Waiting For The Light To Change

Life hands you lots of challenges, and how you deal with those challenges determines what kind of person you are, and how people look upon you. And just when I think things are getting a little better, another challenge arises. And this time around the challenge is strictly internal. As in on my right side, sorta halfway between my bellybutton and my flank.

I'd experienced pain like this once before, bad enough to put me in the ER twice in one day, about a month ago. I was given a diagnosis of a bladder infection and a pulled muscle - not much more than a pat on the head and a take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-in-the-morning diagnosis. But then a week ago last Friday the pain returned, and I was back in the ER. This time around I was given a remarkably thorough ultrasound exam to go along with a milligram of Dilaudid through an IV, and a diagnosis of gallstones. They gave me prescriptions for Percocet and an industrial-grade stool softener/laxative, and sent me home to sleep off the Dilaudid while Joy went to fetch the prescriptions at Wal-Mart. I didn't make it more than two hours - while Joy waited for Wal-Mart's computers to get over a digital hissy-fit to get the meds - before calling her to get back to the trailer and take me back to the hospital. Another visit to the ER - yay! X-rays and a CT scan didn't do more than confirm that my gall bladder was secreting stones and otherwise going south on me. An internist came down to oversee the case and recommended that I have the damn thing removed, to which I wholeheartedly agreed. An ER nurse told me that I'd be released if I could hold down food, and brought some chocolate pudding for me to enjoy.

And this was when everything went straight to hell.

About two spoonfuls into the pudding, I found myself altogether uninterested in finishing the delightful dessert. I'd already been feeling somewhat nauseous and had a barf bag close at hand, but Joy seemed convinced that I needed a second bag and got the nurse to give her a second bag. I was halfway out of my hospital gown, only another five minutes or so from leaving the ER altogether when the pudding decided that it had no interest in letting me digest it and instead chose to commit what Major League Eating would call a 'reversal of fortune'. I barely had time to grab barf bag #1 before violently retching my guts out, nearly filling the thing. And just as I handed the bag chocolate-tinged vomit to Joy, she handed me the second bag and I obliged her by filling that bag half-full of more chocobarf. Where the fuck was all this coming from? I hadn't eaten so far that day. In fact, I hadn't eaten anything in the last eighteen hours, with only a glass or two of milk in the interim. The nurse and internist conferred for all of about ten seconds, and it was decided that I'd be admitted overnight for observation.

Have I ever mentioned that I've never been admitted to the hospital before? Ever? Even when I went in for hernia surgery, it was just an outpatient procedure where I was back home within an hour of going under the knife. To be quite honest I was scared shitless. It was already early in the evening when I was admitted, and Joy was quietly advised that she'd really have to leave when visiting hours were up at eight. It was one of the longer nights of my life, alone save for nurses checking in on me every few hours. At least I had TV - something I haven't had since June. And because I was NPO - no food or drink, just ice chips - TV was all I was getting for the time being.

I wound up having the consultation with the surgeon who'll remove my gall bladder while in bed, and she told me that her office would call me the following Monday to confirm a date for the surgery (NOTE: Still haven't heard from them - have to call them in the morning), and I was eventually, gradually able to hold down clear liquids, then a low-fat lunch before being set loose that afternoon, with a second set of scripts for Percocet and stool softener/laxatives, and a stern warning that my diet will have to change because of having my gall bladder removed. I'll have to reduce my fat intake, and eat smaller portions. Nothing I've ever really bothered to do before, so it's going to take some getting used to. and I'm not particularly thrilled about it. At least I should be able to get the time off from work. The Holidays are the slowest time of the year of for merchandisers, so much so that my supervisor in Portland actually asked for volunteers to take time off in December. After the surgeon told me that I'd need ten to fourteen days to recover from the surgery (and that I'd given the surgeon a tentative date of December 10th for the surgery), I informed her that I'd be more than willing take to time off after the 10th. I'll have to shoot her a message again soon to find out if I've been approved for that leave. Though if things get worse sooner than that, I may have to have the surgery sooner than that, and to hell with leave requests - my health comes first.

Rearranged

So here I am. What has it been, nearly three months since I last posted? I've had issues to deal with. There's actually been good news in our lives for a change. But not without sacrifice.

I had to pawn my gear. I did it a few days after my last post, needed gas money for my job with Acosta Sales & Marketing, merchandising Safeway stores overnight in Clallam, Jefferson, Kitsap, Mason and Pierce Counties. It was a necessary decision, but it hurt nonetheless. And I had to borrow money from friends and relatives to get keep our heads above water until the paychecks started to roll in. I was able to pay the finance charges on the pawn last weekend, roll it over for another three months - essentially paying Lee and his crew at E-Z Pawn to store my gear until the big money rolls in.

