October 29, 2023

 I know, I know. Where have I been?

Well, yesterday we marched in the neighborhood Halloween parade with Superman I mean Jasper and had a great time so there’s that…

But otherwise, the world is so horrifying and scary right now I can’t watch the news and I have basically had to stay offline to preserve my sanity.

I loathe organized religion but I am a Jew and I am a pacifist so I’m in a truly agonizing place right now.

There’s no good answer.

And like the world isn’t terrifying enough, that hideous, morbidly obese PIG in a wig, that ignorant racist rapist TRAITOR Donald Trump, refuses to shut the hell up.

WHY IS THAT STINKING CARCASS NOT IN JAIL?

Yikes, he smells like wet shit.

I wish a real patriot would step up and take care of him.

To make things worse, a week from today is the end of daylight savings. The night we turn back the clock is literally the day of the year I hate the most. I need sunlight, dammit!

So I have been writing. I have Leaving Candyland on submission right now and much to my shock, I got two immediate acceptances but honestly after researching both publishers further, I decided to take a pass and wait to hear from others.

I also got the best rejection I ever received, where it was clear I was googled.

“Robin,

Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to send us Leaving Candyland – we really appreciate your interest.

We're very aware of the hard work and effort that has gone into your submission and think you have an interesting premise. However, after careful consideration, we don't feel that Leaving Candyland is quite right for us. We publish very commercial, genre fiction, and Leaving Candyland's blend of humour and women's fiction wouldn't be a good fit for us.

On a personal level, I really enjoyed reading your novel - you have a beautifully engaging writing style and piercing insight into the challenges of midlife. Also, as a diehard rock fan, daughter of a bassist and sister of a drummer, I absolutely loved all of your musical references (and am I allowed to say I am in awe of your offspring?!)

Unfortunately, due to the number of submissions we receive and the size of our team we are unable to give more detailed feedback on your manuscript at this stage. Whilst we're not able to accept re-submissions for manuscripts that we've already viewed, please do keep us in mind for any future manuscripts - I would happily read another of your novels!

Once again, our genuine thanks for your submission. We wish you the very best for your future success and really hope you find the perfect home for Leaving Candyland.

Best regards,

The Pitch Team”

Sigh…

While I wait to hear from other publishers, I decided to work on something new. Here’s the premise: A young widow suffering debilitating panic attacks must rescue her children from a charismatic right wing cult leader.

I have no idea where I got this idea, har har, it’s way out of my comfort zone, but I’m so doing it. I’m up to 30,000 words.

In better news, Eric will be in Philadelphia tomorrow to rehearse for touring with Kevin Morby starting November 1 in Boston, so that should be amazing.

Finally, if this seems like a scattered blogpost it’s because I’m out of my mind scared. I had bloodwork on Friday and should have the results tomorrow. I feel okay but this is my yearly study and the results are increasingly worse every year as I age what with the wonky heart, with always the possibility of additional new misery being disclosed. Gah! I already take medication twice a day, five different pills, one of which costs as much as a mortgage payment. I even live in fear of yet more pills and specialists.

Okay, okay, enough of that.

Gonna go watch the Eagles and work on the new book. Yeah, I can do that because who really gives a shit about anything while the world is burning?

September 21, 2023

 

So I have been spending the last few weeks working on my new book, Leaving Candyland, and have avoided, for the most part, both the news and social media. I made the decision to leave the site formerly known as Twitter and I vowed to never visit Donald’s Truth Social page again because frankly, reading that poison makes me feel…murderous. To put it mildly.

Luckily the two of us will never be in a room alone together. It wouldn’t be pretty. I may be small but I’m mighty.

Wait.

EWWWWWWWWWW.

Okay, I feel better.

But now, unfortunately, I have the answer to a question I’ve been asking myself since November 7, 2016. How can good people vote for Trump? I understand the bigots, but I’m talking normal people. How can they not be thoroughly repulsed and terrified by what he says and does on a daily basis?

Welp, now I have the answer. 

It’s because they have no idea.

Unless you are always online on a Twitter type site and/or watching MSNBC 24/7, the average person doesn’t know about the Republican rapid and obvious march toward fascism. They have no idea that electing Donald means the end of our democracy.

They have no clue he sounds both dementia ridden and INSANE.

I know this for sure because for the last three weeks, I have been living my life as a pre-internet person and realized the other night I’ve stopped obsessing over him and his evil Republican cohorts. I put on local news every night for a few minutes and there’s no mention of government shutdowns or Jack Smith or anything Donald. Just sports talk and weather and news of inflation and more shootings and crime for which Biden and the democrats are getting  blamed.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Because there’s never any follow up commentary about how the Republicans are running Congress and they will not do anything about guns or billionaires’ money and the purchase of power.

Honestly, I want to leave America but my kids don’t have the same urgency so I’m not going anywhere. I have no other choice but if I want to stay happy and healthy, I need to stay offline.

I don’t want to know what’s going on anymore. From politics to pop culture, I’m done.  I’m old and I am tired of being horrified.

But my family, music, books, and great food? Bring it on!

