“In returning and rest we shall be saved.”

It has been a couple of weeks since my job ended, and although that fact is the biggest thing in my mind and thoughts, what I’m feeling right now a need for sanctuary. It isn’t that I don’t like people; it is that people wear me out. I feel like I’m cruising for a fall with all the activities I’ve been taking on lately. Good activities, but a person needs to stop and recharge.
Like right now – I’m fighting the urge to go to sleep, and it’s only 7:30 in the evening. Just returned from taking Allysan to see Ratatouille, which is an okay movie – I enjoyed it and it even scored a couple of major yuks – but it wore both Allysan & me out. She of course perked right up when I dropped her off at her mom’s. She’s five, though. I’m not five, I’m a little older, and I’m feeling downright woozy here.
The projects I need to undertake have been cropping up in my mind: recording all of my original songs, or at least the ones I can remember; that Christmas album I’ve been wanting to do for years; publishing collections of my essays and Rick’s cartoons; and…well, you know, I’ve never really lacked things to do, only the time and energy to do them.
When my friend Sonya came to visit, she brought a CD she’d had made of a recording made in October, 1971. It was a reunion of the Repertory Music Company: Van Webster, Randy Norton, Bruce Willard, Scott Stewart, and me, the chick singer/songwriter. Dale Covey was on the engineering board. Sonya was in the kitchen, and received a spontaneous standing ovation for her chilies rellenos, of which each bite was a little mouthful of heaven. I can still taste it.
Listening to the CD was humbling, and inspiring. I was surprised to hear that, really, I wasn’t a bad songwriter back then, and really, I hit some good notes here and there, and really, I tended to write songs that were ‘way over my singing ability and control, which led to bad notes. The bad notes were the humbling part.
That hit me, and I also wondered why I thought I was the only thing in the world happening back then. Youth? Insecurity? ADD? The desire to be the best singer in the world, ever? All of the above?
I find I appreciate the guys I worked with a lot more now, and I’m grateful that in that reunion session each one of them got to sing a song (except Scotty, the drummer, who did not sing). It was good to hear their voices again.
And it’s good to hear my own voice again, as I try to break off the rust and limber up my vocal cords. I even did some opera warm ups the other day. I can do that now that the Doberman is dead. Man, she hated opera almost as much as Rick does, and she howled her displeasure.
OK, that’s enough blogging for a sleepy Sunday evening. If this is all there is to blogging, I can do it.