My friend G turned 45 yesterday. She had an all-day party, which started at 4:00 and went on until after I left at 10:30. G had this great idea that everyone (or those who wanted) would perform for her. I was inspired by her email invite to write a song. Of course I recorded it on GarageBand, and if I can ever figure out how to incorporate songs onto the JDJB page will include it with the nine others I've recorded over the last few months. G said my song was her favorite -- not that the others who performed weren't good (they were), but mine was the only one written specifically for her, so it had that going for it. A few moments before I headed to the party, I decided I couldn't just stand there in her living room and sing without moving, so I came up with some hand motions and dance steps to go along with the lyrics; I was surprised by the number of comments I got specifically on the dancing portion of my performance!My latest song (after the one for G) was inspired by J calling a few days ago to tell me that they had put the down payment on the shipping containers which will soon make up a good portion of our new home. The song is called "Train Car" and it's kind of bluegrass (or at least that's how I envisioned it).
Well, we're moving into a train car
On the far side of this town;
She's tall and thin and sexy
And the purtiest shade of rusty brown.
Gonna sleep like old hound dogs,
Sleep like ain't nobody else around,
When we move into our train car
Out here on the far side of this town.
Well, we're moving into a train car
On the far side of this town;
Livin' higher on the hog
Than any poor soul for miles around.
Folks are bound to be jealous,
But we'll just keep on smilin' while they frown,
'Cause we're livin' in a train car
Out here on the far side of this town.
Train car, sweet train car,
Tell me, can you hear that whistle blow?
Train car, sweet train car,
Suits me mighty fine from head to toe.
Well, our train car is a mansion,
Nearly forty feet in length;
We got chickens, a goat and a garden,
We even got us a kitchen sink.
We don't lack for nothin',
'Cause everything we needed we have found
In our happy handsome train car
Out here on the far side of this town.
Our train car is so fancy,
Makes us proud to call it home,
With a door as wide as Texas,
In case we get the urge to roam;
Just slide that big door open
And take a little trip right down the track
In our fancy little train car,
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
Train car, sweet train car,
Tell me, can you hear that whistle blow?
Train car, sweet train car,
Suits me mighty fine from head to toe.
On the far side of this town;
She's tall and thin and sexy
And the purtiest shade of rusty brown.
Gonna sleep like old hound dogs,
Sleep like ain't nobody else around,
When we move into our train car
Out here on the far side of this town.
Well, we're moving into a train car
On the far side of this town;
Livin' higher on the hog
Than any poor soul for miles around.
Folks are bound to be jealous,
But we'll just keep on smilin' while they frown,
'Cause we're livin' in a train car
Out here on the far side of this town.
Train car, sweet train car,
Tell me, can you hear that whistle blow?
Train car, sweet train car,
Suits me mighty fine from head to toe.
Well, our train car is a mansion,
Nearly forty feet in length;
We got chickens, a goat and a garden,
We even got us a kitchen sink.
We don't lack for nothin',
'Cause everything we needed we have found
In our happy handsome train car
Out here on the far side of this town.
Our train car is so fancy,
Makes us proud to call it home,
With a door as wide as Texas,
In case we get the urge to roam;
Just slide that big door open
And take a little trip right down the track
In our fancy little train car,
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
Train car, sweet train car,
Tell me, can you hear that whistle blow?
Train car, sweet train car,
Suits me mighty fine from head to toe.
I videotaped the arrival of the first couple of containers, then went out to Bastrop, Texas, with J to film the driver picking up the next load. There are eight in all, but we're only using three for our house. "Only." Two of them will serve as S's and my rooms, the third will go on top, straddling the back of those two; it'll be like a screened in porch for watching sunrises and having cocktail parties, and for sleeping when the weather is nice. The space between our rooms will be enclosed with a pitched roof (V-shape to catch the rain) and front and back walls. The plans are still kind of solidifying, but there will be a kitchen, a shower/laundry room (which will hopefully/eventually use 100% captured rainwater) and a composting toilet on the other side.
I spent several days last week with M1's saws-all clearing brush and getting the area ready as much as I could before there was anything to do with regards to construction. Now that the containers are all on site, the first thing to do is to have the concrete piers poured; these are the support columns which will lift the two main containers up off of the ground. After that, the containers will be placed on them, and then the real fun begins. Or the real torture. J is a pro at building things; I'm eager to learn; S is terrified. I think we'll all learn a thing or two in the months to come.