So that’s what’s been happening lately at Casa Slick.  Lots and lots of the above, including a wonderful unexpected visit from Eric on Rosh Hashanah. Gary made an incredible vegetarian matzo ball soup and then the two of them went to the Peter Gabriel show where they had a campers’ reunion backstage and not only got to chat and take a pic with Tony Levin but chatted with Mike Portnoy and Omar Hakim, also there to see the show.

Jasper and I stayed home and and watched MasterChef and the Halloween Baking Championship. Jasper had a frozen bacon cheese pup cup and I had a big bowl of vegan chocolate peanut butter ice cream.

It was glorious.

You know what? It’s possible to live in the real world after all.

And now, back to editing Candyland.

August 12, 2023

 

Well here’s something I never had on my life’s bingo card. Sean Lennon showed up at my daughter’s gig last night and my husband , dog and I got to hang out with him for an hour and chat about John and Yoko and other cool stuff and yeah, mind completely blown.

Let me add that Sean told my daughter her performance was EPIC

 

August 8, 2023

We’re on vacation and now you can see what we’re like and you will know why everyone moved away 😂

And here’s my obligatory vacation selfie.

Much more to follow 😎

August 4, 2023

 Thought for today, and it’s a really good one:

“Fear doesn't prevent death. It prevents life.” - Naguib Mahfouz

August 2, 2023

THIS MAY BE THE HAPPIEST FUCKING DAY OF MY LIFE.

July 31, 2023

 

I have a crazy busy week getting ready for vacation but I will stop in my tracks the minute Donald gets indicted for trying to overthrow the government.

Today’s polls show him crushing his opponents. Since the entire Republican Party is now a Christian Nationalist steaming pile of shit, that doesn’t mean anything to me. What does matter is how the actual fuck is this criminal even allowed to run for office and what the fuck is wrong with this country?

It’s demoralizing.

It’s made me ashamed of my fifty year legal career. I can’t even bear to discuss it. It’s funny, I dropped a happy 90th birthday email to my beloved boss of thirty years, and his reply to me included the sentence “no contact with legal world” (in 20 years of retirement) which totally reflected my sentiments.  We were always like that but hey, I started working for him when I was twenty-one years old, he shaped who I am as a person.

He was not your typical attorney, he was a mom and pop sole practitioner who actually helped people.

Anyway, my point is, he feels the same and called our current political climate “very troubling times.”

I’m a little more worried. I think it’s the fucking apocalypse. I don’t see an easy way out of this.

Anyway, in other news…

Tomorrow Jasper has his annual physical and last year the vet told us Jasper needs to lose five pounds.

Jasper did not lose five pounds.

Hopefully he did not gain five more. I’m not even kidding, I am positive he’s the reincarnation of Anthony Bourdain. He’s got a sophisticated palette and he stands next to Gary in the kitchen, watching every step of his cooking.

And his personality…woo boy.

Wednesday we’re going to the beach. No matter what. Even if Donald is indicted at dawn that morning. That’s the only exception because I need the sea and sand.

And then it’s basically cleaning and packing and getting ready for Julie’s visit Sunday and our annual trip to Woodstock Monday for a utopian week of great music, friendship, and beautiful atmosphere.

And then we come home in time for Eric’s visit and my birthday.

Have I mentioned how much I love my family and retirement?

Onward!

July 28, 2023

Whew, this has been an interesting week.

Monday started off pretty awful. I woke up to a distraught text from Julie in Ireland that her sweet little doggie had been involved in an altercation while she was away.

My job was to calm her down but I was completely freaked out. I managed to do it, though, and Gary and I took off for the beach on Tuesday to escape.

We had an absolute glorious day. Jasper is a swimmer. We talked about moving to Somers Point again and when I mentioned that I saw a few houses in our price range, Gary gave me the go ahead to keep looking so maybe…

I want to wait another year or so to see if we will be grandparents first. Gary insists he will never live in a red state but he’s a baby freak and all bets are off if that happens. I predict he will change his mind and want to buy the house next door to Eric and Natalie 😂

I’ve already entertained the fantasy that if Eric and Natalie have a family and need a bigger house, we will buy their current house so Eric still has his studio and everything can revert back to him when we die. I would do that in a heartbeat, his place is fantastic.

I’m learning nothing is impossible. See my next paragraph…

We returned to Philadelphia refreshed and then I got another text from Julie out of nowhere that she’s coming here for a week in November, for Thanksgiving AND Gary’s 70th birthday AND the Thanksgiving jam at Jon and Peters.

So…for the first time since 2019, the band is getting back together on Thanksgiving ❤️

I swear, why didn’t I have the wisdom I have now when I was younger? I just let the universe take care of things these days. I have no control over anyone or anything but myself. When I stay calm, even my crazy husband calms down, too.

Anyway, one more week until vacation in Woodstock. We’re gonna hit the beach again one more time next week before we leave, and we’re making excellent progress working on my latest house project.

No word yet on my new book from the querying I did but hey, at least that means it hasn’t been rejected yet.

Onward!

