The Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Blues

The Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Blues                          821

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005-1:32 P.M.

I'm so exhausted.  My daughter Harmony has had some sort of stomach problem for the last week, and can't keep anything down.  We have to give her small sips of water, formula or Pedialyte in order to keep her from starving.  It's a 7 to 10 day thing, and it's got Pam and me completely wiped out.  The worst of it is that she's still happy and active, just can't eat properly.  As new parents, this is the first time she's really been sick besides Winter sniffles, which was just a bunch of nose-wiping but nothing serious.  It's very daunting.

The biggest problem (besides getting sick myself once I got home from the road) is that you can't get anything done hardly when you're tending to a sick child.  We literally have to give her small sips of liquid every 10 minutes.  You can't hardly compose an e-mail in that time, much less make the phone calls that every comedian needs to make to ensure that their work schedule is full.  I only have the luxury of typing this journal entry because Harmony decided to take a nap for me.  Even so, we give her her bottle in her sleep, and let the instinctual suckling reflex take over.

This was shaping up to be a crappy week, work-wise, but a couple of bookings fell in my lap which will help me make my nut for the week.  It's quite a blessing to be considered a commodity in this business, because you always wind up finding something.  The great pleasure of being a comic is that you have a lot of freedom, but the great curse is that when you don't work, there's no money.  It's not a huge problem for young, single guys who can literally live out of their cars, but for a guy with a family and responsibilities, the tightrope walk is a dire one sometimes.

Harmony has a doctor's appointment at 3 o'clock, so I'm going to finish up here.  News of all the upcoming projects will be dispensed when I can next get around to it.

Today, consider children and how fragile they are, and how much work they are, and think of what your parents went through to try and raise you properly and keep you healthy, and be thankful that they loved you enough to put forth the effort.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY