(Lack of) Fire on the Mountain

Hello, friends.

I posted a Facebook status the other day. It went along the lines of "It's nearing the halfway point of Oktoberfest, and no sign yet of my Nervous Breakdown. Hope he's not planning a sneak attack."

Remember my Nervous Breakdown? He makes an appearance once a year, sometime during Oktoberfest, while I'm working and traveling and playing and living a life and bankrupting myself buying gas and all that.

And he looks like this.

























Maybe he's currently off on a birdwatching trip or something.

Anyway, I'm now in what I think is my seventh year with the Sauerkraut Band. For the past three years, I've had long conversations with myself about it. And usually those conversations begin the same. "Will this be my last year with the Sauerkraut Band?"

And I have several buddies who tell me it should be, told me all three years I've wondered. And yet, I can't come to any conclusion myself.

So far this year I've played six gigs up the mountain. One was great, that was the one the Dishy Michelle and the Dear Nephew and his buddies were at. There was one that only became good after I got nice and snockered (yes, I had a driver), and one this past weekend that was really good because there was a table of people who fancied themselves as clarinet groupies and loved everything we did.

The rest have ranged from tiring to annoying to the one this past Friday, which I can only classify as abysmal. Here's the story on that one. Someone anonymously left (and I guess, dealing with the product, it had to be anonymous) an "unattended package" outside the barn. A couple of band members opened it, and it contained three jars of moonshine. Apple pie, pineapple, and pomegranate. Before long the band got into it, the audience got into it, and I swear to God I think I was the only sober person up the mountain. (Not only was I driving myself that night, but I avoid moonshine like the plague. It's like drinking jet fuel.)

Well, for the first two hours of the show, people were over the moon. They were dancing and hooting and they just loved everybody, but by the time things were winding down, people got legless, sullen, loud, and argumentative. And I thank Himself for two things that night. One, I had to hotfoot it down the mountain to virtually meet Stennie for the podcast, and two, Mary was nice enough to take up my clearing up after the gig duties and let me hotfoot it. Thanks, Mary.

When I've had this conversation, this whole "last year" conversation with myself this year, two things keep weighing heavily upon my tired head. One is my age, and one is my knees.

My age is my age and I can't do a damn thing about that, sadly enough. Until last year, I was one of those people you hate to whom age is just a number - I never felt my age, I felt like some young thing with the whole world ahead of her. And though last year was a horrible year for my whole family, and this year isn't much better, I just realized I'm now an old maid who lives a bad lifestyle and though I should be doing something about that, I'm not.

And alas, there's not much I can do about my knees, either. And I guess now is the time to tell you all about that, but I'll keep it short and give you the Reader's Digest version.

I know you've all heard me blog about my thrown-out knee and the trouble it's caused me, and my biggest fear, the one where I favor the bad knee so much that my other knee starts to hurt, has now come to fruition. So I finally got in enough of a state about it to do something and saw an orthopedist, in hopes he'd give me a cortisone shot just to get me through Oktoberfest.

I did that the Monday that Dishy was visiting, and I found out something rather interesting. I was told I had "endstage arthritis" in both knees. I was gob-smacked. I mean, isn't the stage after "endstage" death? I have 50% deterioration in both knees, and knee replacement is a certainty for the future. We know not when, because we just have that one x-ray and don't know how long it's been advancing. So my knees are terminal, but I got my cortisone shot to get me through Oktoberfest.

The shot hurt like a mofo, but afterwards I was in knee heaven. For about 16 hours, after which I was sitting in a Subway with Dishy, shifted my leg while still in a chair, and all hell broke loose. Now it hurts again, bad but not quite as bad and not while I'm trying to sleep, but I sure do wonder how much I paid for that shot that didn't even last a whole day. I'll be finding out soon enough.

The upshot of all this is, well, imagine going up the mountain after driving over an hour with one's knee in the same position, then standing, schunkeling, bouncing, Chicken Dancing, making merry, and walking inclines and declines on gravel, for some four hours. In a completely embarrassing move, I have had to take to sitting during some songs (I like to choose the marches because they're quite long, and people are marching around, so hopefully they don't notice), but then the last 40 or so minutes of the show, I just can't take it and have to sit down whenever I've become too decrepit to stand anymore. And believe me, my blogees, I sit in shame.

And so I drive, drive, drive up the mountain and have this whole "should I stay or should I go" conversation with myself. And on one shoulder sits the old maid with the bad knees, and the fact that we have this huge catalog of music but play the same songs over and over, and the endless repeatings of the show's "schtick" narration, and the horrible food we're fed, and the pay that should probably be more, and not having a designated driver so I can't drink and not care about all of the above.

But.

But on the other shoulder sits one big ol' entity.

I love the Sauerkraut Band.

I do. I love them, and I love the fact that I'm in the Sauerkraut Band. I went to a hundred Oktoberfests as an observer and watched them and thought how cool it must be to actually do that, and I then I amazingly got my chance to be a part of it. It's still quite mind-blowing. (Thanks, Mr M, for getting me in, even though you now think I should leave.)

I've often said the Sauerkraut Band changed my life, and I truly believe that. Before them, if someone would have said I'd be in a situation where I was drawing attention to myself and talking to strangers and interacting with all those people as such an extrovert - well, I'd have said they were batshit crazy.

Being in the Sauerkraut Band is like being in some secret society. Or a gang. We have all our own rituals and secrets, and there is nothing in this world like being with a group of people who have seen you at your best and your absolute worst, and they love you either way. I always feel like someone has my back with that bunch. It's warm and fuzzy. It's, well, gemutlichkeit.

And there's not a thing wrong with playing some music for people and having them leave us a little happier than when they walked in the door.

So that conversation is still going on, and it's still all up in the air. My Nervous Breakdown is still at large, and I hope he finds birdwatching interesting enough that he misses me this year. I guess maybe I'll know when I'm too old and crippled to be able to do it.

In the meantime I'll make merry, and sit in shame.

Betland's Olympic Udate:
* I wish I was still on vacation.