I unrolled myself from my second bus, and came in for a very well deserved drink after a day of simultaneous babywriting and grantsitting – no, wait – and I overheard two musicians at my cafe talking about a local independent record label, and I know the owner – I’ve met him twice. It’s a small community here. I knew who they were talking about. I was connected to someone who’s someone in the Chicago indie music community. That feels pretty good.

I’m coming to the end of my time as a nanny. I’ve been working part-time as a babysitter for an eight-month-old girl to help pay the bills. Between that and all this theatrical grantwriting, my income has finally caught up with my bills, and I’m able to stop that at the end of this week. It’s nice that just as that starts to happen, I start to feel like I know some of the artists here.

Babies are usurpers of metaphors. Today, the sky wants to rain but can’t, like a child that wants to go to sleep, but can’t. The windows on the bus are foggy, like they were in Denver. And I miss Los Angeles with all the teeth in my skull, but Chicago is pleasantly distracting. Again, like a child. It’s here, right now, so I suppose I have to pay attention to it.

I’m going to set up the back room of our apartment like a rehearsal room this weekend.