I'm officially on the wagon (again), this time until St. Patty's day. This is one of those ongoing "take stock" kinda things, a gut check to see if I get the DT's and need to really worry about the beer/wine intake. I had the booze blues for the early half of the week, but am over the hump now. Had to take an Advil on Monday and Tuesday night, but now I'm fine. Mostly it was just me being pissed off that I have to endure the sleepless nights with our hard-to-put-down-without-squawking 1 month old, and the tantrumy-in-the-middle-of-the-night-at-random 2 year old without something to take the edge off. Yes, I said it. It's a crutch. And I was a bit wobbly (figuratively) without that crutch for a couple of days. But last night I was able to accomplish a lot of little projects I've been putting off after the kids went down, like creating new file folders to put away random things we get in the mail from the County Assessor...you know, file folders devoted to the subject of home ownership, something I am still getting used to.

So I guess I'm not an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker. Of course, I question whether that's the case relative to some of the folks who still live where I come from, not to mention some of my ancestors. At times like these I think of an old Paul K. and the Weathermen song, "Liquid" : "You have a way about you I can easily understand/No you're not gonna do to me what you did to my old man."

Now, mind you, the lyrics don't resonate literally, as my dad rarely drinks more than the customary 1-2 beers before dinner, but drinking certainly runs in the family. I've thought about how I'd do a cover of that song in moments of clarity, and then I get to thinking I'll do a bunch of covers of songs like that, ones not well known. But I don't have the mental, nor physical, nor time...space for such a project as yet. Among the other songs I've long thought of, one would probably be a Verlaines song, maybe from Some Disenchanted Evening or Ready To Fly (assuming I can figure out all of the fuckin' chords), and of course I forget the rest at the moment.

It's been years since I've written a song, so perhaps a few covers. As usual I'll probably ping for suggestions. Far be it for me to come up with much on my own these days. In some ways, after making an honest assessment of my life, it has always been so. I seem to thrive best when collaborating or perusing secondary sources which I can then attempt to refine or make my own. Maybe the operative word is: distill.