Count Backwards from 10 -- Jay

On Monday, my wife gave blood. She does stuff like this because she likes to do good things for other people (and because it was Give-a-Pint-Get-a-Pint-of-Ice-Cream Day). I don’t do stuff like this simply because I hate needles. I hate ’em! I hate anything that…I don’t know…tears through my flesh. But on Wednesday morning I’m going in for my first-ever surgery. It’s relatively minor. I’m just getting sliced and diced to fix a hernia. No biggie. I’m fine. No really, I’m fine!

So I filled pre-op Tuesday with some cool activities to keep my mind distracted (which is a very easy thing to do).

First, I spoke to two Creative Writing classes at my old high school. In each class, I did something I’d never done at a school visit before, but I think I’ll make it a regular part of future presentations. Instead of reading the intro to Thirteen Reasons Why, I started a little further into the book…which required a second reader. So one student from each class read Hannah’s lines while I read Clay’s. The reason I never did that before is because people naturally interpret words differently, and I was afraid of hearing my words interpreted in a different way than I intended. But that’s what made it so fun! So thank you, Nicole and Kacia. Those readings were the highlights of my visit (even if Robin thought I sounded like Napoleon Dynamite while reading one of my lines -- What? No!).

Then my wife and I went back into the recording studio. First, we recorded some promotional stuff for Penguin (including, this time, having my wife read Hannah’s part). Then I recorded the final guitar parts for two of her songs. There’s this one little 11-note riff in What About Me which has always given me problems and took me about fifty takes to get it right. But it’s the funkiest and most difficult riff in all of her songs…and now it’s done. Woo-hoo!

Now I’m writing this blog post after midnight because I can’t relax enough to go to sleep. Robin, to her credit, offered to write today’s post because my day was so full. But I told her not to worry…because I knew I’d need this final distraction at the end of the day. And I was right.

Well, I love you all. I’ve loved writing these little blog posts for ya over these past two years. And I’m sure I’ll write some more. After all, it’s just a hernia. It’s a very common procedure. My wife’s boss is actually performing the surgery, and he’s a really nice guy. Steady hands. Very calm. And he knows that if he messes up…even a little bit…I’m gonna blog about it!

- Jay