Slackjaw's Forum

Happy solstice to all you out there--I for one will be looking forward to our sun god’s return to the heavens, as these long nights are killing me. Christmas is almost upon us and yes, I’ve been able to get most of the things shopped for that I was looking to shop for. Next up is some wrapping and cooking and then eating and drinking and THEN, we can call this season a done deal. Actually that’s not quite true, before the wrapping is yet another funeral. A friend and fellow Tacoma area musician passed away on Monday a week after going into the hospital for Pancreatic surgery to remove a cancerous mass. The surgery resulted in an infection, which then resulted in liver failure and though he hung on for as long as he could it was a losing battle. I liked Pat and had known him somewhat for more than twenty years. In those early days I was playing in Natural Causes and he, being somewhat older had moved to LA with some other Tacoma musicians playing in a band called The Cutouts. They had a...

Now that were less than two weeks away, I should consider panicking. What good this will do is beyond me, but it seems like the next logical progression. It’s not as easy as it sounds—at least for me it isn’t. I’m good at confusion, muddled thought, inaction and sloth, but it takes a lot to arouse a good panic. That doesn’t mean I wont. I came into Ike’s room the other night to give him his meds and discovered that he was having a bloody nose. Things like Ike and bloody noses don’t usually go hand in hand and I wasn’t able to come up with an appropriate response, so slippers flapping and bathrobe streaming behind me I went screaming like a little girl to get a second opinion. Fortunately for me, Sweetie isn’t used to hearing me running and yelping around the mobile home and so I was able to get her panicking alongside me pretty quickly…at least until we went back into Ike’s room and I showed her his nose. That calmed her right down. “it’s just a little bloody nose. Do you think he’s go...

Come to find out that the floor in the new double wide gets pretty cold on these December mornings. Come to find out this is due to the insulation oversight that has taken place in this house for the past fifty years. In lieu of a basement, our new house has a crawl space low enough to trigger my claustrophobasense. I’ve managed to stick my head in there to look around a bit, but I’ve stopped short of wiggling my whole body in there for an up-close look around. I’m not sure how this house has managed to survive all these years with its total lack of insulation and its thin drafty windows. Clearly I’m made of weaker stuff than this houses previous owners, though you would think since this house is old Tacoma mafia, at some point in its existence a little of that loan-sharking money might have made it’s way to pay off the Owens Corning company for a little of that R-30 batting. Turns out that we’re the only family to live here that’s going to take the bait and make it a place where you d...