Two for the price of One Plus a Dollar…

These are the kitties of Randall, “Couch Kitty” and “Window Kitty” .. also known as Alex and Max.
These are the photos we took before they left. It’s been weird. I didn’t want to blog about them, because I don’t know how they are – but I haven’t been blogging a lot and yesterday I went out and read some of my writing to some people and there was mirth and fun and enjoyment and I realize how much I edit and hold back and am careful and it does me no good because bad things continue to happen anyway regardless of what I do. So I may as well just continue on as I am, writing as I like and trying my hardest to be the best that I can be. What can one do about such things? We are moving, and it’s a billiondy million degrees, and and I have been a worrier of Epic Porpoises since I was a podling. Everything will work out fine. I continue to stare suspiciously at the piano and wish things would pack up themselves and magically sort-out-in-all-easy-ways.
1. Pianoteq problem again while trying to save some old data. Well, my pianos have been saved. This is very important because they are like my babies and represent times and places in my development and they remind me of people and places and conversations and stuff I was going through. Sometimes I would just make a piano to FEEL better.

2. I am going to have a graham crackers shaped like tiny rabbits. Because I can.
3. I’m out at my Tuesday night writers group again. I’m proud of this, because this is something that I I’ve been doing that is consistent and that is special and tasty. I don’t know if “tasty” applies here; but we’re going to go with it.
4. Have you ever reached an impasse with a friend? Well, I have reached an impasse with this particular friend so many times that the restaurant that we used to meet at when we were younger with firmer complexions has turned into a hipster space station and moved down the road. I’d go in there, but I am afraid that the smell of TIGI and pretention would choke every shred of energy I have regained from me. Yes, every precious SHRED of energy that I have refound and will clutch to my bosom before my doctor has figured out that I have ripped myself off cholesterol medicine and thrust its evil presence from my wrecked body.
5. I’m a tad drama today. Expect more typing.
6. I think I’m slowly finding my fan base. I’ve been hunting them down. I have, of course, been saying this for years of beers, and the 6-8 people who have OPT-ed-ed-IN are tired of my megalomaniacal claims I am sure. They are people like me. But the regular channels of the Getting of the Attention … it doesn’t WORK that way. I can’t be all MERCHY with these people. I can’t jump up and down with pom-poms and clever hooks and drag them out to gigs and send them to my bandcamp.
7. My husband, who apparently although he has a job cannot be bothered to actually code or anything (#pokeymirthlystuff) has figured out that Vinny the Geriatric Kitteh is between 84 and 90ish years of age in human years. Before we dragged him back inside, he was having a vigorous, non-consensual “dating” life with Domina – who I am assuming is between 50 and 60. I am thinking that perhaps a crotchety (yes, I am aware that I have enjoyed typing that word before) .. old man cat could have been rather useful last night as Get-the-Hell-Off-My-Porching those Raccoons last night. More likely he would have just sat there allowing the powers that flea to take his love and take his land. Animals are jerks.
8. Anyway, about my fanz-with-a-Lolcat-inspired-”z” … they are people of the night. Unless they aren’t; and they feel more jaunty during the afternoon or for breakfast or elevenzees. Sometimes they are practical people who like to make crafty items with funny ears. Sometimes they aren’t weird for the sake of being weird. Actually, they never are. They’re just themselves. They just move around, heads cocked to the sides- funny half smiles at the ready. They don’t have the squinky look on their face that I imagine the majority of people make when they are reading my blog. Or perhaps I am giving myself too much credit and I think it is terribly Roman Tick to imagine myself velvet caped in my dungeon of delights playing my creepy basement organ.
9. that is not what she said.
10. I’ve missed blogging. I promise I will not get all creepy.
11. We are inDEED moving to a new location and it does not have a creepy basement for a creepy organ. There are probably about 3-4 basements in the whole city of Austin because of all the limestone. It’s really too bad because I bet it would be nice and cool and cavey down there.
12. OOOOO! I forgot all about CAVES!
12.5 -> I haven’t been myself lately. I’ve lacked confidence. I’ve need LOTS of reassurance. I USED to be like that, but I trained out of it. I think that this is because I got sick, and being sick is scary and hurty and vulnerable.

