Fond of rumpots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

Here's something to make longtime readers of this LJ blanch over lost time: last Friday, Abbey graduated from high school. No, I don't know what happened. I certainly don't recall ever consenting to be the father of a high school graduate, but there you have it. When I started this blog, she was five, feisty and falling in crush over an Elvis impersonator, and now she's 19, feisty, and falling in crush with non-Elvis impersonators, and more's the pity. The ceremony was basically every graduation ceremony since time immemorial, and yes, I did get a lump in my throat despite my belief that I was immune; she had more than a few obstacles getting here, but by gods she made it. She waited until after the marching was over and the hugs began to start crying. I whispered, "You can do this" as I pulled her in tight, because now comes the really hard part. My one glimmer of hope is that she at least knows that. I'm trying not to be scared for her. I'll do a full catchup on the young'uns soon, but for now join me in wishing her luck.

After the tassel-flip and the photo opportunities, I headed straight to Troy for a Murder Ballads rehearsal-and-business weekend. The rehearsal part was perhaps a bit lighter than usual (although we as per usual ended up adding stuff to our repertoire despite vehement insistence that we weren't going to do that), but glory of glories, I think we can at long last say our second album is at least provisionally under way. Our weekend accomplishments include:

• finally deciding on a title for the thing, The Ash Grove, continuing our tradition of naming albums after murder ballads we don't actually play


• hammering down a target 13-song track list, with a handful left over for a couple of promotional EPs


• having our first meeting with Joel, our producer, and playing the aforementioned songs for him for the first time, with arrangement concepts


• spitballing ideas for the crowdfunding campaign to make it happen (yes, we're doing another Indiegogo; yes, I'll be shilling hard again)


• conceptualizing a Murder Ballads songbook (watch this space)


• eating Buffalo wings and dark chocolate (not simultaneously) because creative process

With any luck, we'll have this thing out long enough before the Apocalypse to actually sell a couple of copies. Given that the two-hour drive between her place and mine has become a three-hour drive, we make no promises.

My office is having some lovely network issues, I'm guessing because whatever godforsaken pit they're keeping the servers in have been reclassified as Ice Station Zebra, and the tech guys are all working from their homes in the South because of the ongoing Mr. Freeze's Death Fandango and Ice Cream Social, so my day has consisted mostly of clicking, waiting, cussing under my breath, and going for more coffee. Luckily our workload is light after the three-day weekend and so we HAHAHAHA I'M KIDDING OF COURSE WE'RE TOTALLY BURIED IN SOP DOCUMENTS PLEASE SEND HELP. I really need to bring the air mattress in for days like this.

There's really not much I can say about the snow that hasn't already been shrieked by so many others. It's kind of amazing how the collective Boston response to the snow has gone from a typical "Ehh, what'cha gonna do?" to ugly, twitchy battle-scarred rage. I don't know if those not in the Northeastern thick of it realize just how effing done we all are with this. A coworker mentioned in passing that we might be getting an inch of snow today, and I yelled from four cubicles away, "BITE THY CURSÉD TONGUE, WOMAN." My one odd reaction is a small swell of pride very time I hear Boston's blizzards mentioned on the national news, like I'm proud of my city for standing there while we get repeatedly crotch-punched by a hairy Canadian in the frozen foods aisle. Go, team!

So what else has been going on? We had the kids and the grandmuffin out for a visit this past weekend while their mom went on a much-needed and much-earned yoga retreat. A good time had, which is to say that the kids didn't attempt to murder each other even once, for the first time in recent memory. The one nasty bit was picking up Abbey from her boyfriend's house on Saturday evening, smack in the middle of Blizzard of 2015 Part LXXVIII, which led to Abbey's first ever no-brakes-on-the-downhill/spinout combo experience (her comment on the matter: "We'regonnadiewe'regonnadiewe'regonnadie....", as we slid to a sideways stop at about 15 miles an hour). Since we had progeny all around us on the 14th, Andrea and I celebrated Valentine's Day on Thursday with dinner at the Watertown Not Your Average Joe's, site of our first-ever dinner date. I gave her The Runaways Vol. 1, she gave me the Criterion La Dolce Vita, because we know each other entirely too well.

This weekend is a Murder Ballads business and rehearsal weekend with cluegirl, so if y'all could pray for just a little break in the crap-falling-from-the-heavens extravaganza long enough to make the drive out to Troy, that'd be great. Stay Safe and warm, everyone.

Yesterday, I got a text from Abbey the Girl-Child in which she asked if pleasepleaseplease could she have Thanksgiving dinner at her boyfriend's uncle's house, somehow managing to flash Bambi-eyes at me over the text lines. I was inclined to say no, partly because the kids were supposed to be spending their first Thanksgiving with figmentj and me ever (at the home of yendi and shadesong and sindrian as befits stalwart annual tradition), but also because I had lost track of who she was dating. Facebook filled me in on that bit of info: Guy I Had Never Heard Of, whom she'd been religiously and devotedly going steady with for the grand sum total of four days. H-to-the-E-to-the-double-L no, I said, which I think she anticipated because I got very little pushback.

