bravissimi!

32

2013-06-16T22:49:00.002-07:00

birthday coffee || birthday oatmeal sprinkles || birthday princess ellie || cookie delivery service || bike shoe fashion || world's largest chard || mobile librarian (strauss on the beach) || the leg returns || catsitting ruby || backyard roses || post-scramble superhero || unexpected love

I can't tell you the number of times I've thought, okay, I'm really gonna sit down and write now. the more time passes, the harder it gets.

I turned 32. since then, I've eaten a lot of cookies, won a softball game, finished working at the opera (for a few weeks), lounged around sauvie island, hung out with my horse, and spent several sunny afternoons having wine and snacks in a friend's backyard. I've wandered portland with the one I love. I've examined my life. I've had a lot of coffee.

today I ran a race up at mt. hood that involved mud, rocks, dirt, and several tricky water crossings. I waded through hip deep sludge. I ran through the trees. I'm covered in scrapes and bruises. "this is not a trail race," they said. "there is no trail." my cross-country race flats finally came to good use. I had forgotten how much I love it, flying through the woods like a deer.

it's summer now. summer: bike rides and ice cream, sangria, berries from the garden, road trips, flip flops, sunglasses. summer, love of my life.

31 & 364/365ths

2013-05-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

my last few moments of 31. it's been hard to write these last few weeks; hard to sit still, hard to make anything coalesce into thought. so many things going on. challenging things, good things. exhausting things. the opera season is over and I finally had a weekend and maybe in a few days I'll figure out how to relax and will finally stop wondering where am I supposed to be right now?

over the weekend I bought myself some birthday gifts, mostly with gift certificates I had saved from other holidays. I left all of what I bought in the original bags, to be opened tomorrow, because when you're a grownup sometimes you have to create your own magic. tomorrow one of my very best ladyfriends is kidnapping me for some sort of mystery birthday surprise, because she knows me and therefore knows how much I like mystery birthday surprises.

31 was in many ways just the same as 30: good until it wasn't. this year it feels very much like I'm turning a page onto something bigger, letting go of what hurt. 31 was beautiful and dangerous, dark and hopeless, frightening, grief-stricken, lost. it was filled with regret and longing and terror, but also love, and forgiveness. a crucible. I have come through it, for a moment at least, and hopefully for a long time to come. I came through it. may I always remember that there is a way through.

'it ended bad, but I love what we started.'
-- fiona apple

facts & figures

2013-05-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

days worked consecutively without a day off: 18

days off in the last six weeks, prior to yesterday: 2, non-consecutive

work days until I go on furlough: 14 (holy shit)

pages of to-do list to complete before furlough: 3, 8.5 x 14" sized

number of salome errata corrections to make in 14 days: something like 1000

number of days until my birthday: 9

amount I have thought about this birthday: 2 on a scale of 10

be honest: okay, 3 on a scale of 10.

okay OKAY, maybe 3.5

days until the thing I am most looking forward to, which I have not told you about yet: 23

number of presents I received this weekend, of both the thank-you and early-birthday variety: 5

miles I have run in the last few weeks: ..4?

number of pancakes eaten this weekend while my sister was in town: about 12

number of dresses purchased while shopping with my sister: 3

number of dresses purchased that have ponies on them. PONIES: 1

I took today off work and am finding, as I did during galileo, that after so many consecutive days working, it's very difficult to sit still. the looming feeling that there's Something I Have To Do is very strong. this shapeless cloud of guilt is particularly unfun in combination with the fact that I'm still tired and don't really feel like, say, cleaning the house from top to bottom. although I do want the house to be clean from top to bottom. problems.

'you're not home, it's probably better'

2013-05-14T07:54:00.001-07:00

I am calling to wish you well. I am calling because I want to
change something I said. A year ago you asked me three questions.
I thought you were asking my birthday wishes and answered all
wrong. If you remember (if I know you you’ll pretend you don’t)
I answered:

1) No, I have always been homely.
2) Yes. I believe you have always been too lovely for anyone to bear.
3) Silk. It is not always expensive, and it is impossible to tear.

It’s my birthday again and because I am cleverer now I can answer
you with more nerve. But because I am still me I am pitiless
enough to have your number and call you with this excuse to let
you know I am still alive (I won’t push it by telling you that I am
wonderful).

1) Yes. Thank you.
2) No. I found it a most repulsive photo.
3) Same. Though I don’t think of you, still it’s a near-perfect heat.
And so dear when ruined.

-- brenda shaughnessy

though it doesn't begin for another fifteen days, I have it on good authority that this next year of my life is going to be significantly better than the last.

2013-05-09T21:15:00.001-07:00

comments from librarians which have recently made my day
"I am just now writing to tell you that we received from Schirmer the set of Galileo that you prepared last year, and it is so wonderful! Oh my gosh! I cannot begin to imagine how many weeks of work went into this project! I appreciate SO MUCH all the work that you did! So, thank you."
-- from an email from one of the librarians at cincinnati symphony orchestra

"Greetings from Mo Wedow. He just loves you!"
-- from an email from the librarian currently working with our conductor from Rinaldo

"Now I understand why Gary likes you so much."
-- from the same librarian, on the last evening of the conference

minor emergencies: Falstaff edition

I.

orchestra reading 1: our second bassoonist calls in with an emergency and we don't receive the call until just after 9 AM for a 10 AM rehearsal. I have only ever hired one bassoonist other than the two in our orchestra, and that bassoonist lives three hours away. not helpful. the principal gives me two names to call, and then I realize that we also don't have the music. the second bassoonist lives an hour away. I write a frantic 911 post on the MOLA board but the unbelievable irony is that all the librarians who might normally be able to help me are across the river at the conference. in minutes I have an email from a librarian in NYC -- the one we rented the parts from originally -- saying he has masters of all the parts and he's going to scan the bassoon book and email it to me ASAP. I begin calling the subs, pacing back and forth in the lobby of the building, our conductor hovering nearby nervously. the second person I try is jovial and agrees to come in. it is 9:30.

the bassoonist and the music arrive almost simultaneously to their spot in the orchestra at 9:58. the conductor comes over and pats me on the back. "you have tremendous grace under pressure," he says. in truth, I feel a hair's breadth away from bursting into overwhelmed tears.

II.

the baritone singing our Ford takes a wrong step off a set piece in the final room run of the opera, horribly spraining one ankle and tearing a muscle in the opposite leg. he spends the night in the emergency room. he is rendered totally immobile but still wants to sing. there is a great deal of work put into making this possible: ramps built for the stage, dressing room assignments altered, helpers recruited to wheel him back and forth, to help him move around. the whole opera is restaged during tech, which makes everyone twice as exhausted as usual.

but theater is made of people who get things done. we open tomorrow, and you can't tell that there hasn't been a wheelchair on stage all along.

