Two days ago I moved out from the Extended Stay, and I passed a guy with a cell phone in the hallway: “I’m on location. In Orange County. An hour away from you, if I drive fast.” Now it’s the second day in the new house. Most of our personal items remain in boxes, but the wife has kindly set up the kitchen; we can cook. I made scrambled eggs for her last night. She said they were the best eggs she’s ever had. She is arranging all the tendrils of a sad-looking vine plant. She really wanted all the plants to travel with us from San Bruno to Costa Mesa, so we babied them along under the fluorescents in the Extended Stay hotel. But plants do not naturally enjoy sightseeing, and they are all now a bit bewildered. Now, my wife is a woman on a mission: put this house under control; decorate, decorate, decorate; all things to be placed into their proper places. “The house speaks to me,” she says. “I tried placing the Ikea cabinet flush against the wall in the kitchen but the house said no so I used it to partition the kitchen from the library. It’s much better and the house likes it.” She is in full-on nesting mode.
The Irish movers were too fucked up to come; they sent Hispanics, who unloaded everything neat as you please. I have reacquired my piano, my guitars, my violin, and my banjo.
I proposed to the wife that we should purchase a shiny metal refrigerator from Sears. It would be a gourmet refrigerator that’s made of shiny silver steel, because those refrigerators are the ones that the finer cooks use for food preparation purposes. My wife responded that a plain white refrigerator would keep our food just as cold as a fancy steel one and cost seven hundred dollars less. She asked me why I wanted a steel one. I said it would make me a better cook. Looking back, that was probably a lie. We got the white one.
The wife purchased a rosemary plant, shaped like a Christmas tree, and she decorated it with some little gold spheres. It looks just like a small Christmas tree, and smells like pasta sauce. I tentatively took a few needles and ate them. Our Christmas tree is festive, yet delicious. I plan to eat more of it when my wife is not watching.
The Collective gig is working out well. Everyone?s type A, like me. I sit down in front of the monitor and drift between tendrils of functions and variables. Hours slip away, if I’m not careful to watch them.
I?m afraid of not having any peeps or any connections down here, so I auditioned and got into a non-union production of “I Love You, You?re Perfect, Now Change” at the Chance in Anaheim. They cast me as the “older man.” I’m a tad bitter. Perhaps I’d be better off just unpacking, but it’ll get me out of my overgrown hedge-maze head for a while.
We have a lemon tree. When life hands you lemons, make salad dressing. We did, and suffered no ill effects.
On December 16, I’m playing a private show; I can’t provide more details publicly just yet, but you’re invited — just contact me off-line for the password and location.
