Kenneth Kaelin 1944-2019

Thank you all so much for your love and support during the past few years of this cancer nightmare. Dad died peacefully and not unexpectedly just after midnight on Monday. 

I had known he was in early active dying since April when he came along on my Scotland tour, but he was hopeful and game for an attempt at cure. The doctors  -- until May 31 -- said they did believe they could resect the entire tumor. After viewing a mid-May MRI on May 29, the neurosurgeon decided it was too far along for him to comfortable remove so much of the brain. Again, this was not a surprise to me, who spent a lot of time with him and knew my dad very well. He had not been himself for a few months. 

He's been cremated and we are having a simple 4-hour visitation at Highlands Funeral Home Saturday June 15 from 2-6. We may all go to a neighborhood pub after the receiving-line-in-a-funeral-home bit to relax (a few venues have been thrown out there, but it's TBA), but Dad did not want a typical service. I suspect we will do another big street party in September to celebrate both of my parents, who were more popular in this town than my 'celebrity' could ever reach. 

I am doing ok. I'm sure I'll lose it at some point, but I'm looking forward to traveling and getting to know my children, who have not seen the best of me since Mom's diagnosis.

Obituary ran in the Courier Journal on Tuesday:
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/kenneth-kaelin-obituary?pid=193108985

WeBothHaveCancer.com

As much as I hope no one else in the world needs that domain (and I am hoping I never need it again), I'm also hoping to be rid of it soon. It's an awful feeling, a walking contradiction, knowing that a loved one is on his way out and that sooner would be preferable to later.

Seeing someone in such pain, misery and general discomfort, and knowing that person to have valued independence and strength, well, it makes it hard to not want it to go away for them. We are staying with Dad, snuggling when he'll allow it, holding his hands when he's asleep which is 23.5 hours a day at this point, and making sure he takes his pain medication to allow him sleep. Cancer is a nasty beast. For those of you who had hoped to visit, you are welcome at the house for hugs and a coffee with me, but dad isn't really up for visitors. I don't think he'd want people seeing him in his current state.

Picture of the boys because they make
everyone smile.

I wish I'd written more details about our family's cancer journey -- something I plan on sharing more of after Dad is gone. I've learned that so many other people have been through similar stories. I'm fortunate to have had understanding and access to palliative and hospice care and to have enough science education to understand medical terms. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but I do want to write some blogs to help others navigate.

In the mean time, I'm still teaching and gigging and trying to keep the boys fed. David is an incredible support, and I'm grateful to my friends out there for the food deliveries, sweet messages and good thoughts.

Some not so wonderful news

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day ..."

I had a gig yesterday, and it turns out I do know all the words to "Ode to Billy Joe." Today, however, is neither sleepy nor dusty and certainly not Delta-like. It's a crisp fall morning in June, and I'm siting on the front stoop of my childhood home where I'm caring for my cancerous dad. He's had a crap few years, and I'm finding it really hard to keep calm for him.

In good news, people I rarely see in real life (which is everyone, since the last 3 years have been spent taking care of my parents and my babies) have shared their hearts and their cooking. That has been so amazingly helpful. Meal delivery is everything, so my kids are getting vegetables again. Other helpful things have been people picking up extra fruit while they are at the grocery and just dropping it off on our porch. I haven't been to the grocery for anything besides laxatives and Coke (my dad's current diet, apparently) in ... well, I can't remember. It's been takeout, pizza and the random can of corn that lives in the back of everyone's cabinet for emergencies like this.

Lakeside has opened. My dad is unable to go, and that breaks my heart. Last weekend he didn't want to go because he didn't want to talk to people. I understand. The day I went, no fewer than five people asked me how my mom was doing, and that was fun news to break to people I barely knew. Now the pool is less-crowded, but my dad is feeling a lot worse.

