Monday, July 25

1:20 am
Plane

This is it.  Officially in the last week of the tour.  In an hour I'll be checking into my suite in Barcelona and starting the countdown until I'm unemployed again, Ha ha.

Three more shows.  Seven more days.  Then I'm a free man.

And I never have to wear that damned red Captain Crunch jacket again, Ha ha.

But even better yet, just three more days until my Baby gets here.  Thursday she arrives.  Gonna be the longest three days of my life and I'll probably be a complete pain in the ass to everybody around me, but we're down to hours now.  About 84, in fact.

Can't wait.

So the beach show went pretty well tonight.  We had to speed through it, make it shorter than usual because of curfew.  That's the shitty thing about some of these unique outside shows.  Sometimes the curfews are stricter than, say, Hyde Park.  And the Belgians weren't fucking around when they said we're DONE by curfew.

That was fine by me, actually.  I'm not quite feeling 100 percent.  Last few shows have been great, but my chords are getting a little beat up.  I know I'm doing it to myself, trying to pull off all those big numbers back to back to back.  Plus it's been so damp and chilly that I think I have a touch of a cold.  My tea's tasting mighty good on this old raw throat right at the moment.

Gotta get well quick.  Can't be sick when Cate gets here.  And hopefully it will be sunny and warm in Spain and some of that native Sangria will kill whatever I got brewing.

But with my luck it will probably fucking rain all damned week.  At this point I'm about ready to trade in the Captain Crunch Coat for a scuba suit and flippers.

Apparently it's all sunny and summery back home.  Cate's back in the City now; just got off Skype with her.  We had Mile-High Skype, heh heh.  She spent the afternoon floating in the pool, watching the show.  And the iPad survived, ha ha.  After that she played with her dog and puttered around the house a little, then headed back to the apartment.  Stopped at her favorite diner on the way for dinner.  A perfectly lazy, ordinary day.  Except she missed me.

Miss you too, Baby.

Cate mentioned something that got me thinking.  She said she's finding it really nice to to escape out to the Jersey house more often.  She's getting tired of the City, of always being surrounded by the hustle and bustle.  It's convenient for her work-wise, but she wishes we weren't always so "in the middle" of everything.

Maybe we should think of moving back out to Jersey, to making our place in the City just a pied-a-terre where we could stay when we want or need to.  If Cate has to work late or has crazy hours she could stay there, but otherwise she could commute into the City.  It's not a bad trip, especially if you don't have to do it during rush hour.

And I certainly have no reason to have to be in the middle of NYC.  It's nice to be close to the Kids, but it's not like I'll see them every day once school starts anyway.  The studio's out there; eventually we're gonna start writing again.  Plus it's a helluva lot easier to get to Philly for Foundation business from Red Bank than it is from Manhattan.

And maybe if we move out to the Jersey House Cate will want to stay home more.  Telework.  And maybe even eventually not work, or at least change jobs.  Take on full-time Mommyhood for awhile.  Try on the role of suburban housewife, Ha ha.

Okay, maybe "suburban housewife" is taking it a bit too far.  Especially in that neighborhood, Ha ha.

But still... maybe Cate's starting to realize she's ready.  Ready to finally settle down, to leave behind the shitty hours and thankless job to follow her Heart instead of her logical cop Head.  Ready to be the woman she never thought she'd want to be.

I love that idea.  But I'm not quite sure how to approach it with her.  Maybe this is a start... asking if she'd want to move out to the Jersey house, maybe in the fall when school starts.

Time to write a new chapter in that book of our lives.