These days, parents stick an ipad in their kids' hands to shut them the eff up. In my day (oh my god, I can’t believe I said that and we’re only a few pages in) it was samesies but with back yards. Now I know “go in the back and play” means “I literally can not handle any more noises coming out of your mouth.” But I was none the wiser as a kid, and back yards never seemed like a punishment so I always happily obliged when given my orders. 

I grew up in three houses. The back yard of house number one, although no bigger than the average back yard, felt like the size of a Ringling Bros. Circus because I had a tiny body and a massive imagination. There was a sandbox with a swing set (awesome), a playhouse my sister and I could fit in at the same time (awesome) and a tall slide made out of metal (awesome, unless you forgot to run the water hose down it first on a hot day). On any given day, the sand box could be a snake-filled quicksand pit, the swing set a pirate ship, the playhouse a restaurant, and the slide a lookout for intruders. When it got too hot, we'd retreat to the shaded patio, suck water from the hose for ten Mississippi's, and stoop down on our hands and knees to work on pastel chalk murals or play gigantic games of hang-man on the cement. That back yard was our territory, and we ruled with authority and conviction. If you didn't follow our rules, we'd send your ass home without a turn on the slip n' slide. Even our parents knew to tread lightly. One summer day, my dad accidentally broke our blue plastic wading pool. We screamed and cried and made him promise to replace it. He never fulfilled that debt, but he sure received some serious 'tude about it for years to come.

The second back yard was just huge; it had nothing to do with its proportion to me. Two large patios, a giant lawn lined with tart but edible cherry plum trees, and a gated pool with a diving board. A pool! With a diving board! I was in kid heaven. (Plus this more than made up for the plastic pool our dad "owed" us.) Our kitchen door opened to a little porch on the side patio. A phone was mounted to the wall inside, and the cord would reach all the way to the first step of the stoop. I felt so mature accepting phone calls from my bestie girlfriends and gentlemen callers, closing the door behind me, petting my dog and squishing ants with my toes as we discussed important matters of the day like who wore what and who liked who. On the other side of the house, another door gave way to a tiny bathroom, where anyone who didn’t have the sense to pee in the pool could enter in their dripping swimsuit. Directly in the back of the house was a sliding glass door that looked out onto a patio and adjacent pool. It was here I broke my arm whilst decorating for a joint birthday pool party. I fell from a wobbly bench and nearly fainted at the sight of my radius doing a backbend underneath my skin. My mom rushed me to the hospital even though there was no emergency room in our town. We waited for the doctors to finish their lunch, then one finally came in to reset my arm. Now it was mom’s turn to nearly faint. Only her nearly was an actually. They had to use smelling salts and everything. The worst part of this day? We couldn’t cancel the party because it was also in honor of my best friend, who did not break her arm decorating. I have one specific shitty memory of watching breaking OJ Simpson news coverage in the living room while my friends did cannon balls into my dang pool. That was about as “not fair” as life got at that age, so I guess you could say I was pretty lucky.

The third back yard was mostly an escape/escapade route for my pubescent years. One gate swung out into the alley. This is where I would meet my first official 7th grade boyfriend for some early morning make-out seshes, braces and all. A huge orange tree overproduced and shat out the most disgusting produce you’ve ever tasted in your life. The old wooden decking was a minefield for stubbed toes and splinters. I think a gang of wasps is running the show back there now. When mom left, dad pretty much let it go to shit. My dog died here. My family did too, in a way.

When I turned 18, I left my tiny town to get a degree in Los Angeles. When I turned 22, I left my college town to be an adult in San Diego. The idea of having a back yard is pretty much laughable now. I don’t think they exist here unless you’re made entirely of money and/or good fortune. Hopefully one day I'll figure out how to acquire a back yard so the children I'm also trying to figure out how to acquire can flee there to escape my wrath. Otherwise we'll just drive to the beach and call it San Diego's back yard. Close enough.

A Sister’s Love: The house directly across the street could never hold down its tenants. One time a family moved in for like five minutes. They had a daughter who was my age, and we established a friendship before her bags were unpacked. I don’t remember her name - does that make me a bad friend? The rule in my family was you were not allowed to go into anyone else’s house without asking. One hot summer day, mystery neighbor and I were thirsty, so we walked into her kitchen to fill our cupped hands with ice from the fancy new ice-maker in her fridge. Said fridge was maybe 10 inches away from the door leading out to the driveway where we were playing. I saw my sister watch the entire event from our front yard, then run back into our house. “That bitch is going snitch,” I thought to myself but in a more G-rated way. I hadn’t taken up swearing yet, out loud nor in my head. Sure enough, when I walked into the house, Haley was crying in my mom’s arms. That bitch did snitch. After I got my ass handed to me, I hissed at her, “Why did you do that?” Her dramatic, weepy-eyed response: “I only told because I love you!”  She’s been doing lots of other stuff because she loves me ever since.

Just wrote a new song I'll call D&H for now. A little belated ditty inspired primarily by my songwriting book club's most recent selection, Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian L. Weiss. I'd read the book once before, but it's always different reading from a songwriter's perspective. 

I enjoy these projects and take them quite seriously. I like the challenge as well as the accomplishment of being able to whittle pages and pages of notes down to a tiny little creation. It's like word pottery. Although sometimes I end up grieving the words and phrases that don't make the final version. I love that these book selections take me on a journey, first far away into another world of experiences, then back and somehow closer to myself than I was when I started. New themes and stories and characters apply themselves like a bandage to my tangled knot of a psyche, and I am able to unearth a different yet familiar perspective. It's like writing from a bird's eye view of myself. 