Long story short: his tumor is not resectable, and he is in Hospice care. Hosparus of Louisville is absolutely amazing, and the care and attention we've already received is beyond that of any doctor's office I've experienced in this country. No more specifics here (that's what www.webothhavecancer.com is for), but if my blogs get dreary or sparse, that's why. I'm back in caregiver mode, not leaving dad's side and loving him fiercely.

When should you take medication before public speaking?

Southern Sirens! I stole this image from their FB page.
They are playing at Highview Park tonight with The Honky
Tonk Band, and I'm emceeing ... it'll be a big time. FREE.

Mental health check: how is everyone doing?

It's a rough week over here, and today I'm trying to figure out how to go out in public and be a cheerful emcee at a delightful neighborhood event tonight. Some of my favorite people and musicians are playing at Highview Park, and it's being recorded for a Kentucky Homefront broadcast. John Gage is out of town, so I'm filling in on hosting duties. I'm hoping it doesn't turn into that scene of Sixteen Candles where the bride takes xanax (or whatever it was) and then trips down the aisle. Because I'm not sure I can handle going out in public and talking to people without medication, but I also should probably be able to think and speak clearly while on-stage.

My dad is hurting a lot. I went straight into caregiving for him four days after my mom's funeral. We have to move in with him ASAP, but don't have any moving crews or boxes or a kitchen at Dad's house because it's all I can do to get Graham to school and make sure Angus has dinner these days.

This too shall pass, etc, though I'm not ready for anything to pass just yet.

Anyway, Louisville, tonight's show in Highview Park features Southern Sirens and The Honky Tonk Band (that's Shannon Lawson!), and I absolutely love both of those bands. It'll be a good time. Now I just have to figure out how to get to Highview.

First world whinges and venting tweets sometimes have a reasonable backstory

Fun with DIY projects

However public it truly is, this blog feels safe. Things I would never post in a Facebook status or tweet feel more discreet in a blog. Facebook tends to devolve into a discussion that has little to do with the original intent of the post (generally to the point where I want to just delete the post and maybe even delete my entire account because YES, OF COURSE I HAVE GOOGLED IT ALREADY or whatever the obvious answer/suggestion/recommendation/solution is). Twitter can be so easily misinterpreted because it’s so out of context. Like when someone last week retweeted me with a “thoughts and prayers to you in your first world problem” kind of situation, when this person had no idea that I own the domain webothhavecancer.com. Out of context, my tweet looked like a vapid whinge, and while, my life is definitely significantly better than a majority of the world, things aren’t roses right now.

Though I can’t afford proper therapy, I’ve learned enough from my friends who can afford it — that my feelings are still my feelings, no matter how much I acknowledge that life could always be worse. Of course if can be worse. It could be worse for all but one person on the planet — for that one person who, at this exact moment, truly does have it the worst. But outside of that, I’m trying to accept that a lot of things suck for me right now. My family, while full of love, has had to deal with a lot of trauma, drama and heartache, with horrible timing and unfair swings of emotion. 

I’m holding my shit together because I have no choice. When David comes home on the weekends, I usually lose it because I can. I hold it together during the week for my kids. I have no time for self-care. Please don’t tell me to make time because right now I’m in survival mode and self-care is NOT at the top of the list. The idea of adding one more thing to my To Do list right now — finding time for a yoga class or a walk around the block — adds exponential stress, particularly when I fail to cross off that one more thing. If you’re itching to comment that I should put on my own oxygen mask before helping others, please refrain. Think it, but understand that right now that’s just not possible. Survival mode.

I’m pretty frustrated with the medical and health care system. My dad’s had an invasive recurrence, and I am not happy with the attention (or lack of attention) and communication that he’s received. I’ve advocated for him deeply. Phone calls aren’t returned. Surgeries aren’t scheduled. Doctors have made incorrect assumptions about my dad’s choices. People are giving us different information. I can’t tell if the surgeon wants to operate because he honestly thinks he can cure my dad or because my dad happens to be an interesting case. 

