Tuesday and Wednesday

I am skipping over the rest of Monday night. Like the massage I got out of desperation from the only woman giving a massage in that town at that time of the night. She worked from a building where I am quite sure people actually go into just so they can smoke. Maybe it’s backwards there. They work outside and come inside for a smoke. I am not sure. But I was sick within minutes from the smell and totally stressed out. Woman, I am coming to you for healing but I am leaving with second hand smoke lung cancer. All I could see were those tar commercials from the 80’s with the little shriveled dying lungs, little dancing carcinogens, and I could here the song that my friend Jeff sings that he learned in first grade, “We are the smoke-free class of 2000, two triple zero, everyone’s a hero.” I started feeling cancerous instantly. I should’ve left but I felt bad.

And, in the nicest but most honest way I know how to say it, it was like getting a massage from a sumo-wrestler. It took every ounce of energy and will power to doze off and not pay attention to the fact that my head or foot or whatever body part she was working on seemed to disappear somewhere within her rolls and rolls and rolls of skin. Nope. That was not four layers of armpit just swishing back and forth over my forehead; it was a very heavy raincloud, so go back to sleep.

So Tuesday and Wednesday?

Tuesday and Wednesday we did one final round of songwriting for the album that, yes, we start recording on Monday morning. This lasted all day long. Ryan watched Annie. I expended the last little bits of brainpower that I had on songs that will probably not even make it onto the album. I felt done, you know, with life in general. I just wanted Oprah and ice cream. Instead, I went home and watched Annie so Ryan could take a break and get his work done.

Exhausting. We were both worn out.