You heard that right - the big money is rolling in, though we're not exactly sure when. Joy finally won her Disability case, and she'll start receiving monthly checks of about $1500 at the end of November. It would be more, but Uncle Sam automatically deducts Medicare from her check. She also qualified for Medicaid, and thanks to another program she won't have to pay more than about $5 for any of her prescriptions. There was a catch, though: she had to take a deal. With her attorney at her side, the judge said (without actually saying it) that either she could take a deal where SSA would backdate her date of becoming disabled to the month of her 50th birthday (October 2010) or appeal until she turned blue in the face. She took the deal. As a result, she's only getting back Disability pay for the past four years, which amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 - 70k. It put a bit of a crimp into our plans, but only a minor one.

The first thing on our agenda upon receiving that back money hasn't changed, though - we're getting rid of my old truck. It has over 303,000 miles on it, and I recently had to bypass the truck's leaking heater core in order to keep it running. And we're making the rounds of local auto dealership both online and in person, gathering information on new and very, very late-model used Ford hatchback/wagons - and getting a lot of phone calls back from those dealers in the process. As of today, we have dealers from PA, Seattle and even Anacortes calling us on an almost daily basis, even though we told them that we're just collecting information and not able to make a purchase until that money rolls in. And it ought to be coming soon - our attorney already got his $6,000 for representing us.

So sixty to seventy grand, Joy's monthly Disability check and my job - I guess things are finally looking up for us. I just want to get my gear out of hock. I've been itching to get behind my drums for months now. And not necessarily back on the road, either. I just want to play the music I want to play with good friends and have fun every once in a while, and getting paid for it would be nice instead of absolutely necessary. We've already gotten back online, and getting TV here in the trailer is coming in the next month or so. A new trailer is also a serious possibility. That said, Joy and I have been having some fairly passionate discussions about where and what to move into. She wants to buy property out in the middle of nowhere and put a trailer or mobile home on it. My argument to that is that in her condition the last thing she needs to be out in the middle of nowhere - especially without the ability to drive. I've told her that in my opinion it's inevitable that she'll need a wheelchair-accessible apartment or condo that's on or very close to a bus line no matter where we go. She says that she wants to leave her kids something when she leaves this world, hence buying the property. I say that she'll leave her kids something when she leaves this world if she chooses to live in an apartment or condo - money.

Dreams of long vacations, cruises and restaurant binges - they're still there, but greatly tempered by reality. Fortunately for us, neither of us are into the kind of meals that cost hundreds of dollars. The most I ever paid for a dinner for the two of us was $130 (with tip) at Lawry's The Prime Rib in Las Vegas ages ago. It was worth it - a bucket-list meal if there ever was one. But these days I'd rather do the cooking myself, making luxurious meals out of average-at-best ingredients with the help of good recipes, careful technique and lots and lots of patience. The only travel I'm really interested in is seeing our grandchildren. Joy asked me if I wanted to buy a new set of drums, and I said no - I'm happy with what I have, though a new cymbal here and there would be nice, and a new snare would be much nicer.

The light at the end of the tunnel is there before us. We can see it clear as day now. Joy doesn't have to worry so much about so many things so much of the time. We're almost there.

Downsized

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't posted anything in what, weeks? Months? I've been busy. And if you notice the title of this post, you should be able to figure out exactly what's been going on. It hasn't been fun, not by any stretch of the imagination. But at the end of the day we're safe and secure, and that's what really matters. But since you really want to know – or maybe nobody's actually reading this other than the occasional bot or meth addict, and the audience I'm being so conversational and chatty with strictly in my mind – here's what's been happening.

Things got rolling about four months ago, when Joy found out that my now former little brother – more on that later - was sneaking into our room to steal things. At first it was little things, paint brushes and such. But then Joy noticed that some of her painkillers were missing. We went to my mother to let her know what was going on, and she ignored us. Joy demanded that I put a lock on the door to our room, and I found one at the local Wal-Mart. A month later, the little bastard noticed the lock on the door and ran to his mother. I got a text message demanding I remove the lock from her, and barely half an hour later another message came, this one calling me deluded for believing my wife's accusations. A third message simply ordered me to move out. Now.

Did I fail to mention that I was in Nevada at the time, in the middle of a gig with Steppen Stonz at the Atlantis in Reno? They've refused to answer any of my phone calls or text messages since. And with me eight hundred miles away and unable to do anything to rectify the situation, I told Joy that I'd do what I could when I got back to town.

She wound up in the spare bedroom of a friend of ours, and I stayed with her there for a week or so, until my next run to Nevada. I spent that time trying to make arrangements for a more permanent place to stay, and we got my father to agree to buy a fifth-wheel trailer for us that we could move to a local RV park. I'd have to quit the band and get a real job, but by now I was angry enough that I was willing to overcome my general antipathy towards the normal workaday world and join in for however long was necessary. The fun part would be actually finding a job in a county with an effective unemployment rate still around fifteen to twenty percent. But more on that later.

