Post Montage. Finally uploaded. Live at the Frothy Monkey, Nashville.

Last  night I was awakened briefly every half or quarter hour to the sound of a mantel clock chiming. After say, 15 years of not working, it suddenly started ticking and chiming again. In full disclosure, I had tried to wind it sometime last week to no avail. 7 hours and 23 minutes later, it stopped. I am not going to wind it again. 

I am sitting at my kitchen table starring out the window. Directly in front of me are dead $7.99 hydrangeas from Kroger. They died  a few hours after I so elegantly displayed them in a crystal vase I found.  I was too tired to take them back for a refund. It's hard to find decent looking fresh cut flowers around here. I thought amidst all the dust, fresh cut flowers might be a pick-me up and an air cleanser of some sort. To the left of me is an application for a booth at an antique mall. To the right of me is the memorial book and a stack of acknowledgement cards I finally almost finished. My GPS coordinates show me to be somewhere between the upper rings of Dante's Inferno and Shangri-La. I am almost certain I have fallen in a wormhole. I thought yesterday that I would focus on making art, or at least writing an updated statement and honing my show title. I need to email jpegs. I waited for Comcast Guy #2 to show up with the right equipment. When he did show up, it was almost  7:30 pm, also known as 3.5 hours past the estimated install time, also known as 48 hours past their original estimated install time. The house is a virgin. No cable lines have ever been "dropped," to use cable speak. After crawling around the basement he reported that I had a decomposing possum, but that it was almost gone thanks to the crickets. He said the stench was horrible. Thankfully, it has not wafted up to the house. He did not install my Internet lifeline. It was too late in the evening. While in my kitchen he noticed a gun shell on the kitchen table. I had been at the firing range last week and a shell had popped back into my purse. I had absent-mindedly placed it on the table. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but it felt reassuring having a 9mm shell casually laying about my kitchen table. He was supposed to pull some strings and come back the next day to install my cable. He did not. Meanwhile, I finally harangued AT&T enough to change out all the outside phone wires so that I could use the phone  as a communication device instead of a static receiver. 

Sometimes, oh who am I kidding, almost everyday, I cry for a second or two. I am too sensitive of a person to be trolling through two or more generations of letters, documents, and outdated service manuals on my own. Sometimes I laugh out loud. Occasionally I am mystified. The house is still not a place to relax after a hard days' work. It is a hard day's work. It's been one month, almost. Time is going to start creeping me out again, and sucking me down if I'm not careful. I am making progress, and yet I feel like I have some responsibility to the furniture. My whole life. Always the furniture. 

The garage is somewhat clean and if I can make the final push to clear it from garage type stuff, I am back to thinking it will make a functional studio. I feel some sort of clarity and focus in there. I suppose if I were rich and ruthless, I'd gut the entire house and have one large open space. Slightly extreme. 

Otto chomped down on my hand yesterday. We returned from the vet (conjunctivitis) and instead of politely getting out of the car as I opened the passenger door, he jumped over to the driver's side. I walked back over to the driver's side and he jumped over to the passenger side. I walked around to the passenger side, and as he jumped over to the driver's side, I grabbed his coat. It felt like a steel door had slammed on my hand. No puncture wound as his canines are rounded down due to his chewing all the molding and wood furniture. It was raining. He didn't even apologize. 

I am desperate to paint again. I feel stupid and dumb as though I would not even know how to hold a brush or how to squeeze paint out of a tube, or even WTF I would paint. I also feel like I am on a desert island. I don't like this feeling.

I have eaten a fresh tomato sandwich every day since arriving. Life is still okay.