Third time IS a charm.

Christian and I have registered for the Eye-to-Eye behind the scenes tour of the Day and Night exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo three times. The first tour was cancelled as we were the only ones registered, the second we missed due to the worst traffic jam in the history of the universe and the third was yesterday. We were certain that a comet would strike the earth the moment we woke up yesterday morning to prevent us from taking the tour. Fortunately, though, the only threat to our attendance was a disgruntled and infantile mother at the restaurant where we ate breakfast, and I wasn't going to risk coming to blows and risking grave injury (she looked like she had seen a fight or two) over her bad parenting technique of flicking her child on the ear (very hard, mind you) to discipline him. I could just envision myself with a broken tooth and a black eye at the emergency room having to explain what happened to me:

Doctor: So, you said "Jesus" under your breath when you saw this woman flick her son's ear?
Me: Yes, and when she said to me in that defensive and hand-in-the-face tone of voice, "It's my call," I told her that she might want to make her call a little more mature the next time.
Doctor: And then she jumped you?
Me: Yeah, right in front of her kids. What a great mother, huh?
Doctor: Yes, a real champ. Now hold still while I pick her press-on fingernails out of your cheek.

Well, the first part happened, but I didn't have a crushing comeback for her so terribly maternal comment, so she passed by with no threat of violence.

We made it to the zoo, even with a few minutes to spare. The tour started at 1:30 with a game of reptile/amphibian/sloth family knowledge tic-tac-toe, which we tied. Our group missed a question about whether or not porcupines can shoot their quills. Turns out that shooting quills are yet another myth propagated by Warner Brothers. Bastards. And here I had a fantasy that, if our team won the game, that we'd get to hold any animal that we wanted. That would be dangerous, however, as whatever I held would most likely end up in my purse.

When we finally got to go into the keeper areas, I wanted to rip open the doors to the exhibits and run inside. The night exhibit keeper was a mild-mannered hippie with the obligatory bandana headband. I just can't do any of the things we saw justice, so you'll have to just look at the pictures and hear the "AAAAAAAAAAAA" of my squeals in your head:















Hedgiehedgiehedgie!!! Sniffy, wiggly nose! ANTEATER!!!! Flicky tongue!!!

And when he took this little bugger out,















check out who was lurking behind him:



















I'm surprised Christian didn't have to physically restrain me from jumping into the enclosure. However, lorises have such allergenic saliva that they can cause anaphylaxis with their bite, so it's most likely a good thing I didn't.

The day exhibit has some extensive ongoing conservation projects with turtles and tortoises. These are two Egyptian tortoise hatchlings. And into my pocket they went.















Hee! Little old man faces.

It turns out that they rotate the King cobras. They have a male and a female and the female was behind the scenes when we were there. She was a grumpy, grumpy snake and struck at the glass whenever anyone would take a picture. Very big, very scary, very pretty. Hood. Flarey.




















I'm always a little disappointed when the enclosures pretty much look like the ones I have at home:















All in all, a very satisfactory day. Especially as the zoo has a new avian exhibit with free flight budgies, cockatiels, rosellas and Princess Margaret parakeets who are so tame they will feed from your hand:
















And there you have it. Add a squealy soundtrack and it will be just like you were there.

Not so much on the eye for an eye thing, though.

I'm a very big fan of the biblical maxim, "If it offends thee, cut it off."

Offender: Tonsils
Cutoff date: December, 1986

Offender: Uterus
Cutoff date: July 28, 2002

Offender: Hair
Cutoff date: October, 2001; November 2003; January 2006

Offender: Retinas
Cutoff date: Haven't saved $2,000 yet, hopefully will soon.

But the kicker:

Offender: Stomach
Cutoff date: Haven't asked yet. Hopefully will soon.

So many of my problems would be solved by not having a stomach:

1. No hiatal hernia, so no reflux; no reflux so no vocal cord problems or chest pain
2. No ghrelin production, so no hunger; no hunger, so no huge chest, flabby arms and giganto butt.

I just have to convince someone that these syllogisms make sense.

My father's daughter

I just spent 20 minutes picking stewed, canned tomato chunks out of my chili. I do the same thing with peas from fried rice. Because, you know, if I accidentally ate either, my head would explode.

Best. Invention. Ever.

I love my iPod, Jane. Not just love as in, "Wow, what a handy thing to have around," or "It's so convenient having all of my music in one place!" No. Love as in, "Stay five feet from her at all times or get strangled with my noise-cancelling earphones' cord. Mine. My iPod. No touchy. Don't touch it, I said! Stop breathing on it! You're steaming up the display! Gahhh (gahh being my killer karate move I'd whip out to protect it, 'cause it's a good little iPod, yes it is! So pretty. So shiny.... )!"

If I were pressed to do so, I suppose I would have to rank the printing press really as the #1 invention of all time, as I couldn't live without books, but the fact that Jane has 15 movies, three behind the scenes at the Disney Studios shows from the 50s and 60s, over 200 CDs, the Battlestar Galactica 2003 miniseries, the whole Firefly series, countless other Aardman and Disney shorts, constantly shields me from the painful reality of life and the inherent rehearsal drama stemming from no one on the artistic staff actually having communicated with each other and every scene having to be reblocked to the conductor's satisfaction, it really is the invention that has enriched my life to the most fulfilling degree. And it keeps crazy people from talking to me on the bus.

Why is it, though, that bus headphone "don't talk to me" etiquette doesn't apply to rehearsal? The second I put the headphones on during rehearsal breaks, everyone must talk to me at THAT PRECISE MOMENT, especially if it's to only ask what I'm watching or what is that or tell me that I'm addicted. I'm NOT addicted. I can stop any time I want. I mean, I left Jane at home today and my hands are only shaking a little. And I have to go home tonight after work anyway, as I can't wear a dress to rehearsal, so picking Jane up has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. I'll just finish the episode of Alias I'm watching right now and then I'll be able to concentrate on other things. Really! I swear.

Twitch.

I can't stop staring at this picture.

Even the most hardened animal hater couldn't help but love this picture.

A hundred thousand bows of appreciation to Manish for this pic of his new kid Bali (on top) and Bali's littermates.

Nothing like a good dose of public humiliation...

to cap a really fabulous day.

At rehearsal last night, a number of people were absent, and in a scene where I have to cross the stage with another chorus woman, stop in front of Macbeth, curtsy and exit, I had a new partner and was trying to walk her through the direction as it was timed to the music. Well, I crossed upstage of two of the principals instead of downstage as the principals were directly in my path, and to cross downstage would have meant going even farther downstage and then back upstage to exit, and there wasn't time. The director got very irritated. He came onto stage, telling everyone to stop as "these two don't know what they're doing," moved the principals upstage and took my arm and said, "And when you bow, don't stick your behind out," and proceeded to imitate me and make fun of how I bowed, which is how every opera singer bows. Well, the principals thought this was just hilarious, so the director kept going. And going. Making voices, faces, imitating my actions, all center stage with the principals laughing at me, not with me. I know the difference. I was the literal and figurative butt of their mockery. I finally just left the stage, angry and embarrassed.

I'm a smart girl. I can act, and follow direction. To get me to do what you want, all you need to do is tell me. Preferably in a more private setting, but if it has to be in public, don't make fun of my ass while doing it. Unfortunately, most of the people on stage had the maturity level of fourth graders, so any chance to mock a chubby girl was seized upon with glee. Ah, professionalism. There ain't nothing like it.

Christian will have to wear a shirt over his wife beater.

We're no longer the white trash neighbors, which means no more sitting on the front porch with a shotgun handy to keep away the damn kids. My mom weeded our entire front yard, shaming us into edging, pruning the hedge and planting our vegetable garden:
















Our lawn will forever look like fifteen kinds of crap, however, as we refuse to fertilize and aerate and all of that really labor intensive crap. My parents simply don't understand our lack of lawn attention. Theirs looks like a golf course and my dad takes unearthly delight in mowing it twice a week. I just don't care that much. It's all coming out in a year anyway to make way for my English-style courtyard complete with artistic fountain and wrought iron benches. Ooooh, and penguin waiters. And raspberry ice. And a white lace tea dress. And Dick Van Dyke. Who would need a fifth of scotch. Never mind.

I have a dream....

and that dream is to:

Fly to Europe and take the 11 day Disney cruise in the Mediterranean.
Go to Paris after the cruise and spend a few days with the Goussus, shopping for a Baroque guitar. Go to Disneyland Paris.

Yes, I'm smoking crack if I think we can afford this. Don't care, want to go.

But he promised me they wouldn't come back!

In 2002, when my cervix was attempting to plummet to its death and I needed to seek advice on how to end its suffering, the surgeon my OB/GYN sent me to, when examining me in that horrible thumb up the pooper way, said, "You have the worst hemorrhoids I've seen in years. You must get them taken care of. How can you LIVE like this?" He was very judgemental of my waste disposal system.

Now, I had never thought much of my, well, hangers on. It was my understanding that everyone bleeds out of their butts, itches like ants were crawling on their bung holes and cries when they have to go #2 because nothing will come out. Apparently that's not the case. So, Mr. Terrible Bedside Manner referred me (forced me to go) to a colorectal surgeon. As if women weren't exposed to enough indignities on the exam table. When the CRS looked at me bum, though, he said that he could snip off the offender while I was under, immeditely following my ute extraction, and all would be well. He was so CONFIDENT. He told me that I would never have these problems again.

He lied.

Makes me sound kind of pretentious, no?

I took this Myers-Briggs-based quiz yesterday, and this is who it says I am:

Personality Type: INFJ

The Portrait of the Counselor Idealist

(iNFj)

RATIONAL
ARTISAN
IDEALIST
GUARDIAN

Copyrighted © 1996-2006 Prometheus Nemesis Book Company

The Counselor Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in reaching their goals, and directive and introverted in their interpersonal roles. Counselors focus on human potentials, think in terms of ethical values, and come easily to decisions. The small number of this type (little more than 2 percent) is regrettable, since Counselors have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their companions. Although Counsleors tend to be private, sensitive people, and are not generally visible leaders, they nevertheless work quite intensely with those close to them, quietly exerting their influence behind the scenes with their families, friends, and colleagues. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people. Counselors can be hard to get to know. They have an unusually rich inner life, but they are reserved and tend not to share their reactions except with those they trust. With their loved ones, certainly, Counselors are not reluctant to express their feelings, their face lighting up with the positive emotions, but darkening like a thunderhead with the negative. Indeed, because of their strong ability to take into themselves the feelings of others, Counselors can be hurt rather easily by those around them, which, perhaps, is one reason why they tend to be private people, mutely withdrawing from human contact. At the same time, friends who have known a Counselor for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that they are inconsistent; Counselors value their integrity a great deal, but they have intricately woven, mysterious personalities which sometimes puzzle even them. Counselors have strong empathic abilities and can become aware of another's emotions or intentions -- good or evil -- even before that person is conscious of them. This "mind-reading" can take the form of feeling the hidden distress or illnesses of others to an extent which is difficult for other types to comprehend. Even Counselors can seldom tell how they came to penetrate others' feelings so keenly. Furthermore, the Counselor is most likely of all the types to demonstrate an ability to understand psychic phenomena and to have visions of human events, past, present, or future. What is known as ESP may well be exceptional intuitive ability-in both its forms, projection and introjection. Such supernormal intuition is found frequently in the Counselor, and can extend to people, things, and often events, taking the form of visions, episodes of foreknowledge, premonitions, auditory and visual images of things to come, as well as uncanny communications with certain individuals at a distance.

Is it me? Yes? No? I'm curious as to what others think.

Isn't this what Flickr is for?

I KNOW I probably post too many pet pictures, but when we got home from Spokane last night, we had missed the birds so much that we forwent (?) cleaning and unpacking to take them out of their cages and subject them to a photoshoot. What different little creatures they are from each other, and from Stanze before them.















Stanze would have NEVER let us pet Fritz in her presence, much less hold the two of them together ON THE SAME FINGER. Christian's hand would have been a mass of bleeding flesh had he attempted this when she was around. Pierre is so placid, almost to the point of alarm. He sits and stares and makes no demands. He let Fritz very assertively preen him:

















And while regurgitation may be disgusting, but at least we know they like each other.




















There was a tremendous moment last night when Pierre perfectly stepped up several times in a row with no nipping, flapping or clinging desperately to the perch with one foot. They even stepped up TOGETHER, which was the highlight of all pet ownership thus far.

We then, though, had a bit of an unnerving pet moment when feeding the snakes. Mom, don't read this. Frederick was unusually hungry and lunged for the mouse as soon as I opened the cage. He missed, but I felt the whiff as he struck near my arm. He took it as soon as it hit the floor of his cage. And to think we were worried about his eating.

Persephone was in the small feeding cage and lunged for her mouse as soon as she smelled it (they must have been extra stinky) and caught her teeth in the mesh of the cage lid. Fortunately, she disentangled herself with no apparent damage, but it can be shocking to see snakes act like, well, snakes, especially when they're usually so docile. They are who they are, however, and I wouldn't want them to change. I just need to make sure that the next time they eat, the bags the mice are thawed in don't leak, as wet mice must smell to them like cinnamon does to us.

High Class and Sensitive

I can't tell you how much I want to drop kick a certain other singer right now. This person, for the second time, has posted on her website that she got a part that I also auditioned for before I was told that I didn't get it, before it was announced by the company and before the rest of the cast was informed. Therefore, I found out that I, yet again, didn't get the part by looking at her website. I hope she trips on the hem of her costume while on stage, falls into the orchestra pit and gets impaled by a violin bow. Stupid cow.

Stupid week. Stupid career.

Hmmm...that manatee would be a nice treat...

You have to have a license to keep a cat or dog, but superpredators, ah, anyone can keep those! Oh, and as people breed and sell them online as they bring a good price and the general public (dickwad, punkass idiots, mostly) want to buy them thinking how cool it would be to have a pet that eats LIVE GOATS living in their basement, a pet that they can bring out at parties to scare the chicks, they're available EVERYWHERE, and relatively cheaply, especially for an animal that lives FIFTY YEARS. Cool, man. And you know, when the pet gets too big, the fucktard owner can just let it go! Because, dude, it's a GOOD idea to let a Burmese python go in a national park where the wildlife balance is SO DELICATE that half the indigenous species are endangered and the other half threatened.

