Monday Musings for January 15, 2024

 Oh, my, another blog coming at you late in the day. I don't even know if anyone is actually reading these, but I'm still gonna write 'em. It's good practice for me to get these things out of my head and into the ether-world, right?

Anyway. 

While much of the country is in a deep freeze right now, we're still in the relatively balmy mid-20s here in the northern Adirondacks. Later this week is a different story - we're expecting night time lows below zero, but not much below zero. And while sub-zero temperatures are totally normal for this part of New York at this time of year, they're not nearly as low as they were 20 years ago. Yes, the climate is shifting. And yes, it worries me every time I see a weather forecast. 

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Today is a day off from school for my son, and it's also his birthday. We went out for sushi last night with one of his friends, and drove home in a mini-blizzard that threatened to dump a bunch of snow on us but didn't deliver. We had a great time at the sushi place - most people just do takeout, but we sat down and ate our meal there. We were the only ones in the entire restaurant, aside from the owners and their young children. Maybe because it was a birthday celebration, but we ordered dessert, too - two tempura bananas, and a slice of tempura cheesecake. It was all heavenly. My son couldn't remember having a tempura banana (even though he did, just when he was much younger), and he said it was amazing and now wants to try making them in the air fryer. 

I baked a two-layer red velvet cake for my son this morning. Not my best work - the center sunk in a little, and it crumbled a little when I was frosting it and putting the layers together, but it's still gonna taste amazing after dinner. 

We're all fighting off a weird little upper respiratory bug (Covid tests negative so far) so we're all just kind of chilling out today. (Other than the baking and cleaning the kitchen and doing dishes and taking care of the chickens and walking Tucker and making a scrumptious birthday dinner.) This time of year when things get cold, we all feel the need to slow down and rest. 

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Couple of fun things coming up. First, I passed my Purple Belt test for the Uke-Jitsu program, taught by Andrew Molina! I learned so freaking much in the last 3+ months working with him, and now I want to put it all to use. Easier said than done, but this week the plan is to sit down with some of my original songs and some songs by other people and start working on some chord substitutions. 

There are also not just one, but two songwriting challenges coming up in the next 10 days or so. I'm still struggling to get past my inner critic and just write, so my intention for both of these is to do just that - write. At the end of both challenges, I should have 8 new songs, written over 8 days. And Lord knows I have entire notebooks filled with notes and half-finished verses and chord progressions, so time to put all that to use. 

One of my favorite songwriting teachers, Danielle Ate The Sandwich, is also offering another round of her 4-week Life As a Songwriter course, and if I can scrape together the funds, I'm definitely going to register and do that again. 

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Everything just feels so chaotic and out of balance these days...does anyone else notice this but me? The feelings were so intense the other night, I did some shamanic journeying/channeling writing to ask my spirit guides what the eff is up. And they just said, yeah, things are chaotic right now. 

So if you're reading these blogs and you got this far, thank you. Do a little something good for yourself this week, if you can. Shut off your phone. Stay in for a night with a good movie or a good book or your journal and a cup of tea or a great bowl of homemade soup. Be kind to yourself the way you want to be kind to others.