III.

during halftime at the final dress, the principal trumpet -- a very affable chinese man, skinny like a beanpole, who always gives me a hug when he comes in the building -- comes over to talk. his eyes are red and he looks exhausted. he tells me that his wife and young daughter, age 2, are in china visiting family and that his daughter is in the hospital with a high fever, that she has had a few seizures, that he is out of his mind with worry. he says that a pediatrician friend of his has assured him that the seizures are probably normal, and I reassure him of the same thing; my kid brother had them too, as a young child, and though febrile seizures are terrifying, they are usually not a big deal in the long run. but of course there is no reassuring a parent whose child is on the other side of the globe in a hospital, sick and scared.

when I come into work early this morning there is a message from him: his daughter has acute meningitis. he is flying to china, effective immediately. because he is infallibly decent, he calls me and apologizes, which I scold him for. he gives me the names of a few subs, saying in particular, "so and so is the best and could really use the money."

I leave messages for the people I most want to play and then I sit and wait and wait and pace and try to work on parts for next season and mindlessly scroll through the internet. my stomach churns. at a certain point I make more calls. I get in touch with one person, who is completely unavailable but passes off more names. I write a few emails. the concertmaster and I are in nearly constant touch as she tries to get his car home, to get his music from his office, to get all the relevant items to me.

most of the morning is spent either on the phone or waiting for the phone to ring. I call the conductor and both of the other trumpet players and the personnel manager and the concertmaster and my boss. I look musicians up online to figure out who the best options are. falstaff is hard. I call one guy on the recommendation of a person whom I've already called, and the guy sort of takes a gulping breath and says that though he'd like to see the music, he thinks he can do it.

then there is a mad scramble to get the music. the concertmaster can't get out to get the actual part until later in the afternoon, because, understandably, she has her own obligations. I offer to drive down to her (two hours south), pick up the music, drive it another hour south to the sub, and then return to portland. we debate whether this is necessary and she thinks not. I write to the librarian mafia but get no bites. finally, exhausted from pacing the office, exhausted from lack of food (I intended to be at the office until just before lunch and instead am there until 3), I go home, forwarding all my calls to my cell phone. on my way home, the same librarian who helped me with the bassoon part calls. he's on his way home and he'll send me the trumpet part. by 4:30 everything is situated. I nearly fall asleep fully clothed on my bed.

I am still worried sick about the trumpet player.

and now for something completely different:
unusual candy bars -- a review (part 1)

big hunk: like if you combined the worst parts of the charleston chew and the sugar daddy with stale peanuts and then made it twice as big as a normal candy bar.

u-no: first of all, is this pronounced 'uno', like 'number one,' or 'you know'? second of all, this is basically an extremely fancy truffle-style three musketeers. this is the only candy bar I had to eat in two installments.

take 5: I laughed this one off but actually that pretzel really is a game changer.

2013-05-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

the best collective nouns
a cloud of bats
a wake of buzzards
a glaring of cats
a peep of chickens
a waddling of ducks
a bloat of hippopotamuses
a cackle of hyenas
a scold of jays
a pandemonium of parrots
a pride of peacocks
a gulp of swallows
an ambush of tigers
a zeal of zebras

this comes up because late one night during the conference, over beers, the question was posed: 'what would a group of orchestra librarians be called?' and for some reason it is driving me fucking NUTS. it is the best question and there's a really perfect answer out there somewhere. and I want to figure out what that is.

fancy pants
today I was at lush buying myself a tub of fancy face wash. (it is worth the money.) while I was there, I got a sample of $90 moisturizer. ninety dollars. nine zero. I just finished putting it on my face. results pending.

MOLA
I am having a lot of trouble making myself sit down and write about last weekend's conference. it was a really special experience and while in many ways it's not difficult to explain why, for some reason it is taxing to say why. I can tell you that it went beautifully, that I survived moderating my panel (in a gala dress), that the metropolitan opera librarian attended my panel and was very kind afterward, that orchestra librarians sure can close down a bar. I met some exceedingly wonderful people. we -- the symphony librarians and I, known collectively as "the Js" (Joy, Julie, Jess) -- did not want anyone to leave. I miss people profusely. the world is big, and our profession is small, and we are very spread out. we help each other out a lot but hardly ever get to work together. we hang out for 3 or 4 days and then part. it's surprisingly hard.

I have to write at length about it for the opera blog so I guess I will have more to say about it then. for now I just want you to imagine what it was like to come back from your best friend's house after a long weekend together when you were a kid. namely: a little lonely.

overheard at the office: conference edition
how did oregon get the pretty librarians?

what ninety dollar moisturizer smells like
tamales

the orchestra librarian mafia strikes again

2013-04-30T22:38:00.002-07:00

and I am still too tired to tell you about it. it was good. I miss them. I feel like camp is over for the summer and now I have to go back to my life.

a sunday

2013-04-21T08:41:00.001-07:00

in my dream I look for you everywhere but cannot find you. in my dream I say to you, "I don't know how to say goodbye to you," but you aren't there. I am running barefoot in the rain to get to you. I can't go fast enough. you drive by and I know it's the last time I will ever see you; you are doing something insipid like returning a movie and you are not alone. I don't care but even so I can't find you, don't catch you. I stand there, barefoot in the mud, my clothes soaked through, bereft.

in one moment of the dream you are there with me. I know you are going, will soon be gone, and everything inside me is frantic. every time I see anything beautiful, I tell you, I think of you. everything I am made of screams: please don't go. if there is a place farther from me, I beg you do not go.

I wake and am alone, my head pounding, the hair at the nape of my neck damp and hot. there is one extremely loud bird outside. I spent much of yesterday walking around with a guy and his little hound, ellie. I spent the rest of it on my bike. now I am alone in my bed at dawn and for all that matters, it might as well all be the dream. I still don't know how to say goodbye to you. I still think of you whenever I encounter anything beautiful. I would run whatever lengths necessary, barefoot in the rain, everything on me soaked and ruined, if it would bring me to you. this is the only secret about myself I have been keeping. except from you. forgive me. I couldn't help but tell you.

wherever you are in the world, I miss you more than I can say, even in dreams. still, and, I fear, always.

lately

2013-04-17T19:33:00.001-07:00

boston. what else can I say?

otherwise:
+ impromptu tap dancing classes in the rehearsal studio
+ creme eggs (I am hoarding them like they are gold)
+ zero tolerance for bullshit
+ 7 AM bike rides
+ lilacs ♥
+ pedaling through the burgerville drive-thru at 7:15 AM on my bike (it was free breakfast sandwich day)
+ definitely NOT quietly stressing about managing the softball team
+ mild but worrisome achilles pain
+ fancy face potions from lush
+ riding my bike brakes like a nervous nelly
+ a practical study of the differences between a current-generation mars staedler eraser (my eraser of choice) and an older model (older one lasts longer, sheds smaller shavings, but doesn't erase as efficiently)

I may not have any money, but at least my apartment is full of flowers.

p.s. my photo above, which I submitted in response to a call for photos from folks who wore race shirts yesterday, seems to have, in a small way, become the face of portland runners on our local news station. I'll take it.

back of the pack

2013-04-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

race #2 in our xdog season pass: the dirty du & dash. (my librarian friend joy and I both have passes; that photo -- and foot -- are hers) we opted not to do the duathlon because we weren't too confident in our mountain biking skills. I wasn't even sure I was going to run the race, because my calf had been acting squirrelly -- kind of out of nowhere -- and the last thing on earth I need is to hurt myself now that I am almost exclusively self-propelled.

we got to hagg lake at 10:26 for a 10:30 start. I was in the bathroom when the horn blew; joy was putting a parking pass on her car. we probably started 3 minutes after everybody else. xdog events are awesome because they are so chill that neither of us really gave a shit about this.

turns out running in the back of the pack is the way I can get away with racing without, well, racing. nobody was really around to compete with. I walked as much as I needed to. I was all alone in the woods. my only regret is that I LOVE trail running and it was a beautiful trail and there is nothing better than opening up and flying through the woods like a deer.