It's a terribly unpopular position among those who keep these pets responsibly, but I do believe the possession of very large exotics should be illegal. It's not permissible to keep a tiger in your home, so why should be be legal to keep an animal so large that it can consume the family pets, including the children? That would halt the moronic gene pool, though, so maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing.

Oh, and MSN? If you're going to post a picture of a python to go along with the above-mentioned story, make sure it's the right species: a BURMESE python. Not a BALL python, one of the SMALLEST python species, and one that is common in households (as pets, I mean, not just lurking behind cupboards and such, like a spider). Fact check, people. It takes five seconds.

This public service post brought to you by CAPS LOCK.

And what an arduous weekend it would be.

When I got home from rehearsal last night, Christian asked me, in his patented portentious tones, "Would you mind if I didn't go with you to Spokane this weekend? For Easter? Work is piling up and I'm getting nervous." To which I replied, "I'm going to pretend that you didn't just ask me if it was all right if you miss one of the two family functions in Spokane that we've been able to attend in the past year so you can do the work that you've had for three months but are just now getting around to because you've been doing everything BUT said work for the same past three months. You can do your work in Spokane."

But, had I been the kind of embarassment to womankind to roll over and say yes, dear, whatever you want, and had Christian stayed home, this is exactly how his weekend would have gone:

Friday:

Leave work. Change and go to gym. Work out for two hours. Come home. Take bird out of cage. Eat dinner of three kinds of breakfast cereal mixed with a cookie, ice cream and milk while lying on the floor reading a Crutchfield catalogue, trying to justify the purchase of a subwoofer for the Corolla. Watch Modern Marvels for an hour. Futz around on the internet (specifically the throwing web ring) and then go to bed without showering.

Saturday:

Get up at 7, unable to sleep in. Get dressed and go to track to shot put. Avoid crushing skulls of members of peewee soccer team practicing in neighboring field. Go home. Ice wrist/back/knee or other injured body part. Eat more cereal. Work for one hour. Make turkey sandwich, leaving tomato ooze on counter to solidify into pink mass peppered with seeds. Read Track and Field magazine. Practice stepping up with birds while taking pictures of them in artistic poses (not dirty, like it sounds). Still don't shower as showering washes away pleasant smell of iron and manly funk. Go to Lowe's and get part for sink. Eat dinner of mac and cheese with the artistic addition of an egg white, a chicken breast and some broccoli. Listen to Swing Years and Beyond while reading sites already read today, as maybe they've been updated/had new comments posted and maybe work for a half hour or so. Go to bed at midnight after watching more Modern Marvels.

Sunday:

Get up at 8, eat more cereal, finally shower, go to Mass (it is Easter, after all). Come home, eat another turkey sandwich, this time leaving lettuce on the counter with bits of turkey that will dry out and stink. Do a load of laundry. Change into grubby clothes. Tighten sink bolts/nuts/cables. Realize that wife is going to be home in several hours, house is disaster and have only worked for an hour and a half. Freak out. Try to get everything done and once and get nothing done in the end.

And for that, he'd miss my Mom's ham.

Nappy

I said no to Indian food yesterday so I could stay home and nap. I was that tired. I fell asleep after about 15 minutes, slept for a half hour, woke up, fell back asleep for three hours, woke up, ate, watched the telly, went back to bed, couldn't sleep until midnight. Didn't care, though. Excellent nap. I like not having anywhere to go on a Sunday.

Boring post. Want another nap. Am five. Where's my blankie? Oh. It's at home.

If I can't have a real one...

I'll make a fluffy one. I'm very proud of his embroidered nose.















Felting is an interesting process. Ever put a wool sweater in the wash on warm and take it out to find it half the size and really firm? That's felting. It's taking an expensive product and making it cheap. Smooth and pretty, but cheap. It makes for a fantastic toy body, though. Thick. Water-repellant.

Christian had a busy weekend about the house as well. We are slowly replacing all of our crappy household apparati with better quality products. Note the manky grout behind the sink. I bleach it every week and it still looks like that. Well, it's what happens when you have 40 year old countertops. I can't wait to remodel.

My famous boy!

Pierre is on CuteOverload.com! You've seen the picture, but it's still groovy.

And me without my spikes.

After reading an article about a soprano who, in her 40s, was about to make her mainstage Met debut, and reading the subsequent argument on the singer's forum about similar events and the insane jealously that accompanies other singers' successes, I had a dream last night that I was asked to step in for an ailing First Lady in The Magic Flute (even though that's a soprano role, but my subconscious obviously doesn't care) at the Met when the Seattle Opera general director had taken over the role of GM there and hired me from having heard me sing at my chorus audition.

In my debut, I mispronounced two words, which in my dream were Italian, even though the opera is in German (again, very confused subconscious) and my cast mates were very upset with me. I kept getting lectures from EVERYONE, wherever they could find me: the office; the hall; the cafeteria; the bathroom... Also, they were mad at me for not being thin as the singer I was replacing, which made the costume scandalously tight and, oh yes, sleeveless. Good times all around.

Well, after my disastrous debut, I was called into the GD's office to find out if I would be fired or given another chance. I entered the office with a clenched stomach to find the GD on the floor sitting next to his dog, who 1. wore a white, plastic cone around her neck to prevent wound chewing, 2. spoke in a woman's voice and 3. relayed everything the GD wanted to say through the apparent mind meld she shared with him. Somehow I found this totally normal. The costume shop was next door and, as I was STILL wearing the electric blue tank and genie pants, the costumers kept coming in to hold fabric in front of me, presumably to see if the color would look right with my cheeks which were flushed lobster red.

Now, I understand the whole being called to the "principal's" office, and the rest blah blah, but why were we singing on the side of a cliff, and why did I have to wedge myself into a crevasse and sing to the other cast members on the plain below? And why was everything so foreshortened? AND WHY was I then transported to a huge office building elevator shaft where employees had decided to dump all paper products? I had to jump in and slide to the bottom, catch a car and make my way back to the opera house. Why? Where was the elevator? Was the elevator my career??

WHAT THE HELL?

Oh, say can you...is that a hot dog?

What do most people think of when they think of baseball? Bloated salaries? Infantile players who won't go on the field when they don't get their preferred 2nd base position? Parents pressuring their sons to learn to pitch? Overpriced beers and drunk executives? Opera? Yeah, me neither on that last one. Which is why I think it's funny that, along with some other regulars in the Seattle Opera chorus, I am singing the National Anthem at Wednesday's Mariners' game. And I'm such a big sports fan.

But I don't WANNA step up.

Ehn! Stop eeeeeeet!

Don't you just want to sniff them?

With their little, sweet birdie smell.

God, I wish I were home. Christian, the rat bastard, is working from home today and has been able to capture some amazing bird shots.

What are they looking at? Pierre looks ready to bolt at any moment. Look at those fanned out tail feathers. My man takes phenomenal pictures. Look at the identical curve of the back mirroring the curve of the beak. And....pretty. Blue. Green. Yeah.














No surface is safe from parrot destruction. Not my favorite shirt, or the couch cushions, my toe this morning...






































Fluffy pooper! Gleaming in a cloud of dust, generated by Fritz, most likely. Have you ever seen a parrot shake their feathers with the sun behind them? Not a sight for the faint-hearted or fastidious. We're real sanitary folks.
















