which feels so great. Other than that, though, I don’t really interact with anyone. I call my dad every day because he’s getting depressed. Not only is he on lockdown, too, but he doesn’t actually enjoy being alone, and, it’s been raining a lot where he lives so he can’t even get outdoors and take a walk.

Aside from that, he’s still grieving the death of his wife of 35 years. She’s only been gone 2 months now. And even though my dad and I have not had the best relationship during my adulthood, by any stretch of the imagination, even I knew that he had a really happy 3rd marriage. My stepmom was just the best. They loved each other so much. And she was the easiest person to be around. One of those rare women that you just enjoy being in the same room with — and you really noticed it when she left a room. She had such uplifting, delighted, joyful energy all the time.

So with or without the quarantine, my dad no longer has that wonderful energy in his life. Now all he has is the TV. And it’s on constantly — always on the news. Every time I call him, I have to say, “Dad, turn off the news. It’s depressing you.” Of course, he doesn’t do it, but I still feel it’s my sworn duty, you know, to tell him to do that every single darn day.

(I’m guessing that the minute we hang up the phone, he’s saying “You’re not the boss of me.” And he’s turning the volume on the news right back up!!)

But anyway. That’s my day. Peitor and/or my dad. Then I eat endless vegetables — so boring. I’ve already “ice-creamed” myself out — totally not interested in the ice cream anymore. So it’s back to eating really healthy stuff. Doing my yoga and my Booty Core, so that I can feel and look great during my endless days of living in captivity all by myself. And I still meditate and keep my endless little journals, so that my mind doesn’t completely unravel.

And then, you know, I sit down at my desk and write. In so many ways, that seems like heaven — so how come it doesn’t feel like heaven? Hmmm……

Oh — I did want to thank you guys for buying my books yesterday and during the night. Seriously. I actually do appreciate it, even though you steadfastly refused to be led in the direction of my more literary pursuits — i.e. Twilight of the Immortal. I still really do appreciate that the old erotica still sells. (It will remain on sale for the next 4 weeks on Smashwords only.) (See yesterday morning’s post.)

But I do want to point out something, and I have no qualms whatsoever comparing that specific novel (Twilight of the Immortal) to F. Scott Fitzgerald. I honestly don’t. I know it’s a really well written book (that a lot of publishers also loved but they did not love the fact that there were so many lesbians in it & I was not willing to delete them from history). Still, I’ll point out that when F. Scott Fitzgerald died, you could not buy a copy of The Great Gatsby in any bookstore. Nobody wanted to read it. (And, frankly, it is my favorite novel of all time.) And now, almost 100 years after it was written, it is not only considered a masterpiece of 20th Century American literature, but right now, today, it is ranked at #5 on Amazon’s Classic Literature list, and ranked #131 in all books.

All books. Do you know what that means? Can you even estimate how many books are being sold on Amazon right now — and that nearly 100-year-old book, which at one point, while he was still alive, nobody wanted to buy, is ranked at #131 amid those millions of titles?

I’m just saying. Your great-grandchildren will be more than happy to buy my lonely little book, let alone get it for free! Even though it doesn’t have a ton of sex in it… (And you’ll be stuck up there in Heaven — with any luck, that is, because it’s getting dicier with all that porn you’re reading — but anyway, you’ll be stuck up there just listening to harps and stuff!)

All righty!!!!

So here’s good news. The numbers, while increasing for now, are still encouraging. Close to 94,000 recoveries from the virus as of today (3/21/2020). About 179,000 known cases worldwide, and about 171,000 of those cases are considered mild.

And some other good news — because of all this quarantine stuff, that portion of my bathroom ceiling that collapsed yesterday because of all that sudden rain? I get to just ignore it for now because no way on Earth is anyone going to be able to come out here and fix it yet.

I love, love, love ignoring needed home repairs!! It is one of my very favorite things to do! And usually it bothers my conscience when I’m doing it, but not this time!! Yay!

Okay, guys. I guess that’s it for today. I’m guessing that Nick Cave is out there, quarantined somewhere, too, and yet still wearing a suit and having some sort of a conversation!!! Alas, we don’t know for sure. It’s just an educated guess. (Yes, life’s getting a little boring here in my room.) Oh, I’ve started streaming re-runs of the British Crime Drama, DCI Banks in the evening. So that’s fun. And I did eventually finish watching Ken Burns’ Jazz documentary — man, was that good. If you like jazz and you haven’t seen that show, it’s totally something to watch. It’s about 20 hours, but still worth every moment.

All righty. Thanks for visiting! Wash your hands and stop touching your face already. Life is good. The world is beautiful. I love you and I feel certain that a whole lot of other people do, too! See ya, gang!!

“In My Room”

There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my room

Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday

Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room

Gosh, I Feel So Bad For Me!!!

March 11, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes, gang! I know!! My life SUCKS!!

I have to spend the whole darn day working on that new web site for Abstract Absurdity Productions or it is NEVER gonna launch!!! Fuck.

I hope that by now you had a chance to see our wonderful new logo!! I just love it. Peitor did such a great job. He had been trying to explain his idea to someone there in LA who actually designs logos, but then realized he was just going to have to do it himself if it was going to be anywhere close to what he was envisioning.

He’s been a record producer for decades and, as the Internet took over the music industry, he became really good at designing album cover art JPEGS, too, so he decided yesterday to just do our logo himself.

I am so happy with it!! It fills me with glee whenever I look at it. I’ll post it again here, in case you didn’t see it. This is just the rough image that he texted me last night:

Here’s an urgent update, on another, very different note!

The starlings are right at this very moment building a nest in my gutter but, for now, choosing a whole new area of the gutter to destroy!! This one is outside my upstairs bathroom window. Isn’t that just fantastic news??!! After I so patiently didn’t fix the part of the gutter they destroyed last Spring so that it would be all move-in ready for them this Spring??!!

Okay. Back to what I was saying.

Our meeting yesterday was not about script work at all, even though we are so close to finishing the script. Instead, we wound up working on business stuff and discussing what I needed to do to get the website launched (re-direct the domain, etc.); then get the YouTube and Vimeo channels set up; and the social media accounts set up, and we discussed the (absurd & abstract) game plan for social media once we launch.

It became quite a tidy little To-Do list for me, gang. I tacked it to the wall in front of my desk and my heart sort of sank. I cannot keep avoiding this stuff. It is absolutely never going to get done if I don’t just fucking do it.

So. I’m doing it.

Yesterday, I finally decided on 2 templates for the web site. I know the one I prefer so I hope it’s the one that will work for us. We’ll barely have any content when the site launches, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to set up. I just need it to be a template that will easily help us grow. (This template I use here for Marilyn’s Room is so freakin’ easy to use, it’s ridiculous. It is so user-friendly. I think I’ve been using it for about 5 years already. But it’s a magazine template.)

Anyway. It also became incredibly clear that I needed a better movie editing software thing on my desk top. So I had to research that. I settled on Lightworks, because it will be easy to upgrade to Pro if I ever need to. I’m not planning on becoming a film editor or anything (she says now — but the day’s young!). But I do need to be able to edit our video clips and upload them to the web site.

So guess what I get to do today (besides take 2 more webinars — another one on movie financing for short subject films and one on negotiating perks and credit placements, and back-end point deals, etc., etc.)? Yes, that’s right!! I get to learn how to actually use Lightworks now that it’s on my desk top!! Because apparently it’s not 100% user-friendly. And let’s face it — I am not (yet) a film editor, by any stretch.

Although I do have an Associate’s Degree in audio engineering. Yes! I’m technically a Sound Engineer. However, I have no desire whatsoever to be a Sound Engineer and so my skills are extremely outdated (analogue!!). But my point is, I can grasp this sort of stuff when I focus and pay attention. (I think that’s redundant, but it gives you an idea of how my mind can wander if I’d rather be doing something more important — i.e., looking at all things Nick Cave-related on Instagram).

But anyway. I’m guessing I can learn the basic Lightworks interface pretty quickly. But I have to do that pesky thing called: watch the videos and actually learn it. And I have to take those 2 web seminars. And I have to learn the new web site template and actually upload stuff to it and launch it.

I know! I’ve tried to tell you! Even though I do Booty Core now and look indescribably fantastic for someone who’s going to turn 60 at any moment; and even though the hair stuff really is working and my hair is really starting to look like I actually have some and it’s not falling out everywhere!! Even though all of that stuff is so blindingly difficult to ignore — Please don’t envy me for my truly glamorous life! A lot of fucking web seminars and other frustrating stuff go into making the magic happen.

All righty. Oh, in case you want to know. Now that I know for sure this stuff works, gang, here it is. (But if you buy it on Amazon, be forewarned that the company will strongly urge/bribe you to give them a 5- star review, which kind of irked me. But it does indeed work.)

Before I forget, if you saw my post about Weenie yesterday and how he is showing signs of potential kidney problems — he’s on his homeopathic drops now, maybe forever. And no more treats for any of them, ever. The salt content in those treats is through the roof. And I know this. But gosh they love them. And the worse the ingredients, the better they love their treats. But it’s got to stop.

Last night, they all wandered into the kitchen and stared at me, quite perplexed; their little expressions saying, “Have you forgotten something? Isn’t it treat time?” And I tried to explain to them that Weenie was sick and that I didn’t want him to die that horrible death that Daddycakes went through.

They acted like they didn’t understand a word I said. But today, they’re spellbound — glued to the windows and watching the starlings flit and flutter and build their nests hither and yon. So hopefully we can forget that treats ever even existed! And have 7 healthy, happy cats for a very long time.

Okay. I’m gonna scoot and start working on all that exciting stuff mentioned above!! Thanks for visiting, gang!! I hope you have a really great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, with the appropriately titled Moanin’ from1958. Another true classic of jazz. If you don’t know it, give it a listen, you’ll probably love it (and want a martini or something!). (Even at breakfast!) All righty! I love you guys. See ya!