My dad is as stoic as ever, though he’s trapped in a situation and a location that he has no control over and I just feel awful for him. The poor man lost his wife and best friend of almost fifty years. He spent the last two months of her life in extreme pain from his own radiation and chemotherapy. I want to just hug him tightly 24 hours a day, but he feels like he’s a burden on us. He’s not. This is family, and I love him. He raised me to love and help and be there for family, and it’s a no-brainer that I want to take care of him and spend every minute I can with him. 

But it’s a crap time. I hate that there’s no home health care (yes, we’ve looked into palliative care, which is not hospice, but it’s been a several week process to get that ball rolling, involving financial forms and phone calls, even when it ends up that you qualify for full financial assistance because, well, you lost your job the same week your wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer). I just wish home health care was standard. I wish there was a team of people who had eyes on my dad on a regular basis. I wish people would call us back. I wish it felt like the doctors saw my dad as a whole person, for, like, one minute — that he was more than a 74-year-old widower with cancer living in his daughter’s basement. It feels like they’ve given up on him, but that they forgot to tell him that and want to cut his head off to try to save his neck.

It’s infuriating, and my mind is swirling. I want to be kind to everyone, but I see people with full sets of grandparents and I just get angry. And sometimes I just can’t get out of bed even to do something so simple as to turn off the light because even that feels too overwhelming. And I tweet about it because that’s all I can do — throw a whinge into the universe.

I know. Life could be worse, but it really really sucks for my dad right now. And having just watched my mom endure a really awful death, I want my dad to be able to catch a break for once. He spent the past 3 years caregiving or in treatment, and he could really just use a week at the beach. Or, like, to not be in pain. 

Painting Hardwood Floors DIY

Today I walked in my mom’s house. We are moving here soon. It is a wreck.

I am staring at piles of dirty clothes, knowing most donation places don’t do laundry, but I don’t want to hire one of those services because I need to see what’s being thrown away. During this process, I’ve found some sentimental things that a stranger would never have known to be emotionally valuable. Still, I need this stuff gone, so I can ... paint the floors.

Now this blog shifts from sentimental-my-mom-died-too-young-of-evil-cancer to DIY MOMMY BLOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE! There’s no chalkboard paint gender reveal, but I do have to find a solution for the hardwood floors.

Our original plan had been to double the size of the house so four adults with two home offices and two growing boys could live here comfortably. Plans change, and I need to be in this house for the summer for mental health reasons.

Now we are quickly trying to make an accessible suite for my dad, while making the rest of the house inhabitable. I’ve got some bad dust allergies, and this house is a hundred years old. I’m also allergic to dogs, and I’m still finding dog hairs, years after the dogs died.

My task today is: What to do with 100-year-old oak floors that have been peed on by many, many dogs for the last fifty years?

I’ve googled. I’ve talked to hardware and hardwood flooring folks. I’ve examined every plank of wood, to the point where I developed bronchitis from inhaling so much dust.

These floors cannot be saved. Sanding is not effective, as the stains are all the way through the wood. Even the slightest sanding releases the odor of urines-gone-by (not nearly as bad as cat pee — so at least there’s that). The wood itself is solid, but there’s no subfloor. In an effort to re-use what’s already there, save some resources and time (and money — that is better spent on making accessible rooms for my dad... yes, someday we will lay new hardwood flooring on top of this), we are going to paint the floors and seal them completely.

At first I assumed we’d go dark — brown or black or grey or something, so people wouldn’t necessarily notice at first that we had dared to paint original hardwood flooring. But in my grief, in incorporating the idea that my mom would FLIP OUT if she knew we were painting original hardwood, I’m trying to imagine what she might like. I think if she walked into anyone’s living room and saw something like this, she would love it:

So now my task becomes, not should we paint the floors?, but how crazy should I go? It’s not quite a “what would my mom have done,” because David, after all, is a bit more conservative in his design taste than mom was. Remember the dining room?

This morning a friend is coming over to help me stay focused, to help me put things in large ziploc bags, to help me clear out the room and see the disgustingness that is the beagle pee. What kind of floor will I end up with? Stay tuned! I am back to the blog, folks. For realsies!

