Screw

This morning was on the rough side.  My daughter is a veritable wall of sleep in the morning, and getting her up to make the bus to school is generally a walk in the briar-patch.  I'm getting handy in the briar patch, but it's what it is.  There is a strategy laid out, and a procedure to follow.  The rest is all about being relaxed, tenacious and resilient.  We made the bus, all is well there... and to my kid's credit she's on her way to becoming a rock-star in her own right.  She loves school, and is finally getting what she needs to succeed.  looking forward, looking good!

My wife is a fledgling church organist.  She's got talent, and she's a perfectionist.  She had lessons years ago, before motherhood, and we're setting them up again so she can really nail this gig.  But they're giving her 8 pieces a  week to learn!  That might be alright if she were a regular, working musician but she's not.  She's been Mom for 12 years, manages a daughter with a chronic history of difficulty in school (and I'll add here that it's not our kid's fault- it's the fault of the school system and I'll go toe-to-toe with any professional on this), she works part-time as a CNA in an Alzheimer's unit, and has a penchant for taking on more than she can handle... she's a strong kid, my wife.  But she's got too much on her plate, and sometimes the stress of it spreads like milk from an upturned glass into the cracks of an old hardwood floor.  We are pretty pressed.

I need glasses.  I had a pair which I ran over with my van one day.  Not for nothing was my nick-name "Space" in high school- I'd left the glasses on the rear bumper one day in front of the house.  I moved the van, got out and picked up my glasses.  Was I upset?  Well, it's not like I wasn't prepared for this!  Yep, gotta figure that expense in now to our already thin budget.  I still am going without them until December, when I can get a new pair on insurance.  Like my grandfather did at 80+ years old...

So this morning, between keeping after the bus-bound school-girl, making lunches, the necessary coffee administering, checking weather and doing my now required daily "crunches", I decided to throw that adjustment screw into the bridge of my old Hamer Cruisebass.  I'd scored it from a kid on talkbass.com, who claimed it was the very same axe used by The Romantics in their 1983 video for "Talking in Your Sleep".  I do believe it's the one:  Factory overspray of Jet-Black over the original Trans-Red, serial # from '83.  Saw the vid, looks just like this now-beaten, well-played relic.  I still have to write Hamer about it, but who has time for such trivialities...  But in my unnatural pace and with my compromised, myopic vision in the semi-light of our above-ground basement, I evidently cross-threaded the screw into the saddle-piece, trying to keep screw, spring and saddle aligned through the little hole at the back of the bridge... you bass and guitar players'll see what I mean here.  So now I need to write to my good friend Herr Bünning at Schaller Guitars and order a saddle for the 3D-4 Chrome bass bridge.  Yay, international pen-pal fun.

'Morning, all...