“It’s a recording present…and it has a ukulele on it!”

And look at that–isn’t it so adorable? I am one very lucky girl.

And WE DID IT!

We recorded FOUR SONGS in just under TWO DAYS. And, I must say, I am so excited about these tracks. I keep listening to them. In fact, I went to the gym tonight (yes, I’m the girl who goes to the gym on a Friday night. Romantic, I know)–but, I was in the weight room and listening to this one part of my song that breaks down into a rap. And there’s this rolling snare drum that just makes me SO EXCITED (that’s why I used caps, guys, cause caps are EXCITING!), I cannot help but dance when I hear it. So, I am standing there with one weight in my hand while the rest of me is sort of dancing, when one of the trainers walks up to me.

“What are you listening to that’s making you dance?” he asks.

And for a second, I can’t even hear him, my music is blasting so loud through my earphones. I see that he’s not going to stop asking me whatever it is he’s asking, so I regrettably stop the music and listen to his question.

And am instantly embarrassed and evasive.

“Oh…” I say, scrambling to think of something–ANYTHING!–other than: “Myself. I am listening to myself and it’s making me dance. And, oh yeah. I don’t go on dates on Friday nights–I go to the gym. At least you’re here because you’re getting paid to be here; I cannot say the same about myself…”

Right, so I don’t want to say that, so I say, “Oh…it’s nobody you would know…” and just kind of hope he goes away.

But he keeps standing right in front of me, staring, muscles bulging through his polo shirt, looking like he’s ready to talk to me about whatever it is that’s making me dance —even if it takes all night. Or at least until ten, when the Y closes.

“What kind of answer is that?!” he says, “Come on, what are you listening to?!”

“Uh…myself? I am listening to myself…” I finally admit. “I didn’t want to tell you that I was dancing to my music. That’s kind of embarrassing to be caught doing. I mean, I never thought anyone would ever ask me what was making me dance…”

And then that led to a whole conversation about me being a musician and then another guy came over and, having talked to me at my parents’ Y last time I was in town, asked me if I’ve cut some weight. Cut some weight. Not lost it. Huge body building men have their own language, guys. So I admitted that I might have. “But not on purpose–I’ve just been so busy lately, that I keep forgetting to eat.”

Which, once these guys got over the shock and incredulity of anyone EVER forgetting to eat, of all things, led to us talking about what’s happened since youtube happened to me.

And then I came home and played the tracks for my parents and one of their dogs. Strider seemed to enjoy it. Well, he slept through it, but he seemed to enjoy whenever I scratched his ears–and my tracks were playing when I was doing it–so there’s that. My parents listened to it in a kind of reverie, smiling or moving a little or closing their eyes (but unlike Strider, I am pretty sure they didn’t fall asleep).

My nephew and brother are geniuses in the studio. Their help is immeasurable and I could not do this without them.

Like I said, I am one lucky girl.

And it looked like this:

(that’s Wayne Tucker, Biet Simkin, me, and Tom Larsen, from left to right–they are incredible musicians; such a privilege to collaborate with them)

I also met with my publicist today. Yes, this means I have a publicist, which is quite new for me. She took one look at my safety pinned-together purse and was quite taken a back. “We need to correct this situation,” she said. “You cannot just walk around looking like…”

“…a homeless person?” I supplied.

She nodded and I made a mental note to drop my purse off at the leather shop this weekend while I am recording.

I wore three inch heels last night. This makes me 5’11. “You are sooooooooo tall,” said someone in the audience as I walked by them. What’s interesting about that kind of statement is that it’s hard to know how to respond, exactly. You can’t say ‘thank you,’ because it isn’t a compliment. You can’t say ‘so are you,’ because it’s generally a short person who makes that kind of observation. You could say that you are not so tall when compared to most trees, but that would start a conversation that you might not want to have. Plus, there are always bonsai trees–and they totally trump your argument.

I usually just end up agreeing and then trying to move the conversation on.

Oh, and here is a video someone took of us covering ‘I Need a Doctor’ from last night at Sleep No More, if you care to watch.

And that, my friends, concludes this blog post.