How behavioral oncologists are the unknown saviors of cancer patients

Cancer. Let's talk about cancer, and how much it sucks, however everyone we know and love seems to have far too firsthand of a story about it.

I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of maneuvering the hospital system, and I have a surprising number of friends in the medical community. I understand liability, protocol and how different doctors are trained to approach things in a different way, specific to their specialties.

Surgeons want to operate. Oncologists focus on cancer cells, often ignoring other health issues that also threaten to cut life short. There is so much protocol -- and, let's face it, there are SO many people with cancer! -- that doctors tend to forget that there is a person underneath all those bad cells.

In dealing with both my mom AND my dad (in two separate hospital systems), not one doctor or staff member ever mentioned an amazing resource that exists: the Behavioral Oncologist.

It was only in talking with a friend, a friend I ran into at a coffeeshop, whose daughter happens to be a behavioral oncologist (at the same hospital where my mom was) that I even began to understand what that job is.

I had to bring it up myself (children: the advocates!) to my mom's main oncologist, and he agreed that it would be a good idea to see such a doctor. He said he'd arrange for an appointment. His staff didn't follow through. A month later, I asked about it again, and they made an appointment for her four months later. This was for a woman with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

No one brought it up with my dad until I pointed out to a staff member that, well, no one had yet brought it up.

Now that I've ranted about how it's not a service that is readily offered, but seems to be a service that every hospital has, let me explain what they actually do, at least in my own experience.

They listen to you. They understand cancer, but not just how it affects your body. Their focus is how it affects your mind, your relationships, your life, your feelings, your quality of life, and they can help you sort through your feelings about treatments, which then can help you make major decisions -- such as to continue treatment or reach out to hospice to help you enjoy your last years without pain. 

My mother was never one to talk about her feelings, so her visits to the behavioral oncologist were quiet. She also was pretty passionate about choosing quantity of days rather than quality of life, but it was really nice to have a doctor who listened to her, who knew the other doctors, and who could help her figure out what questions to ask and how to prioritize her time. There was someone to help her understand timelines and to help her manage her anxiety and depression, not just the symptoms of the cancer itself.  

As a family member/caregiver, I qualified to see the Behavioral Oncologist myself as a patient. I still see her, though my mom died months ago. She's been a wonderful resource in navigating this insane health care system and this crazy cancer ride. 

Not much more to say here, but I'm trying to write more without violating anyone's privacy. Someone out there -- someone who doesn't have close friends who work behind the scenes and can pull strings -- needs to read about Behavioral Oncologists. 

If that's you, then ask your doctor. Ask them straight up if they can put you in touch with the Behavioral team. It's yet another doctor, but it's the doctor/APRN who will listen to you as a whole being, not just as an interesting case. 

Scotland adventures, Macbeth, Kentucky Homefront, TRAVEL!!

I WENT TO SCOTLAND! And ENGLAND TOO! It was a great tour -- totally slammed, and I took a thousand pictures (probably not an exaggeration). I've been instagramming with microblogs attached, so check out over there if you can't wait for me to post stuff over here: www.instagram.com/brigidkaelin

MY NEW VIDEO IS OUT! Thanks to WFPK for playing the single so often. This link is a post by WFPK with link to the video.


TWO AWESOME THINGS TO TELL YOU TODAY THAT BOTH HAVE TO DO WITH SCOTLAND!

One: Wee Graham was cast in a real, live play -- like with a professional company and stuff, and it's Shakespeare, at that! He's in MacBeth (and he has lines and everything!), and you can buy tickets here.

Two: I'm hosting a Kentucky Homefront again on Sunday, April 28! Yes, they're giving me a microphone again for a live-to-tape radio show :) My radio hour includes a Scottish singer who plays Americana music, and a Kentucky group that plays celtic songs. How's that for a theme? Buy tickets to that in advance to save $3: here.

