July Begins
Friday, July 4th, 2025 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
91F and partly cloudy today, going down to 71F tonight.
Paid all the bills on Tuesday the 1st before work.
Went to book Studio C after the bills were paid, only to find that somebody'd already booked the room for Saturday, between 2PM and 5PM.
But Friday was a holiday, so I booked for today instead, 3-5PM.
Clue Phone was the song dejour in the hot upstairs room of the empty building, with a bit of sweat dropping off my face.
Pitch-wise, the song's not too challenging until the very end.
But once again, I found myself easily hitting notes that were so difficult last year, they gave me pause to worry I may never hit them again!
I was also getting a bit of hum and extraneous signal noise through the mike that turned out to be thanks to my having set the coiled up microphone cord on top of the MOTU... an issue I didn't catch until I was several takes in.
But that's fine!
It's just gonna add to the analog feel of things... especially once those takes are chopped up into the final edit!
Only three more songs to go now!
Then it's on to round-two with re-takes and harmonies!
I gotta get busy tonight, picking up where I left of with, Never Rains in the processing of vocals.
I now have SEVEN more songs waiting to be processed after that one's done!
I am now one full year into this new life, living up in 1106, parking in a garage, and working at a high school.
This weeks new streamline to the lifestyle?.. a reusable grocery bag!
A year ago, I was still trying to park in the loading zone in front of the building to bring in my groceries, but that proved to be an enormous ass pain, because there are always a car or two hogging the space, sitting there for hours!
I took to just carrying my two paper grocery bags back from the parking garage.
Later that was streamlined to putting most of my groceries in the backpack, and just carrying one paper bag with the lighter stuff... freeing up a hand to wheel a case of beer along with me, on the luggage dolly.
So now I'm replacing that one paper bag with a reusable bag that can live in the backpack, when not in use!
So... no more fear of the rain, or of the bag just randomly tearing open!
I am quite happy to have July 2024 slipping into the distant past, this month!
Last July was a heart-wrenching nightmare!
The plan had been to get Prowly to that vet in Batavia, to get him fixed, and then bring him with me to 1106, to live a high-rise kitty lifestyle, wearing a harness for walks.
The house closing was supposed to happen by July 3rd, and just to be safe, I'd told ComEd not to kill the power until the 6th, or so.
But everything went so wrong that week!
The closing was delayed, so I had to push back the power cut-off to the 15th.
And after the move, I slept at home for two more nights, hoping to catch prowly inside, early in the morning to get him to that vet.
But Prowly was a no-show both mornings!
My first night sleeping here was July 3rd, because that vet would be closed for the July 4th holiday and the rest of the weekend... and I'd taken a week off work, so I needed to report back on Monday.
All this meant that when Prowly was a no-show on the morning of the 3rd, I'd missed my final shot to get him fixed... which had to happen if he was gonna live here with me, to prevent him from spraying!
He never sprayed indoors at the house, but he had so much freedom he didn't need to.
Cooped up in a studio apartment, unfixed, I'm sure that he would've!
At any rate, my first night sleeping here, on that cursed, rectangular rock of a twin mattress, without my normal blanket or pillows, crying about Prowly... was a terrible night!
And because the closing remained in limbo, I had to return every day to the house to run the hot water (to prevent the water heater from overheating) and leave food on the table for a cat I never saw!
But every day, the food from the day before had been eaten.
The lights stayed on, and the AC in the back room continued to run on hot days... with the closing being pushed so far off that I had to call ComEd and say, you know what? Just forget about cutting the power! Just leave it run!
The bill was still in Dad's name, so who cared?
I had only met DelTorro one time in person, back in June when he'd come to do a walk through, with his daughter along as a translator.
I had told them then, about my outdoor cat who I might not be able to catch.
The daughter asked him if she could adopt the cat.
DelTorro rolled his eyes but... he did seem to accomodate Prowly in that house for several weeks after the closing on August 1st.
My sneaky recons on friday nights revealed that the cat door remained operational well into September.
And DelTorro had left that back room AC unit running all weekend, through August... no doubt because that electricity was still being charged to Dad's dead dime!
ComEd surely sent polite reminders to the deceased man for months, about being behind on his payments, and the need to work something out.
And they went into the overstuffed mailbox with all of the other garbage for both Dad & Mom, being delivered on the daily.
I had also left behind a nearly full case of moist cat food, and a cat carrier!
So, I think it was really up to Prowly, if he wanted to be adopted by DelTorro's daughter!
On my watch, he'd befriended Maria, two doors down, immediately after I installed the cat door.
She would feed him occasionally, and even let him into her house!
So, he had the ability to cozy up to humans... especially women.
DelTorro did his flip of the house mostly by himself, with the help of a couple guys now and again.
I'd normally see only one truck in the driveway on my daily drivebys... occasionally two.
I'm sure his was a family operation, which meant his daughter, off from school for the summer, was likely around.
If Prowly didn't adopt her, then there's also the possibility that he simply adopted the new family who moved in, last November.
That house never went on the market, and it was still being worked on up until days before they moved in, which tells me they knew DelTorro personally, and therefore knew the stories of the tabby tomcat who called the place home.
He may have lost entry to the place for a while, as DelTorro was working on that back porch area, and flipping the back room.
But he was such an outdoor cat, he'd stay out all night even in January and February as long as it was above zero!
So being stuck outside through October would've been no big deal to him.
I'll never know for sure what happened to Prowly, but I do believe he's alive and well... either in his native neighborhood, where I found him as a kitten, or in DelTorro's neighborhood.
Maybe someday, some way, if the cosmos is willing, I'll hear word.
My friday night recons, sneaking around the house, and peeking into the windows ended in early September, when DelTorro set up MY old ring camera on the side porch, and put MY old surveillance warning signs in the windows!
"Warning, Pat!... you are being watched by YOUR camera! Stop sneaking around your house and go home!"
The last time I ever peeked into the back kitchen window, to see the room so dark and empty, I could feel Dad in there, despairing of the bleak turn the story had taken.
And I knew in that moment, that I too, was haunting the place.
The drivebys continued through the winter into early March.
But now it's been over three months since I've been down Jackson Street.
I'll turn 56 in four days.
It's the age of a nodal return!
And those moon's nodes began lining up with my natal ones right around the time it became obvious I wasn't gonna be able to stop the foreclosure.
The cosmos can be harsh!
But that was a south-node life I was trying to hang onto... doing all the things I was already good at, and comfortable with.
Home improvements, landscaping, walking dogs and cats... all past life stuff, according to the lore of things.
This life... is the north-node life.
Magic and music.
Urban living.
Immersed in the heady, creative atmosphere of a high school... doing that south node stuff like fixing door locks, to pay the bills.
My last nodal return at 36 was just as tumultuous!
Let's hope by the age of 72, I've got my shit together well enough for the nodes to be nice!
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