I still had one last run to Nevada to make, and ties to sever as gently as possible. A week in Elko came first at the Red Lion, and that went pretty well, other than our keyboard player Chris deciding to bail on us at the absolute last minute. Jef Derderian came back to help us out for a few days before a new player came in to play the last night of that gig. He's a nice kid from Las Vegas named Dominico – sorry, I don't have his last name. He was another friend of Jef's, continuing that strange line of players that have passed through the band since Mike and Arthur sent Cliff packing. Miguel, Alex, Jef, Chris, and now Dominico. That lack of consistency must be driving Mike and Arthur nuts. And my impending departure wouldn't help things any. After Elko, we had a few days off before heading to Minden for three nights at the Carson Valley Inn. I set up the pop-up trailer and settled in for a few days to recover and plot a strategy to break the news as gently as possible to the guys while we were in Minden.

A string of thunderstorms was passing over Northern Nevada the day I headed up to Minden. In hindsight, I should've recognized the omen for what it was and stayed in Reno. Arriving at the CVI, I found out that I wasn't expected – nor were the rest of us. Simply put, we weren't on the schedule. I did my best to contain my shock and anger and told the manager that came down to inform me of the situation that there had to be some sort of error, and I'd let the rest of the guys know what was going on, and I told them that while I was disappointed, I wasn't angry with them and that they were doing the best they could to help a confused drummer. The manager told me that she'd give Stew Stewart a call, and I told her that I'd call Mike to see if there was some way the gig could be rescued.

Mike didn't take the news well. Y'see, he's very neat and organized when it comes to the band's calendar. Stew had given us this particular week on the schedule back in December – something I'd told the CVI – and he wrote the dates down in his calendar as Stew gave them to him over the phone. He called Stew, and the response he got back was either a study in ignorance or pure chutzpah – we were supposed to be playing John Ascuaga's Nugget that weekend. Either way, his response was total bullshit because the Nugget had closed its cabaret, new ownership deciding to move the sports-book into the cabaret's new location while the space that held Trader Dick's would now become a Mickey Gilley's Honky-Tonk, part of said new ownership's goal to move the Nugget to a country-and-western theme. Regardless of the tack of Stew's line of bullshit, we were still out a gig. And this would continue to haunt me – and it still is, and will likely do so for at least the remainder of the summer.

I retreated back to the pop-up and hunkered down for what would now be two weeks off. After some frantic searching and e-mailing, I found a buyer for the trailer. A polite young Hispanic couple handed me a sum of money that I split with Michelle and Bill before driving away with the trailer the day before I started what would be my last gig with Steppen Stonz back at the Atlantis. I informed the guys of my situation that week, and I think they handled it pretty well. I told them that I didn't want to quit the group, but I had no choice. They let me know that should I ever come back to Nevada, my chair would be waiting for me. Maybe I'll be able to take that offer up someday. But I kinda doubt it.

Upon my return to Port Angeles, my father confirmed that he'd buy us a trailer, though it'd likely be an older one that needed repairs and cleaning. The weekend after I got home, he purchased a particular trailer that an old friend of his had for sale, and he and I did our best to clean it up and make it fit for human habitation. Then we found out that it needed a new refrigerator and some work on the floors do to water damage. At the end of the day, he admitted to me that he should've bought a different trailer – any money he'd saved in the original purchase was long gone, and that he'd spent twice the purchase price on repairing the thing. And after a few fits and starts, we found a place to park the trailer.

We're living in the Peabody Creek RV Park now, just above downtown Port Angeles. And our home is an old Alpenlite 32' fifth-wheel. No cable or internet, but we're dealing with that as best as we can. My drums are stashed at my father's place for safe keeping. And after six weeks of searching, I found a job, working for a company associated with Safeway. Eventually I'll be merchandising stores in five counties, working overnight for $12.50 an hour and mileage. I actually start my orientation tomorrow, a regional manager driving up from Portland in the morning to do the deed. It's still only part-time work, but our bills are modest enough that as little as twenty hours a week should cover things nicely. We'll still require government assistance, but hopefully things will hold at least through the winter. By then, we might be in a much better situation.

Joy's attorney here in town was able to get Social Security to hear her case again – though I think a letter to our local Congressman may have helped as well. The hearing is at the end of September, and a positive result could put a not insignificant sum of back SS/D benefits in our pockets by the time her birthday rolls around, and around seventeen hundred a month in our bank account for the rest of her life. And where we go from there is up to us. Staying in Port Angeles is an option, but not my preferred option. After my mother's decision to believe whatever story her drug-addict criminal subhuman child over the truth of his criminal behavior and kick us out of the house, I chose to disown them – and I've even gone to the extent of removing pictures of myself from their house, systematically writing myself out of their history. And Joy and I have a few other surprises in store for them. Nothing illegal or physically damaging, mind you. But it will be painful to them nonetheless.