But back to G's party. After the performances (which had intermissions between each of them), G set up her sound system in the back yard for her improv disco band, which includes her and her friend S1. I have been one of the dancers for all three performances. I wore a pair of pajama bottoms and a matching red t-shirt and old Crocs because it was too hot for any of my polyester dance clothes. But G's girlfriend A mentioned that she might have something I could wear (she's tall and has a "pretty wide rib cage, too"). So I ended up in a beautiful vintage polyester black bikini with bright red tulips and a wrap-around skirt and short "jacket" (perhaps it would be called a jackette in fashion lingo, or should be). I put the very skimpy bikini top on my head, wore the jackette as a kind of tied-in-the-front Carmen Miranda look, slid on the skimpy bottoms and wrapped the skirt around my bottom half. The music was pumping and I was doing my best moves, doing a slow strip tease and eventual reveal of the crazy-sexy bottom. But with all that gyrating, I suddenly felt my junk on the outside of the bikini bottom. I reached in to fix them and danced a little more, revealed a little more. And then suddenly realized that the bottom had come untied on one side and had fallen down around one thigh. I did my best to wrangle the wrap-around skirt back around my pride and kicked off the bottoms with a little reveal of ass cheeks -- not on purpose, it just happened that way.
Soon thereafter, I retreated to the "dressing room" and put on my boxer briefs and a blue mesh underskirt which would normally be used for some kind of a petticoat action. My fellow dancer -- whose name escapes me -- was at the party but was not dancing, so I was on my own. I was happy to see that A had donned a rather Elizabeth Taylor Egyptian number and blond wig and was out there to lend me support. Eventually some of the other party-goers joined in on the dancing. It was really a good time.
I must work my stomach muscles quite a bit in improv disco performance -- or maybe I hold my breath a lot -- because all three times I've done this gig, I've had a bit of a stomachache afterwards. That's why I left shortly after the disco ended at 10:00. G wanted to sit and chat with everybody, but I was already chatted out. She seemed disappointed that I left "early," but I'm sure she got over it because there were a lot of other people there to keep her company.
The original announcement had said it was a potluck, so I made an egg salad (because she said she would be having a "sandwich bar," and because I had the ingredients in the house), but when I arrived, M (a somewhat androgynous lesbian I have always had a crush on) had just delivered thirty burritos -- large ones, cut in half, so it was really like sixty meals -- and the sandwich bar idea had been ditched. I put my egg salad in the fridge, and left with it. M brought the burritos as part of her performance for G. She's a professor at Community College and had difficulty buying thirty tacos as a reward for good work by her students, and after a bit of back and forth email writing to Chipotle corporate headquarters was offered the thirty burritos for G's party (because school is out of session).
I had a veggie burrito, and it was very good. But I was really looking forward to an egg salad sandwich with some of the arugula I'd picked from the garden for G. So today, I had my sandwich with some fresh cut leaves of arugula and a slice of swiss cheese. Yum! The egg salad had mayo, mustard, red onion, calamata olives, fresh basil, salt and pepper.
This evening, I went with A1 and E -- some friends from the Dance Group -- to see the new movie Brick Lane, about an Pakistani woman in an arranged marriage living in London. It's a gorgeous movie, very touching, one of those movies I wanted to just have a good cry after, but I couldn't since I was with A1 and E. Well, not that I couldn't, but I didn't.
I came home and sat on the porch to a lot of distressing insect activity, which I'm hyper-aware of because I'm rereading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek right now. There were four wasps congregating around the porch light. I couldn't tell if they were building a nest or if there was one already built up in the cup around the light, or if they were just pretending to be moths. Then a brilliant green dragonfly appeared and was flying clumsily around the light and around the wasps. I was certain a murder was about to happen before my eyes, so I decided to come inside, turn off the porch light and hope for the best for all. But not before I was dive-bombed by a waterbug (what I grew up calling tree roaches). Whew! And then I started writing this blog only to discover that the queen wasp (it must've been the queen, she was bigger than the rest, and agitated) had gotten inside and was spinning around my desk lamp and around my head. I got the trusty small-necked bottle I've used before and once again did a catch and release somewhere around the second or third paragraph of this entry.
So now, of course, I'm totally exhausted!
Oh, and one more thing to report. I got an invitation to be M's friend on Facebook! She said she was enamored by my song and dance at G's party. Swoon!
I spent several days last week with M1's saws-all clearing brush and getting the area ready as much as I could before there was anything to do with regards to construction. Now that the containers are all on site, the first thing to do is to have the concrete piers poured; these are the support columns which will lift the two main containers up off of the ground. After that, the containers will be placed on them, and then the real fun begins. Or the real torture. J is a pro at building things; I'm eager to learn; S is terrified. I think we'll all learn a thing or two in the months to come.