Well, no more! When you realize that you are in the bottom of a dank, dank, stinky hole then you have to look up and see the gleaming taco stand at the top and crawl back out. I have stuff to do. I’m not even going to link it. I’m not even going to BLOG RESPONSIBLY. You’ll all just have to wait because

HERE IS A DEN LIST:
A. I have either TWO or THREE songs to write. I’m hedging about the third because I am not sure if it is needed, wanted, or necessary. It’s become almost a philisophical connundrum at this point.

B. I SHOULD start with the song that I know I have, but for some reason doing the most difficult thing is what I crave, because if I can do it; that means that I have my stuff under control
C. There is not any more. For that is all.

hay-hay.

ps. sorry for mistigacakes. We have to go someplace and I don’t have the time to spell-chalk this up properliciously.

Overlord-in-Training

1. interesting discussion on Facebook about how the gentle manipulation of humans may be a positive thing…hmmm. I will get back to you on this.
2. I have two tasks to complete. Then there will be NO EXCUSE not to move on to the FINAL FRONTIERS of ROOM CLEANSING and COMPUTER DOMINATION…
3. my bathroom is atrocious. I’m seriously from a poisonous species. You do not want to know me. No. Get out. I am serious. It’s better this way……(cue sadViolins)
4. I’m thinking of avoiding the Internet but that actually feels ill-advised and irresponsible. Addictive Internet behavior and compulsive negativity does not mean one needs to quit blogging and withdraw one’s President-ence. I just need to go back to the practicing.
5. I have a thought that I might like to bake this weekend, so that Cake-like-Birthday-product may be had. Also Birthday boy (birthdays last a week!) will get to pick his dessert..
6. We are going on a barbecue trip tomorrow (Saturday). We’ll most likely make a video as well we haven’t done that in forever. I know I keep saying that, but No! I mean it!, and it is True! …you mark my words … you mark my words …
7. I will now take a short pause to rub my hands together nefariously. I will take a photograph of myself doing so, ever mindful of the fact that on Twitter we are talking mildly about Narcisstic ReTweeting. When I am Queen, we shall retweet EVERYTHING I decree. Even my BLINKING shall be reTWEETABLE.
8. Calm down. OMG…I’m totally KIDDING. I have no idea what kind of mood I’m in …but NO…everytime I type something into Twit-deck, I do NOT require an advertisement for a magic iPhizzle. No THANK you, green-egg-icon-space-bot. Gettenzie-a-life!!!!!
Here is my Fetching Series of Photographs, oh People of the Screen….gaze and B A-Mazed.

(Really, I just end up laughing at my own stupidity at the end, as my Hatched Plan does not come to Fruition.)

[LATER EDIT.... did I spell "narcisscisstictytic wrong? Probobably. Oh whale. This is the way the detergent gets in our cherry soda. Flarg.]

stream of conscious-blog

1. Oh holy cows. It is:

EIGHTY NINE DEGREES FARENHEIT!!!

(for you eager beevers over in places where they use the Metrick System and feel that we are quite quaint and silly, that equals:

31.666 CELULOID.
(or whatever)

2. Yes. I am being silly, with my funny words and stuff. But just listen to my congenial mood! How I giggle because I almost typed congenial moose. How I made a wish for you cuz it’s 11:11 am. Yeah, you. And you. And YOU! I get to do that!

There’s a breeze.

3. I’m in a hair salon. My husband is receiving a haircut. Yesterday my mood was so bad I thought I was honestly going to die. Moods are SO WEIRD. I really hate this thing in my head. I swear sometimes it’s going to beat me. I really am a very lucky individual, with everything I need.

It’s like putting a 6 year old in a Ferrari.
Yeah. I do think I’m a pretty fast car. And I’ll crash myself one day.
4. Speaking of weirdo little children, theres a boy sitting across from me with his shirt pulled over his head and arms stuck in his sleeves. He has made himself look like a pair of jeans with sandals and a shirt with just a mop of hair and no arms. Maybe he is just cold. I wanted to take a photo. But you can’t randomly photograph people’s children even if they are doing something amazingly cute and funny because people will think you are creepy. It’s really kinda too bad.
Jeepers! This kid looks just like my husband did when he was a kid, and real similar to a friend of mine too! Weird.

The next person I hang out with hopefully will look nothing like me.

5. I remember once I was in a band with a youngyoung guy. He was beautiful, in his 20s. Very slim, delicate features, longish hair.
REALLY tall like Eric Northman TrueBlood tall!!!

I thought, dude! I’m singing with the vampire Lestat!

