I know…I know. It’s been way too long since I posted a blog on this site. It’s been over a month now. I’m truly sorry. It’s been really crazy here. I shouldn’t even be writing this blog now.
As you all know, I took two short trips at the end of April. First, I visited my family in
But then I found myself swamped for the two days I was home, before we left for a second short trip up to
We were going up to
But once again, I arrived home to tons of work and due to the traveling, I was about three weeks behind. One of my clients I sell for had given me thousands of CDs. The longer I sat on those, the less money I would make on them. So I had to get them listed on Amazon as soon as possible. That took weeks, and the many days of those weeks were interrupted by several events.
The big event was a traumatic one. A year and a half ago, I lost the greatest cat that I had ever had as a companion. I wrote about Frankie then and you can find that in my blog archives. (http://mlcompton.blogspot.com/2009/01/frankie-1993-2007-and-cats-i-have-known.html) We were left with two other cats, neither as close to me as Frankie was, but loved none-the-less. That was Chuck and Squeek, who we found as weeks-old kittens in the engine block of our car one morning. Within a few hours of getting home, I noticed that the female, Squeek, who we named after one of Charles Manson’s female sidekicks, Squeaky Fromme, was looking very thin and was rather haggard. That’s not a good sign, so I ran her down to the vet, who after a series if tests found that she was suffering from some rare form of feline hepatitis. The vet told me they knew very little about this disease and there was only a small chance of her recovering from it. Considering our dwindling financial situation, I really should have put her down right then and there. But our pets are part of our family and I feel that I owe it to them to at least try. So we authorized the vet to spend the next three days trying to flush the disease out of her system. Of course, that failed and we were out $1000 for the effort, but at least we tried as much as we could. After a week of worry, I found myself at the vet trying to comfort Squeek as she was given the injection that would end her life.
Now I should explain that while it is always extremely traumatic for me to be with these loved pets as they are put down, I also feel that I should be there with them. They have brought so much happiness and comfort to my life and I should at least do the same for them by being a familiar, comfortable face for them as they breathe their last. Skip can’t deal with it, but I feel I owe it to them. I wasn’t as close to Squeek as I was to Frankie, but it still destroyed me for a couple of days and I couldn’t convince myself to do anything, let alone write. Even now I can feel a painfully empty pit in my stomach as I write about it.
So that leaves us with one cat, Chuck, and you must be able to figure out who he was named after. Like Squeek, I wasn’t all that close to Chuck. They were good cats, but kind of stuck to themselves, appearing only now and then for a quick petting or the feeding of snacks. But Chuck has dramatically changed now that he’s the only cat in the house. He now loves to lie next to me on the couch as we watch TV and he spends the night curled up next to me on the bed, purring loudly. He even plays with a string now, which he never did. He still doesn’t like to be picked up and held, but I find myself rapidly growing closer to him and am finding great comfort in his animal friendship. I know I’m just setting myself up for more traumas in the future, but it’s the price we pay for companionship with these little creatures. Until the day I have to put him down, I will enjoy his company and love him as much as I can.
The other reason I’m so far behind is a happier one. That would be the annual Disney’s California Adventure Food & Wine Festival, held for six weeks at the theme park next to
On top of that, we love to see bands at the House of Blues in
We also just saw Doves (http://www.doves.net/), who I liked. I found myself wishing that they would just cut loose a bit more though, instead of being so safely structured. They are heavily influenced by late 80s-early 90s guitar rock, like Swervedriver and, I swear, Thin White Rope, but they refuse to let their sound get out of control and it holds them back in the live setting. A little chaos can go a long way towards an exciting set.
Coming up, we’re seeing
But despite it all, I promise to get back on schedule and have new blogs up close to every week. I still have a good many road stories to tell about Thin White Rope and I’m trying to work on stories that feature some of the other bands I worked with, like Poster Children, BPeople and Young Fresh Fellows. There’s a lot more on a number of other subjects I would like to get into as well. So keep checking and I’ll be here.
In a lot of ways, you may be lucky I wasn’t able to write because most of my attention was drawn towards the political question of gay marriage. I was going to do a column on that “stupid bitch” Miss
I’d like to thank those of you who have left me comments or sent emails about various blogs and subjects. Thanks for those and believe me when I say that they’re extremely important to me. Any sign that you are out there reading and enjoying these words I’m writing helps keep me going.
You probably also noticed that I’ve already taken the ads down off my site. While I get more hits here than I ever expected to get, I don’t get enough at this time to really translate into much cash. I’ve decided that the payoff isn’t worth subjecting you all to ads on my site. Maybe someday, but not now.
So thanks again for reading and supporting me and I hope to see you all back here next week.
Hey thats a loads of adventures, sorry about your Cat ML, same thig happened to me last month ( my famele german boxer died very young) so i kind know how it is....
ReplyDeletethere is a previously unseen TWR video posted on YouTube by Matt, from last gig in Ghent, its absolutely stunning, check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VzUzKV_h-Y
Good to see you back again!
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