I'm sick too

Just like everyone else on the planet, apparently. I'm in the sore throat, cracking voice mode. Yesterday was more of the stuffy headed zombie mode. I avoided people all day and focused my energy into cleaning; I was too out of it to distract myself so I got quite a lot done by focusing on one task at a time. Now our house is lovely and I just want to sit in it. And play (Warning: highly addictive awesome game!) Bloxors.

The weekend was good. I biked to the Riviera to see Rilo Kiley on Saturday night before late-night drinks at the Handlebar with Jess and Molly. Couldn't find anyone to go to the show with me, and I'm proud of myself for going alone. The show was okay. I was crammed into the crowd and spent the whole show craning my neck to see Jenny over tall dancy guy's shoulder in front of me and through the shifting space between wide neck guy and floppy hair guy. I didn't even notice the hotpants and silver tights until the encore, because I could only see sequined sparkly pieces of her at a time. She was good, like she is, all hot and strong-voiced, but I was a little disappointed that everything just sounded exactly like the record. My favorite song of the night was a totally different version of "Rise Up With Fists," which is a Jenny Lewis song but not a Rilo Kiley song. I was grooving into it but the crowd was not with me; they just wanted to sing along at the top of their lungs, matching Jenny syllable by syllable, and weren't fans of new, different, or Jenny-less stuff. I've often thought that if I was to build my idea rock band it would be similar to Rilo Kiley, or to the New Pornographers. After Saturday's show I don't know if I have the ego to be the front woman in the way Jenny is. I had much more fun watching the New Pornographers at Pitchfork playing with each other.

I guess it's another reason that my commitment to Baba Mnouche has not been 100% lately; I don't relate to the rest of the band. I'm the only girl and the only one under 45. Plus it's lonely to be the only one people are looking at. I have my fair share of ego, don't get me wrong, and it's fun to be in front getting all the attention, but in a bar full of sketchy drunk old dudes, I wish there was someone to share their eyes with. Or to harmonize with! My favorite! I feel like I do my thing and the band does theirs, but there's not much working together. Not to mention someone to have a conversation with between sets. My bandmates are nice guys and all, and really good musicians, but when I told Tony I was going to see Rilo Kiley he'd never heard of them, and when I said it was Indie Rock he was like, "Oh, wow, with the sitars and everything?"

In any case, our gig last Friday was really fun, and I have lowered my commitment in other ways, like telling the band leader that I just can't do every Sunday night anymore. They're still gonna play every week, doing instrumentals and things without me, but I'm every other week now. He recognizes that those guys in the bar are awful leery, that it's a long commute for me, that it's late, and that it's not enough money to make it worth it without being convenient or extra-fun. Now that we're the only band we don't have the crowd of friendly young folks that the other band we used to play with would bring in. Plus we have to play later, so we don't finish till 12, and it takes me at least 30 minutes to drive home, and at 12:30 the available parking spaces are far away from our house, and I have to walk home, take off my makeup, get to bed, and teach WW at 9 the next morning. I had started to dread our Sunday night gigs at about noon on Saturday as we planned out the weekend. I only recently stopped working at the desk every Sunday, and my newly free day was already hindered.

So this Sunday I had the whole day off! Ben and I had breakfast at Swim Cafe, and watched football, and I went to the Renegade Craft Fair, and we played with kitties at Treehouse, and went grocery shopping, and then went back to the Handlebar for dinner with Aer1n and Andrea. Good times. Good to hang out with different friends. It was a fully relaxing, fun day, which unfortunately developed gradually into sickness. It was good I wasn't singing that night.

Tea time.