And, finally, proof that Gwendolyn EATS:


















I'm so happy.

I'm ashamed to post this picture.

Not because of Persephone, she-who-will-most-likely-get-big-enough-to-eat-my-head, of whom I'm very proud, but because it looks like we live in squalor. The inside of the door is filthy. How did I let it get that bad? Of course, it's the door to the area under the sink where we keep the cleaning supplies (how ironic) and the garbage can, so it's bound to get dirty, but ack! The filth! I'm so ashamed.

However, the picture is a hoot and everyone should witness the glory that is our girly in all her getting-really-bigness and her perfectly forked sniffing appendage. Christian was cleaning her cage and had her around his neck and she crawled right off and onto the towel rack. I'm surprised it could support her weight. She's a tank, just like her momma:

I bow to the mistress of knit

Lynn knitted the pictured hat (on the head of my beloved when he was merely a slip of a lad) for Christian in the hopes that he wouldn't pull off the bobbles. Apparently, he didn't, as the hat still looks exactly as it does in this picture and has lost none of its bobblyness. Apparently, it won a prize at the local grange because it RULES.

Look at this kid. Is he not the sweetest little chap? Makes me wonder what our kids would have looked like, if we had decided to have any. Big eyes, definitely. Huh, now I'm all sentimental. Dammit.

How...with....the paw....

Look at the baby's paw. LOOK AT IT, I SAY!!!

http://www.hedgies.com/images/TenzingDay5.jpg

He won't step up, but he'll fall in.

Christian enjoyed his time with Pierre last night. A little too much, methinks. I could just be jealous that Pierre doesn't let ME do this to him.

The flash reflected off of the sheen on his feathers and makes him look slightly radioactive.

Mmmmm...nuclear bird....no wonder why Christian likes him so much.

Two small rules of ambulatory etiquette.

1. If you are walking down a hallway that has been narrowed by considerable construction barriers, please do not walk three abreast, especially if you are walking more slowly than most 100 year olds who have arthritis. And if I am pushing a dolly loaded with boxes of books and the person I'm walking with is carrying a large carpet, when I say "excuse me," that doesn't move I'm sorry for getting in your way. It means get out of mine.

2. If you then get to the elevator shortly after me and my aforementioned dolly and carpet, don't shove past us to get on the elevator first and let the door almost close on us. And then especially don't stop halfway into the elevator and not allow us any room to set our loads down. You can walk up the one flight of stairs to your destination. We cannot carry our shit up three.

Assholes.

Ah, sweet relief.

Recital and audition over. No more desperate memorizing. Don't care that I could not for the life of me remember words in second half of Lucia scene. Didn't matter anyway as I was merely there to tell Lucia not to go crazy with the wrong man lovin', which, if you know the opera, is about as useful as telling Britney to not give Manpris his own checking account.

I get to go home tonight. Home. For hours in a row. Shall I knit? Shall I play with the birds? Shall I cook dinner? All are possible.

Most likely, though, I'll watch Tivo and go to bed at 8. After sniffing the birds, of course.

I'm still too embarassed to find it funny.

On the way to the Oregon coast last weekend, Christian and I stopped, as moral imperative dicatates, at Powell's, the best bookstore that god or man has ever created. We bought about 15 new and used books for $126 with NO TAX. I mean, each of the Anne of Green Gables series of books was $1-2, and I found all of the same publisher and mostly similar editions. Where else can you find a Debbie Bliss children's sweater pattern book for $8? That shit ain't cheap.

After I completed my purchases, Christian ran down the street to Powell's separate technology bookstore (as they can't possibly want the techie guys mixing with their usual clientele) and I was killing time in the magazine section, reading Vogue Knitting and chuckling over the heinous fun-fur, cropped sweaters with matching hand-warmers and "kicky" glittery, acrylic hoodies with pom-poms that will inevitably end up on You Knit What within weeks.

Anyway, I checked to see if my phone was on as Christian was going to call me if he was going to take longer than our agreed upon time, and I saw that Christy, she who takes care of the pets, called so I called her back to make sure everything was OK. Now, I must set the scene, here. I'm sitting on a bench by the front door with my back to the masses of people streaming in, everyone coming and going, the cashiers and info desk right next to me, people talking, shouting, laughing, babies crying, etc. Not a place for quiet reflection. The rest of the bookstore, yes, but not the FRONT DOOR. Ahem. So I'm sitting on the bench and I call Christy. I'm chatting with her about Christian's job interview and the pets and our upcoming auditions and I notice that the young man sitting next to me (who, by the way, has taken up a good quarter of the bench with his enormous backback) is staring at me. After a few more minutes, he says to me loudly, "Don't you think that's rude?"

Startled, I replied, "Don't I think what is rude?"

"Talking on your phone," he replied.

"No, don't you think it's rude to interrupt a personal conversation?" I replied, irritated.

"No, and you're shouting," quoth he.

Pissed now, I said, "I'm not shouting, I'm speaking at a normal volume."

"No, you're not," he smirked, in that smug tone reserved for 21-year-old recent college graduates who believe that they are the possessors of absolute knowledge.

"Yes, I am!"

"No, you're screaming."

Oh boy. The quickest way to piss me off is to tell me that I'm being too loud. My entire life I've been told that I'm too dramatic, too sensitive, too LOUD. Consequently, I've tried very hard to pitch my conversations low, and no punk-ass wanna be Jess who is backpacking across the country to "find" himself on Greyhound and most likely brought in the book he was reading and wasn't even a Powell's patron whereas I had just spend over $100 was going to tell me that I couldn't conduct a conversation in which he had no part and about which he'd have no problem if the person to whom I was speaking was present, was going to tell me that my voice is the approximate pitch and volume of an air raid siren.

What followed was not my finest moment. I stood up and shouted right in his face, "It's not a fucking movie theater..." I started to walk out, leaned over the low bookshelf behind the bench as I exited and screamed "or a library!" and left. Of course, I was on the phone with poor Christy, who was laughing, the whole time.

I'm positive that Powell's has video cameras, recorded the whole thing and will never let me back in.

One more mouth to feed...

Christian just called me from his drive in to work to tell me that he actually WITNESSED Gwendolyn eating, a feat heretofore reserved for the third graders in whose classroom she lived for a tortuous year and the other pets in our house who don't really care anyway as they have their own food issues. We've never seen her open her mouth and the vet couldn't even pry it open, thus leading us to believe that she was incapable of doing so. Consequently, we had no idea as to how she continued to survive her Ghandi impersonation. What were her political motivations? We'll never know. She just refuses to talk.

Christian has gotten into the habit, good man, of giving her warm water in the morning and soaking her in it, and to exit her pool she has to pass right by the food dish. Well, we bought superworms thinking she might like them and knowing that the frogs love them, and apparently, as corroborated by an eyewitness, she saw the worm, nudged the worm, opened her surprisingly large mouth and gulped the worm down whole.

Did her starvation finally weaken the regime against which she was protesting? Were her people set free? I'd like to think so. If she ate merely because she was hungry, that would be so passe.

Because I'm having a hard time posting pictures...

I'm trying this one in a separate post. He's just so sweeeeeet. And so dishevelled. I want to give him a bath and rock him to sleep.

And, by the bye, if you are noticing a theme in bird names, well, then you must be Chris.