I've had a lot of personal drama with family medical crap over the past year, but I'm trying to pull it together to get the travel blog and whisky adventures back together. Love to all of you for all the support.

****

Support an indie artist: buy me a cuppa tea? 

Traveling again!

I am desperate for travel, and also keenly aware that this is a terrible time to be traveling. My kiddo had a tonsillectomy last week. He should be fine by the time I leave -- 14-days post-surgery -- but I'm still nervous to leave if he isn't 100%. My dad is feeling the effects of his most recent immunotherapy, and I'm nervous to leave him.

LUCKILY, he's decided to join us on this tour -- be customer #1 for Brigid's COACH BUS TOURS OF SCOTLAND where all my friends join me on a pub-tour. (Someone out there, please organize this because I have organized ENOUGH things for enough people this past month to last a lifetime.) I'm hoping he'll be able to take some photos too, so that we'll have more than just weird selfies and a bunch of pictures of a banjo.

In other fun news, my little guy's commercial from last year has been airing primetime basketball tournament slots:


My little guy has fallen deeply in love with acting despite my best efforts to encourage the MBA instead.

Are you in the UK? Will I see you on this tour? Message me if I won't. Just say hello. I have been a bad blogger because I've been spending 25+ hours a week on a volunteer job instead of my, like, career. Turns out that's bad business all 'round, both for the bills and the spotlight. Look for me to be back here more often.

ALSO -- I HAVE A NEW SINGLE COMING OUT ON FRIDAY!!! WFPK is premiering the video on their website on Thursday, April 5, so you can be the first to check out the new song.

Scotland, England, I am coming for you!

It's not been a fabulous past year, which has clearly affected my mental health ... and therefore my writing frequency, which then circles back around and affects my mental health negatively. Losing your mom isn't something I would recommend, though it's been living with my dad. I don't post a lot of super-personal stuff (hard to believe, I know) on the internets, but my dad's got cancer too. His is a rare form of sinus cancer, and despite surgery, chemo and radiation, it's popped back above his eye. In true Kaelin spirit, however, he's decided to not let that stop him from doing, well, anything. In fact, he's bought himself a plane ticket and will be official videographer and merch person on my UK tour in four weeks!

I typically don't allow my family to come on business trips with me, but this is a very different situation. Plus, my dad is a silent, stoic type, so I can't imagine him being anything but fun on this trip. It will also be fun to point the audience to a merch person with an eyepatch!

Those of you who are reading this in the UK, please come say hello!! The shows in Strathpeffer, Southern Skye and Beverley are house concerts, so email me if you want details about that. The other shows are listed in more detail on our Facebook event tour. It would be FANTABULOUSLY helpful if you shared the Facebook events/graphics with your feed or tagged your friends who live in the UK. We all know that music is essentially free these days, so the best way you can support a musician is to TELL YOUR FRIENDS! Please help spread the word?

I even made Steve sit down for a silly video to promote our new tour. It shows that our cinematography is very weak, but that we are generally fun people to be around. Come say hello, UK friends!!



Here's a big link to our Tour Dates:
https://www.facebook.com/events/390530431729441/

Other ways to support us if sharing on your newsfeed is too challenging:)
Buy us a drink or a meal or a tank of petrol, and we'll be sure to shout out to you on our tour vlog ... and review a particular whisky if you like, or dedicate a castle to you.
 Venmo is @brigidkaelin
  CashMe is $brigidkaelin
 Paypal is https://paypal.me/BrigidKaelin

Me on network TV and other deep thoughts

Well, there’s a beautiful segment on me on KET that premiered this weekend, and there’s a sound byte about how when I don’t write, I don’t feel well in the head. Funny how I had to watch myself say it on TV before I realized maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so bad lately.

It’s been a month since I blogged!