I am meeting a new friend who’s visiting from Britain tomorrow morning. We met because she interviewed me for a radio program, and now we’re hanging out. The internet is a crazy and wonderful place sometimes.

I don’t understand what it is that makes strangers talk to me, but it happens all the time. Just now, when I was about to walk down to the subway, a man blurts out to me, “My wife hates me.”

I stop; those are powerful words, after all.

“I doubt that,” I say. But now that I think about it, I shouldn’t doubt that statement. Many husbands and wives end up hating each other. Love fades so easily. It’s the perfectly healthy, stout little frog that jumped into my very messy closet when I was a little girl. Poor thing had no chance in that maze of clothes with no food or water. I found a sad pile of little frog bones much, much later.

We wonder why, after we’ve hopped blindly into a dark closet–away from any and all nourishment–we find our relationships no longer in tact. Not that I’m an expert. If I’m an expert at anything, it’s finding the frog skeleton. Someday I’d like to find the healthy little frog; someday I’d like to say LOOK! I KEPT HIM ALIVE! And then live happily ever after. I’ll even do the dishes. Well, when I remember. But I probably won’t mow the lawn and I definitely won’t watch tv every night. Sorry, there are just some things I will not do.

The details of our lives are so good at keeping things in perspective, huh? So many people–mostly those who I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting in real life–tell me to please “keep it real.” And maybe these people don’t realize that I am the girl who walks around with a large chunk of cheese in her bag. Sure, it’s because I met friends at Whole Foods for dinner, and, seeing the cheese on sale for $2.79, simply had to buy that along with dinner and then stick it in my bag for the rest of the night–but, the fact remains: cheese. In my bag. All night long. Sexy, I know.

I guess what I am saying is that if ever started to think too highly of myself walking around in my super cool earmuffs that make my ears all squishy and warm, then all I need to do it glance into my canvas bag and see a large and orange hunk of cheese. I mean, I don’t think the glamorous women of the world carry around cheese. I might be wrong. Perhaps Madonna, cheese in hand, would say otherwise.

Also, this: every night I go to sleep wearing a retainer in my mouth.

So, I guess my point is that I have found a dead frog in my closet. Both for real AND metaphorically speaking. I walk around with cheese in my bag. I sleep with a retainer. If those things don’t keep it real, then God help us all.

I really need to take up a very tiny instrument. One that fits into my pocket, preferably. One that doesn’t make me look like this at the train station:

Cause right now I am lugging around: a keyboard, a ukulele, a suitcase, a purse, and a canvas tote bag. I think I will become the world’s best triangle player. And it may not get me a viral video, but it sure as heck will allow me to move with ease and freedom.

I’m not really complaining.

Okay, maybe just a little bit.

I need a very strong friend who has nothing to do and really loves to carry instruments. Anyone? ANYONE?

…

That’s what I thought.

Actually, when I am carrying something really heavy and wishing that my brothers or a boyfriend or someone like that (ha! I am not sure who someone like a brother or a boyfriend would be, but, sure, send ‘em my way, I guess!) was around–I think to myself, You are very strong, Jess; you CAN do this. Cause you are very strong. All them push-ups and ballet classes paid off…NOW. 

Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it helps. Positivity. Faith. Belief in oneself. Thoughts that help buoy the soul. All that stuff matters. Especially when one has inadvertently become the human pack horse. Wait, stop. If Imma be a horse, Imma be a unicorn, if you don’t mind. So, ahem, that means I have inadvertently turned into the human pack unicorn, thankyouverymuch.

A pack unicorn. Magical, yet practical. I like it.

Anyway, my train is pulling right up into Penn Station in a few minutes, I think. And this girl has got to get her stuff together. Luckily, NY is the last stop. Meaning, I have some time to get off the train. Not like when I’m going to Wilmington and the train barely pauses to let you jump onto the platform before it’s already chugging along to Baltimore like it’s the white rabbit who is late! late! for a very important date!

Train, why you gotta be all hurried? Haven’t you heard the Beach Boys say we’ll get there faster if we take it slow?

Maybe trains don’t listen to the Beach Boys.