I've done my best to remain positive through all this. It isn't easy. But nothing worth having ever is, as the old saying goes. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel now. I have a job. I have a home. I have the woman I love at my side. And with luck the future will become a lot brighter in the near future. I should let go of all the anger I have towards my former family. But it's hard to do so. I want to punish them for their stupidity and arrogance. But I think watching my mother and stepfather descend into senility with only a shiftless lazy punk to look after them, a phony hipster with no desire to do anything other than sponge off of them – I think that's revenge enough for me. I have more important things to worry about. I have a family. I have Joy, her children and grandchildren. I have my friends. I'm still trying to get a local band together, though that may never come to anything really fruitful. I even got the opportunity to play a sort-of reunion with Powerlight last weekend, and that could lead to future gigs if my work schedule allows it.

But what's most important is that I need to put my nose to the proverbial grindstone and work hard to maintain what I have in front of me. I have to put the past behind me and move forward.

So Where Will I Sleep Tonight?

One more night before I can start over again. It's been not quite a weeks since I got home from Reno. Things aren't particularly bleak per se, but it ain't exactly beer and skittles here on the ranch. Joy has been holding up as well as can be expected for someone who's basically been forced to couch-surf for the last two months between our friends at the Evergreen Terrace apartments - where we're on the waiting list, by the way - and trying to maintain sanity as best she can. We're both stressed and angry at everything. But we do our best to apologize to each other before we go to bed, wherever that bed may be.

But tomorrow is a new day, and a new and more permanent residence will be waiting for us. Even before I got home from Reno, we'd been scouting out RV parks for the fifth-wheel trailer that Dad bought for us on the cheap only to wind up spending almost double what he paid for it to fix it up - much to his chagrin. We'd pretty much settled on setting up shop at Monroe Estates just east of town, but their insistence that my father co-sign for us pretty much scuppered the deal and sent us scrambling for a new location. On a lark we tried the Peabody Creek RV Park downtown happened to have spaces available and was willing to overlook my temporary lack of employment - more on that later - because of my comparative abundance of cash. In the morning we get the electricity turned on and change our address for quite possibly only a few months.

Why do I say that? Turns out that Joy's attorney has wrangled a new hearing for her Disability case in late September. Given that we're looking at seven years of back SS/D pay handed to us should the judge finally rule in our favor, even the revelation that Joy's medical bills have us $27,000 in the hole is suddenly kinda trivial.

And I doubt that I'll be unemployed all that long. A day or two before I left for Elko, I took a flyer and threw up an application onto Wal-Mart's website for any position that didn't require a lot of customer interaction - mostly graveyard-shift jobs. The day after I pulled into Elko, I got a phone call from the Port Angeles store's personnel office asking if I could come in today for an interview! After explaining the situation to their personnel manager most carefully, he agreed to keep me informed should an opening come up after I got home. The very next morning I got a similar call from the Sequim store's personnel manager, with a similar result. Then the personnel manager from the PA store called me again the following morning, only to remember the conversation we'd had forty-eight hours before and apologize profusely for waking me up from a deep slumber. And then he called me a third time two weeks later as I sat patiently between gigs in my old pop-up trailer - I guess he likes me.

By the way, the trailer is no longer mine/ours. I sold the thing to a nice young Hispanic couple, only for them to wreck the thing on the drive home. And then they had the audacity to demand their money back, claiming that I knowingly sold them a defective vehicle! I offered them my sympathy and nothing else before leaving the scene - we'd towed it down from Washington without incident, after all. I don't think they were being entirely truthful to me. Welcome to Craigslist, kids - everything is sold 'as is', and the moment they handed me the money and I handed them the title, they were on their own. I sold them a functional unit, and they knew what was wrong with it going in. Sucks that they wrecked it, but that's not my problem.

And I'm trying to get a new band started here in town. But it seems that everyone is in survival mode right now - myself included. Nothing is sacrosanct right now, anything and everything can potentially be sacrificed should I need the money. The Wal-Mart job is only minimum-wage, but the hours should be sufficient to keep us in the RV park for the time being. And at my father's suggestion I put in an app at Clallam Transit for a paratransit driver. I think I could do that. And there's always fast-food work or some other sort of temp or part-time job should Wal-Mart not be enough. I just have to bear down for the time being and get us across the finish line - which with any luck should be sometime this fall. I just have to do what I have to do, and hold on for the time being.

Why Now Is The Time To Let Go

I'm sitting backstage at the Atlantis as I start to write this. I'm miserable and in no small amount of pain – my cracked and broken wisdom teeth have been a constant ache for the last few weeks now, and I'm eating Tylenol like candy. In a certain way I have come to understand why Joy must endure on a daily basis, albeit no doubt magnified by an order of several magnitudes. One thing about going home for good is that I'll finally be able to see a doctor and dentist on a regular basis, even if I may have to drive all the way to LaPush to see Joy's dentist at the Quileute Tribal Clinic.