To be fair, it’s been a year, and we’re not even two months in yet. My dad’s cancer has had a recurrence, this time as a tumor in the sinus above his eye. Graham’s taken up acting (and booked a few gigs!), our au pair went on vacation (she’s back, yay!), and I’ve taken on a volunteer gig that turns out to be a full-time job, all the while trying to work my actual job, finish an album, promote my upcoming UK tour and sort out a summer Europe tour as well. I get that whole ADHD panic of I-don’t-even-know-where-to-begin and then somehow prioritize designing a graphic for a Facebook event cover of a show I’m not even singing on. FACE PALM.

Anyway, in general, life is fine. We aren’t skipping meals. We can afford childcare. The wee boys are gorgeous and sweet and lucky and privileged as anyone could wish upon their children. 

My dad seems in good spirits, though we aren’t a family to talk about our feelings (that’s David’s job). I think we’ve given up on the idea of adding on to his house and are now talking about just moving the entire family into his house so we can spend every waking and sleeping second as a family. 

That’s my update. I’ll write more, so I can take fewer meds.

How my mother's grief helped me move forward

I don't remember my grandmother. I was 4 when she died, and all I have is a flash of dark hair, a yellow dress, some paper dolls and the smell of stale cigarettes. Going through my mom's house has given me a little glimpse here and there (my grandmother lived in the house for 25 years), but it also forces me to acknowledge that my kids won't remember my mother.

I remember the morning my grandmother died. It was Easter Sunday, April 3, 1983. I was in the dining room, hiding with my basket of chocolates when the phone rang and my mother answered. "Mom's not breathing," her brother informed her. We'd celebrated Evelyn's 63rd birthday earlier that week, and then she had not woken up that Sunday, the result of a massive heart attack in her sleep.

The funeral came. I caught chicken pox from my cousin Samantha. The sympathy cards rolled in for my mother. Most were stacked in a pile -- a pile I'm sure I'll find soon as I continue to clean out my my mother's house (she never threw out anything) -- but one, only one, my mom framed.

This was major because framing was a luxury we never really had. We had drawers and drawers and cardboard tubes full of thing she intended to frame, you know, someday when there was disposable income for that sort of thing. But she must have grabbed a cheap document frame from Woolworth's because I remember a single sheet of paper with a poem on it, written by their friend Glenn, whom we knew from such classy establishments such as the Zanzibar and Germantown Cafe:

I'm sorry. Sounds trite, doesn't it?If sugar cookies or balloons or a warm summer day could make your smile, I'd give them to you. Remember your daughter -- her laugh, her zest for life. That's your mother's legacy.

There were a few other lines in the middle, and I think I've invented the part about the "warm summer day," but I remember hiding in the dining room eating through the rest of my Easter basket and staring at this new framed artwork on the wall -- words only, and not even a card, just blank stationery and a ballpoint pen. I read that poem daily for many years and didn't understand much except that mom's friend wanted to bake her cookies (why hadn't he?), and I had something called "zest," which proved a really fun word to say but even the dictionary definition was confusing. And "legacy," was even more of a challenge for a four-year-old to comprehend.

I tried.

One day my mom took it down. I don't know why she did, and I don't know in which drawer the poem ended up, or whether it remains in a frame, replaced by a school photo or newspaper article.

Today my mom's ashes are in a beautiful sparkly urn in my dining room, surrounded by her keys (she loved her keys) and a Harry Potter Quidditch LEGO set, which she guards from baby brother fingers. I see the urn daily, and I think, "How weird, that she is there. Her body is burned, contained, but with us."

I'm not ready to let go, I like knowing she's with us for family dinners or when Graham destroys us in Monopoly. I like the boys to smile and wave to her. Every so often I put a framed photo of her next to the urn, and when I do that, I feel a lot worse. For some reason, the urn alone is okay, but the urn with the photo is too much. Then I put away the photo, but leave the urn. I wonder if my mom took away the poem for the same reason I put away Mom's photo.

Everyone has long said Graham is a miniature of David, but when I look at Graham now, I see the wide grin of my mother. Her smile is Graham's smile. I see a look of skepticism on his face, I see twinkle of mischief in his eyes, and I see a longing to be loved.

I don't need the photo. It reminds me of the past, of completion and of things that will never be. But I hear Graham's laugh, and I remember that poem, and I think I understand this zest for life and this legacy. I suddenly want sugar cookies, and I definitely want warm summer days. And I know they will come, and it will be okay.

Systemic burnout and the indie artist

I'm recording! Steve and I have set up shop and are focusing on finishing our duo record, which will be a delightful mix of Steve's originals, some old covers and some of my originals. Will you be able to tell which is which? Who knows?!

There is so much going on, and I'm realizing that I need a manager: someone to rail in my crazy ideas, to whittle down my whiteboard list, to help me focus, to create a deadline for me. I'm not asking you to be a manager, so don't fret, I'm just trying to hold myself accountable. I have a difficult time understanding how some people out there manage to homeschool six children, while simultaneously writing and publishing books, hosting popular podcasts and taking gorgeous instagram photos that receive thousands of likes. I can't even keep track of my kids' socks (and I have given up trying).

Have you read that article about systemic burnout? The thing about millennials not being able to go to the post office? I'm not a millennial, though I hate the phone and the post office and I've got 208 unheard voicemails that I just deleted on January 1 because, quite frankly, anyone who needs me knows to text me. Independent workers (like all artists) operate with that same mentality of the millennial who needs to always be available to work, however, because, well, if we aren't working, then we know someone else is, and that person will get the gig. Sigh. It's a battle to stay relevant, constantly have content, but also keep said content interesting and click-worthy. But also, like, pay the mortgage, which -- hang on -- I'm going to go do right now. Okay, all good on the house...

My little printable from last week is helpful, however, in helping me to focus. I'll just keep referring to that!

In the mean time, who else has a way to be organized, accountable and productive? Point me to your printables or your apps. I'm very curious what actually works for people -- not just what apps you installed.

Some dates of note:

• Fun show on Friday, January 25 at the Bard's Town in Louisville. It's early (doors at 6:30, show at 7) and it's all-seated. It's also all advance ticket sales and is halfway sold-out in the first 24 hours of tickets, so please grab your tickets now: https://brigidkaelin.com/event/2539394/485479633/burns-night-with-brigid-kaelin-rannygazoo-friends  Please buy tickets, so I can stop fretting about ticket sales and start planning an AMAZING show.
• Saturday, February 9 at the Holy Trinity Clifton Campus (The Clifton Center) is a taping of Kentucky Homefront, the 30+ year old radio program that began on WFPK with host John Gage. They tape two shows that night, and I'm not one of the musical guests. Instead, I'm HOSTING one of the episodes! Guests to be announced soon, but you'll want to attend.

Free PRINTABLE Weekly Planner

Happy new year! Who is getting organized? I've been doing some version of bullet journaling my whole life -- with the little codes for tasks, events, etc. But then I started seeing bullet journal photos on Instagram, and I realized it's gotten out of hand, and people seem to be spending all their time using protractors and brush pens instead of completing said activities. Part of me desires very much to be a fancy hand lettering yoga Mom with a calm mind and beautiful list, but I'm forty, and I know myself better than that. I do love a nice pen, and I adore a list, however so ...

As part of my initiative to bring more to this blog than my breakups with yoga (which happened AGAIN this morning -- why do I keep going back??), I'm going to give you some fun free stuff that isn't music. Because, I mean, music is free anyway.

Instead, here is a free printable for a weekly planner. 

I'm working on another one -- a daily one that I find useful -- but here is a link to today's FREE PDF PRINTABLE WEEKLY PLANNER. Whoo hoo!

Now I'm going to get off the blog and maybe actually fill out this weekly planner rather than just posting about it.

Happy January to you all!

ALSO: May my fine blog readers be the first to know about a Burns Night show (it's a Scottish thing, you know how I'm obsessed!) I'm putting on in Louisville on Friday January 25, 6:30-8:30pm. Advance tickets only. This show will sell out. Only 50 tickets available. All seated show.