Play that funky music white boy

Saturday started out as a total mess. The house was cold when I got up, so was the coffee. The first meant the furnace was out again, the second meant I forgot the mate doesn't do the coffee on weekends anymore. Neither was exactly my happy thought of the day.

I was finally settling down to watch the birds and knocked a pyrex (unbreakable) bowl off the counter on my way by and sent shiny slivers of glass sliding across the tiles. Of course, you have to get the animals out of the area and then clean up the mess. But then there is a little dog hair over there, and a crumb over there and of course I swept the whole floor. Then the coffee was cold. Timing is everything.

I nuked that and finally got to sit and watch my birds. But there weren't any. I had not filled the feeder Friday because I was off riding my cycle..silly me.

I can be taught from my mistakes. I sat and sipped my steaming brew while it could still warm my shivering hands. THEN I filled the feeders. After that is was chores chores chores. Whine.

It was no fun but I got the few dishes and the laundry done along with a little sorting and moving of the mates stuff. I decided to blow the rest off because there are people coming in the morning to make heap big mess moving dressers and desks and pianos and such. I am just going to have to clean up after they pull all that so why do it twice?

I got a website updated and posted a new one I am working on for previewing. Then I was stuck. As soon as I have nothing to do here things start getting depressing. I reach a point when even though I know there is more I could do I just can't do anymore right now. When it starts to go down hill I have learned I have to get out of Dodge for a while.

So, I thought, I needed to go to town for guitar strings, didn't I. Why? Oh, hmmm. let's see. I sat down to play a song or two last night and not one string was tight. Either the mate's ghost hates me and unwound all my strings to tick me off or the two short people that were here got at it while the tall people with them were in the basement trying to figure what I need to get sumps working right again.

I am betting on the short people because if the mate has a ghost he likes me. And he put those strings on there for my himself..hmm....naw! I'm pretty sure it was the kids. No harm done but the e string on there was really a b string and it didn't have enough stretch in it to tune to pitch. So I had my mission.

I got dressed to hit a public store and took off in the little white truck. The radio was messing with me so I put in a CD of the mates that is all traveling music and tried to jam with that. There were some smile in it for me. A lot of what I think of as his theme music was on it. But I stuck to it because it was all upbeat stuff if I didn't think about it too much.

And then the big valfairy in the sky smacked me in the head with the wand of "Why Not". Go ahead. What's the worst that could happen? They hang up on you? Hurt your itty feelings? Nothing ventured, nothing gained and if at first you don't succeed, read the instructions and all like that.

I pulled into a parking lot behind an apartment building and looked up the phone number I had been given for one of the missing forever friends. I even punched it into the phone that even had a charge for a change. Then I sat there, frozen. I was going against the social rules again. Then I thought, "What do you mean, 'going against the social rules'? You HATE social rules. You ALWAYS try to at least bend them, even if you don't outright smash them to smithereens!"

I pushed the call button and the phone rang at their end. Wow, usually it's busy or I just get the machine. But she answered and when I asked for my friend and gave my name she didn't throw the phone down and pour bleach on it or anything. She just told him who it was and called him to the phone. WOW!

So we did the obligatory "haven't seen you in 20 years, blah blah" and when I told him I was headed for the music store for strings he put me on hold, asked his very nice lady if I could come over to play and she said yes! I was floored. He asked me where I was and I confessed to being about a whole two blocks away. He says, "I have some strings you can have, come on over."

It was the most fun I have had since the first call with Too Tall! They made me comfortable, offered a beverage and then we all went down to the music room and played. I heard songs (need some nics here.....thinking..) the Traveler had written a long time ago but recorded with good musicians in a great little studio and they were hot! I heard new ones he just wrote. We talked, (sometimes his Loving Lady and I talked when we were supposed to be listening but tT was gracious enough to let us, understanding the need I had for communicating with what I hope will be another new friend) we discussed the music, the drummer draggin', the back up vocals, the over all feel of a song, things I have had NO ONE to share with since I said "I do" to the mate.

I tried to tell them when I left (three hours later and never a smoke break!) how much it meant to me to just be able to work with the music in my head like that again. It was like letting my soul out of a cage. Music has always been part of my life. It does not matter that I can't sing like Streisand or pick like Roy Clark or even like the guy next door right now. It's the music itself that is part of me.

When we were just barely big enough to run a record player my sibs and I would play and learn to sing just about anything we could lay hands on. My Grampa played accordian and my uncle had a band and dad had a band and the family sang. Sometimes we were even good! As a teen I learned to play the guitar and I took it to school then sat in the stairwell at lunch to play because I loved the accoustics I got in a three story tunnel. I have always been the annoying coworker that sings while she works, hums through lunch and when you have all gone home and nobody is looking, cut loose and really blasted out a tune in the shop because those old steel buildings have so much echo and reverb and I loved it.

The mate loved music, too. We have lots. But he could only listen or sing it just to me because he was tone deaf. He did get better over the years but it was never easy for him to sing and he didn't have any luck with learning guitar either, his fingers were so large we couldn't find one with a wide enough neck. He didn't like me performing in bars and I understood his problem with it so I quit doing it. Maybe once or twice a year I would hit a jam session at the Senior Citizens Center and sing a song or two. That was it. I just put it all behind me to have the love be right between us. I would do it again in a ny minute.

But with him gone I am full of songs again and I need the stupid guitar to write them. So I needed strings. I got them and my old friend and maybe a new one, I hope. Even if all I get to keep from tonight is the strings those two people cleared a channel in my system that was blocked until tonight.

For those of you who didn't get the thing about breaking the social rules, I am a single female calling to see a male friend who has been happily married for many years. It's hard to get people to believe that you can have true friends of the opposite sex and not want anything but friendship with them. The mate wouldn't.

My love for Too Tall, the Traveler and my Daring Dame gf is based on a connection in our souls cemented with our experiences. Too Tall says I saved his life, I KNOW he saved mine. In my NDE it was these three that argued with me and Too Tall that took me from the couch when I could not walk. I say the Traveler saved mine when he was there for me after the horrendous divorce began to talk me into believing in myself again. He says I taught him things no one else could about himself. Daring Dame and I have nursed each other through everything from hang overs and romance problems to child birth.

It's a different kind of soul match with each of them than the one I have with the mate - he was my true other half in all things having to do with love. These people have shared their hearts and their music with me and their twisty minds over the years as well as their homes. I treasure them as soul friends. I would never do anything to mess up their lives for them. My goal as a friend is to make their lives better.

I have seen Daring Dame more often than the guys over the years but every time it's like we never parted. And we haven't! We just haven't been in the same place at the same time. So both the T's and my best gf are accounted for, even if I never get to see them again. I needed just to tell them they were important to me still and I love them all. My new friend, the Traveler's Loving Lady, was gracious, kind and understanding enough to share her space with me for an evening. I was humbled by her kindness to me.

I have a book to read and some tunes to listen to and I am just in little piggy heaven right now.

May all of you have even one friend that is your true friend at least once while you are here. It is a blessing, with all of it's strange stories and weird tales, that will add joy to your life.