I know what you're thinking – what did he just say? Going home for good? Yeah. I have to give it up. This isn't something that just happened the other day – and as I write this my current employers have no real idea that I'm about to drop the hammer on them. I wanted to tell them sooner, but this particular trip to Nevada has been fraught with personnel problems, cancellations, and just bad fucking luck. And this whole chain of events didn't even start when I left Port Angeles for Elko, Nevada. It actually started about a little over a month prior to that.

Before I go any further, I need to make something absolutely clear: Macdonald Craig Robertson is a useless little piece of shit and I hope the little bastard dies painfully of dick cancer. Why do I suddenly hate and despise my half-brother to such an extreme? Well, I'm going to tell you.

I'm not really sure what his deal with me is. I've known for many years that he hates me. In fact, I've actually had people come up to me – complete strangers – and ask me if I was Mac's brother. When I told them that I was, on four separate occasions these people told me the same story, that they'd seen him at an open mic show the other night, introducing a song by dedicating it to me. About how much he hates me. I'm not totally sure why he hates me, to be totally honest. Aside from your standard big brother – little brother dynamic, I have no clue why he hates me so much. And he's never had the nerve to actually confront me about it. But he does like to confront my wife about it, that's for damn sure. And he's been doing this, what – the last two, three, maybe four trips of mine? He'll start shit with Joy while I'm gone, then plead innocence and try to be all buddy-buddy with me when I get back into town.

A few months back, Joy noticed that things were disappearing from our room. Nothing big, but it was still plenty annoying to her. Paint brushes seemed to be disappearing, then reappearing for some odd reason. She confronted not only Mac about it, but my mother as well. They told she could leave if she didn't like it, and that's exactly what happened. She spent a month at the apartment of our friend Delane, and she told me that she'd only come back if I put a lock on our door. I told her that we'd get around to it. Then she found that some of her oxycodone pain meds were missing. I got the lock for the door. I went to my mother about it, and she blew me off. I told her that this was serious – theft of prescribed narcotics is a Federal offense. She told me that she'd talk to him about it. I'm pretty sure now that she didn't. I'm pretty sure now that she doesn't give a shit.

Well, she started to give a shit about two months ago, when I was playing a gig here at the Atlantis. They noticed the lock on the door, and lost their fucking minds about it. I received a text message from her demanding that I remove the lock. I reminded her that we suspected Mac of stealing things from our room. I got another text telling her that I was deluded, then another telling me to pack up and leave. Apparently not letting my ignorant little shithead brother walk into my room whenever he wanted to, letting him take whatever he wanted to whenever he wanted to, that was some line of death that I crossed. She hasn't spoken to me since, and has instead only sent harassing text messages to Joy while I'm out of town demanding we get our things out right now, knowing full well that she couldn't do it herself. And here's where things get crazy. I'm not allowed in the house any longer – supposedly I'm a threat to their safety now! I'm beginning to wonder what Little Man is whispering in his mother's ear to influence her decrees.

Note that I said his mother – not our mother. Since they seem dead-set on casting me out of their lives, I've decided to do the same – and worse. I plan on disowning them. Linda Marie Robertson chose – likely at the behest of her son – to play favorites with her children, and pit them against one another. Her daughter Alex - a brainless twit if there ever was one, who uses her looks to get what her tiny intellect can't – decided to put me on blast on Facebook, trying to reinforce any claims that her brother was innocent and that I was delusional for accusing him of stealing Joy's meds. I told them to enjoy the rest of their lives without me, and held back letting her know just how much damage I can do to them. There's so many things I can say about them all. And I plan on telling all. To the police. And then I'll collect the things I need and walk away from them. Forever. I've taken the pictures of my family out of their house, because they don't deserve to know about my family any more. And out of pure malevolent spite, I found the baby pictures of my older sister and myself, and I turned the picture of myself around. When I get back to Port Angeles, I'll be collecting that picture, and any others I choose to take from her photo albums – and I'll just walk away with them. They chose to be spiteful to me for no particular reason, and I plan on returning that spite a hundredfold. Don't talk me out of it. It's too late for talk.

The only thing keeping me up at night is why Little Man is doing what he's doing. I think that it all boils down to his massive ego and his equally massive hatred towards me. In his sick little mind, this is all about proving that his dick is bigger than mine, and that he's somehow the better man than me. He didn't finish high school – didn't even get his GED. Of Linda's four children, I'm the only one with a college degree and without a drinking/drug habit, or still recovering from that habit, as my older sister Julie is. The bitter irony is that Little Man is doing all this in order to maintain his easy, lazy lifestyle – sponging off of his mother, occasionally working under the table with his alcohol, drug and dementia-addled father, and going over to harass poor Gordon and his friends until they can't deal with him and his monstrous ego any more. With me walking away, he might think himself finally victorious over me. But I'll have the last laugh – who'll take care of his parents with me gone? Julie is loath to spend time there because her mother still drinks heavily. Alex is a selfish twit with the IQ of a gravy boat. And with me out of the picture, that leaves Little Man to change his parents' diapers. Oh, and he'll have to get over his own hipster bullshit and go get a driver's license – how else is he going to get them to their doctor's appointments or to the store, on the handlebars of his bike? I should really thank Little Man for doing this, actually – I have no desire to change the diapers of a pair of ungrateful invalids.

