January 22, 2003 9:45 am
On my mind....
Top of my mind right now is Daddy and his surgery Monday. My poor sister and mother have been taking him all over Dallas to specialists and getting him analyzed to see if he is capable of being cut into Monday. So far everything seems a go. He may or may not go into the hospital today. At my sister's insistence, they tried to admit him Monday, but there were no rooms in the hospital so they are waiting to have an opening. In the hospital they will be able to administer pain medication and do some rehab and get him prepped for surgery. Most importantly, the can keep him TIED TO THE BED so he won't get up and kill himself. This will allow my mother to sleep soundly for the first night in over two months. On Monday they will repair the spine in his neck and make it stop pinching his spinal cord and nerves. I will go up Saturday or Sunday and be there through the surgery and next day or two.
Second on my mind, the big radio station move is complete. What a huge relief! I think I have slept better since Sunday. My airshifts yesterday and Monday were probably decent from the listener standpoint, but on my end I was having lots of problems, not finding what I need in the computer, cussing a blue streak (and even made a computer tech I hardly know comment on my use of a certain colorful word), and taking anti-anxiety agents, including chocolate, to calm me. I hope today goes a little more smoothly. I think I will very much enjoy having a studio that is way off by itself where sales people and office workers have no business going to. Downside is that when I need THEM or even need someone in another studio, I have to make a hike to get to them and back before my song is over.
I broke my toe, I think, on Sunday. I ran out to my car to see if my friend had left her billfold in my front seat. As I ran through the garage barefooted, my little toes struck the leg of Mark's drums. I hobbled through the day and the night, hobbled to the George Strait concert, and hobbled across the dance floor at the Continental (you do what you have to do). When I got home and took off my sock I thought my toe had been bleeding. No, it was just every color of the purple end of the rainbow. Yikes, I've never seen a toe bruised like this, top and bottom and spreading into the foot. I've used Chinese liniment and arnica since then and it has helped tremendously. It still hurts and it is still slightly bruised, but it is a lot better. Probably wasn't broken, but I'm continue to claim that it was for the sympathy vote.
The George Strait show on Sunday night was very good. I'd never seen him before and he does put on a very good show, because he doesn't run up and down ramps and fly above the audience, or, heaven forbid, dance! He looked great and he has that twinkle in his eye that makes it worth seeing him live. I wish he had sang more of the early hits, the Western swing songs, but he did a huge variety of his styles and songs and it was wonderful and there is no way he could have sung them all.
I had a great happy hour Friday night with the other Austin online journalers. I was one of the last to arrive at the Texas Chili Parlor so Omar and others were already leaving. I hadn't seen Jette or Kramer is months, but didn't get too much of a chance to catch up with them since Kramer was flying off to El Paso and Jette was down the table for a while and it was incredibly noisy there, which it should be, it is, after all, a bar. I enjoyed meeting new ones and catching up a bit with TimBrat and Greg. All in all, I enjoyed myself at this gathering more than just about any of them. You never know quite what combination of people you'll find at one of these, sometimes there's is a conversation-dominator or soapbox-speaker (and sometimes I'm them!), but this time it was just some nice conversation and rapartee. Which I probably misspelled.
On my mind lots more than concerts and happy hours and my toe, is my friend and former roommate Di and her suffering. She is in San Antonio and she has breast cancer. She is 46 and has a 5-year-old daughter and has nursed and taken care of so many in her family: Her own mother died when Diane was 18 and Di had nursed her through her arthritis, which killed her, she raised her little brother and sister once her mother was dead, she practically raised her neice and nephew because her sister was rather irresponsible and her brother-in-law was completely irresponsible, she took in her grandmother when she was too old to live alone and is still caring for her, and she took in two other nephews for a time recently when their parents didn't know what to do with them. She has always been the caregiver and nurturer, and now she needs the care. She had a mastectomy last week and called me the next night. She cried on my shoulder a tiny bit, but she is so used to putting on a smiling face and not allowing sad emotions to come out that she quickly stopped. Saturday our other roommate Beth and I drove down to see Diane for a while. It was a good trip. I wish we could have talked about her illness and been updated on the prognosis and let her cry, but it was a light-hearted, superficial visit. I know it did her good, but we need to do it again and let there be more honesty. I have never been in a situation where one of my peers is ill and it is all new territory. Sure, I've seen others go through it, I've read books where that is the plot, but I don't know what to do now that it is my friend in that situation.
Also on my mind, better news, is that I will soon be doing a night shift in San Antonio. No, I won't be driving down and working each night, it is pre-recorded and will take me about an hour a day to do a show there each night. I was incredibly flattered to be asked to do it, and I'll admit I said yes more to the ego-massage than I did to the money, although the money is great. The operations manager of the station worked with me at the old job where we all got laid off (he didn't, he was gone before then) and he remembered me and heard me last week in Austin. San Antonio will be the biggest city I've ever had a daily regular show in, also. That will be a nice feather, especially if/when the ratings are good.
And speaking of that giant concern, the ratings, they should be out today. I will try to go to work a little early to see when they will be in and available. Our ratings have been trending upward (you get a little peak at the ratings each month, but the one that counts, THE BOOK, only comes out every three months) and I hope that that continued this last month and we will have lots of reason to celebrate today. I am particularly anxious to see how my afternoon show goes since this will have been me on the air all but about 3 weeks of this ratings. I can take some credit for the whole ratings, too, since I have been the one caring for the music since mid-October, too. I hope the ratings help make this a good day.