But back to G's party. After the performances (which had intermissions between each of them), G set up her sound system in the back yard for her improv disco band, which includes her and her friend S1. I have been one of the dancers for all three performances. I wore a pair of pajama bottoms and a matching red t-shirt and old Crocs because it was too hot for any of my polyester dance clothes. But G's girlfriend A mentioned that she might have something I could wear (she's tall and has a "pretty wide rib cage, too"). So I ended up in a beautiful vintage polyester black bikini with bright red tulips and a wrap-around skirt and short "jacket" (perhaps it would be called a jackette in fashion lingo, or should be). I put the very skimpy bikini top on my head, wore the jackette as a kind of tied-in-the-front Carmen Miranda look, slid on the skimpy bottoms and wrapped the skirt around my bottom half. The music was pumping and I was doing my best moves, doing a slow strip tease and eventual reveal of the crazy-sexy bottom. But with all that gyrating, I suddenly felt my junk on the outside of the bikini bottom. I reached in to fix them and danced a little more, revealed a little more. And then suddenly realized that the bottom had come untied on one side and had fallen down around one thigh. I did my best to wrangle the wrap-around skirt back around my pride and kicked off the bottoms with a little reveal of ass cheeks -- not on purpose, it just happened that way.
Soon thereafter, I retreated to the "dressing room" and put on my boxer briefs and a blue mesh underskirt which would normally be used for some kind of a petticoat action. My fellow dancer -- whose name escapes me -- was at the party but was not dancing, so I was on my own. I was happy to see that A had donned a rather Elizabeth Taylor Egyptian number and blond wig and was out there to lend me support. Eventually some of the other party-goers joined in on the dancing. It was really a good time.
I must work my stomach muscles quite a bit in improv disco performance -- or maybe I hold my breath a lot -- because all three times I've done this gig, I've had a bit of a stomachache afterwards. That's why I left shortly after the disco ended at 10:00. G wanted to sit and chat with everybody, but I was already chatted out. She seemed disappointed that I left "early," but I'm sure she got over it because there were a lot of other people there to keep her company.
The original announcement had said it was a potluck, so I made an egg salad (because she said she would be having a "sandwich bar," and because I had the ingredients in the house), but when I arrived, M (a somewhat androgynous lesbian I have always had a crush on) had just delivered thirty burritos -- large ones, cut in half, so it was really like sixty meals -- and the sandwich bar idea had been ditched. I put my egg salad in the fridge, and left with it. M brought the burritos as part of her performance for G. She's a professor at Community College and had difficulty buying thirty tacos as a reward for good work by her students, and after a bit of back and forth email writing to Chipotle corporate headquarters was offered the thirty burritos for G's party (because school is out of session).
I had a veggie burrito, and it was very good. But I was really looking forward to an egg salad sandwich with some of the arugula I'd picked from the garden for G. So today, I had my sandwich with some fresh cut leaves of arugula and a slice of swiss cheese. Yum! The egg salad had mayo, mustard, red onion, calamata olives, fresh basil, salt and pepper.
This evening, I went with A1 and E -- some friends from the Dance Group -- to see the new movie Brick Lane, about an Pakistani woman in an arranged marriage living in London. It's a gorgeous movie, very touching, one of those movies I wanted to just have a good cry after, but I couldn't since I was with A1 and E. Well, not that I couldn't, but I didn't.
I came home and sat on the porch to a lot of distressing insect activity, which I'm hyper-aware of because I'm rereading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek right now. There were four wasps congregating around the porch light. I couldn't tell if they were building a nest or if there was one already built up in the cup around the light, or if they were just pretending to be moths. Then a brilliant green dragonfly appeared and was flying clumsily around the light and around the wasps. I was certain a murder was about to happen before my eyes, so I decided to come inside, turn off the porch light and hope for the best for all. But not before I was dive-bombed by a waterbug (what I grew up calling tree roaches). Whew! And then I started writing this blog only to discover that the queen wasp (it must've been the queen, she was bigger than the rest, and agitated) had gotten inside and was spinning around my desk lamp and around my head. I got the trusty small-necked bottle I've used before and once again did a catch and release somewhere around the second or third paragraph of this entry.
So now, of course, I'm totally exhausted!
Oh, and one more thing to report. I got an invitation to be M's friend on Facebook! She said she was enamored by my song and dance at G's party. Swoon!
No comments:
Post a Comment