But where does that leave me, you ask? Well, Joy and I were staying with friends for a while, until my father decided to actually help me when I needed it and not read me the Riot Act over it. He bought a.... well, let's be honest. He bought a cheap fifth-wheel trailer for Joy and I to live in until her Social Security case is settled. After that, we're out of here. But until then, I have to do the one thing I really didn't want to do – quit playing music full-time and go work some normal job for the foreseeable future. As I write this, Mike and Arthur still don't know what's going on or what I'm about to tell them. I don't want to tell them I'm leaving. But I have no choice.

I wanted to tell them when I got to Elko. But what I found out when I got there gave me pause. Steppen Stonz' keyboard player at the moment had abruptly quit the band via text message. We knew Chris Williams would be leaving for most of the summer – his Tahoe Reggae band was going on a European tour this summer – and a previous keyboardist would cover for him until he got back. But Chris took the bitch's way out, and Mike and Arthur were nowhere near ready to be told further bad news. Jef Derderian came back to cover for four of the five nights in Elko, then a new guy came in, an Italian kid from Vegas named Dom who like Chris and Jef is a trumpet player and a recent graduate of UNR's music program. Dom seems like a nice enough kid, and I hope he can provide some stability for Mike and Arthur – they need all they can get.

I genuinely like playing in Elko. The Red Lion is a nice hotel, the food in the buffet is good, and the people are plenty nice. I'm glad that they'll continue to bring Mike and Arthur back with Dom and whoever replaces me – they really need the work. What sucks about Elko is the drive back to Reno. Five hours of driving into a constant 30mph head wind is murder on my gas mileage. But at least I got to spend a few days off visiting with Michelle and Bill and the grandbabies. Can't really call them babies any longer, since Cody is ten and Ellie nine. But it was a pleasant few days until I pulled up stakes and headed south for a three-nighter at the Carson Valley Inn.

Which never happened.

Thanks to some.... unforeseen error, it turns out that we weren't even on the schedule at CVI. I did my best to keep from screaming as a manager apologized to me for the inconvenience of having to drive in from Reno for nothing. I called Mike to tell him what was going on, and if he was mad in Elko, he was really pissed off now. Both Mike and CVI management were wanting to talk to Stew Stewart about whether or not some error had been made, but apparently he was.... unavailable. And the story he told Mike as to why a gig he'd given us in January suddenly wasn't available was something right out of science fiction – according to him we were supposed to be playing at John Ascuaga's Nugget this particular weekend. Which was an utter load of bullshit because anyone who hadn't just fallen out of a tree knew that the Nugget no longer had live entertainment. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we were the last band to play their cabaret back in March before they closed it in preparation for it to be torn down and their sports book moved into its place.

So now I couldn't tell Mike and Arthur that I was quitting the group while we were in Minden. From there it was back to the trailer in Sun Valley for another week-and-a-half. I've put the trailer up for sale, and hopefully I'll have it sold before I return to Port Angeles.

And then I ran out of money.

And then I ran out of propane.

I'm not looking for sympathy – that's just what happened. And I just had to deal with it. And now I'm in bed at the Atlantis bandhouse, found out earlier today that the band that had been here previous to us had totally trashed the joint. Dog shit and piss in the carpet. Diarrhea in the bathtub. Broken faucets and generally shitty disrespectful behavior. I couldn't willingly be in a band that treated their lodgings like that. Fortunately for me, I won't have to find out about that because this band will likely never play in Reno again after this last weekend. But now it's four-thirty in the morning, and I need to get some sleep. I'll finish this later.

I tend to ramble when I tired. Come to think of it, I just tend to ramble period. Got maybe four hours of sleep before my teeth and jaw started to ache again. Got an offer for the trailer, but only a thousand dollars. If I wasn't desperate, I'd have turned it down. But I'm not in any real position to turn down money. So I think I'll take the offer, if only to get it off my hands and get my bank account back into the positive. This trip has been gawd-awful from the jump-off, and I just need to minimize losses, stanch the bleeding as it were.