Actually, to be perfectly frank, I don’t either.

Trains probably listen to the pop group: Train.

Which is something I don’t do, either.

Okay, why am I still writing? The train is slowing down. I gotta load up and tell myself that I am very strong in a few minutes, it seems.

So finally I just walked out of the bathroom and explained the situation to her. Though, seeing my fly open probably gave her the gist of it before I opened my mouth.

Enter: safety pin.

Have I mentioned that safety pins are basically my knight in shining armor? They are right now responsible for holding together: my purse, a pair of boots, and now my bright green jeans.

Who needs a personal assistant when you have safety pins?

“The good news is that a replacement zipper costs $10,” my friend told me.

And the bad news is that I’m out for the day and my zipper is busted and a safety pin is reflecting the sun from my crotch, I thought.

Oh well, C’est la vie, right?

I took pilates today with a teacher I’d never had before. And I happened to be waiting for the elevator with her before the class. And she kept hemming and hawing over the length of time it took for the elevator to get down to us. And then she got all frustrated over the fact that it was 6:30 on the dot and the instructor who was presently teaching in the studio had not yet finished. And then she got all mad at the lady giving a tour to prospective clients because she interrupted the pilates class (once it was well underway) by touring it briefly. All this to say: no matter how good the class was, I would have been less than impressed.

Because we are in a world that involves other people.

And they use the elevator, too. And they teach classes, too. And they have to do their job and give tours, too. And I think if we realize this (and if I realize this, because I sometimes get frustrated with the elevator and forget that maybe Suzie on the tenth floor needs it a little bit more than me right now. Maybe she’s got to go to the bathroom. Maybe she has a busted fly and–horror of horrors!–NO SAFETY PIN!) –well, if we realize this, then we start to practice patience. And when we start to practice patience, then all the good parts of life become much more accessible. Not that they weren’t there before in droves–but now we notice them. And, honestly, whether the good parts are there or not doesn’t matter as much, I think, as whether or not we notice them.

So, here’s to practicing patience. And realizing that we share the elevator with a whole building full of people who lead VERY! IMPORTANT! LIVES! too.

And, just to bring it round full circle, here’s to safety pins. Because they sure help when my fly has decided not to.

Yeah, this one.

And it’s very old.

It’s falling-apart-old.

It was old when I got it in a vintage store in LA.

The strap has already broken off, so I replaced it with a strap from another purse that I love.

But that doesn’t help the fact that the leather stitching is undone in many places.

And since I was tired of having random things fall out of my purse, despite the fact that it wasn’t open, I safety pinned it.

See?

But before I came up with that  classy idea, my mom taped it for me.

With, um, packing tape.

Even classier, I think.

Is that even possible?

Anyway, one of my favorite exchanges with a stranger in NYC to date happened at the bank and involved this purse.

I was slowly walking out of the bank, having just made a deposit, and wasn’t quite looking where I was going, so almost ran into someone.

I looked up, said excuse me, and saw the man focused on my purse.

My taped together, jerry-rigged mismatched strap purse.

He looked at the purse a little longer, looked to me briefly, then back at the purse before he said:

“You have a hard time letting go, don’t you?”

I followed his gaze to my purse and couldn’t do anything but agree.

And, gosh, who needs therapy when one runs into strangers like that?

My room.

Well, my current room, anyway.

See, for the past couple weeks now, I have not slept in once. Not once! ‘Welcome to adulthood, Jessica,’ is what you might be thinking. But, when an adult happens to be an artist–well, there still isn’t often a reason to get up early. Okay, maybe for auditions–I will give you that. Oh, and church. But certainly not when I was touring. Really, getting up early on tour meant having to be at the theater by 1:00 for a 2:00 matinee. Me and my roommates would try to be in bed early the night before–like by 2 or 3 am.

But now I’m having to get up around 7:30 in order to be at rehearsal. And I am on a tight schedule once I get up–like, I need to be in my car at a certain time and I don’t give myself a lot of time to do nothing. Or even something, for that matter. And the morning generally consists of trying to find something, which is generally not scheduled. Today it was my purse. I finally found it buried under a mound of clothes. Yesterday, it was a certain pair of pants–I found them in my closet. Well, the floor of my closet. Tonight it was some underwear. Which is still MIA, actually. Anyway, my problem is that my room gets completely unorganized.

