In my title, I’m not speaking of the blog repairs. I’m tearing through those as fast as I can. I’m not taking a linear approach. Some years have a lot more posts than others, so depending on my level of fatigue and eyestrain, I go between light posting years and dense posting years. This often provides a disorienting sense of time travel. For example, through the years, some people have lived in several different homes. Other people have gone between different careers and in and out of advanced degree programs. I’m reading about someone’s child, and then I’m reading that she’s pregnant with that child. Friends’ companion animals who’ve died are alive again. One morning, I’ll have read where I talked about a person’s death; late afternoon, that person is in the comments on a different post, earlier year.
Back to this post’s title. Sometime back, I bought a ticket to see Brian Wilson and his touring band (NOT the band that tours as the Beach Boys, which I care nothing about), along with Chicago (not playing together; I think Brian and his band play first, then Chicago plays) tonight.
When I finished that online transaction, I was excited. In the past, every time I saw the Beach Boys (both before and after Dennis Wilson died, but never after Carl Wilson had also died), Brian wasn’t touring with the band. It’s been a lifelong dream to see him perform (much like the one I fulfilled in 2019 when I saw Paul McCartney).
But then it seemed like every day after that, I had to meet some challenge to make the concert happen. I won’t get into it all, but the reasons have to do with health, our insane drought temperatures (the venue is outside and my ticket would have been in an unshaded area), venue rules which have changed since my old concert days, and other things.
By Friday night, when I read the temps in The Woodlands might reach 109 degrees on Saturday, and the sun wouldn’t set until after nine, by which time Brian’s part of the concert would have concluded, I knew I wasn’t going. It was a hard decision and a disappointment because I don’t know if I’ll have this opportunity again.
Today I was working on the blog, and after I fixed a long-ago post, I read comments, including one from my late St. Louis blogging buddy Rob Edler (aka Rob E, Really Rob, Cody Frizbee Jr, Clayton Frizbee, Jr., Arele, and Smiling Bagel, depending on which social media or how he signed his art or writing, for example). In his comment, he mentioned how he’d had to miss an outdoor opera performance (he loved opera so much) because the temperature was 106 degrees. I answered him and said, “You made the right decision.”
You made the right decision. In that moment, I reminded myself I’m not a girl anymore, or even a young adult. I need to take care of myself so that if I ever have the opportunity to see Brian under better circumstances, I can. No matter what, I owe myself the same consideration I’d give a friend.
And I was fine.
Dash and grandma ways