6. They are playing REM in here and it is making me think of high school.

7. It just switched to ‘Wipe Out,’ or I thought it did. Quite a lot of rock drumming is really just trying to copy the raw, innocent energy of ‘Wipe Out.’

I was thinking of getting something here, but I already have enough girly crud to put in my hair…

ps. METAL! KILLSWITCH!
pps. BlueStarCafe!
ppps. this week I am buying some Reeses PB cereal. Dunno why this is important.
pppps. Mike thinks the Type O Negative that came on was random, bur NOTHING is Random… NOTHING!!!
ppppps. right into ‘Land Down Under.’ And he’s screwing up the words? Really? REALLY?!?!? And dancing in the car. Embarrassing me. Dude…..
pppppps. He also can’t drive. Nope.

I had something else to say but can’t remember what it was:
Oh yeah. It was tagging. I’m gonna tag the heck outta this today. Sigh. Borrrrrinnnng. *eyeroll*

EDIT: three stupid mistakes that were funny found upon reread. They made me giggle though. I almost kept them in in brackets after I corrected them cuz they’re funny. But I didn’t cuz I’m so professional

We Don’t Need Another Hero, but gee, Donuts are Nice.

I’ve sprinted upstairs. I feel decadent, dirty … ashamed. I feel like a liar, and a cheat.

I’m having an affair with an online songwriting competition. Again.

I actually had stuff all planned out. I wasn’t even going to WORK on this until later tonight. I was even going to work on my List of Things To Do. THAT used to be an addiction. Making lists. I would be oozing all over THAT.

Maybe the trouble is that I have an addictive personality. Whatever I am into, I am stuck like jam to and it is impossible to pry me off. If I am interested in you, for the week, look out. You’ll be completely overpowered. You won’t know what hit you. You’ll be my new fad. Until I am distracted by a new Bright Shiny Object.

Am I really that person?

The song has mutated into something dark and angry; developed an unlikely antagonist. The lyrics getting too long – the secret lair developing caverns. It will all have to be trimmed. The clutter is starting to look like the piles of crap in the bedrooom, the laundry. The stuff that needs doing while I mix and move lyrics around making my next move – working my sixteen hour days … lies UNDONE. Orchestrating stuff that doesn’t get relased because it isn’t perfect yet. Honing piano parts. Making setlists that look like perfectly clear martinis with olives floating in the triangular glass.

I can’t even explain what I’m trying to say here. I haven’t blogged in a while. I get really into my skull. I have felt kind of alone, a bit lately, with the writing.

I am too shitty a housewife to also become a shitty songwriter. Me with my issues and all.

I feel manipulative. This blog is on Twitter. I feel like I’m covering my ass, because I have people who are pulling for me. But who’s pulling for the wife, and who’s pulling for the musician?  And then there’s the thing …

Do I have time to be putting out silly videos that are … well, silly?

I’ve been looking at the way that other people do their videos, and it’s time to up my game. The only problem is that I can’t tell if I’ve developed some kind of a low-fi style that I need to get better at, or what. I don’t know. If that’s the case then I really need to figure it out.

I’ve got some stuff cooking, regarding that. Stuff involving other people.

But that stuff really involves me ALSO becoming a much better Austinite, and a better housewife, and a better friend, and a better live musician. All of which …

I suck at. Becuase I would much rather have an affair with competition after competition, waiting for my husband to leave so I can stop folding underwear and sprint upstairs to butcher my third draft of lyrics and strum the same four chords and work on the eighth version of a piano.

This is Not Healthy.

My name is Denise, and I’m ………

Ack. I think I am just feeling really angsty, and I am maybe trying to work myself into a good organizational place. Maybe trying to use my audience (you know…. the VAST SEA of you ALL … … to motivate myself into HappyFunDenLand, which is a place that I have Just Made Up and which makes me use Inappropriate Capitals in my Sentences like a Freak.

Oh, isn’t it Joyous! #thisisn’tworking.

I do actually feel a little better. I shouldn’t complain about my husband. He is long suffering, and brings donuts.

Twenty Shiny DXets to the first person who ever tells me that sometimes, I have to suffer too, and that sometimes … OCCASIONALLY, it is SOMEWHAT feasible that even though yes, he is EXCELLENT and AMAZING and that SURE, his RIDICULOUS SIDEBURNS are filling out, I can sometimes suffer too, and Mike can be Tough to Take … and that I am not the only Problem Child in this Relationship.

I do not need saving today, and I do not even need to be a hero to save myself.