I'm not looking forward to telling Mike and Arthur of my intentions. They've been good to me for the last five years. Put up with me. But I've got more important things on my plate now, and I have to move on and shoulder a burden that in some respects I've been avoiding all my life. I admit to my flaws as a person – I always have. And those flaws aren't something that can be eliminated with a wave of the hand. But I found it funny that when my father decided to help me and purchase the fifth-wheel for me, he said that he 'didn't approve of my lifestyle' – what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I'm sober – not a recovering alcoholic like he and my sister – I never started to begin with. I've never drank a significant amount of alcohol in my life. I've managed to hold my marriage together when it might have been easier to just walk away. I've found it funny that my one marriage has lasted longer than either of my father's – perhaps longer than both of them combined. What is it about my 'lifestyle' that he finds objectionable? Sure I haven't made a lot of money at this game, but I'm not a drug addict. My addictions are far cheaper than any drug. As I once told my wife, my Xbox 360 was a whole lot cheaper than booze, drugs, and hookers. And it's a whole fuck of a lot cheaper than divorce.

Okay, so I said it – I'm done with Reno. Will I come back? I simply don't know. We've pondered the possibility of returning to Reno once Joy's SS/D case is settled to our satisfaction. That kind of money – well over $100,000 in back payment and nearly $1,800 a month for the remainder of Joy's life – would allow us to find a small house or mobile home or even another, larger RV just about anywhere in the western United States. We've thought about staying on the Peninsula, though I think at the end of the day we both want to get away from there. I told her that wherever she wanted to go was fine with me. And Michelle is actually expecting us to come back to Reno, because she made the mistake of telling her kids that we'd move back there. At least with the SS/D money we'd be able to buy the things we'd need to make Joy more comfortable in Reno. As in solar panels to help defray the cost of electricity so she doesn't have to swelter in summer and freeze in winter. But we've also considered several locations in Oregon and Eastern Washington, and I think that those are more likely stops for us than Reno.

{June 2, 1230hrs} I just broke the news to Mike and Arthur. They didn't like it – how could they not like it? But they understood. And they appreciated that I was willing to break the news to them face to face instead of over the phone or Facebook. I just worry that I might be the straw that broke the camel's back, even though they told me that it just wasn't the case.

Now that the weight is off my back, or at least that part of the weight, I can try to make some sort of assessment of the time I've spent here in Nevada. On and off it's been eleven years or so since I first started coming down here. I've made some great friends here. And I've lost some friends here as well. I've had some great times here. But I've been miserable here – I'm miserable right now. I can't shake the feeling that I've somehow dealt a mortal blow to Mike and Arthur. Empirically, intellectually I know better. But in the not-quite five years since I started working with these guys, they've been through five keyboard players and they're just starting in on number six. They have four weeks until their next gig – playing Fourth of July weekend here at the Atlantis – which at least in theory is plenty of time to find a new drummer, and hopefully one who can sing. But while they understand and accept my decision, they'd still rather have me around, and the door is always open for me to return.

But I'm frustrated. Angry. I don't want to do this. I don't want to walk away from everything that defines me as a person. But now it's time for me to find other ways to define myself. But I still have music in my life. I have friends who will no doubt be happy to have me back in town and find use for my talents. But that will have to be around a full-time job. There isn't much available, but I already have options. In all likelihood I'll either have a job waiting for me when I get back to Port Angeles, or I'll be employed within a week. But working a regular job isn't me. It just isn't. I guess that I'll have to make it me, though. It's time for me to hunker down and just plod through until we can get Joy's SS/D case settled. How long that may be is anyone's guess. So I have to bite my tongue, be polite when I'd otherwise be truthful no matter the damage it may cause.

And I need to try to somehow enjoy the time I have left here in Reno. Since I have no idea when I'll be back – if ever – I might as well do my best to be positive and make the proverbial lemonade from lemons. Tell my friends that I appreciate their friendship, my bandmates and fellow musicians that I appreciated working with them and alongside them. Smile when I want to cry or scream, then return home to the one I love above all others as I move on to the next chapter of my life. There may be another act yet to play here in Reno, I'll hold out that hope. But hope doesn't get the rent paid. I just have to do my job, whatever that is, and continue moving forward. I was dealt a serious blow by the betrayal of my own family against me from within. But nothing can stop me. Nobody can stop me. I will continue forward, because that's the only direction I can go.

Don't Fuck With Me....

Or else the truth comes out.

For those of you that read my old blog, remember Mark Connolly? The allegedly high-functioning methhead who tried being the lead singer of Dirty Joe before abandoning the group after one rehearsal on the grounds that we weren't reliable? Well, for those of you that don't, refresh your memory here. Well, he decided to resurface for reasons unbeknownst to me.

Yesterday (well, earlier today AFAIC) Joy and I were walking into the library here in Port Angeles. There were a few people outside the library's front door enjoying a brief burst of afternoon sunshine. One of them was I guy I recognized from the local karaoke circuit. And there was another guy that I vaguely recognized, but I couldn't remember where from. This little fellow seemed to recognize me though, and he wasn't pleased. He began to threaten me, said that he'd heard about what I'd thought and said of him, but I couldn't figure out why he was talking to me so. Then I remembered that he was the meth addict that wanted to be the lead singer of Dirty Joe. I told him that he could take his threats and put them squarely where the sun doesn't shine, because drug addicts don't particularly frighten me. Especially ones that are quite literally rotting away from drug use and disease. As in the leg he was missing.

