house arrest.

so, i've been grounded.

this means no leaving the house except for work or rehearsal for the entirety of this week.

in all honesty, this is not a bad idea. we're back in the studio on saturday, and the boys in the band have made it patently clear that if i'm not 100% fit and fighting, they will stab me repeatedly with a variety of forks and other pointy objects. and while i'm as game for a good bloodletting as the next girl, i'd rather not be on the receiving end of such an onslaught if given a choice. this means something very simple for this week: i sleep. i rest. i don't drink (much). i stay in. i rehearse. i behave. i make it through saturday, after which i bring out a bottle of premium tequila and get the boys celebratorily bombed.

i'm particularly keen to be in fine fettle at the studio this week because since our last visit, we've clocked up no less than twenty additional hours working these four songs to the bone--brushing up on vocals, laying down guitars, that sort of thing. most of these hours have come in the form of marathon sessions in the back room: 6 hours last saturday, 7 hours last sunday, and 11 hours yesterday. i have been pretty much useless for most of these hours, as it has been determined that i will not be taking the lead on the guitar front for this recording, doing little else than throwing in the occasional two cents and arranging idea; the hardest work of all has been done by my lovely boys. really interesting, wonderful things are happening as a result of all this incredibly hard work, and i'll be damned if i'm going to let them down with a repeat of last session's deplorable vocalization.

the boys, however, know and love me well enough to know that sometimes i need a little outside impetus if i'm going to stick to guns that involve me taking care of myself. ergo, the order for my house arrest.

the mandate came at about half past 11 last night, when we were so delirious and crazed from the ten previous hours of banging our heads against a wall that we were not just loopy, but struggling hard to keep our spirits up--yesterday's session was hard. ultimately, we got some good stuff out of it, but by hour eight, it was an ordeal. i was in particularly good form, having just come off a very busy set of days (barbecue on saturday afternoon, party saturday night that saw me crashing at a friend's place in manhattan as the sun rose, frisbee and coffee in the park on sunday morning [and we won't even mention the ten thousand miles i had to walk through the fulton street station in my endeavors to get back to the hood from avenue D]), was wearing saturday's clothes and practically insane with exhaustion. this, as i'm sure you can imagine, made me particularly fun.

the state i was in prompted a few joking comments from the assembled company, which then turned into slightly more serious messages of "so, you're not going to be sick on saturday, right*?" which then became the very serious "no really, you're not going to be sick on saturday, right? no late nights? no hot dates? you're going to do things like sleep and eat vegetables?" i waffled a bit at this point, as my overscheduling tendencies don't appear to be abating with the advent of spring (too! much! to do!); in the moment that i waffled, it was decided: in the best interests of the band, i was grounded. no ifs, ands, or buts.

so i look now down the barrel of a week wherein i do nothing but rehearse and watch tv and go to bed early. it seems so alien to me.

i cannot fucking wait.

* you may recall, i've been sick pretty much constantly since my bout with strep in january; it's transcended being a running joke and actually hit exasperation point.