… we’ll be fine.

why?

1. I am veryvery tired. I fell asleep on the couch.
2. I am veryvery tired of the internet. I can’t control things on the internet
3. I am veryvery unprepared for my show tomorrow
4. I am veryveryvery much more paranoid now than I have ever been.
5. I go from heights of joy and happiness and peace and a feeling of safety to knowing that I am not safe at all and that I definitely counted the chickens before they were hatched.

Nothing is secure and I can’t count on anything. I have to watch myself at all times. I’m tired and sleepy and achy and scared. I don’t have a set-list. This is the main problem. The frickkin set list.

I’d been in the chat last evening and then I practiced piano for a while. It was a wonderful chat, we were all funny and I’d been back and forth with some people about some neat stuff. My practice, after that, started to NOT suck, which was distinct from this morning. I started actually learning to play my tunes and do it intuitively, not needing parts or plans. And I started loosening up on the fingerings for the fugue. The left hand of the polonaise was even starting to trickle in. I smiled a lot. Things were starting to go in.

I went to pick up Mike when he called back, I’d apologized for leaving my phone downstairs and off during upstairs computer time chatting/doing pianos. I’m planning three new recordings so I’m making another piano and actually trying for a wurly-vibe-xylo-thing hybrid. While we came home I told him some about what had happened that evening. I said:

“I’m free.”

I smiled.

He knew EXACTLY what I was talking about. Because we had both been trapped. A lot. For YEARS. The one I was talking about was professional. It was personal. It was a looking over my shoulder. It was a haunting. And for some reason I just relaxed the last muscles of it tonight. It was like a letting go. I felt the last bonds of the old attachment to 2006 and its horrors leave me.

I could write about it.

I want to feel safe in this. I know I let go because I felt safe. It’s a bit like the votes in the contest? Were they really mine? The incessant need I felt between rounds 2 and 3 to prove they were my own shiny votes. The long week of stressing and perfectionism and how damn competitive I get about all that just with myself. I kept asking this … maybe it’s a male/female thing. Maybe the male/female thing exists inside of me. Maybe this is all just some kind of mental exercise of some sort. I know I raked it in at the end.

How much piano do I really need to play tomorrow? Why didn’t Mike like my idea? Why didn’t I ask about my setlist idea yesterday? Did I chicken out about it because Mike made a face in the afternoon when I talked about it, so I didn’t ask any of my colleagues, even in PMs?

Why am I super afraid?

And why, at ANY second now, I am right on the edge of just RUNNING away from it all to the next thing as if I was NEVER there?

VERY QUICK LIST

1. I finished Song Fu Six: Round 3. And if I have said the phrase “skin of my ass” before, I had NO idea what I was talking about. This was the legitimate skin of it. We’re talking 11 on the nose. Like 39 seconds past or something like that, when the official time logged in. FREAKY!
2. The song is weird. I have no idea if it will come across. I have no idea if I like it. I don’t know if I’ll publicize it. I don’t really know HOW this is gonna go. According to me it is contorversial.
3. I use a lot of what I think of as “Toothpaste Commercial Vibraphone.” I think the actual name of the modelled pianoteq FXP is something like “SuperHappyOuterSpaceShoppingMallVibes” or something like that. I dunno. I give my presets ridiculous names which don’t help anyone keep track of anything. This is because I am a silly engineer
4. If I don’t snap-to, I’m going to be in serious marital trouble. Cuz I’m not taking care of basic stuff in my life. Like eating and sleeping. It’s gotten bad.
5. I still like lots of attention.
6. I had a letter opener in the shape of a sword holding up my hair last night.
7. my head hurts.
8. I need new headphones
9. I type internet smileys too often.
10. no more diet coke. it’s time to cut the apron strings. this is a BAAADDDD addiction!!!!
11. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

ThemTube

So, I’m uploading a video on YouTube.  