He claimed that he would sue me for slander - go ahead and try. You see.... well, go read the original post. In order for something to be considered slanderous, it has to be malicious and more importantly false. Read the post - everything I attributed to him was the actual, unvarnished truth. And that's something I'll stand by until the day I die. The truth hurts, Mark.

Mark Connolly may no longer be addicted to meth now, but he was then - he told me so himself. That is an unassailable fact. His behavior was erratic enough then, and it's still erratic now. And violent. And in an ironic twist, a friend of ours that we're staying with - long story, more on that later - told me that she'd been introduced to him some seventeen years ago, and in that one brief encounter had deduced that he was a potential threat to her and her daughter and told the mutual friend that had introduced them to remove him from her sight post-haste.

At the end of the day, I could really care less about Mark Connolly and his hollow threats. He's a bum, a drug addict (though his current status could only be determined with a blood or urine test and I have no interest in pursuing that), and otherwise a waste of space. Considering that I haven't laid eyes on him in about three years, I see the likelihood of encountering him again to be minimal at best. And considering that I have no interest in laying eyes on him again unless it's through bulletproof glass, I see the likelihood of encountering him again to be that much smaller.

Oh, and before I consign him to the dumpster of history yet again, one last thing: threatening someone with violence is a crime. And doing so via the Internet is a Federal offense.

Goodbye, Mark. I don't have time to play. I have a life to live - clean and sober.

The Test Of Love

I love my wife.

Let me say that again - I love my wife. Joy is the center of my universe. But traveling with her is a pain in the ass. How much so? Let me explain. My most recent gig in Nevada was at the Carson Valley Inn in Minden, a place that's rapidly becoming a place I don't want to play for reasons that I'll explain later. But even though it was late February and she doesn't handle winter well at all any more, Joy wanted to come with. Under normal circumstances I'd leave for a Thursday-through-Saturday gig late Tuesday night or very early Wednesday morning, within a few hours on either side of midnight. Joy wanted to leave on Monday, and stay in Bend to visit with her sister and her family. We stayed there that night and the next, and I'm pretty sure that I did all the cooking - not to mention buying most of the food I cooked. And then there was stopping for meals along the way. And did I mention that it was snowing in Central Oregon, and that we slept in an unheated trailer those nights?

But we made it into Minden, albeit freezing our asses off. I can't wait to ditch the truck and get a car that has a working heater. Among other things. I schlepped everything into our room, then took a moment to recover before taking the truck over to the casino's main entrance to load in my gear. But that didn't happen, as the Wednesday-night solo act decided to leave his stuff onstage at the end of the night and come pick it up in the morning. Which left us to wait until the next morning to finally set up and soundcheck.

Now I know you're asking yourself, why is Joe suddenly not so thrilled to play at CVI? Well, it's basically because I'm playing dead drums there. A chain of events that happened at a previous engagement there put me in the position of having to turn my drum module completely off in order to get someone off my back who shouldn't have been on my back in the first place. And Mike keeps telling me "oh, your drums are really cutting through the PA" - oh, horseshit. You can hear my cymbals just fine. But my drums are dead for a reason - to reduce stage volume. That's why I have them triggered and run the module into the PA, so they can be heard. But since the module is off - this time around I didn't even bother unpacking it - nobody's hearing anything other than my cymbals. And this is what's putting me in such a good mood. Having Joy to come back to at the end of the night is a million times better than coming back to an empty hotel room, but sometimes even that isn't comfort enough.

And then there's all the stuff she wants and needs to bring with her. And with those wants and needs, she winds up carrying nearly twice as much stuff as I do. That takes up space and weight in the back of my truck - and the front. She winds up spending the trip pretty much locked into one position because of all the things she just has to have with her in the cab of the truck. But true love is being able to put up with your beloved's issues.

After finishing up at CVI, we headed north to spend a day or two with Michelle and the grandbabies - can't really call them babies any more, now that Cody is ten and Ellie close to her ninth birthday. One problem, though - we kinda forgot to let them know we were coming. And with staying for two nights, it meant having to set up the trailer. At least Joy didn't go bonkers that the damn thing is falling apart. And we made sure to stop on the way home to get some Voodoo Doughnut goodness in Portland.

And I found out that I'll be turning around here in a little while for another weekend. Turns out that the Nugget is still having bands in the cabaret for a little while longer - originally we'd been told that our contract had been cancelled - but the original contract was for this weekend just past, and we were informed that we'll be playing this upcoming weekend instead. I wound up leaving my drums in my storage unit in Reno for just this reason. And Joy wanted to come with me at first, but then she changed her mind. Or more accurately, getting sick right after we came home changed her mind for her.

True love is being able to put up with your beloved's issues. But it's also her being able to put up with mine. And that's why I love her.