And it’s not entirely my fault, either. The two reasons proving this point, are 1). I have my lifetime’s worth of stuff packed into a tiny, strangely shaped room and 2). The other day, I found a large step ladder smack in the middle of my room. At first, I didn’t really notice it (yes, my room is that unorganized right now. Unorganized enough to miss a huge step ladder parked in it), but well, it’s here–and I didn’t put it there. So please enlighten me, folks: just how the heck is a girl supposed to keep a room neat when people are putting step ladders in it?

Another problem is that every time I decide to clean my room, I end up writing a song instead.

And guys, I am pretty prolific.

So…let’s just say, yeah: my room is, um, pretty messy; it’s simple math, really.

But tonight I made sure to put my purse in plain view. There is other underwear I can use. I have already planned out the pants I want to wear tomorrow. And the stepladder is now an extra couple of shelves for clothes (what else?).

And someday I will be perfect and my room will be neat all the time.

Or maybe not.

And then I finally got home at 2:00 am and was all ready to trade the real world for the dream world, but before that could happen, I had to open up a door to my parents’ house to, you know, get inside.

deep breath.

Cause that was the kind of sentence that you swear must be a run-on. But it’s not. It’s just lengthy. It’s just a stop-and-take-a-breath-girl! sentence, is all.

But the door was locked.

Well, every door was locked.

And I literally thought: sucks to suck! when I realized this.

Sucks to suck.

This is my sister Jenna’s latest favorite phrase. She says it a lot. She said it to Strider the dog the other day. He had managed to steal one of her starbursts, but then didn’t like the flavor and so Jenna was all, “SUCKS TO SUCK, STRIDER!”

It made me laugh.

But being locked out of my parents’ house at 2 am when I am already feeling what one would classify as rough?

That did not make me laugh.

Until I thought SUCKS TO SUCK! to myself and then remembered how Jenna said that to Strider. And then I did laugh.

But I was still locked out and wondering what to do about it.

I decided to drive my car to someone’s house. I had just said good-bye to a bunch of people who were heading to Shane’s house to eat food. I wanted to eat food. Plus, I knew his house would have doors that were not locked, so perfect.

I got in my car.

But my brother had just borrowed my car and, instead of leaving the key inside the car (which is what I always do. But if you’re a car thief, I’m just joking. I never do that. Never ever)–but instead of leaving the key right between the two front seats, my brother had put the key on the key ring inside my parents’ house.

The one that was currently locked.

So I couldn’t drive my car anywhere either.

AWESOME.

Then I decided to do something crazy. I vaguely remembered my mom giving me a key. Luckily, I was using the purse that I had not used for a while, so maybe it was the same purse I had dutifully put the key in and then promptly forgotten about it.

I looked for it with no faith at all.

And then I found it with what could be called very modest rejoicing. As in: For once that evening, I did not think: SUCKS TO SUCK!; I thought something more like: I wonder how this thing works…

Well, okay, not totally. But I did not grow up with keys, see. I grew up in the legit country. We didn’t lock our doors. Nobody even came to our house for candy on halloween. Well, almost nobody. And when one kid did manage to brave the half mile country lane into the woods to climb up our deck and finally figure out which door to our dome house could possibly be considered the front door and then ask for candy, my pop managed to find some old forgotten piece, probably left over from one of our Easter baskets or something.

I hope that was the best candy of that kid’s life, considering what he did to get it and all.

But keys make me nervous and I don’t trust them and I always kind of doubt they’ll work.

But this key worked.

I was a lucky duck.

And then I was a sleeping duck.

And then Darby felt really badly about locking me out of the house.

But I didn’t care; I actually thought it was kind of funny.

Me (referring to the man in the bikini): are you sure he was a man?

Darby: yeah.

Me: and he wasn’t a tranny?

Darby: well, if he was, he wasn’t a very good one, cause he had a beard.