It’s just a cute little video I took of a friend of mine’s kid at a Mexican restuarant a few months ago.  But I’m thinking about these things, because I’m doing this SongFu thing and everyone is doing videos and achieving and doing all this other stuff.  I’m a real hermit crab – and don’t even like to put that many things on myspace.  I’m really chuffed that I’ve even put ‘Tomorrow’s Not Today’ up there, because it’s a real good song and I feel like I’ve “lost” it somehow to the “powers that be.”  Even when I get it “back,” there will still be a “server copy” lying around somewhere and that could get hacked to bits and changed into a combo Elephant Tap dancing PeeweeHerman Rapa-baroqabilly Housetrance Acoustic Spoken Word Solo Underwear Concerto.  That’s if anything amazing ever happens to-me-ha-ha (which is the type of attitude I suppose these big companies bank on you having; the “well aren’t YOU big for YOUR britches to think that YOU need to copyright yourself so much that your PRECIOUS material doesn’t need OUR DIY help … you VISCIOUS PROLE!!!”).  Meanwhile, there’d be a lawsuit the size of Pangaea if we took a brass farthing from them …

Anyhow …

So I’m doing some research on all this, and I’m uploading the video at the same time.

Funnily enough, the video kept loading JUST fine.  But the ‘terms of service’ site kept coming up with a server error message.  As in “the YouTube servers are busy.  Or down.  Nuttinhoney ??? Move along, Charlie!  :)9 (that’s a cybergrin with a stylish and jaunty goatee).  All the while, my file’s busy chugg, chugg, chugging away. Now, I’m no techie.  Maybe I was part of the traffic clog.  But it seems kind of odd to me.  How much fairy dust does it take to open the terms of service page?  Why is that one the first to go?  And three times?  How extremely odd!

I did find an interesting article about all this though.

Makes me rethink all my plans about how I’m going to do all this.  Again.  Like I haven’t been already the whole time.

Would Alex Jones feel proud?  One-upped?  Or just call me an ameteur.  A dilletante!!!

DH

1. Bedtime.  HA!;  2. Lists: Finally making their wordpress debut.  Yay.  They’ve been on my lj forever; 3. Songfu: starting to freak me out; 4. Husband: sleeping, like a normal person.  I should record him, because he’s snoring; and sounds like Ferris Beuler’s recording.  That’d just be wrong though; 5. My blankets itch.  This might have something to do with my non-sleepiness.  And excessive Twittering …

PS.  Texas thunderstrorms rule, except for the stupidroaches.

fu-fu

I am waiting, with more bait-breath, for some kind of sign about the song-fu thing.  I am impatient.  I have not really finished any kind of solid food today.  I am a freak.  I stayed up FAR too late last night and I should probably consume some blueberries or something.

I have to send in my notes for the musical, because for some bizarre reason they consider them invaluable. I am not sure why this is – since the vibe I was getting in rehearsals was what led me to drop out of the musical in the first place.  We left on good terms, unlike many of my projects – where we have not only burnt bridges, but blown them into dimensions where their fields of reality cease to exist and dangerous event horizon-type things are created and chain reaction horrible-nesses occur all over other galaxies in other people’s alien rock bands.  That didn’t happen with this one.  Things were regretful and polite.  The phrase, perhaps we can work together again, was tossed out by the person I thought I was troubling … and if I remember correctly – I think it was accompanied by looking forward to … I guess if I’m this surpried, this makes me sound like some kind of problem child.

I don’t know, perhaps I am a space cadet.  I do not regret my actions, since I need the time and I don’t have the learning-curve stuff together on the software … I was clear about this.  I don’t know why I’m second-guessing myself.  I talk to the husband about this over-and-over.  And I need to be careful with all future things.  I should be careful with other approaches, even wtih Song Fu, to a certain extent.  If I pour all my energy into songs about lactating weasels (not that I will do this!), this is not really celebrating the strange flower that is myself.

My husband’s homeboy who is my ex-boss is doing some movie about horses and he has mentioned that he wants me to collaborate on some string parts.  I don’t know if this will come to pass or how this will be structured.  I am going to play around with viola noises today, because he brought his guitar into the smoke shop and I listened to his sonic interpretation of horses running in e minor-ishness.  I think I can work with this.  It reminds me of my marine/bro and his playing the theme from ‘Brokeback Mountain.’  I think everyone has a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ story, probably like knowing where where you during this last inauguration or 9-11 or or any other pivotal moment.  Okay – maybe not so much.  Or I don’t know – I think so … it was a fairly large moment in cinema, anyway.

When saying “cinema-anyway” really fast over-and-over becomes recklessly entertaining, you know that you have abused your body … hopefully for the last time.  Perhaps I should shut up and eat my pineapple.

Barton Springs, finally.

This entry has nothing to do with the pool in Austin.

Downhill Fast

This post is rated PG-13 for a bit of cigar room language (just some color, I’m not describing a sexy colonoscopy or anything…)