Christmas is around the corner and Congress is busy Scrooging the Hell out of the country while I keep my spirits up and look at new Aliens toys. I’m not ignoring it, nor am I ignoring it – but what’re my options? I guess I go back to voting against stuff cause there’s nothing to vote FOR.
But I don’t want to talk about politics. Christmas is around the corner and I’m busy worrying about one or three last presents, knowing some things I’ve meant to get together AREN’T together and they’re just going to be late. It’s a great way to relieve stress – to acquiesce to the inevitable and just let it go. Sometimes things are going to be late, sometimes a show’s gonna be you and the bartender, sometimes you’re not gonna get your homework done. Knowing that there will be other deadlines, shows and assignments that you can win the Hell out of is key to remembering that screwing up on 1 out of a hundred ain’t so bad, and that sometimes to do something right, it’s just smarter to do it LATER.
The skies are hanging low over Baltimore City and Kristen is excitedly putting her Subaru’s new “NASCAR rated” brakes and axles and various other car parts to the test.
It was a Hell of a Christmas present – she received a frighteningly tangled box of car innards that we drove over to a shop. A day later and those parts are all up in the Weaselmobile and she’s zipping with renewed zest through morning I-95 traffic. It makes me think about buying car innards for my Saturn… though my reflexes were learned behind the wheel of an 81 Volkswagon bus and it still shows as I tend to prefer sticking to one lane allowing traffic to go ahead and pass me on the right rather than taking advantage of every forward pointed hole in the rat race around me. I miss my bus, but it wouldn’t have gone 70mph unless it was dropped off a cliff and even then, terminal velocity as it applies to German-engineered houses on wheels may have STILL kept if from getting much faster.
And Christmas is around the corner and the lights are up around town and in the house. I’m working retail for the holidays – I’ve sold more ukuleles than I can shake the handle of a washtub bass at (we’ve got that in stock, btw…) and I’ve got a customer who keeps waffling about the purchase of a sitar that he’s going to want shipped to Georgia. (don’t they LYNCH sitar players down south?!) Another individual is looking into whether a tres is going to be easier to buy or rebuild out of an old guitar (for Christmas? You best just buy, my friend). Several rentals are going out the door for spouses (I am now in the habit of asking the renter to be very, very clear to the spouse about the fact that this is a RENTAL – this past March I did an awkward phone call that went something like “Yes, your rental is overdue” “What rental?” “the somethin’ somethin’ accordion? It was due a month ago…” “But he gave it to me for CHRISTMAS?!” “He RENTED it, he doesn’t OWN it…” “WHAT?!?!?!” – very awkward… please avoid this situation in your own Lives), ukuleles, as mentioned, are being purchased and are sent out the door with a warning that they’re difficult to wrap. Many, many people actually make the statement out loud: “I Love my ______, but I don’t Love him / her THAT much”.
And it was a damned great party.
Sigh. You should totally buy your blank a 1913 mandolin. You totally Love him / her that much.
Whatever. Some people are merry, most are just exhausting. A select few are absolute assholes, either intentionally or through their absolute ignorance as it pertains to issues of shipping sitars. Sunday wanted to kill me. Monday made me want to kill. Today I’m starting out exhausted and tomorrow’s the last day. I have to not lose it over the next 48 hours. I think this is manageable.
Kristen played an absolutely insane couple of days of holiday giggery this past weekend and I think I’m okay with not being involved in that. Playing Christmas carols on locomotives in Pennsylvania seems attractive on a certain level, but in general I think I’m happy with the way our touring and gigging tends to take the holidays off. Christmas instrument retails sales is exhausting, but it’s also a decent change of gears and I don’t generally need breaks, I just need change…
2012 promises a LOT of that. I’m excited to get all up in the New Year – we’re a most-wanted artist at Falcon Ridge this year which should open a lot of opportunities. We’ll be doing a little bit of touring with Greg Klyma and Pesky J. Nixon – that alone’s sort of in danger of being like a dream come true – we’ll be on the road a lot more than we were in 2011 and I’ll be balancing that with my favourite open mic I’ve ever run. It feels like we’ll be putting our teeth back into our dreams. I feel like my Life begins again next week with our New Year’s Eve show with mOsno and Carbon Leaf – and then it’s time to sprint.
Just got to survive the next… it’s just 34 hours… I can DO that.