And really, if I can wear a bikini, who says that he can’t, I suppose.

But now, Jesus. Or rather, the man who looked a lot like all the pictures make him out to look. He came strolling along the beach, right before sunset. He was wearing a long white robe and had a nice short brown beard and thick brown hair that was about shoulder length. As he walked by, Jase mentioned how he left only one set of footprints, and how he must have been carrying us along, after all. The couple nearby guffawed over that for a good long time.

And then there was the guy who asked me if I had found his dollar, perhaps in my purse. I asked him what he needed that dollar for and he told me it was to feed his dog. The thing is that he did have a very sweet looking dog with him. So, even though I have never seen dog food that only costs a dollar, I gave it to him anyway. I saw him later smoking a cigarette. His dog still didn’t have any food. I hope that he fed him when I wasn’t looking or something.

I ran along the surf today. There were so many sailboats along the horizon, that I felt like being a painter for the day. It didn’t seem like the small fact that I have never been a painter for a day should get in the way–not when there was something so beautiful to paint right in front of me. I felt encouraged by the waves. The ocean and I go way back, and that has always been the effect it has on me. I am not sure that it can say the same about me, but I am okay with not having a totally reciprocal relationship with water, I guess. It also makes my face itchy; I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for the ocean’s face, let alone make it itch.

But today I was staring at the waves and I had this sense that life is a grand thing and that I am honored to be a part of it and, even though I don’t quite know how, it’s good now and it’s gonna be good then. Because really, all of my thens are the culmination of now and now and now, right?

Yes.

And I feel closer to God by the ocean. I am not sure why, but I’ll take it.

And I asked someone to take our picture tonight on the santa monica pier. And to quote a song that Lyric and Darby and I have sung before and that Lyric and I like to sing still: we’re special,

special,

special–

like a great white shark.

we’re special,

special,

special–

like a puppy’s first bark…

and then we usually start laughing and stop singing after that.

A beautiful blur, but still.

I didn’t get a ton of sleep. I have many pictures here, but none of them are of me sleeping because, right: I didn’t get a ton of sleep. Too bad, because you know how I love to post pics of me sleeping.

But I did go to the Summer Molestice. And Shane and I got to play there, which was pretty awesome.
And people listened, which makes a show even better, I’ve learned.

And I got a new pair of boots.

Yes, that has nothing to do with the Paper Janes or the Summer Molestice, but well, I’m liking them very much, so I thought I’d mention it.

And Shane and I really need to make a card. This is something we say very often but rarely do. Actually, we never do it. And every time someone asks us for our card, I feel pretty dumb as I reach into my purse, rip a receipt in half, and scrawl some of our info down for them.

Which is what I did for the man in the far right of the above picture, after he asked us for our card. And then he told us that he wants to produce our little rap, boi boi boi. And yep, that’s how it’s spelled. And yep, it’s a rap. But he was pretty excited about it and I guess we shall see if that happens or not.

I’ve learned that people say a lot of things and maybe it’s well intentioned and maybe they mean it as they say it, but I don’t put much stock in things people say they will do until it’s pretty much done.

At least when it comes to things like producing.

And wow, just wow, because my brother Jase decided that he would put on one of our dogs harnesses and run people around in the dog cart.

It was pretty hilarious.

And I don’t know who enjoyed it more–Jase or whoever was getting carted around at the time.

And afterwards, Jason said that he thought it would be easier. He mentioned that he thought he’d be able to run like the wind in front of that dog cart.

But keep trying, Jase! Cause we certainly don’t mind the rides around the yard, even if you don’t quite run like the wind.

Yet.

And last but not least, today was Father’s Day and we all pitched in to get my pop a whopper of a gift.

I made a poster because presentation is everything, you know.

And pop is quite delighted at the prospect of his DNA test.

We were joking about all the many results that could come of it. One of the Sand People from Star Wars, Bald Man, and Any Ethnicity That He Is So Clearly Not So Wouldn’t That Be So Funny? are all in the running, but I suppose we’ll have to be patient and see.

And of course, his results effect all of us, so we all have some vested interest in this test.

Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted.