Right now I am desperate for much-needed sleep to fall upon me. I’ve been on steroids to get asthma under control. I am breathing better but I have terrible anxiety and am sleeping horribly. A day or two of that is fine. A week? No way.
Tomorrow is my last day on steroids and tomorrow I have no reason I can’t sleep in so I am going to try my hardest.
This past weekend Wonder Boy and I hosted Easter lunch. My dad, two of my siblings and Songbird came over. We ate delicious black bean burgers from the local farmer’s market We had an indoor Easter Egg hunt, even though the youngest of us was 25.
A special guest at our festivities was Bruce (as in Springsteen), my sister’s 6-month-old (ish) Gooldendoodle. Bruce is a sweet dog who has yet to figure out that he’s huge. Not surprisingly, as soon as Bruce walked into the house Addy hid away for the day. Biggie was a little more curious.
In the match-up between a 43-pound puppy and a 20-pound adult cat, my money was on the cat. But, aside from a few good swats from Biggie to Bruce, the two got along reasonably well.
Last night I head out to see the New Pornographers perform and was anxious to find out if Neko Case would be joining the band on stage or not. Technically I have seen the New Pornographers play before. But I only get to say that as a technicality because they were the opening act and I only arrived in time to see about two of their songs. And Neko, and artist who is high on my list of people to see, was very absent.
So last night I was thrilled to find out that Neko was indeed performing with the band. Not only do I think she is awesome, seeing her live is on my 100 List so I am able to check something off!
Last weekend when we saw the Decemberists, they were so good but just didn’t have a handle on the audience. Last night the New Pornographers confronted an different issue. The sound, particularly for the first part of the show, was terrible. Neko has this killer voice that can drown out just about anything and yet she was washed out.
The show last night was at a venue notorious for their terrible sound quality and bad crowds. But, I’ve seen plenty of perfectly good shows there as well so I’m not willing to write off the whole place. Wonder Boy’s theory is that something was wrong with the amps last night. Something about the facts that amps have three parts — focusing on high, medium and low sounds — and the part that amplified the low sound was busted. Maybe, but regardless, I felt bad for the band. Audience members were yelling at them because we could hear their vocals and they were trying to fix things from the stage. I’m sure the sound person was frustrated but he whole thing, but isn’t he or she the one who is supposed to be fixing the sound quality and not the band on stage?
By the end of last night’s show, many of the sound issues were resolved and the music was still great. Get a great bunch of musicians and performers together and it’s hard to go completely wrong. And I’m happy because I saw Neko. I’m also a little bummed because neither Wonder Boy or I could rationalize that a poster from last night’s show could make our wall of fame, but so it goes.
With all of the rain, it’s been hard for me to enjoy the fact that Spring is here. Maybe it’s more of the combination of rain and asthma run amuck? I have de-onioned one part of our yard but the rest of gardening and basement work has fallen to Wonder Boy while I hack and wheeze my way around the house.
Yesterday I got a glimmer of hope of what is coming. One of my favorite flowers, though I don’t know the name of it, is in the bloom in the yard. This isn’t one of those I’ll-bloom-for-two-days-and-die flowers. No, this one will bloom for quite a while. And then when it does die, it gets even cooler looking. No kidding.
No if I can just convince my lungs and the rainclouds to cooperate, I’ll get to go outside and really enjoy Spring!
My new favorite Android app is called WordFeud, essentially Scrabble®, and I am hooked. Good? Maybe not. But definitely hooked. I typically have 30 games going at once, which is the maximum, and am playing my husband, friends and a lot of random people.
WordFeud, with which I have no affiliation, is making me feel smarter. And it’s making Sunday night in my house a whole lot nerdier, in an analog sort of way.
