I’ve been playing my guitar obsessively lately.

Obsessively as in six and seven hours a day.

Obsessively in that I can’t even feel the keys under my left hand right now because my fingertips are so numb.

Obsessively in that I wake up and hear the words and lyrics in my head and it starts to make me feel crazy to the extent that I have to get up and actually play it out loud.

That kind of obsessive.

And it’s super weird because I really haven’t been playing much at all before this…or for ages.

Dozer wanting something. This wasn't the picture I meant to upload, but I'm going with it anyway.

But like any good addiction, it’s easy to get back on the horse. Or fall off the horse? Is ‘horse’ slang for heroin? Why do I think that? Anyway, I’ve mismanaged my attempt at metaphor, so let me simply say that I am easily obsessed and this is yet another in a long string of compulsions.

Meanwhile, the thing of it is the music I’m inescapably hearing and playing is other people’s – Patty Griffin and Ani DiFranco mostly. And that’s because I love their music. And I sing in the same range. And because I don’t know how to write music. Or songs. Or melody. Or tunes.

And that’s what I tell myself.

And so it’s true.

At the same time, I have a friend who has insisted it’s easy. All you need are words and a hook. And it’s going to be extra easy for me because I’m already a writer. Pay no attention to the music part, because apparently that’s easy too.

And last night in a particular sweep of absurd bravado, my same friend insisted that I get on the songwriting immediately. “Write a song tonight or I will never speak to you again” was, I believe, the exact statement.

This is not Dozer, but it could be.

Of course I ignored this because, again, I can’t write songs.

But then this morning I started thinking about it, and I figured everybody’s got to start somewhere.

So why not?

Maybe try?
And see what happens?

And begin with simple inspiration, something right in front of my face. Like someone who browbeats me into writing a song and goes out of their way to try to irritate me just to laugh at the reaction and drops f-bombs like it’s Hiroshima (ooh! That’s good! That’s going in the song!) and…

That’s right.

My bully has become my muse.

And with that stated, I bring you the title and a few lines from  my very first song (no music yet, as I just dreamed this stupidity up about five minutes ago) entitled

What the Fuck Is Wrong With You?

Collaboration welcome.

Anything good that rhymes with “Someone must have dropped you on your head as a baby”?

Maybe something about lazy?

How about “I’m not sure they’ve invented the drug that can fix what you’ve got.”?

Wow! This songwriting stuff is easy!

Sometimes I have to learn lessons the hard way.

Like the lesson that other people really aren’t my responsibility.

Case in point: The friend hosting the week in Mexico (at a timeshare owned by her parents) revealed to me that she was going to drive to Acapulco from Guadalajara (and back) by herself, about five or six hours each way.

Me the night before the big drive, looking surprisingly alert despite the fact that I was running on about two hours of sleep. Other members of my party have been cropped out to protect their identity!

Now I’ve driven through Mexico before, and let me summarize the experience by saying that when we got back across the border in Nogales, Arizona, I literally knelt down and kissed the ground.

America never looked so fine.

Nonetheless, some sympathetic motherly part of me was concerned for her safety and volunteered to come along. Two is safer than one and all that.

(Otherwise known as: “You’re putting yourself in harm’s way!? Well, let me do that too!”)

More than anything, my concerns centered around the current drug cartel activity (a.k.a. random killings) and Federales stops. In my previous experience, the Federales would stop us, separate us, interrogate us, and search the VW van end to end, followed up what looked like a oil check, but wasn’t. They’d have us drive over a big hole in the ground – exactly like you’d see at Jiffy Lube – and someone would inspect or do god knows what underneath the car.

A mob of horses (per Wikipedia, this is a legitimate term) just popped out and crossed the 120 MPH freeway. I spent the rest of the trip praying we wouldn´t crash into another mob of the giant beasts.

In hindsight, the VW van was the equivalent of wearing forehead tattoos that said “we’re drug smugglers” (although we weren’t), and something of a magnet for trouble.

Thanks to the fact the rental car was some kind of tiny Chevy, we at least had that going for us.

In any case, we set out from Morelia around 10am, and within two hours were in the middle of freaking nowhere.

Seriously.

No-where.

Now, nowhere is one thing, but Nowhere, Mexico is quite another thing.

Nonetheless, not wanting to add stress to the situation, I held my tongue and didn’t ask to double-check the directions or scrutinize the map. However, when my friend inquired if I thought we’d pass a town with a gas station soon (as we were nearly out), I broke down and spoke the three fatal words: “Where ARE we?”

She informed me that we were somewhere on Highway 14 or 14D, and when I asked if I could take a peek at the directions, she handed me a notebook in which she’d scrawled “14D to 37 to 200.”

I just realized all the pictures of the dirt roads we had to go down are vertical shots, so here are the musicians at the very cool guitar bar in Morelia from that first night.

Ummmm….?

What?

Feeling my stomach sink to the floor, I realized we didn’t have a map. Or Google directions. Or even (sometimes terribly inaccurate) MapQuest directions.

We didn’t have distances or landmarks or, well, anything.

And barring the generic answer of “Mexico,” we didn’t know where the hell we were.

Truth be told, although I admired her devil may care/just ask for directions from the locals approach, all could imagine was my dad’s reaction when he learned I’d be murdered somewhere in the middle of rural Mexico and we didn’t even have a friggin’ map in the car.

That stated, when we finally came upon a gas station, I went inside and acquired a Mapa Carreteras immediatemente. Thank god for the thing, too, because we weren’t just off track then…there were several other ‘where the hell are we?” and “which city do we head toward?” moments to be had before it was over.

Three cheers for the mapa!

Meanwhile, apparently the male Mexican sense of time/distance is different from that which I like to call reality.

You see, it doesn’t take three hours to go from Guadalajara to Morelia, it takes four or five (depending upon traffic). And it doesn’t take five hours to go to Acapulco from Morelia…it takes TWELVE.

That’s right, we rolled up to the resort, sore-butted, bleary eyed, and road weary just around 10pm.

Needless to say, I have wizened up, and I will not be returning to Guadalajara via motor vehicle. Nope. Tim has wonderfully, graciously, kindly booked me a flight, and my friend has a Mexican friend accompanying her back to Morelia, if not Guadalajara, so I’m not abandoning her to the elements.

Moreover, I’ve learned a valuable lesson about trusting your gut and cutting corners to save a few bucks.

Never again will I go against my own instincts in the interest of ‘going along to get along’ or being a good friend, so if you’re planning a big road trip through the Middle East later this year, you can count me out.

I’ll be in my own house, knitting a ‘home sweet home’ pillow, with an American flag in one hand and my life insurance policy in the other. And grateful for every minute of it.