After the Dance
On Saturday, I held the third Waggle Dance. I discovered, belatedly, that all the prep I had done for the thing, the bulk of it garden-oriented, had made me too tired for the actual event. Oh, old age, you crack me up! I sang alright, but my hostess banter was a lame stain that ran down my shirt and puddled around my feet. Apologies, audience. But a lot of the labor went to things that will be done for the next one, in August (like my Rube Goldberg-ish lighting system and the velvet curtains and the gardens are DONE, I tell you). The rest of the summer (sidebar: today being the first day of said season, it's worth noting it's gray with a promise of rain and this morning I had the heat on in the house) will be spent swanning from chaise lounge to hammock to Adirondack chair and back, drinking cool beverages, reading and hanging with the flock. Special thanks to my guests who performed and I look forward to the next installment. For which I will be rested up.
An Indoor/Outdoor Weekend

One for each day. On Saturday, I woke up to a blue sky that has been making itself scarce of late. I quickly did all the indoor chores and then I was outside in the yard(s) for about 7 hours. I nearly put out an eye! Who says gardening isn't for thrill seekers? That night, after a very uninspired white-bean-spaghetti-pinenut-parmeson-cheese dish (eh), I spent some time rehearsing my songs for The Waggle Dance and managed to finally put down lyrics for the Artie Shaw number I'm singing over. It's been 10 years since I put pen to paper, lyrically, and that moment when the right words fit to the right place, well, it's pretty satisfying. After I was truly read to blob out for the night, I watched the last episode of Season Two of True Blood.

Dear HBO:

Fuck you.

I waited a full year to watch the second season of True Blood on DVD. I even went out and bought the sub-literate blocks of pulp it is based on - all of them - while waiting for you to get around to releasing Season 2. Was it worth the wait? Hell no.

That is all.

That said, I'll wait a week and watch it all again.

On Sunday, it rained all day and I parked it at the easle and applied embroidery floss to my newest Ester painting. I was very ill-tempered by the end of 6+ hours of work after I saw how little I'd accomplished. But a day in the garden and then a day in the studio is actually the perfect weekend. So, um, thanks, Universe!

Superenigmatix*
I have been without a computer for two days at home and I'm a little stunned by what a large sink hole that seems to have left. I now watch tv, write, and listen to music via this metal box and when it's snatched away, well, then what? Weather-wise, it refuses to do anything but rain (which is pretty much what it did last year at this time, then we had the longest driest hottest summer since life began, so I hope that's not going to be a repeat, too), so I'm house-bound after work. The book I'm reading is only bed/bathroom fodder, and I can't even practice singing, as all the cuts are ON LINE. I had the computer fixed by one of our IT guys at work yesterday, brought it home, and it promptly went into some weird loop of log-on pages and never did allow me to get in. So, back it came and I guess I'll schlep my work laptop home tonight if they can't fix the problem today. Frankly, I'm far more comfortable with less technology rather than more, in most cases, but shit, a tool is a tool.
Dinsdale is feeling better, but still a little under the weather, which he conveyed to me by means of a puddle of piss and a couple of turds in his favorite spot in the kitchen. Poor little guy. I yelled at him, but my heart wasn't in it.
*A term - loosely coined from Bebop Deluxe - I use when I experience some kind of a cluster fuck, usually technical.
Wet and shitty morning
With sniper-like precision, Dinsdale, Monsieur Hair, has necessitated a trip to the vet when I am stone broke. A restful drive of 30 minutes of piteous mewing and cat panting and drivers in Seattle who always seem to be flummoxed by rain and Mommy wants a Valium. Dropped him off and they called me a bit later: it's not dire - a swollen anal sac, ew - but it involves a bunch of shit that involves money. Oh well. If anything really awful happened to Mr. Hands, I would be bereft, so I am thankful that it was just this, and thankful that I don't have an anal sac which could require draining at some point in my future.
Also, I sent my next Waggle Dance invitations out and immediately my core 'family' bailed. I will take this as the Bigger Picture showing me that I don't need a reliable warm cushion of love and acceptance, that it's time to graduate to cooler and perhaps higher climes. I decided when I initally conceived of the idea of a Salon/Workshop, that if it was just me, then I would just sing for me. The practice I'm putting in is really reaping results and I'm starting to get a little itchy for good sound systems, good lighting and beyond the lights, a sea of flint and potential sparkage.