A secondary source of inspiration is an ongoing dialogue between me and my father regarding the necessity of action, which happens to be a recurring theme in my life, in his life, and in the aforementioned book. (Not to mention every other freakin' place I look...but I'll write more about synchronicity later.) Ok, here goes. As my pal Jeffrey Joe would say, writing this song felt like oral surgery.

D&H

1. Father hear my pleas, don’t make me scrape my knees
Even Diogenes, he agrees with me
A syndrome of self neglect is the sin of intellect
Holding lanterns to the light is no necessity

CH
What good is a god with the head of a falcon 
that lives on the body of man
What sense is the strength of a thoroughbred stallion 
Running like a scared mare every chance that it can
What comfort lies in millions of lives 
if they’re over before they began
Sometimes it shapes me, sometimes it escapes me
The good of a god in the body of man

2. Father hear my cries, I’m not buying alibis
Your books so wise disguise the valleys for the peaks
If all your world’s a page you’ll never take the stage
Baby steps assuage the magnitude of quantum leaps

REPEAT CH

BRIDGE:
Heaven knows I’m also froze and apples don’t fall far
Trust me, any day’s a good day in the shade of where you are
But I’m a prudent teacher’s student and I'm just trying to understand
Heads and birds, actions and words
And the good of a god in the body of man. 


REPEAT CH

Our neighborhood could have been a set from The Wonder Years. Every summer, my sister and I romped around until supper time with the boys from across the street. Matt was the oldest and therefore the coolest. Junior lived next door to him and loved all things basketball. Once we took him on a family vacation to one of my dad’s coaching clinics in Las Vegas. He reached brotherly status during that long car ride through the desert when he peed on me during a tickle fight with my dad. Dan was the youngest and had a crush on me. But I was more interested in timed bike rides around the block than I was in boys. One time Matt rigged up a wire from the roof of his house to a tree in his back yard and we took turns hanging onto a pair of handle bars and flying from end to end. I bit off more adventure than I could chew, lost my grip and fell flat on my back. I couldn’t move. Matt freaked out because he thought my parents would kill him for letting me Evel Knievel my way to paralysis at the tender age of under ten. He picked me up and carried me home. When my mom opened the door he handed me over to her, cried like a baby and begged forgiveness. I was doing my own stunts again in less than 24 hours.

A snippet from The Lovebirds latest newsletter... 

August is nearly halfway over and I'm just getting around to sending out our newsletter, so sue me. The tardiness is actually indicative of the news I'm about to break, so here goes:

We're letting go. After getting home from the last tour, this bird was burnt the f*ck out. Over five years we've been an indie band, busting our butts to try and reach some imagined destination in the future where we might find some sort of stability and security in doing what we love to do for a living. All the while, I've watched my friends and colleagues in the music industry climb that same mountain, wondering what keeps them going, wondering if I wasn't as hungry or as talented or as married to the struggle of it all. I especially disliked the gross combination of joy and jealousy I felt when witnessing their achievements. I'm not proud of that, but I'll admit it.  

Don't get me wrong, the results of all that hard work have been tangible. We've accomplished a lot and have experienced so many incredible moments and met so many lifelong friends because of that tenacious work. As my dad says "if it were easy, everyone would do it." But here's where I went wrong: I worked toward my imagined future at the expense of my present reality. I neglected myself and my ability to be happy in a moment. 

So that's going to stop. As I mentioned last month, we still have goals. We still practice religiously. We're still doing our best to book shows and record albums and plan tours and raise money and share our music. But now, living life takes precedence over imagining it. Cooking and cuddling and walks and runs and novels and friends and writing and laughing and family will be the priority. Phone calls and press releases and accounting and promoting and emails (like this one) can wait just a bit.

Something I posted on FB a year ago today...

I don't know Robin Williams but I am sad to see him leave us. I am also sad to know so many people who suffer from depression and mental illness or who have lost loved ones as a result of these widespread yet largely ignored challenges. My personal struggle includes low lows peppered with crippling anxiety - bouts of deep sadness and shame and fear that last just long enough for me to ache for anyone who dwells in that horrible place on a regular basis or for anyone who fights to bring a loved one out of that place. It hurts me to the bone knowing so many wonderful people end their pain this way. But I can't get behind the "unforgivable sin" belief. The only unforgivable sin I can fathom is not showing compassion for those around you.

I look around and it seems as though we have set ourselves up to be depressed. The things society asks us to value never turn out to be very valuable. I'm honestly sometimes surprised that so many humans ARE able to endure this experience we have created for ourselves. I ask that we all do a little good will hunting of our own...How can we lift each other up? How can we remind ourselves not to judge others? How can we discuss issues affecting our society and work together to find solutions? How can we be more personable, even if it means being less profitable? How can we choose kindness and love over ignorance and hate? I am sad tonight as I think of these things.

Waffle Feet: We used to have one of those floor heaters built into the actual floor of our house. Whatever genius came up with that brilliant idea is lucky people weren’t so sue-happy in the 80’s. Every year, there was always that fateful winter day when we carelessly rounded the corner and were branded by the scalding metal grates.  Waffle Feet.