Oh, Pierre!

All of my hours of internet searching have paid off. We are now the proud parents of the most terrified and abjectly miserable little bird in the Western United States. Meet Pierre:



He's beautiful and sweet and I'm already desperately in love with him. He let me carry him home from Bremerton in a sweatshirt, but just seems so sad and confused. Note the rumpled feathers and low posture. He's wondering why we've taken him from his home and thrust him into the cold, hard world. I'm going to worry about him all day.

Mid-Rehearsal Stress Syndrome

How the holy good jeepers almighty am I going to get through the next week? All of this below plus full time day job:

Tonight: Rehearsal and pack
Friday-Sunday: Out of town
Sunday night: Rehearsal
Monday night: Rehearsal
Tuesday night: Costume fitting and rehearsal
Wednesday night: Rehearsal
Thursday night: Coaching and call back (for which I've only started learning the music but have to have it memorized by a week from today)
Friday night: Dress rehearsal for concert
Saturday: Coaching (hopefully) and rehearsal for recital
Sunday: Recital and then rehearsal for ANOTHER concert after recital

Shit. I still don't have my music memorized for the recital.

No hose=no good

Note to self: Don't ever wear leather dress boots without hose again. When I walk, a little air bubble trapped at my calf makes a noise like "squidgy, squidgy". Not appealing or attractive.

Lessons for today from Mme. Crankyskirt:

1. Make sure to wash your hands very thoroughly after cleaning the snake cage. Salmonella is not your friend.

2. If you must incessantly cough, swear, yell, bitch or spend more than an hour on the phone arguing with members of your family, shut your damn door. I should not have to share in all of your diseases and dramas just because I have no personal space.

3. To everyone who can't keep their opinions to themselves when they are supposed to be paying attention, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! And as it takes you three times as long as anyone else to learn the music because you have the IQ of a piece of plywood, you especially need to listen. Yes, I know that when I was in college choir, you couldn't have made me stop talking without removing my head, but I was TWENTY. You're FIFTY. Shut up.

4. My desk is MY DESK. No, you can't borrow my stapler/sugar/phone/pens. You take my pens and never return them.

5. If I'm listening to my iPod, please don't talk to me while the headphones are still in. I can't hear you and it means I don't want to. I have five minutes of personal time a day and you're interrupting it.

6. Don't drink caffeine on a gurgly and upset stomach. It really doesn't help.

All of those moony Sundays...

When I was about 14, I was watching the Disney Channel and happened upon Anne of Green Gables, the Canadian miniseries based on the Lucy Maud Montgomery novels from the early 20th century. I had NEVER seen anyone like Anne in any show or movie, and was so taken with her that I forced everyone in my family to watch the series with me. Fortunately, they loved it as much as I did, so they didn't resent me too much. She was so awkward, full of mistakes and so SMART, and Gilbert, dreamy, darling Gilbert loved her for her "queer ways." I was like Anne, so caught in books and daydreams that they seemed more real than my actual life. I taped the miniseries and the sequel, Anne of Avonlea, and watched it over and over, hooking all of my girlfriends, with whom I would bake cookies, stay up all night and sigh over the very hopeless situations in which Anne found herself, only to come to the end and all that was right in her love for Gilbert. My college roommates and I would stay in our pajamas on Sundays where we didn't feel like studying and watch the whole miniseries and cry over the fact that no one would ever love us. We won't discuss the recent revival of the miniseries with a new installation. No, we won't. What new installation? I don't know what you're talking about. Shut up.

So, bored at work and thinking of things to do, I remembered that I hadn't read any but the first novel in the Anne series, and that many years ago. There is a site called www.gutenberg.org (when I mentioned this site to a singing colleage, he said, "Steve Gutenberg has a site?) that has books online whose copyright has expired (go there now), so I started reading Anne of Green Gables, cried, had to keep reading, read Anne of Avonlea, needed more, read Anne of the Island, and cried again when Gilbert and Anne finally got engaged, and now I'm finished and want to start on Anne's House of Dreams, but one has to draw the line somewhere when reading novels while working.

I'll just buy it at Powell's next week. Mmmmm...Powell's...boooooooks....what was I saying? Oh yeah, love me some pitching and mooning. Sigh.

Don't care how, I want it now.

Why is finding what I want so bloody hard? We want a blue mutation, male Pacific parrotlet, and trying to find one is just impossible. Even the breeders who ship are out. I don't want to have to wait for the bird shows in April. Now now now!

And I want a pretty side-by-side cage for my living room. Pretty.

Scatologically Impaired

Why do I not find farting funny? I likewise don't find pooping funny; profoundly satisfying and worthy of much analysis, yes, and the cause of envy of those who possess vastly superior pooping ability, but not humorous in the context of a storyline.

Other bodily-function-related plot contrivances and sight gags I don't find funny:

1. Vomiting
2. Belching
3. Scratching testicles
4. Getting hit in the crotch
5. Basically anything involves crotches, actually

I also hate public farts. I don't want to have other people's farticles in my nose. They don't belong there, and enough things are taking up residence in my sinuses and they don't need any company. It's OK for Christian to have flatulence in our home as, when you get married, you essentially agree to inhale each others previous day's dinners until death do you stop smelling, but I did NOT sign that contract with anyone else.

Bathrooms have a purpose people, and that purpose is to allow us to catch up on periodicals and relieve our souls, not to financially benefit Hollywood.

Spooky

I was very worried over the weekend as I couldn't find my work master key and, as I am one of only three people who have them and need it ALL THE TIME as I'm the key bitch, I braced myself for some strong words. If a master key is lost, all of the doors in the department have to be rekeyed at a cost of many thousands. I had suspicions as to its location as the last time I remembered having it was on Thursday when I lent it to a certain faculty member who shall remain nameless who had locked his keys in his office, and I hadn't seen it since, but he SWORE up and down that he gave it back.

I checked my drawer where the key is kept again this morning and it had not magically reappeared over the weekend, which it couldn't have anyway as the drawer is locked, so imagine my startlement when I opened the drawer again to take out my purse and there hung the key, dangling innocently as if it had been there all along. Very tricksy, that key. I suspect it went on a bender over the weekend and is now feeling guilty about its debauched behavior so it returned to its rightful place. I won't ever ask it about its weekend, though, as that would violate the sacred privacy trust between key and me. I don't want to put that kind of pressure on it.

Let out of the big house

I'm no longer on probabtion. My officer gave me my slip telling me that I'm now a Regular Regular. They pretty much shoved it in my hand at the end of my audition, so there must not have been much doubt.

I must say that it's heartening to know that I can sing my feared aria after having a night of reflux. Makes me wonder what I could do if my cords were HEALTHY. Maybe I'll find out someday.

Degrees above baseline: 50 billion

I have my opera chorus evaluation tomorrow. This will be the fifth time in four years I've had to audition for a chorus position, only this time it's to determine if I'm good enough to be kept on as a Regular. The union requires that the house makes you do a "were we smoking our shoes when we hired you" audition to prove that they weren't after your first year of Regular contracts.

My #1 chorus audition was during the open call in 2002, #2 was the callback of doom at which I didn't get to pick my aria (a move that outraged every other singer within 500 miles), #3 was for the Associate position at which the General Director told me I had a beautiful voice and I actually skipped out of the room like Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road, something I haven't done since I was six, and #5 was my audition for the Regular position, which I thought sucked but still managed to win by the grace of God and the fact that I have a foghorn of a voice that could take the place of any two other singers volumewise.