July 23, 2023

 

Good morning.

I’ve been thinking about the pandemic a lot lately and how we’ve moved passed it.

Or have we?

In trying to self-analyze why I’ve been suddenly hit with depression and cure myself, I realize what an emotional toll it took and how it totally and completely changed me and my family forever.

The pandemic occurred at a really pivotal time in our lives. The kids were in their early thirties and Gary and I were what we thought were a couple of years from retirement age. Eric and Natalie were newlyweds and literally made settlement on their house in Nashville in March of 2020, just days before everything shut down. It might have even been the day before.

Julie was fairly new to Seattle and I didn’t really believe she had decided to make it her permanent home. I was still used to Julie being a self-proclaimed nomad who lived everywhere from Tuscany to a pot farm in Humboldt County, California.

I finally had a job I adored after fifteen years of bouncing around from one nightmare to the next following almost thirty years at my beloved longtime job when my boss retired. Man, talk about taking something incredible for granted. But oh well, we all know that trips down memory lane are pointless and make you more depressed so…

Anyway, I had a great job and my boss and I had just gone through our first jury trial together in January of 2020 where we secured the highest personal injury verdict for a premises liability case in Pennsylvania for that year.

We didn’t even get the chance to celebrate. The news made the headlines in the legal world during late March of 2020.

The first months of the pandemic could not have been more horrifying. Gary and I watched news coverage of morgues overflowing with people over sixty years old…our age. In Italy, seniors over sixty were deemed to be expendable and left to die gasping for air so that overworked doctors could save the young. There were weeks when I was truly scared we would die on a weekend and no one would know because the kids were living their own nightmare and several days would go by where we wouldn’t hear from them.

We were terrified beyond belief.

And like I said, we couldn’t/wouldn’t express this fear to our kids thousands of miles away, because they were dealing with horrors of their own. As touring musicians, their income was completely cut off with no end in sight.

We aged during the pandemic. All of us. It robbed us of really important years.

This of course totally changed my kids, too. I worry that they’ll never feel the same about making music for a living again and that makes me sadder than anything. I know I am right about that and the only thing saving me is that other than typing it now, I don’t allow my brain to go down this path. I have no control over how others feel and I know that. My only job is to be here for my family when they need me.

But I’m a thinker and it’s hard.

Other terrible things happened during the pandemic that would normally bring us to our knees but was ten times worse then. Our dog died. Eric’s dog died. Julie’s relationship ended and she was facing homelessness. I found out I have a wonky heart.

Somehow, we survived everything.

So realizing how short life is, Gary and I retired in 2021 and suddenly time is flying by. And while we’re enjoying leisurely days just puttering around the house and going to the beach, fear has been creeping in. These carefree days can’t last. We’re approaching seventy years old. One or both of us will get sick. One or both of us will die. 

I have to stop thinking about this. We could have another twenty years, we could have another twenty seconds. Nobody knows.

But when you’re around seventy, the odds really increase you won’t be around in ten years.

I never thought about stuff like this before. It’s horrible.

But…

I can’t keep living in the future anymore than I can live in the past. I know this.

So, I’m writing this now as a reminder to be present. It’s sunny and we’re going out shopping for a special Sunday dinner tonight.

Today I am grateful we have mostly good physical health and everyone we love has that, too.  More importantly, Gary and the kids are happy. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There’s really nothing else I need.

Okay, okay, I do admit to having an extra bounce in my step after Eric told me he’d be here for my birthday and Thanksgiving yesterday.  Haha too funny, he doesn’t know this because he hasn’t read it but the character in my new novel who saves the day is a Nashville record producer named Ric Swift and he’s totally based on Eric.

Life always imitates art, doesn’t it?

Onward.

July 22, 2023

Life can be amazing.

I’ve been pretty bummed lately, and it’s been a struggle to stay in the present. Missing my kids so much I feel sick is a real thing. 

Plus, I was pretty sure Jack Smith would be coming for Donald (again) last week and it was an incredible letdown when nothing happened.

But but but…

Once again we were woken up by blue jays…I talked Gary into doing stuff around here and not only did he happily oblige, I went off cleaning on my own and found $50 in an old handbag. I couldn’t believe it.

So I went downstairs to tell Gary, but he was outside repotting some plants so I checked my phone and all of a sudden I got a text out of nowhere from Eric, WHO WILL NOT ONLY BE HERE FOR MY BIRTHDAY BUT FOR THANKSGIVING, TOO AND NOT ONLY THAT, WE’RE GOING TO THANKSGIVING JAM AT JON AND PETERS IN NEW HOPE AFTER DINNER.

The last time our family went to the Thanksgiving jam at Jon and Peters was in 2019. That’s the video I posted above. I don’t have to tell you what happened next. 

It’s also the last time we were all together on a holiday.

Please don’t tell me to calm down. I am so fucking happy I will even be patient for Donald’s arrest but omg, if it happens next week I may faint from joy.

But see? This is why we must live in the present. I’ve spent the last few weeks miserable for no fucking reason.

One of these days I’ll grow up. I promise.