I came in fifth from last. a little sorry I wasn't just straight up dead last. joy, on the other hand, passed about 75 people and won her age group. badass.

otherwise, the weekend consisted of homemade pizza (made entirely because I have about 10 pounds of chard growing in the garden and ... I don't like chard? I don't know why I do these things to myself), netflix, coffee, a phone call with my BFF, a crazy freak hailstorm?!, lady date. lady date is where I got the lilacs, which is what my whole place smells like now and all I want is lilacs forever. they are my very favorite flower.

in an unbelievable turn of events, I am so far ahead at work that I began working on the SECOND show of next season today. I keep wondering what gigantic thing I've forgotten to do. as our orchestra manager once sagely said, "we won't know until they yell at us."

52 more days of work until furlough. two weeks until I present at the MOLA conference. a month until my sister comes for a visit. and I only have one more real weekend until the end of may. batten down the hatches, sailors.

austerity measures

2013-04-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

so, since around the first of the year, I've been on what most people would consider a shoestring grocery budget -- around $30 a week. every time I get paid -- every two weeks -- I go to the ATM and get $80 and that has to be food & restaurant/going out/coffee money until the next time I get paid.

the reason for this is that in november I called a budget counseling service, one available to me through my credit union, and got enrolled in a debt consolidation program. all last year I was totally emotionally overwhelmed by my credit card debt, too shy and ashamed to call the credit card companies and talk to them about how to not have my minimum payment be (in one case) $150 a month -- an insanely high minimum that got that high precisely because for awhile I was throwing extra money at it. did you know this is a thing they can do? they can reset your minimum to the average amount you've been paying. so I accidentally screwed myself in the end.

so I finally got fed up of being terrified about money all the time and enrolled myself in the debt management plan, wherein I made an appointment for a very kind person to go over my budget with me over the phone, and then help me figure out how much I could reasonably throw towards my debt. and then that person would contact all my debtors and work out an agreement where they would hopefully waive late fees and reduce my APR and possibly reduce what I owe by a small fraction. in return, I agree to: a) close all my credit card accounts; b) not take on any new debt; c) pay a set fee every month to the debt management company, which they disperse to my creditors. so that's what I did.

the monthly payment is steep, but is set specifically to be a certain percentage of my income. it's a lot, but it's doable. but if I miss a payment, boom. they drop me and I'm on my own with the credit card companies again. and I will be on this plan for five years.

by the way, I am telling you all this in no small part because I think it's bullshit that money is a thing we are ashamed of, like not having any makes you a bad person by default. it doesn't.

anyway.

a vast majority of my expenses are fixed. rent, board for cookie, car insurance, phone bill, student loan (which is not rolled in to my plan because the interest on it is already hilariously low). fixed, fixed, fixed. some can go higher (car insurance, phone) but most of them can't go lower. (phone is the only one left of those that can, and this is a spoiled thing to say but I really don't want to give up having a smartphone.)

what's left to cut back on? food, gas. and of course things like clothes and running things and all those miscellaneous things we buy ourselves. I don't spend money on any of those either.

so, I set my food budget at the experimental rate of $80/pay period, and it worked, so I kept it there. but the end result of looking at my budget in this way is that when unexpected expenses come up -- like Cookie's $300 vet bill last month -- the first thing that pops into my head is, "well, I guess I'll have to eat less."

fast forward to this past week. my car has been making a noise, which I've been attributing to a belt that needed tightening or something similar. the check engine light has been intermittently going on and off, but it's been doing that every winter for SIX YEARS. I had been putting off taking it to the shop, because -- well, because of everything above -- but I finally got it in this week. I had to take it in two days in a row because on day one they couldn't make it make the noise, which of course changed the minute I got into the car.

so wednesday afternoon, cindy, the lady who works the desk at my mechanic (and I'm pretty sure the whole shop is two mechanics and cindy), calls and says, "hi honey. well, we have some bad news." that squeaky belt that I thought was going to be a minor fix is going to cost me somewhere between $550 and $1000. in addition, my coolant temperature sensor is bad, to the tune of $330. awesome.

I drive the same car I had in college. the car is 11 years old. it has 130,000 miles on it. it's a base model ford escort, no power locks, no power windows. it has a tape deck. I have known for some time that I might be staring down the barrel at losing my car, but I thought I had a little more time than this. I walked back to the mechanic and called my mom. "I mean, it doesn't seem like it's even worth fixing, mama," I said. "what if I throw $1300 into it and next month some other huge thing breaks? that's $1300 I could have put toward a car."

I got to the shop and they chatted at length with me, explaining that because my car is the only one of its model they get in (they primarily work on european cars), they had never actually seen this particular problem before, so not only were they not totally certain that replacing the broken thing would fix my car, they also weren't sure what would happen when the thing actually broke the rest of the way. "my guess is that the car would just slowly come to a stop," the mechanic said, "but I don't know for sure."

so in addition to having a hefty car repair bill, in the meantime the car might either just inconveniently break down on the side of the road, or it might kill me. okay!

so I took the key and gingerly got into the car and hesitantly turned the key and drove home feeling like I was in a death trap. (but not before I nearly asked out the mechanic, who is cute and, google tells me, the same age as me.) I called my mom back and she called an old family friend, a ford mechanic who my stepdad used to work with, and he told my mom that I should take it to the dealership (BARF), that it would not kill me if it broke, and that I should fix it.

so. that is what I will do.

in the meantime, I am driving it as little as possible, in part because I don't want it to break the rest of the way, and in part because gas is the only other variable line item in my budget and every goddamn dollar counts. so, now I am suddenly a full-time bike commuter! thank god I bought a bike last year! thank god this is not my first time ever commuting in traffic!

on the down side, there is no way to get to the barn without a car. no public transit goes close, and if I took the closest bus route and then biked the rest of the way, the trip would take me THREE HOURS. three hours one way.

so once again I am trying to find somebody to share my horse with me.

