House Concert

Last night Mark Ettinger showed up at our doorstep with his beautiful and talented daughter, Kate. They gave a concert to our assembled friends and family. I adore Mark's music. If, indeed, you want to listen to it or to order a copy of his CD (once he gets more copies, since he just sold out - but more are in the works), you can click here. He is one of the many musician friends that responded to my requests for music to get me through this last most difficult year, although he took my request a step further and put together a CD length recording of lots of his other songs from the past, covers of other people's stuff, and lots of great personal wishes. It meant a lot to me. I still listen to his stuff all the time.

Kate, who just got a full ride scholarship to Oberlin, sang harmonies for Mark last night and then treated us to some of her songs. They left this afternoon to work on recording her CD, which will most likely come out by the end of the summer. Mark is also working on his next CD and he played a number of his new songs for us last night as well.

We've known Mark for many, many years and as he points out, I was instrumental in getting him hired by the Flying Karamazov Brothers. I apologized profusely for doing so, but he said he doesn't hold it against me. In fact, he was quite gracious about it.

It's a rainy day here in Oregon. I'm still in recovery mode, so the weather suits me. It keeps me indoors and quiet. I seem to need a lot of sleep these days. Everyone tells me how marvelous I look and it puzzles me, since I still feel rather fragile from the surgery, but I guess they are comparing this to how I looked during chemo, which was close to dead. Compared to that, I'm okay. My pain level quite low as long as I move very carefully. I'm even thinking of going to the Oregon Country Fair this year, although I'm not planning on playing the glockenspeil as per usual. I shall take it easy and simply visit with people and wander around. Ah, the privileges of temporary disability.

The ancient beast is on her last legs. Howard and I took her to the vet yesterday and she was put on another round of antibiotics and low-fat dog food. I haven't quite elected to put her out of our misery yet, but she's just one fecal explosion away. As Howard likes to point out, her quality of life isn't fabulous. She's arthritic, she's blind, she's deaf, she can't even smell food when it's put in front of her (but once she perceives it, she's very happy to eat it). The decision to "help her feel better" as we put it, is a difficult one. I'm taking her to the groomer's on Saturday to shave off her fur in hopes of making her more comfortable and easier to clean should we have a repeat of her latest ailment. She's a sweet old thing and I don't know where to draw the line since it seems to be my choice when she dies. I dislike having these God-like powers over my dog.