Burning the Dynamite at Both Ends

We-lll, I'm not sure if it's the stupid late to bed, early to rise hours I've been keeping, the 25 pounds of airborne mold and mildew that I inhaled during Friday's basement cleaning, or just the pollen out there that's giving everything a dusty jaundice, but I feel like crap.

Also, it's late, I've got an 8:00 meeting tomorrow, and I hit my head yet again, this time on the metal towel rack in the kitchen as I was standing up from feeding the cat.

Not that I'm angry at the cat. She's my constant companion while Yesenia is away, and she's even a little depressed at her mistress' absence. She's also been mopey since the basement flooded and the house has been in emergency lockdown mode. At least by this weekend, the basement will be finally cleared out, so her litter box can go back down.

Anyway, all of this means that, even though I won't be able to sleep, I also entirely lack within me the cognition to assemble a decent Rambler for you. Apologies. I hope to do a couple of really nice content ones this weekend, with all of the free time I'll have. Last weekend was houseguests, and barbecues, and moving my mother, and visits to NYC, and demolition, and 3 AM trips to Newark International. This coming weekend will be just me and the cat and the house. Not sure which I prefer, but I know one thing: there'll be a lot of sleeping away those daytime hours for me coming up.

A side note: I might finally have come up with a decent lyric hook for a chord change & melody that I've had lurking around for about six months, now - an ambling piano piece that I'd recently taken to calling "The Flood of '07," mostly as a joke. But then I realized that I'd never really tried to write one of those Arlo Guthrie songs, before - the rains come up and the dam fails and everyone knows it's coming and there's nothing they can do - and it seemed like it might be kind of fun. Hopefully, I can fit some actual poignance in there, too, and exorcise a lot of the negativity I've been feeling since the basement flooded. THe bridge lyric came to me whole, and I think it points the way to the rest of the song:

"In the auditorium,
small behind the podium,
the Rev. Mr. Jimmy Young
tried to ease the crowd -
but that's when we lost power."

I like the idea of a series of vignettes as the town realizes the full extent of the calamity. Of course, there's only three verses, not much (if any) chorus, and the bridge, so I've got to really whittle out some punchy imagery to create a full narrative in only a few lines. I think I need for the title to be a little more vivid - it's kind of flat, now. If I can really nail the title, that'll give me all the context I need and the lyrics can be a little more free. We'll see. Perhaps I can get Billie Joe McAllister to throw something else off the Tallahatchie Bridge. It worked for Bobby Gentry!

D.