When I picked up Abbey and Nik the Boy-Child in Easthampton today, I asked about Josh, the aforementioned Guy I Had Never etc. "Oh," she said with a distracted toss of the head, "we broke up already." Ladies and gentlemen, my almost-16-year-old daughter.

figmentj has assured me that among those who actually date in high school—i.e. people who are not me—this level of turnaround is pretty much par for the course, a 100-level anthropological exercise that you think I'd have noticed a lot sooner. That's reassuring, but I'm starting to see the need for a scorecard to keep the girl's boys straight, lest I commit the parental sin of terminal cluelessness. Here is the dossier intel I've gathered thus far:

Dale: The current perennial on-again-off-again fellow. Polite to adults, but succeeded in drinking himself into a coma one fine afternoon. Apparently currently dating someone else now, allegedly monogamously, but still calling Abbey. Strikes me as the sort who would make a strong request of an SO that includes the phrase, "...you and another chick." Gives me the jibblies.

Patrick: The frizzy-haired one who took her to the Homecoming Dance. Funny, a fan of My Little Pony, and currently repairing her dropped laptop. Apparently reluctantly broke up with her because he didn't think it would work out. Pity, that.

Josh: The latest. I know nothing about him, except that her [insert term that means "frenemy" without actually being "frenemy" because I loathe that word] Tiffany lured him away with her evil voodoo vaginamancy. Boooo.

Isaiah: Her boyfriend before she left Worcester, who is suddenly somehow back in the picture with repeated phone calls. Nice enough fellow, but Abbey, dear heart, what the blue screaming Saxon hell are you doing?

Zippy McCool: Actual chosen name (Abbey: "His real name is Brandon, but don't ever call him that"). She hasn't actually dated him, I don't think, but his name keeps coming up on conversation. Plays jazz trumpet, and is apparently going to be karaoke-ing Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" at the talent show in a few weeks. My daughter's turnover rate is through the ceiling as it is, I know, but since she's single at the moment and bloody unlikely to let that lie, she could certainly do worse. Plus I'd get to use the phrase, "my daughter's boyfriend, Zippy McCool." Yeah.

While I was hanging out with the young'uns over the weekend, I unexpectedly stumbled over one of those parenting milestones I try not to run into when I'm not looking: now-15-year-old Girl-Child lied to my face to get some alone time with a boy. As I said to figmentj, "Awww! They grow up so fast!" Fortunately it was a relatively mild infraction—this was a "yes, his mom will be home to chaperone even though she actually won't be" sort of lie, and not an "I'm going to sneak out my bedroom window at 1 a.m. so I can get to third base down at the overpass with my 20-year-old biker boyfriend you don't know about named Snake" sort of lie. And she had the presence of mind not to argue the punishment or bewail the unfairness of it all, although she was none too happy. Most fortunately of all, as Kristi and I conferred on after the fact, she's not a very good liar. (Fortunately for us, anyway.)

Also, I actually got a few thousands words of work done on The Noise of Endless Wars this evening, which shouldn't be an uncommon enough achievement to warrant mention on LJ, but I'll take my victories where I can get 'em. Only a couple more chapters to go, I keep telling myself between Tullamore Dew shots and crying jags, because THAT'S WHAT WE WRITERS DO. Boy howdy.

Recording (and rerecording) of The Elmsley Count proceeds apace, where in "apace" means "eye-crossingly slowly." I finally killed off the last of the replacement vocals on "Eclipse" this evening, and yes, "killed off" is the correct verb phrase. I swear, upwards of 40 takes on one bloody badger-felching line, between flubs, continental drifts in both sharpward and flatward directions, and $%@#ing aspirations no matter how I tried to avoid them. (I swear, I'm never writing a song with the letter P in it again.) So there was much teeth-pulling and creative cussing, but at least I got it done, which means that between "Eclipse" and "The Way Things Go" I have two—yes, TWO—songs completely finished until I decide to go back in and start tinkering again! Eight to ten more to go! Up the Republic! Death before dishonor! Kazango!

Meanwhile, the food situation is currently exemplary, in that I'm actually eating food at home that requires preparation above and beyond opening powder packets and/or microwaving on HIGH for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes [Caution: bowl will be hot]. Granted, I'm not necessarily the one doing said preparations—wired_lizard and figmentj have both made soup in the last week or two, and figmentj pulled out the stops for some awesome Southern fried chicken on Friday—but I made coq au vin not too long ago, the leftovers of which led to (wait for it) coq au vin quesadillas. Yes, "sexy" is the word you're looking for. This Saturday, I'll be picking up a whole rabbit from McKinnon's in Davis Square, which we'll be braising with pine nuts. I quake with anticipation.

Speaking of quaking, I went to Abbey's soccer game on Friday afternoon, which ended as a tie, 2-2. There was no overtime, because the referees, in light of the torrential downpour that we'd all been standing in for two and a half hours because the opposing team arrived obscenely late for the game (hence the quaking), took pity on all of us and sent everyone packing. Abbey was only in for a few minutes, but she did well. Worth the hypothermia.

And my sleep cycle's a bit borked. Will attempt to rectify. G'night, all!

In Worcester today with the kidlings.

I have been informed by my daughter that it's not fair, because I've got a whole bunch of cool friends, and she doesn't have any.

I share this information to let all of you know that you have been decreed cool by a 14-year-old manga fan in mesh fingerless gloves.

Thank you. You may continue about your affairs.