I am having get togethers at my house more often, seriously.

Sunday a girlfriend of mine came by for tea and a chat, a lovely afternoon.
Then the band folks came over for our 2nd strategic planning meeting for 2009.
It was warm and cozy in my house and Juli brought me a book, Andrea tuned my cello, David reconfigured my igoogle home page and reorganized my itunes library, and Keith did my dishes.
Enough said.
I enjoy having conscientious, kind people in my life, those souls who know what friendship means and how to cultivate and care for it. I made tea and hummus and we made a list of every song in the archive and began determining exact tempo, length, feel, instrumentation etc. Which ones are radio friendly? Which ones need more attention? I fixed a few of my own lazy musical details that had been bothering me for a while and needed some focus. A productive evening, and it felt good.

I am headed out the door to go to Long Beach for a week-long sales and marketing meeting. I love my home but staying in hotels is fun too. We are having a cocktail party on the Queen Mary Tuesday evening and the theme is the TV show Mad Men. Dug around for a Breakfast at Tiffany's dress, an easy find in my costume closet..

i
love
my
life

Last night 1/2 of the genitals; Juli, David, Keith, and I drove down to San Diego to see Juli and our new manager Sean perform in Cash'd Out for New Years. It was fun, loud, and full of the things you would expect at a bar on the beach in San Diego on New Years Eve. No one spilled too much Jack Daniels on me and Juli was awesome, I am enjoying watching her grow as an artist. Crazy dancing with Keith (again!) we survived the drunken dryhumpfest mayhem and quickly afterwards drove through the night in the fog..beautiful 2 am fog by the way..to Denny's for some late night coffee, conversation and french toast slam breakfast.
Our hotel room in Encinitas (womb 111) was where we awoke this morning to a beautiful New Year and our trip to the Self Realization Fellowship meditation gardens.
Lying on a bench, overlooking the ocean, listening to the waves and my own heart beating I thought

Life is GOOD

Koi ponds, Keith's first love of photography, a gigantic herd of whales passing by JUST as we stood watching, and the spectacular smell in the air. David kept taking deep breaths and saying "the air..it's so clean I can feeel it going in my body!"

Driving home, listening to the radio and all 4 of us singing the oldies (good AND bad) as LOUD as possible in the car, including all the instrumental parts (Jules and I decided that is a great way for us to have vocal rehearsal, to start having late night drives while listening to K-EARTH101 and work on our harmonies together in the car, although David is more of a smooth jazz guy..) freedom, fearlessness, friendship and fun.

It's the way to go.

I'm waiting for Juli to pick me up..
The Evangenitals are going to Disneyland!!!

Happy New Year
Love Love Love

Mom is back home now, we had a lovely time.
I kept her out until 1:45am on Christmas eve,
she was enjoying the party and playing along.

These are the things I have been doing since she left..
Rest. Hike. Run. Play(music). Read. Soak. Cook(soup).
Eat(soup). Dance. Listen. Drink(tea). Laugh.

Simple Simple Simple.

I am not very good at holidays.
Seriously, I can never remember when they are..or how quickly they come up and every year ask countless times "wait..what day is Christmas again..Tuesday? or Wednesday? What day is it today?"
My concept of time is always a bit askew, and honestly I think that every day is important. I guess I just don't usually wait for a holiday or a birthday to tell someone how I feel about them. In fact, the pressure of some sort of expectation of intimacy that is on a calendar causes me just a little bit of uncomfortability (my favorite word that is not actually a word, unless you're looking it up in the urban dictionary..I digress).
Last year Juli forced me to have Christmas, she even made me a stocking at her house and I gave her a cookbook of 1000 vegetarian recipes and some Crocs :) After we opened gifts, I went to my annual Christmas get together at Beth's house in Hollywood, where all of the holiday loners gather and watch every badly edited Christmas slasher film we can get our hands on (although one year we watched Matt Dillon in "Over the Edge"..a classic)

This year I decided to buckle down and do the holidays differently. I went up north to dad's for Thanksgiving and it was so lovely, I have the best dad in the world and we talk on the phone a lot but really don't hang out enough. I then invited my mother down to MY house for Christmas. She just retired 2 weeks ago and is very excited to take the train, I'll pick her up Tuesday. Mom came to visit earlier this year for the first time in 10 years and we had a great time, I took her to see the Cheech Marin collection at LACMA, she is a huge fan, go figure. I love getting older and finally being friends with my mother, I am able to appreciate her more every day. Christmas eve we will go to a tamale party in Highland Park and on Christmas day..the movies (something at the Laemmle though, I think I will spare her "Black Christmas", "Silent Night, Deadly Night" or better still, "Christmas Evil")
I am looking forward to it.

zen traffic.


I started a new job,
it's been about 4 months actually.
I am enjoying the work, the people, the routine, the creativity, the $$, the meetings, the travel, and strangely enough I have found that I don't even seem to mind the traffic.

It takes 45-50 minutes to get to work in the morning, and 1 to 1 1/2 hours to get home..I just got home.
That is on top of actually working a 9 or 10 hour day.
(I have been equally happy working part-time, close to home and walking..
but that is another story, this one is about traffic)
Last night I was on the phone (in traffic) with a friend in Oakland laughing about how much I appreciate the opportunity to see my city at a much slower pace. How I get to see the lights of downtown in a way that I may miss if I were passing it along at a faster clip. How I like the opportunity to sit still and practice patience, sing to myself, catch up on phone calls (headset!) and just BE THERE.
I have yet to wish I were somewhere else when I'm in it, I seem to have accepted (for now) that it is part of the day and as valuable as any other part of my day.
I looked up possible options; bus, train, bike..but for now this seems to be it.
I have come up with some great thoughts, meditations, ideas, and just plain silence during these times..My car stereo was stolen years ago when Juli and I were on a lunch break at work (elsewhere) and I never bothered to replace it.
I appreciate the quiet time.

For someone who has spent most of her life always wishing she were "somewhere else" I consider this great progress and I am grateful for it.

**the Evangenitals had our 1st strategic planning meeting for 2009 Q1 last night..
I am deeply in love, and there is more to come..

It's a rainy stay-at-home night. A bathtub night.
An "I'm going to make a pot of soup and read" night.
I remember when nights like this used to frighten me, as if by staying in, I would somehow end up missing the exact moment when I would receive the answer I needed to fix whatever I thought was wrong. (Does that make sense?)
I don't care anymore, or perhaps this is the moment, and I've found the answer.
I couldn't wait to get home in the rain and fill up the tub. I like the sound of my own heart beating in my ears when I lie still in the hot water and listen.
(Has anyone else done that lately?)
Anyway, I am looking forward to hearing it..