Good Lord, Where I Left Off?

Ow, it hurts to even think right now. I just came from the annual networking event of the African American Health Coalition, of which I am a faithful member, thanks to Job #1. I grubbed seriously and ate way too much b/c today is one of those long-ass days where I will have been gone from home ALL DAMN DAY (longer since I spent the night at Jon's house last night). I went from Jon's house to Job #1 to the networking event, now I'm at Job #2 for 3 hours, then straight to rehearsal. We got a gig this Sat. at one of our usual haunts and I managed to negotiate the time to be 7:30-10:30 instead of 8-11 b/c one of Jon's friends is having a party and he and I want to get there toot suit. You can bet I'm gwine try to actually close the gig down closer to 10:15pm! Shit, when I took this gig way back when I didn't know I'd be dating Jon and would have his events to add to my social calendar!!!

So anyway I promised to write about the magical event that Jon took me to a couple Sundays ago. It was at the home of one of our local favorite keyboard players, a man of 74 yrs young. This is the one that we played a benefit for a few weeks ago, along w/Jon's band and other bands. Jon is like a son to Earl; so is some of my other musician friends. I don't know Earl that well, to be honest. But we went to his place and his wife served up a crapload of soul food: pigs feet, greens, cornbread, cakes, ribs, etc. etc. I wasn't that hungry but I ate 2 pieces of her delicious coconut cake. As a gift I'd brought a huge bag of oranges picked that day by Jon from my grandfather's tree. Several of our other musician friends were in attendance by the time we got there, a couple hours late. (We'd stopped by Jon's on the way from Pasadena and got distracted for a little while.) Their instruments were already set up in the "doghouse" which is a groovy icehouse structure out back in the yard. Lots of neighbors/friends were there too.

Jon got ready to play w/the band, all white boy musician friends of ours. I watched and drank a beer. They were awesome, of course and the blacks were dancing it up. A friend of ours in attendance, the owner of the Big Easy, Tom, was watching w/me and he leaned over and told me how fortunate I was to be witnessing this; I knew he was right. At one point Earl managed to come to the doghouse from his home and since he was weak and on oxygen, he sat down right near Jon and Jon did the O.V. Wright song that Earl taught him and that I love love love. Earl broke down and started crying and we all freaked out a little bit and I totally teared up! (So did Jon, I later found out.) Tom leaned over and told me that Earl probably knew there would not be too many more of these doghouse events. Jon had told me that they used to do this every Sunday!

Then our bass player friend called ME to the band so I could play a few songs, along w/Tom who plays harmonica!!! Oh boy, was I tickled! I didn't think I'd get to have the honor of playing a few songs in the legendary doghouse! I did fine, I knew the songs they called out and people kept dancing. No one in the audience had suspected that Jon's little girlfriend played bass and they were all tickled as well to see me up there. After we played about 5 songs we took a break and went to the house to spend time w/Earl and I finally got to talk to him a little bit. He's played with all my favorites, from Albert Collins to Gatemouth Brown and he knows Stevie Wonder, ZZ Top reveres him, etc. etc. Earl's wife had made a special pan of cornbread just for Jon and she sent us home with that, plates of food, tons of the delicious deviled eggs, plus the rest of the cake! As I said... it was a wonderful, magical evening.

Anyway, so in other news, things have been great w/Jon. He had to go to Ohio last Fri. for an annual concert/recording session/master class thing he does up there for a blues charity for cancer organization. I drove him to the airport and it was a good thing I did that, as my car Blue Lou ended up being in the shop until Tuesday and cost... Ugh... $1,400 to repair. (Puke!) So I drove his cool black Dodge Magnum all weekend. I also slept at his house on Sat. night after my (lame) gig since we were playing right down the street from his place. Also I was supposed to have lunch on Sunday w/Jon's mom, cousin, aunts at a restaurant near his house but that actually ended up not working out since they were running an hour late from Baytown and I had muchas cosas to do.

I picked up Jon from the airport yesterday afternoon and took the last part of the day off from work so we could spend time together. Everything is really going well and we are totally falling in love. It's just EASY with him, I don't know how else to describe it. He and I are on the same page about everything. We have nothing but fun w/each other, even if we're just lounging around. I was going to take him to the High-spanic Health Coalition holiday party last night but he was so tired and I was on the fence about it anyway (I really just wanted the free Mexican dinner) so we ended up blowing it off and going to eat at our fave Mexican restaurant followed by a trip to Crave Cupcakes!