the funny thing about these austerity measures is that, surprisingly, I haven't once felt this year like I'm deprived. there's something about trying to live on a very paltry food budget that feels like a game. some weeks I manage to spend something like $18 on groceries. when my best friend said, 'how???', I replied, 'I simultaneously want to tell you that it's really not that hard and that I have no fucking idea.' or, like I jokingly told my mom, 'well, I have been wanting to get back down to race weight.'

scars, part 2

2013-04-09T02:14:00.001-07:00

excerpts from a sent letter, for a change:

I am just as bad at all of this as you are. I know it might seem like, on this particular front -- the front of 'facing one's fears' or whatever -- I really have it together. but actually, it is the thing I struggle most with. like, it is head and shoulders above any other flaw I might have. my flaw list would say BURIES HEAD IN SAND in bold and then there would be a big space and under it in small print it would probably say 'doesn't keep in touch with friends' and then 'doesn't floss' or something. (and then probably 'bad at brevity'). I've been thinking about this to the exclusion of all other things today because I am having an absolute anxiety attack about a bunch of work-related shit that I have categorically refused to look in the eye until it blew up. I create a lot of my own terrible anxiety by never 'eating the toad,' as they say: instead of doing the hard, scary thing first so that it's over, I save it and save it and save it, even though I know it won't go away.

I could have written much of what I wrote to you this weekend as a letter to myself.

I'm not sure if my intimate personal knowledge of the difficulty of 'doing the hardest thing' makes me the best-placed person to give you advice, or if it makes me a total fucking hypocrite. I guess it's probably both. I really do know exactly how hard it is because I struggle with it, and with myself, every goddamn day. when it gets really bad for me -- like today -- I basically have to go on an anxiety-laden spree of cleaning everything up, all the while being kind of close to tears about how much I fuck shit up. I solemnly stare at myself in the bathroom mirror and say, "you really fucked this up," and then I take a shower and take a deep breath and go buy a giant coffee and sit up in the office until 3 AM cleaning everything up and hoping nobody will know how close I came to really REALLY fucking it all up. that's how I don't know if I'm a good music librarian or not, and why I doubt myself even when everybody else has a lot of faith in me. there's a lot of 'fake it till you make it' in my life.

your presence in my life has made me so much better, and continues to make me so much better. I really don't want you to ever know how much I fuck shit up because in that regard you are so much better than me, and my example to live up to.

I'm going to go stare solemnly in the mirror for awhile and then take a shower and go to acupuncture (!) and then go clean up my mess of a life and try not to cry and hopefully nobody will notice. I'll swear I'll be better next time but it'll probably happen again, because getting better at life is a thing we all have to try and fail at a hundred bajillion times before we actually get any better.

I've been thinking about you all weekend, nonstop. I hope you're OK. I hope you're finding some place of peace, somewhere, in all of this. I wish I could give you a hug. and a beer. and a shoulder. and an ear. and frankly the rest of me too, if you'd have it. I love you completely. I desperately want you to be happy. mended. whole.

love j

the dent in my thigh will be there for the rest of my life. the line down my chest, the spot on my ankle, the pockmark on my eyebrow. the old scrape on my knee. and this.

they all could have been avoided. but would I have? would I give back the feeling of the river on my feet? would I put on sensible shoes before hitting the dance floor? would I erase what there was between us, knowing what would come?

no. I would not. not now, and not ever.

2013-04-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

I know it's a week after easter but anyway on easter I made a batch of hot cross buns and wore my easter apron and talked out the window to my upstairs neighbor when he came back from his bike ride. I wasn't sure if my mom was going to send me an easter basket this year because I guess I'm a grown-up? and then when the mail came saturday and I didn't see the mail lady put a package on my doorstep, I got a little disappointed. but it turned out the package fit perfectly in my mailbox so suddenly it was a big surprise again! my mom is the cutest. in the basket: a running shirt, the easter candy she knows I like, a gift card, and an article from the local paper about major renovations to the high school.

in case you're wondering if I made my horse stand next to a flaming rubbish pile -- yes, I did. I rode while it was burning and cookie was, surprisngly, scared of it but mostly well-behaved. but since we're trying to expose ourselves to new sights and sounds so that we become confident that we aren't going to die, I got through riding and marched her right over there and we stood and looked at it and then she got to eat grass. after the intial OH GOD FIRE moment, she was way more interested in the grass.

I got my hair cut. it's the first time in four years that I've left a salon liking my hair. normally it takes a few days. she flat-ironed it so for a day or two I get to pretend I have stick straight hair. I texted a photo to my best friend and she immediately said, "somebody is going to give you their number because you are adorable," and then I went to watch the SU/Michigan game with the local syracuse alumni club and a dude came over and gave me his number and told me I was adorable. HUH.

I am officially a softball manager/coach now. our managers' meeting was monday night. I bought all the balls we need for the season (home team provides a new male and a female ball for each game) and now I have all these rule books and scorebooks and a lanyard and oh god what am I doing

I went on a date friday night. and that is all you get to hear about that, INTERNET.

scars

2013-04-03T21:47:00.001-07:00

right eyebrow, eyelid: age 11, chicken pox

right inside ankle bone: age 11, on vacation with my aunt, uncle and cousins; slipping on the concrete embankment on a section of the james river in jamestown, va, while illicitly trying to dip my feet into the water. nearly required stitches

right index fingertip: age 28, cut open a day before moving out of my apartment while making an egg & cheese sandwich. required 3 stitches

10 inches from top of right breast running diagonally and ending below left breast: age 29, hay-related accident, cut open by being slammed into, and then dangling upside down from, the corner of the bed of the barn's utility vehicle. included an epic hematoma

left knee, thigh side: age 4, pinched in my mother's chain-link watch

lower lip, inside: age 12-16, slowly but irreparably damaged by the pressure of clarinet mouthpiece against mouth against bottom braces

left knee, shin side: age 31, fell while clipped into bike pedals

right thigh, lateral side, visible and palpable dent in the quadricep muscle: age 29, hay-related accident, impaled on the lip of the barn's utility vehicle

lower achilles, both legs: age 31, sustained while wearing new shoes and dancing at cristina's wedding

also of note:

age 3: right hand grabbed and held onto my mother's hot curling iron. bandaged for weeks. no scar.

age 5: while running down the street with my jacket unzipped, which slipped down my arms and kept me from being able to catch myself, fell straight on my face. nose very injured for two weeks; was made fun of at preschool. no scar.

2013-03-30T16:32:00.003-07:00

When he has disappeared, Mother clears her throat. I don't turn around and look at her in the rocking chair. I don't want her to see the disappointment in my face that he's gone.
"Go ahead, Mother," I finally mutter. "Say what you want to say."
"Don't let him cheapen you."
I look back at her, eye her suspiciously, even though she is so frail under the wool blanket. Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.
"If Stuart doesn't know how intelligent and kind I raised you to be, he can march straight on back to State Street."
She narrows her eyes out at the winter land.
"Frankly, I don't care much for Stuart. He doesn't know how lucky he was to have you."

