The chest cold lingers but I slept really great, all things considered. I only did that “lurch awake and suddenly hack my brains out” once during the night! Otherwise, I slept like a wee bonny babe.

I try not to take OTC cold remedies because I use Flonase due to allergies– that’s a steroid and has some indescribably horrific bad reactions when combined with most OTC cold remedies. I found that out the hard way — twice, because I didn’t know what had caused it the first time.

If you’ve never accidentally combined Flonase with OTC cold remedies, it feels like you’re heart is going to explode and like your lungs are collapsing and your whole chest starts heaving, as you try to get air. And that only goes on for about several hours.

So now, I do the apple cider vinegar stuff, the ginger-honey tea thing, the endless glasses of water, and good old-fashioned, delightfully-scented Vick’s VapoRub!! (It works, too, because, of course, Flonase is doing all the somewhat dicey chemical stuff…) (And by “dicey,” I mean that Flonase has a potential side effect of glaucoma.)

Anyway. So I’m better and I slept great. And I felt suitably armored to call my (adoptive) dad on the phone and tell him how my trip to NYC went.

If you’re not a regular reader of this lofty blog, my adoptive dad and I have a tumultuous relationship. That is putting it super mildly. I am always either in or out of the Will — depending on things like my politics any given year, and whether or not I use the ‘F’-word constantly. And a whole lot of other, way more serious stuff that I don’t want to go into here because it will just depress me beyond your abilities to comprehend.

Anyway. I try to be nice. And sometimes, he does, too. But I can never just pick up a phone and call him without suiting up in every conceivable type of armor there is — emotional, spiritual, psychological. Protective Voodoo chants and empowering aroma therapies. (I would put on the actual armor of the knights of yore, but it would make it ridiculously hard to use my iPhone, plus I don’t own any.)

But, seriously. I really have to do that kind of protective mental stuff before even picking up the phone. And when I told him how great the meeting went with the director, and what the plans were for the next 9 months, and how the meeting was just a great success, he said, “Can you imagine how devastating it would have been if everything had gone wrong?”

ME: “God. Dad, why would I want to think about something like that?!!”

I always have to erect this huge mental blockade against everything he says. He is so negative and sort of mean. (When I was almost 15, and really just at the nadir of my existence; Greg was dead, the boys at school  would not stop assaulting me, I was taking 15 sleeping pills a day, etc., my dad was dropping me off after his monthly “taking me to dinner” and I was afraid to go back into the house and be alone with my mother, who was on this weird ‘punishment’ rampage, where I had to stay locked up in my room, 24/7, and I could only come out to eat my meals — and only when everyone else was done and had left the table; I couldn’t play records or watch TV or listen to the radio or talk on the phone or see anyone at all. Not even my brother. She allowed me to have my guitar in my room, but that was it. For a couple of weeks this went on, and my room was a hot little airless box that got up to about 100 degrees because it was the height of summer.  Anyway. I was afraid to go back in there. And cut to the chase: my dad said, “You’re on your own here. There’s nothing I can do for you anymore. If you’re going to kill yourself, just kill yourself.” So, you know, I went in there, went up to my room and tried to do as he advised, then wound up in the sunny wilds of the mental hospital…)

Yeah, so. Me and my adoptive dad… a unending perilous journey in the making. Until one of us dies.

But I got through that phone call by just not giving an inch of ground. And he attempted to point out every negative possibility for my life that he could imagine, and I kept my arsenal of handy vocabulary words as close by me as I could. And then the call was over and I could sigh and say: Okay. I called my dad. What’s next on the list of death-defying feats today?

You can see why you might not want to make that kind of phone call, though, if you’re not feeling well…

But I am feeling better!

And my cats are so frisky! Darting all over. Playing. They really love this chilly fall weather, and I think they’re actually happy that I’m home. Even Francis seems happy to see me, in her tiny mean way! She hunkers down and stares at me, growls a little, thumps her angry tail — but the fact that she does this and doesn’t run away and hide, means that she’s willing to allow me to occupy the same space as her for the time being!! A small act of love. Which I cherish.

My cats. Thank God for my birth mom, right? I’m going to have to travel so much next year. It gives me so much peace of mind knowing that she got along so well with my crazy cats.

Okay, today I am going to try to map out some of those rewrites to the play — which are actually pretty substantial. Not what has to be taken out, but what needs to be added to what’s already there. Without weighing the play down or making it go on for too long. And one of the ways to handle that is to  weave additional character development throughout the entire play. So that it doesn’t just come at you in one big chunk, you know?  Sort of like re-weaving a tapestry or something, right? Introduce the storylines sooner, without changing what’s already written there. “Expanding” what’s there, I guess is the word for it.

Then I’ll do some more notes on this new “Litany” development for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. That really came out of left field, gang, but it feels really exciting. I am really curious to see how that’s going to ultimately land on the page.

The Conversations with Nick Cave move into Canadian territory today — Montreal, then Toronto. Golly, I really wish I could be there! It’s so hard for me to believe that I won’t be able to see one of those things again, because it was so cool. But I’m guessing next in line is a tour for Ghosteen.

And next week, there is the listening event on Youtube for the record, but I cannot figure out what time zone that thing is in! Honestly. It’s some time zone I’ve never heard of before.  I’m guessing that google will attempt to help me figure that out. And I do have it set to stream on Spotify when it drops, however, me and Spotify are just not real cozy. I’ve been on there since the company launched and I still cannot really figure out how to use it. I always have to flag down some random  27 year-old guy and shriek, “Can you help me figure this fucking thing out??!!”

RANDOM 27 Year-Old Guy: “Just click this and then that.”

ME: “But I tried that and it keeps taking me back to Tropical Fuck Storm!!”

Honestly. Old as it makes me sound, I really miss the days when I just went into Woolworth’s and bought the record and took it home.

Okay! Gonna get started here. I hope you have a great Friday, wherever you are in the world and whatever it finds you doing!! The 2nd anniversary of Tom Petty’s death is rapidly approaching, but I am doing really okay about that. I really am. I was listening to An American Treasure at breakfast this morning (I was listening to it while driving across Pennsylvania — that and Let Love In and Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus for 500 miles…) and when I played the song below — a really, really great rockabilly song that they never released until after he died — instead of thinking how sad it is that Tom Petty is gone, I thought about how fun it was to listen to him in the wilds of sunny Pennsylvania, trees turning to autumn everywhere I looked.

It felt bittersweet but, overall, I was happy.

So. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“Lonesome Dave”