-- kathryn stockett, the help

I honestly don't think I've ever fully known what I'm worth until the last month or two. there is tremendous power in it.

luck

2013-03-27T21:23:00.003-07:00

nearly every performance of rinaldo, my friend sharin (she is a wonderful colleague and a beautiful singer, you should hire her) would come out onto the stage with her umbrella and stand under the 'rain' (a shower) and sing lascia ch'io pianga and all of my complicated emotions would come out and I would cry big fat baby tears. this was acceptable because I was alone in the booth and nobody could see me but sharin.

aside: having your own personal soprano sing to you specifically from the stage is pretty special.

I should preface this by saying that I actually first cried at rinaldo on the very first day of rehearsals back in february, and this is going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I am a total sap, but it happened when sharin sang her very first aria (which is definitely not sad) because she is a really good friend from a larger group of really good friends, all of whom I treasure and miss, and I hadn't seen her in awhile and here she was singing and she was a grown up opera singer, and sounded so beautiful and so I secretly cried a little but didn't tell anyone.

last saturday, on the afternoon of closing night, I drove over to the hotel where all our artists stay and picked up a keyboard I had rented for our conductor for the duration of his stay. let me just take a moment to tell you that gary is possibly the single loveliest and most gracious person I have ever worked with, excellent on the podium/at the harpsichord, and beloved by the singers, orchestra, and staff. rinaldo was very likely either the hardest or the second hardest project I've worked on in my eight seasons at the opera (galileo being tied for the lead), and it would have been unbearable if gary hadn't been unfailingly helpful, patient, knowledgeable, and appreciative. he is the first and probably only conductor to ever refer to me as 'his goddess' at a public event. the two of us make up our own mutual appreciation society.

anyway. I came over to pick up the keyboard and gary had informed me a few nights before that he also was going to give me all his leftover food (they're here for over a month, so they have what essentially amounts to small apartments), and that he had 'something for me.'
'should I bring it to the office, or to the theater?' he asked me, one night after a show.
'to the theater is fine!' I replied. 'no need to make an extra trip to the office.'
'oh good!' he said, then paused. '...do you have a car?'
'gary, what on earth!!' I said. 'did you buy me a pony?! because you know, I already have one.'
'oh no! well ... isn't two better?'

so I came and brought a cart from the hotel lobby and we loaded up the keyboard and the stand, and then he handed me a bag of groceries and another bag and said, 'here's the loot!' and I peeked inside and there were bottles, but I didn't take them out while I was standing there. we hugged and he said, "I'm terrible at goodbyes! so, see you in a few hours." and then I got into my car and opened the bag and found a card and these:

which in case you can't tell is two bottles of bourbon, both local.

the card came via pony post:

and was so sweet and wonderful that I choked up in the car.

so later that night when it was dark and quiet in the theater and sharin was standing there with her umbrella, singing her heart out, I sat in the booth, lit by one stand light, and quietly bawled my little heart out. and it wasn't because the aria is so sad and beautiful (which it is) but because there are gracious, wonderful, amazing people in the world, and they are my people, and we were all there together in the room making something beautiful.

in depression you want to see things like this but you just can't. you can't recognize most beauty for what it is, particularly in yourself. I feel so lucky to have my people. all my wonderful people. just, what, 8 weeks ago? I felt like I might as well abandon everything and everyone in my life and go be a park ranger somewhere in the woods, alone, because what is the point of my life right now really.

these people are the point of my life, really. now and always.

2013-03-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

oh hey, internet.

miscellany:

• the city accidentally did me a huge favor by putting a turn lane in on my street, right in front of my apartment, because in doing so they turned the part of my street just before our driveway into a no parking zone. every day for the past, oh I don't know, fourteen months? I've mentally cursed out the neighbor in the building next door who parks his huge-ass child molester van so close to the driveway entrance that I'd have to come to a screeching halt in order to make the turn. so thank you, city of portland. also the turn lane is pretty ace.

• it seems like a hundred years ago that I was falling asleep in the middle of rinaldo tech rehearsals. time passes so strangely.

• I discovered during the run of rinaldo that I really like cherry jolly ranchers. (our director brought a bag in to the theater). like, really like. because I am 12.

• in other junk food news, I had most of a bag of popcorn kernels left over from a party we threw this week (I'll tell you about that later) and so I finally braved making popcorn on the stove, since I live in the dark ages and don't own a microwave. and y'all, that shit is easy and now I am in danger of eating nothing but popcorn for the rest of my life.

slightly less miscellaneous:

horse
cookie and I have been hanging out a lot. her leg healed but not before I shelled out $170 on a vet visit, which of course happened to be scheduled about 12 hours after I realized she no longer looked lame. I didn't cancel because I was afraid to trust my instinct. so the vet visit went something like, 'yep ... she's totally fine.' incidentally this is the second large vet bill I had to pay in a two-week period, since I'd had the dentist out just 10 days before for a full float. as a result of paying about $325 to columbia equine this month, I'm currently subsisting on $18 worth of groceries.

by the way, the one fortunate thing about the vet visit was that her all-clear came the day before tech, so fortunately my days of getting to the barn at 7 AM to cold hose and then going back at 9:30 PM ended just before I would have had to instead visit the barn at 5 AM and midnight instead.

anyway. we have been hanging out a lot, although not so much the last few days, when I have just been too worn out. my goal has been to see her at least every other day, either to ride or to hang out, graze, groom. I've taken to walking her around the property on a lead, like a big dog. although this is ostensibly because I want to expose her to new sights and sounds (something I have been pointedly bad at while I have owned her), it might also be because while I was sick last weekend I watched like 6 hours of the best of the dog whisperer with cesar millan. so if you need a dog trainer, call me?

so, cookie and I are kind of hitting the reset button, and I am feeling better about all of it than I have in a long time. now, she nickers to me when I come in the barn door. also, if I stand at my tack bin, which puts me just out of her reach, she makes this ridiculous face:

which is her attempt to mug me for treats. it usually doesn't work.

opera
I had this thing happen a couple of weeks ago where we decided we wanted the singers & orchestra to play bird call sounds backstage at the top of one of the numbers in rinaldo, a number called 'augelletti' (little birds). so I contacted our principal percussion player to rent some, along with a thunder sheet and a wind machine. (it never stops amusing me that this sort of thing is par for the course in my job). then someone asked me to find out how many bird calls he was going to bring over, so I asked, and he said: one.

one bird call.

this was two days before the first time we'd use the calls in rehearsal, so I promptly went in a panic through the entire internet trying to first figure out what kind of bird calls to buy -- they were being played by the singers backstage and there really wasn't time for 'nightingale calls 101' -- and then where to buy them where they wouldn't cost a fortune and could be shipped to me overnight. I discovered that you could buy children's whistles that realistically simulated bird tweeting when filled with water, but after much searching and hang wringing I could only find one vendor on Amazon who could get them to us quickly enough. I placed the order on a tuesday morning for a wednesday afternoon arrival and felt pretty good about it all. the order was for a dozen bird calls. I signed up for a trial of amazon prime and the grand total of the order was $9.98 so I also felt pretty smug and awesome.

then on wednesday, they arrived and were nothing like I thought they'd be and were not even water whistles but rather regular whistles made of wood, in the shape of birds. fuck. me.

at this point, half-panicked and with about 17 hours to go, I made a comprehensive list of every toy, party, and game store in town, with a plan to call them one by one the following morning. not having bird calls wouldn't have been the end of the world -- it was our first tech rehearsal, more than a week before opening night -- but our conductor so enthusiastically believed that I could produce any musical change, item, or instrument at will that I really hated to rob him of that belief.

in the end, totally by accident I thought of cargo, this crazy imports shop downtown where incidentally I spent about an hour and a half on my birthday last year with g, trying on funny hats and making all the lucky cats' paws move and opening the drawer of every cabinet and table they were selling. and although their online catalog is far from comprehensive, there were the birds, $3 apiece. I went to the store in a state of terror, afraid they'd be out of stock or would no longer carry them or god knows what else, but I walked in and there they were, an enormous display of them just next to the register. like, 150 bird whistles. every shape and breed. the girl behind the counter, seeing me grabbing fistfuls of them, demonstrated one to me and I nearly cried in relief.

this is why every night when the singers played them from backstage -- despite being children's toys, they are remarkably bird-like and very present and require no amplification -- I think of them as my birds. I brought one of them, a rooster-shaped one, up with me to the spot booth and at the end of the aria before the bird cue, I'd crawl out of my chair, lay on the floor by the spot window, and bird call as loud as possible, in hopes to add a little magic for the folks in the second balcony.

rinaldo closed last night and today my only goal is to do nothing for as long as possible. although it's supposed to be a relatively nice day -- normally a recipe for total guilt and restlessness for me -- unless portland pulls out 80 degree wather and birds come knocking on my door and the ice cream man drives by a few times, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be me, zelda, netflix, and probably some of that popcorn. and if you happen to need 11 bird-shaped wooden whistles (I broke one), give me holler.

2013-03-11T13:38:00.001-07:00

friday, march 8:
I have been in the rehearsal room so long with this group of people and this music that it could be 10 AM or 6 PM and I wouldn't know the difference. time seems not to even matter. I look at the clock and it's 3:51 and only much later do I think, damn, it's almost evening.

except for 14 bars I accidentally broke off the page (and therefore left off entirely) of the bassi part, the rinaldo parts are, thank god in heaven, perfect. the bassi part thing was so stupid -- I had made a much nicer (and actually correct) version but somehow I added the old version to the parts. it was an easy fix but I hated my record to be marred by a stupid oversight. we probably lost about 1 minute in rehearsal about it so, you know. it's fine.

hours worked in the last 7 days
12.5
13.5
5
11
16
15
8

it's possible I have never worked harder in my life than I am working on this show. there was a lot of work in galileo but most of it was elective on my part. I certainly didn't have to write ten blog posts, one for every scene; I definitely didn't have to attend as much staging rehearsal as I did. for rinaldo all of the work is necessary, and none of it is from mistakes on my part. I've had to rewrite several numbers on the fly in rehearsal because suddenly, hey, actually we wanted this aria from the 1731 version but we thought we wanted it from the 1711 version, which is the version we (we = I) originally transposed. oh, but actually the 1731 version is lacking a da capo so if we could combine the 1711 and 1731 versions, taking the changes from the latter and incorporating them into the longer format of the former, that'd be swell. and we thought we wanted the oboes to play the trumpet III and IV parts for this aria but actually we want them on the trumpet II and III parts instead. and in this one number we want the oboes to play the trumpet part except for 15 non-consecutive bars where we want them to revert back to the oboe part.

I'm actually not complaining about this process at all. I've adopted a very zen attitude about the ever-fluctuating state of this music. it's a good opportunity to develop my ability to edit on the fly, right? and also if I were grouchy about all these changes, well, then I'd be tired AND grouchy and that's frankly too much. but it definitely is very tiring. there's not the same sense of "well, now the orchestra readings are done so my work here is over." I mean, I am still getting emails from the trumpet players saying, "actually we added the oboe to these two bars in #38 also, we forgot to tell you, could you change it?"

our conductor is the loveliest person on earth so I really don't care about any of this. but I did sleep until 10:30 this morning and needed every second of it. that is, by the way, in addition to having slept on and off for part of yesterday afternoon.

as usual, this is why I have not had time to blog. you understand.

by the way in addition to all that I also was going to the barn twice a day to cold hose Cookie's knee. the vet came out on wednesday and declared her to be sound, but did say, "geez, that lump is super weird and I have no idea what it is." we returned to riding on thursday but I haven't had a chance to see her since. after hanging out with her twice a day for almost a week, I miss her.

overheard in the office: "gary is in the camerata room 'spontaneously ornamenting.'"

suspense, suspensory

2013-03-02T22:18:00.001-08:00

so my horse may or may not have a serious injury to one of her front legs. a few nights ago our barn owner called to tell me that cookie's knee was swollen, but she had already cold hosed it (the equine equivalent of icing it) and there wasn't really any reason for me to come down. I went down friday morning and hand-walked her around the arena, because (depending on the cause) the movement can help the swelling. then I cold hosed again and I felt okay about it and left her. later in the day our barn manager called and said he'd taken a look and he thought that it was definitely some sort of blunt force trauma and that she probably banged her knee on the stall wall, which would have made sense because she was just moved from a stall with an open panel front to one with a solid wall front.

friday night I came back and was going to take her through the whole litany of 'things you do when your horse is mysteriously busted.' I poked and prodded her knee to see if any of that pressure hurt her (no), but halfway through that process I discovered a mysterious lump on the back of her leg, just behind the knee. bigger than a pea, smaller than a marble, and cystic to the touch -- not bone hard but not squishy like swollen tissue. somewhere in the middle. I quietly freaked out and showed the barn manager and his wife, and we all pretty much scratched our heads. he thought maybe it was an old ligament injury that had healed. pressing on it doesn't seem to faze her at all. but I have no recollection of any time before I bought her when she was unsound at all, ever. so I just don't know.

in the course of the last week, cookie has had her teeth floated, has moved to a new stall, has had her feet drastically trimmed, and then has been ridden on her drastically trimmed feet. any or all of these things could be the cause of the knee and/or the mystery lump. the knee and lump may or may not be related.

my horse has been sound the entire time I've owned her, and, I think, her whole life. so this whole 'treating an injury' thing is new to me -- which is kind of hilarious since I have been so chronically injured myself.

last night I cold hosed it again, walked her a lap or two around the barn, then hung out with her. I was waiting for the barn manager to feed so I could give her some bute, a horsey NSAID. but you don't give it on an empty stomach. all told I was there for nearly 3 hours. I think the poor girl was like 'why are you still here, standing in my stall?!!?!?'

best case scenario is that she just banged the knee and it will be fine (honestly I can't even tell if it's even swollen anymore; at any rate the swelling was never very bad), and the lump was something that somehow I never noticed. worse case scenario is that the lump is an indication of a tendon or ligament injury, to her check ligament or suspensory or deep digital tendon, the connective tissues that run down the back of the leg and tie all those fragile bones together. tendon and ligament injuries can take a year to heal.

it will be what it will be. I'm concerned about her, and super bummed because I had just started riding regularly again, but if it turns out she busted a ligament then I guess I'll just get really good at wrapping legs and we'll have to find some fun things for her to do in her stall for the next few months.

through all of this it occurred to me that there is probably no clearer indicator of just how bad things got for me than the fact that I was considering selling that horse. the idea that I was so desperate and terrified and sad is now sort of incredible to me. yesterday night I had my arm around her neck and I thought, I can't believe I ever considered selling you, and that was when I realized just the full extent of how badly and how long I have been depressed. today I was mucking stalls and thinking about what I was going to do about all this and I realized that I was concerned and bummed but that also, it was okay. and I realized that I think I've felt bad for much, much longer than I was actively aware of. because it has been ... longer than I can remember when I felt like I had a full handle on my life. or that I accepted that I didn't have a full handle on my life but anyhow it was fine.

modern medicine, I am grateful for you.

I mean, I thought about selling that horse. now when I contemplate how the eff I'm going to pay the vet bill (particularly if they bring the ultrasound machine out), I wonder where else I'm going to NOT spend money and think, well, I guess I will just be hungry for awhile. I did want to get back down to race weight.

in the meantime, send us good thoughts. how pathetic if both of us are busted!

the haps

2013-02-25T17:29:00.001-08:00

working on rinaldo has done something really beneficial for me, in that the work turned out to be less frightening than expected, or at least more satisfying (and therefore less daunting), and I feel that I did a (hopefully) bang-up job on it, though of course we won't know until the orchestra is playing it, which they won't do for another 11 days.

a few days after I delivered the keyboard to our conductor he wrote me an email saying I'm loving my keyboard delivered by this charming and magical lovely woman in an elfin hat!, said hat being of course the one in the picture over there to the right. I am pretty sure I am going to keep this conductor forever and ever and nobody else can have him. paws off, people.

I did this thing over the weekend where I rode my horse two days in a row after riding like once every two weeks or less for the past year, and now I can't walk.

also there has been a ton of barn drama in these last few weeks, the culmination of which was the mass exodus of the riding instructor (whom I have known almost since I moved to portland) and most of her students, a combined total of 7 horses. only me and two other boarders remain. I didn't really even consider leaving; I haven't taken a lesson in over a year and the barn owner is the reason I own a horse at all, so my loyalty remains with her. on sunday she and I arranged to meet at the barn and then drove to the cafe down the street for breakfast, biscuits and gravy and coffee, where we talked about all the stupid drama and what the barn was going to be like in the aftermath. the verdict: quiet. when we got back I let cookie run around for awhile and then rode for a half hour, and got laughing when I took her through some rollbacks and she picked up what I wanted so fast that all I had to do once we'd halted was begin to turn her and say 'go!' and she would take off at a canter. she's too smart for me most of the time.

I went to the garden on sunday after having not been there for six months and it's simultaneously totally overgrown and not as bad as I expected. it's weedier than I thought it would be but the stuff I left to rot in the ground is less daunting than I remembered. the tulips and hyacinths are coming up, so although I tried to disturb the soil as little as possible (it's still too wet and I will ruin everything if I go tearing it all up now), I did weed around all my bulbs so I could actually see them when they flower. unlike in previous years I will probably cut them and bring them home right away, because there's no use having them in the garden when I'm so rarely there.

oh. also I am managing/coaching our softball team this year. yeah, I know. I'm also not sure how it happened. I mean, of course I know how it happened: the player who coached the team last year is not doing it this year and left it up to us to figure out who would take his place. then nobody stepped up and there was fear that we wouldn't have a team at all for the first time in over 10 years and I sat for days thinking this is ridiculous, I don't even have time for my current life and then I wrote everybody an email that said I would do it. so basically the same way I get into anything. I guess I will figure out the hard way how to manage a softball team. any pointers are appreciated.

in the same vein, I'm leading a panel at this year's MOLA conference, which is being held here in portland. it was originally meant to be about opera/ballet galas but the more we've gone back and forth, the more it's looking like it'll turn into 'opera & ballet for the uninitiated,' a panel discussion about all the things that non-dramatic librarians might run into from time to time but know little about, like standard practice for common arias and wtf to do with backstage band music. this is simultaneously my worst nightmare (public speaking) and also, whatever.

in the meantime I'll continue to eat whatever weird dessert food shows up in the break room, like the strange 'mexican candy' marzipan-type balls that ended up there today, which didn't look particularly delicious but had sprinkles on them. and it should be obvious to anyone who's read this blog for half a minute that I will eat anything if it has sprinkles on it.

the truth, even after all this time

2013-02-24T23:37:00.004-08:00

hey jude
don't make it bad
take a sad song and make it better
remember to let her into your heart
then you can start to make it better

hey jude
don't be afraid
you were made to go out and get her
the minute you let her under your skin
then you begin to make it better

and anytime you feel the pain
hey jude, refrain
don't carry the world upon your shoulders
for well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
by making his world a little colder

hey jude
don't let me down
you have found her, now go and get her
remember to let her into your heart
then you can start to make it better

so let it out and let it in
hey jude, begin
you're waiting for someone to perform with
and don't you know that it's just you
hey jude, you'll do
the movement you need is on your shoulder

hey jude
don't make it bad
take a sad song and make it better
remember to let her under your skin
then you'll begin to make it better

2013-02-23T10:18:00.001-08:00

we begin rinaldo rehearsals on presidents day, with the rest of the office closed. the harpsichord tuner comes and we chat; I tell him that I am there, seriously, to tune the electric keyboard to the same temperament as the harpsichord. we laugh and he hands me his tuning peg. in the end I decide it's a waste of my time to make the tiny minute tuning adjustments necessary to match temperaments, and that nobody even knows it's possible and won't notice anyway.

when the conductor comes in the room I shout "oh boy!" before I have a chance to think about it, and scamper over to meet him. he can't shake anyone's hand because he's come down with some sort of cold overnight. he is as lovely as everyone has told me, gracious and kind, full of good humor.

on another day, I go to the barn to try and at least run cookie around for awhile, and although I am dressed to ride, I don't have my heart set on it. or maybe I'm actually kind of fearful of it, having only ridden maybe once a week since the start of the year. when I get there the yahoos next door are shooting off guns in the nearby field and cookie is so frightened by the noise that she won't even turn her back to the far end of the arena. I try to shoo her away from the gate with my whip but she won't run more than 5 feet away before returning, on high alert and in terror. after half an hour I give up and put her back in her stall, grateful that I wasn't too keen on riding anyway, but frustrated by the wasted trip.

at our production meeting I hold court for ages, talking through three full pages of notes, questions about harpsichord moves and continuo schedules and whether or not the oboes are doubling the violins in certain numbers. I take longer than all the other people combined. normally I have one or two things to say.

when I go to bed monday I have a headache, and I still have that headache 6 days later. it's moved around my head but only gone away for maybe a combined total of 16 hours. I suspect, but can't confirm, that it's from endless hours bent over my standing desk, which, unlike my regular desk, makes me have to look farther down and therefore strain my neck harder.

at the rinaldo meet & greet I get an unexpected shout out and everybody claps for the endless work I've done on the music. the conductor calls me 'his goddess,' and afterward when we are chatting in the hallway I laugh and say, there's a first time for everything. when later in the week I deliver a rented keyboard to his hotel room, he says, "this is so great of you, I'm pretty sure this isn't in your job description," and I reply, "I'm pretty sure the first line of my job description is 'other duties as assigned.'" he promises that when he's over his cold he's going to take me to 'a fancy dinner' and I laugh and say, 'you're going to spoil me for every other conductor,' and he says, 'good.' I find it very funny that somehow it's always this show, our small production, that I love best and work hardest on, and it's this show's conductor that becomes my best friend.

I go out for drinks with girlfriends, one of whom is a dear friend and former young artist, who got engaged recently and whose fiance asked us for help in picking out her ring. it was delicious to be in on it; later on she said to us, "you bitches sure can keep a secret," and that is the truth. the ring is beautiful. we were there when they met.

I read voraciously -- by the end of the weekend I'll have finished 4 books this week -- and it feels like a very funny time of year for it, too busy, but when I go to update my five-year calendar last year's entry says, went to the barn -- braided mud tail, cleaned stall, rode for the 1st time in weeks. came home, read + read + read. the way the days fold into last year's days is peculiar and although sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's also comforting. the cyclical way things go. "rode for the first time in weeks." "bone tired and ready to be done working for awhile." even "went to the garden for the first time in months."

I ordered seeds for the garden yesterday, and for the first time in months I felt excited about it. the garden, which uncharacteristically I left to rot at the end of the fall and haven't seen since. across the street, the neighbor's rhododendrons are blooming. behind my apartment, the cherry blossoms are budding. it's happening. somehow I always am surprised at the first promise of spring, like I did not have faith it would ever come.

2013-02-12T22:38:00.000-08:00

if you go away from writing for long enough you begin to wonder what it is you used to say.

because of my long absence I'm sure you imagine I'll tell you things are dark. wrong! they are much better. modern pharmaceuticals!

a funny side effect of the drugs I am taking for my brain is intense, focused concentration. it's frequently prescribed as an ADD drug. I am pretty sure I don't have ADD but I have definitely never been this undistractable in my life. it's incredible. in a few days I'll drop down to half the dose I've been taking, which will be my actual daily dose. I'm kind of terrified I'll turn into a space case. DON'T MAKE ME GO BACK

another funny side effect is the ringing in my ears. it's faint but consistent. and I don't even care! look at me go.

in the three(ish) weeks since I last hung around this blog, we opened and closed tosca. it went fine. I never saw it because I was in the supertext booth. it was not my best performance librarian-wise or supertext-wise (seriously, I have never stepped in so many entrances as I did in this production. sorry, singers). but that's okay. I entered it feeling as bad as I've felt in my life, so it's a miracle that anybody even got the right music, never mind that I managed to sort out all the electronic and backstage instruments. I mean, I didn't cry once in rehearsal, so let's just call it a success and move on.

I moved on to the next opera, handel's rinaldo. we're cobbling together the 1711 and 1731 versions and so it's a librarian nightmare, a pile of transpositions and inserts, a score that's cut and pasted together, a constant series of changes, plus the confusion of baroque instruments, none of which I'm terribly familiar with.

(henry the desk vacuum, a christmas present from my mom)

I get almost daily emails from the conductor that say, like, "hey, when you rewrite the trumpet parts for oboe, can you do me a favor and insert these 5 bars from the oboe part in the middle here, and then these 14 bars here, and then you can jump back to the trumpet part." but in the same breath he says things like "thank you, jessica, for this meticulous and beautiful score," so everything is okay.

and hey! I am on ADD medication. there were days when I almost literally had to be torn from my work. I worked so much and so hard on the parts for these last two weeks that my face started to hurt from looking at the music. my FACE was sore. THE HELL.

they're done, and I sent them out yesterday, and since I worked 74 hours last week I took today and tomorrow as my weekend. it's the first time I've had two uninterrupted days off in at least a month. yesterday on my way home from the office, I went and picked up my own giant vat of hot & sour soup, came home, changed into my adult one-piece camo print footed pajamas (YES), turned on trashy crime dramas, and ate the entire container of soup in one go. then I fell asleep for two hours, woke up, puttered around for an hour or so, and went to bed at 10. what's not to like?

the most exciting thing on the agenda tomorrow is my massage, long overdue, where I'm hoping to utterly horrify the massage therapist with my bone-hard, strangely lumpy left leg. you gotta have goals.

ask me

2013-01-27T13:14:00.000-08:00

some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. ask me whether
what I have done is my life. others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
you and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. we know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
what the river says, that is what I say.

-- william stafford

last year I began keeping a five year journal. with the exception of a lost period in december, I have kept it up. (and that blank, lost period in december speaks of my life in a different way). so for these past 26 days, I have been running against the ghost of my last year self. it's novel, fascinating, and oftentimes sad. on this day last year, I worked from home (presumably on galileo) and then spent the evening at the barn, 'lazily lungeing cookie.' I was nursing a possibly-broken nose from my terrifying ride. I was carrying around a heart-shaped rock in my pocket, a gift from g. I used to sleep with it in my hand, a talisman of hope; I used to zip it into my vest pocket when I got on my horse, for luck. sometimes I still slip it into my coat pocket; it fits so perfectly in my hand. it's hard to run parallel to my last-year self, and illuminating, and comforting, and strange. I just keep marking down the days, a small act of faith that things will get better, that there is good in what's to come.

books 2013

2013-01-23T13:43:00.001-08:00

1. lauren groff: the monsters of templeton
2. margaret atwood: the year of the flood
3. lars kepler: the hypnotist
4. patrick rothfuss: the name of the wind
5. kathryn stockett: the help
6. julian barnes: the sense of an ending
7. jeanne duprau: the city of ember
8. paula mclain: the paris wife
9. laura hillenbrand: unbroken: a world war II story of survival, resilience, and redemption
10. jeanne duprau: the people of sparks
11. r.j. palacio: wonder
12. mary ann shaffer & annie barrows: the guernsey literary and potato peel society