The difference between those auditions and this one is that I'm choosing for my first aria one that has been the cause of more emergent phobias than anything that I supposedly have a knack for has the right to cause. This aria terrifies me. I love it and hate it, I can sing it great or, if I get too nervous, turn it into an object lession about the perils of taking asthma medication before singing. Because I've been so nervous all week, my reflux has been terrible, so my cords feel gummy and unresponsive, exactly what I want when singing an aria that has more notes per measure than downtown Portland has liberals per block. Also, now that I'm a Regular, there is a possibility of being cast in small (comprimario) solo roles on the mainstage, so I want to prove that I have some semblance of musicality and wouldn't resemble a plank of cured hardwood in a fluffy dress on stage.

My cognitive-behavioral therapist from years back told me that those who suffer from anxiety disorder as I do have a hyper-sensitive nervous system, and that, while most people's general anxiety levels (in terms of the fight or flight response) hover at about 15%, mine flails about at around 80-90%. Yeah, I'd say that's about right.

Now excuse me while I go throw up.

HA! Vindication!

Orientate is NOT a word!

http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html

Death by Idiocy

I have been hyper vigilant about peanuts my entire life. I don't eat in Thai restaurants because, come on, there is no way peanuts haven't contaminated EVERYTHING in a kitchen as would be in such a restaurant, I don't allow peanut butter in my home and Christian has to brush his teeth and mouth twice before he can kiss me if he eats a peanut butter candy.

So, it would only be logical to assume that I would check a bag full of cookies from which I was extracting a particularly scrumptious-looking molasses one for any evidence of peanut. I glanced, saw oatmeal raisin and though woo hoo, no nuttage. Well, lurking underneath the bags of Tim's Cascade Style Chips (which I can't eat either as they're fried in peanut oil) next to the two oatmeal raisin cookies were two lethal peanut butter death bombs.

Thank God my cookie wasn't touching them.

Never mess with old ladies.

My mom always says that old ladies are crotchety because they are sick of taking guff from everyone. Well, apparently she's right.

Awesome.

The REAL talents of Christian W. Salas

And he says he's not an illustrator (click to enlarge):


He's never met a card he couldn't embellish. Hopefully, this will make up for our absence.

I could have done it better.

It's so easy to dissect other singers' performances. From our comfy seats backstage it's the simplest thing to say that the soprano was miscast or the tenor was too strident; so easy to say that the production is flawed, the stage is too large and the singing uneven. But it's all a product of bitterness. All of us who don't have real opera careers are so eager to find fault in those who do, as seeing their faults makes us think that we could be where they are had we just had the right opportunities, as they are no better than us. It may be true, it may not. I do hear professionals who are no better than me, and some who are much better than me. But, however they got where they are, they are doing it. They are putting themselves out there to be criticized, to hear all of the back-biting comments and cruel imitations. The gossip, the pettiness, the jealousy is taking away so much of the joy of singing. I forget that I like to sing. I end up focusing on what I'm not doing rather than what I am doing.

I like many of my fellow singers, have lost perspective. If a production we see doesn't impress us as the most phenomenal one to ever be mounted, we profess ourselves to be disappointed, bored and irritated. Opera is on the decline, we say. We claim that singers are less spectacular than they used to be, that technique is shoddy and that more emphasis has been placed on looks than talent. What we have forgotten is that these things have always been true, but only to those who are left out, who don't get cast. We listen too much to the complainers, the singers who were born with a self-serving attitude, those who believe that they deserve perfection without having the open-mindedness to see that they are at fault for the imperfections they are decrying.

I find that I still enjoy the productions in which I'm involved as a chorister. There's always something good about each singer, sometimes something really special or spectacular, something I can learn from by example. For Lent this year, I'm going to give up criticizing other singers, and I'm going to stop participating in conversations that do. If it were me up there, I wouldn't want the things I hear said every night to be said about me.

Now if I can only teach him to call me "Mom".

If you want to feel loved, needed, invaluable, get a bird. That little face, the soft and fluffy feathers, the poop on every conceivable surface, the seams of your favorite shirt chewed through, ah yes, there is nothing like a bird. It's like having a toddler AND a teenager all rolled into one, except the part about putting them in their cage if they get cranky.

I ran home last night to set the Tivo to record women's figure skating and change, and I had a few minutes to play with Fritz, so I took him out and talked to him and scratched him and gave him safflower seed. When I had to leave and put him back in his cage, he turned, looked at me and uttered a tiny little "cheep?" in a sad, questioning tone. As I shut the front door behind me and turned to bolt it, I heard his plaintive cries through the door. They gradually escalated as he realized that I wasn't coming back.

I'm a terrible mother.

If this trailer's rockin'...

The production of Cosi Fan Tutte I'm in right now (as chorus with SO) is in modern dress and has the two erstwhile young male lovers dressed up as bikers/rock stars when they return in disguise as rivals for their girlfriends' affections. They actually look like members of a Doors cover band, and not in a good way. The baritone is quite, um, well put together and they have him dressed in all leather with no shirt, and stenciled on his chest is an enormous tattoo, with a smaller tattoo lower on his stomach that reads "High Voltage". When we all finally realized what it said, we were laughing so hard we couldn't hear him singing. And then they stated that their mustaches are their "wands of love." [Edited to add: it was actually "flags of love." Christian saw the production last night and corrected me. He'd know, as he is sporting his very own own horrific flag of love, worthy of the greatest NASCAR fan, as we speak. There won't be any love, though, until it's gone. I can't kiss him without the hairs poking me so hard I sneeze.] This was after Dorabella used an inhaler during Smanie Implacabile. Well, she is gasping for breath in the song, I just never took it so literally. I really love this production.

Just shoot me.

There's a fabulous line in Gaudy Night where Miss De Vine tells Harriet that one never makes really catastrophic mistakes in things that one truly cares about.

I think we all know what I'm talking about. Today sucks.

OhmyGodOhmyGod

Bless you, Chris, for pointing this out!!

http://www.muppetcentral.com/news/2006/020106.shtml

Most depressing comment ever heard on an elevator:

Conversation between resident and medical student (who I remember from her rotation on our service):

R: How are your kids?
MS: Not good. My husband decided that Valentine's Day would be a good day to leave us.

Pause.

R: God. I'm so sorry.

Poor resident. He didn't even remember her name.

A better-late-than-never Valentine's Day tribute to my husband:

When I was young, I never played mom or wife with my Barbies. I always played famous person who could have Ken whenever she wanted him around but usually didn't. She was good on her own. My friends in high school thought I was crazy as I never talked about the future as if marriage and kids were a certitude. I was so awkward and nervous as a teenager, anyway, that I may has well have wanted to fly to the moon in my Tercel as date and then marry a boy. I never understood how all of those girls in my class managed to know when a boy liked them, or show a boy they liked that they were interested without acting like they were on drugs. Well, a lot of them were on drugs, but that's not the point.

College was a little better. I could actually talk to boys but had no idea that SO VERY MANY of them were gay. I liked a gay boy (closteted, of course) for most of my college career, and I'll always remeber what it was like to have feelings for someone who would try but could never return them. Once I figured this out, though, it was a useful little life lesson that I would never forget. I even dated a little, and was actually engaged, which was a disaster on scale with the Titanic, but I learned a lot from that, too. Namely that it's far better to be alone and content than with someone and miserable. I didn't date again for six years.

I moved to Seattle and had the strangest few months of my heretofore pretty hetero-members-of-the-opposite-sex-free life. I apparently was giving off a "date me" kind of vibe, as I had three romantic interests at the SAME TIME, a feat heretofore only achieved by my college roommate, Malia. One guy was a flake, one I dated and it didn't work out and the other was you.

I remember the day I met you. I was falling asleep at my desk. We worked on the same floor but for different companies, in one of those large office buildings you only find in downtown areas of major metropolises (metropolii?). You worked for the graphic design company next door and I was the assistant for a recruiting firm. I had been at rehearsal late the night before and was exhausted. As all the fronts of our offices were glass, you could see that I was nodding off. You opened the door and asked me if I was okay. I'll never forget your eyes. They were the most beautiful I had ever seen. Still are. You were so nice, and I noticed that you had chipped front teeth, which made me less nervous, as you were so perfect looking that I usually would never have been able to talk to you. You gave me a funny Halloween article to read and then told me that you had to leave to go work out with your partner, Matt. Well, he's gay, I thought. I know how to deal with THAT. Straight men may bewilder me, but gay men I can at least talk to. Remember what I said about never forgetting? I could be friends, but I couldn't get too attached. We started eating lunch together, which I later found out was by design. You came to see me sing and even brought a date, but I didnt' know that at the time. You asked me to come with you and your friends to do your cable access show on a Saturday night, and I fell in love with your gang immediately. We went to an opera together with my roommates, and the next day, your office manager, with whom I had become friends, asked me if you and I were dating. "But he's gay!" I exclaimed. "No, he's not," she said, "he just broke up with his long-term girlfriend a few months ago." It turns out that you were dating someone else. You liked ME, though, as I found out when you left flowers on my doorstep with an anonymous note the weekend that I had decided to go to the beach instead of staying home and languishing, as it was also Valentine's Day. When I got home and found them, I called you and told you that I knew they were from you. You denied it for three days until I wore you down. We've been together since that night. When my therapist asked me the week before if I wanted to be with someone since I had just been moaning about prospects, I had no idea it would happen so quickly.

How do I say to you what a difference you've made in my life? I was such a wreck that first year, anxious and uncertain. I had never dated anyone for longer than a few months and had no idea how it was supposed to work. I fretted about that, I'll tell you. I was so scared that you'd figure out how much of a disaster I was that you'd flee. Somehow, you stuck with it, coming to all of my performances and even auditions, which no other singer's significant others did. You said it was great free entertainment. We struggled with trust, me because I was so afraid and you because you had had your trust broken by someone.

I still feel like I may have pressured you to get married. I don't feel right about that. It wasn't fair, but I felt that you were so afraid of repeating your previous relationship that you were afraid to commit. I knew I wanted to marry you, and I thought it was ridiculous to wait, as we had been together for a year and a half. So, you proposed. We got married and we figured out how to live with each other. I realized that I had to control my anxiety because I hated the effect it had on you. I went on meds and holy cow, for the first time I could truly see what I had. I knew that you were wonderful, but the fear clouded the acceptance of it. I couldn't believe how lucky I was. All of a sudden, there you were, your kindness, your humor, your devotion, your strength, your passion and, most of all, your boundless love. I finally saw it all. I knew I was the most fortunate person alive. Not only did I love you, I genuinely liked you. What a revelation.

I can't tell you in any words what a joy you have been in my life. You make me laugh so hard. Your emails should be immortalized in a book so everyone can see how witty and hilarious you are. You're a brilliant artist, and I'm so glad that more and more people are seeing that. You are so earnest and decent. You ask for so little and give so very much.

I don't know that I'll ever be able to let go of all of the ingrained fear and anxiety I've lived with my whole life, but I'm trying. You've given me a million reasons to do so, and for that and a million other reasons, I love you.

Dear young lady who is currently in a meeting with my boss:

You're charming. Smart, tidy, darling shoes, excellent phone manner. However, you need to express your sense of individuality in a way other than using a perfume that smells more like urine and less like fragrance the further one gets away from the source, and one has to be far away from the source in order to not choke to death as you apparently replaced your hot water heater with an atomizer and bathed in Liz Claiborne's hateful 80's eau de stink right before you came for your appointment. Not the best way to approach a professional about becoming a research assistant in a laboratory inside which you're not even allowed to apply lipstick. But, you have good hair. Go with that, instead.

Do I want my singing to be her only memory of Mozart?

At the Cosi Fan Tutte preview I sang on Friday night, a resident at the retirement home at which we sang took my hand after the performance and told me that, at 91, she had never heard anyone sing opera live. I asked her if she liked it and she said she very much did. That was a relief.

I'm glad I didn't fall over or forget my words. I don't want that to be her memory of opera singers.

Slacker

I've found a new pasttime to distract me from picking at my own skin. I spent about an hour and a half last night (when I should have been practicing) scratching Fritz and picking the waxy coating off of his new feathers. It satisfied me on a very deep level.

Eeeewww.

My desk area smells like feet.

The honeycomb is for good luck.

I'm currently knitting Christian an Aran sweater in a pattern I designed. Well, I didn't design the actual sweater pattern, Vogue did that, but I did design the center panel.

I'm a moron:

While cabling isn't difficult, good God almighty is it time-consuming. I'm further along with it now than in this picture, but I'm scared of armhole shaping so I'm taking a break while I learn some music I have to sing this weekend.

It's turning out beautifully, however. I taught myself how to correct cabling mistakes several rows later. It's fancy.

After a long, happy and fulfilling life and when it's time for his final journey, Christian will be buried in this sweater.

It's no more unlikely than being an opera singer.

I want to work at Aardman making plasticine models. We bought Curse of the Were-Rabbit last night and giggled with delight as the modeler did a bunny tutorial and come on, how hard could it be? I used to sculpt when I was five. My dad still has a little chicken I made displayed a potted plant in his office.

As an update to the earlier post, I got a callback for Incoronazione di Poppea, although I'll bet anything I own that it's for the role of the nurse. And I so wanted to be Ottavia.

To the indiviual who stole the stereo out of the Corolla yesterday:

When I got to my car at the Park and Ride last night after work and saw that the driver's side door was unlocked, I knew something was amiss. I opened the door and saw the shambles you made of my dashboard and I was pissed. Really furious. I saw, though, that you actually took the time to unplug all of the components without cutting the cables, and that you didn't disconnect the defroster or the hazards, so I'm grateful for that, at least. I'm an idiot and partly to blame, I know, as I should have removed the stereo's face. I've gotten out of the habit since we bought our house and don't really need to worry about our neighborhood anymore, which is probably absurd anyway as we don't exactly live in Laurelhurst.

But why would you pick my car? Is it because it has no alarm? There are far nicer cars in proximity to mine that probably had far nicer stereos. Did you know that I gave Christian that stereo for our first Valentine's Day as a couple? Did you know that I asked to borrow his car under the ruse of not wanting to lose my parking space at the Capitol Hill apartment? It was an easy fib to believe as it would sometimes take me an hour to find a spot and I'd usually not move my car until the need was dire, say I was bleeding or had eaten a peanut. I washed and vacuumed his car before I took it back, too, so it would look as nice as possible. The stereo had a detachable face, so when we got in the car later that night, Christian thought his old radio had been stolen, and when I pulled out the box containing the face and said "Surprise!" his thrilled and gobsmacked expression was, to this day, the best one I've seen on his sweet mug.

I'm curious about something. You opened the glove box, presumably to look for money or credit cards, although why anyone would keep such things in the glove box is beyond me, but apparently this is something people even stupider that me do. In the glove box, unbeknownst to me at the time, was Christian's iPod Shuffle, which you either missed or didn't want. It's probably worth the same as the stereo, so why didn't you take it? Not that I wanted you to, but are you that unaware of modern technology? Also, in the back seat was a cashmere sweater that was supposed to go to the dry cleaners. Why did you not take that? I'm just trying to ascertain your motives, here.

I hope that you really need the small amount of money you will make from the sale of the stereo, but you probably don't. You're most likely just a lazy, entitelist ass who feels that you shouldn't have to work for a living, and have the right to take whatever you want from those who do. This upsets me most of all, as both Christian and I work very hard; two jobs each. You have no right to take things that belong to others merely because you feel that the world owes you something. The world owes you nothing, and you deserve nothing that you didn't earn yourself. I hope that somehow you will be taught this lesson in a way that will make you understand it. Prison time would be excellent. I have to admit that I would enjoy it if you became your cellmate's special prison friend. Chances are, though, that nothing of the sort will ever happen, and you will continue to believe that you can take that which doesn't belong to you. So, in that case, I hope you fall down an open manhole into the sewer. And I hope that the sewer carries you out to sea, and that you get eaten by a shark. Yep. That's what I hope. Fucktard.

I'm just a girl who can't say no.

I had the boys yesterday.

I now understand all of those parents who allow their children to use other children's ears as footholds while climbing the fiberglass termite mound in the Family Fun! area at Woodland Park Zoo. Not that Jayden does this, God, of course not and how dare you suggest such a thing, but when he wants to climb something, I want him to be able to climb it, if only to see that ecstatic look on his face and hear him shout my name when he manages to surmount whatever previously unsurmountable object the bigger kids have surmounted before him. I have to say, though, he is pretty adept at sharing his conquests, even to the point where he gets pushed off the bronze orangutans by a horde of ravening girls and their hippie mom who didn't tell her pink-clad brats to let Jayden climb the lower rope as he's too little to reach the higher ones. Why are we the only polite ones? Stupid hippies and their Random Acts.

I would be a terrible and unfit parent. As I was handing Jayden his rain jacket and hat to get him ready to go to the zoo, I pressed my knees against the mattress to keep Kyan on the bed where I had set him. He seemed pleasantly gurgly and content. I still don't know how it happened as he's not terribly mobile yet, but he rolled down the bed to the foot, got wedged between my legs and the mattress and bonked his head on the hard floor, giving him a painful goose egg, the badge of my inability to care for two children simultaneously. He cried for all of twelve seconds and then was fine (little trooper), but everyone at the zoo looked at me like I had beaten him with chains and then locked him in the closet to cast out his demons. Evil, evil child, he must have deserved it. That was a joke. Really, it was! I love him more than life itself!! Oh, just nevermind.

I find it so difficult to say no to Jayden. He has that round, angelic face and dimples (Dimples! God, what is nature trying to do to me?) and when he lowers his chin and asks me a question in his barely audible little-boy voice, I feel like I'll scar him forever by telling him that no, he can't have a popsicle when he hasn't eaten lunch and it's 40 degrees out.

And I don't know if it's because Tina and I look something alike, and when you're eight months old your eyesight isn't very good and he thought that I was the person who took him to the aquarium, Pike Place Market AND the Pacific Science Center ALL IN ONE DAY, but when we stopped at the zoo to let Jayden climb the giant rope spiderweb and I turned Kyan to face me, he gave me a look of pure adoration, absolute love and worship and everything I totally don't deserve as I covered his hands with the little pockets on the end of his fleecy suity-thingy and he couldn't reach his cereal bits and I had to feed them to him. He must have stared at me for a whole minute, smiling and chattering. It was probably a concussion.

I'm glad it's benefitting SOMEone.

From the Seattle Times:

"Sure you're ready for the rain to stop — but don't be selfish about this.

Think of your fellow frog.

While persistent precipitation has dampened human spirits around Puget Sound, Northern red-legged frogs and long-toed salamanders have been reveling in rain-swollen lakes and ponds.
The hearty amphibians started breeding in mid-January, and females are laying more eggs than usual after bulking up on a bounty of snails, slugs and other wet-weather goodies, said Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife research scientist Marc Hayes. An abundance of standing water means fewer eggs will dry up and die before hatching.

"This is the kind of weather that's absolutely terrific for amphibians," he said."

I'm going to go frogging.

Antsy in the pantsy

At the end of the Fledermaus run, all I could think of is "get me the hell out of this stinky-ass costume." Three days later, I'm fidgety and cranky. It could be nerves for tonight's audition for an opera where most of the roles are already cast, or it could be that I'm so used to being a huge martyr about how busy I am that I'm not myself when I'm have nothing to feel sorry for myself about. I do so enjoy feeling persecuted.

A girl named Sue.

I hate the name Sue. I had a horrible neighbor growing up whose nickname was SueSue and was the most wretched tantrum-throwing, parent-abusing, dog-nose-denting cow ever born, and who grew up to be a serial procreator and useless layabout.

Sue is a legal action, a Johnny Cash song, a negative association. I never diminute the name of anyone unless I've known them for such a long time that saying their whole name over and over would take hours off my life. I would appreciate the same courtesy. Suzy is fine, as long as it's spelled correctly. Suz is just great. Everyone calls me Suz. As long as the nickname has the "zzzz" sound, I will accept it. But not Sue. Not ever. Especially not from a Dean's office staff person who has never even met me. That is not OK.

Oh, and here's my new hair:



















Oy. I have chubby girl cheeks.

My shoes are muddy.

I don't want to be here anymore. I want to be here, or here or here. Or anywhere that serves clotted cream and scones.

Ignore the pound of transfatty acids.

I was baking cookies last night, and I doubled the batch so Christian could take some to work without depriving me of my 3 am cookie fix. He took all of my cookies to work a few months ago to make everyone like him and I was deeply pissed. I had been fantasizing all day about that big, dense block of sugar and caramel chocolate chips I was going to have as soon as I got home only to run into the kitchen and find a little pile of crumbs. I was wrathful.

I had to use four eggs, so I cracked two and glanced in the bowl. Hmmmm...four yolks?

← (Evidence)

So, I checked the sink and yes, two shells. I cracked one more egg and another double yolk slid slimily into the bowl. Ah, modern farming science. There's nothing akin to growth hormones for adding flavor to my eggs. I'd like a second puberty, please, with my souffle.

It does raise the question, though, of whether or not a double yolk in the chicken coop would mean twin baby chicks. It seems that the shell would be awfully small.

The winter of my discontent.

Why, why oh why do I keep getting sick? Am I going to have to believe that my mother was right and I should have been taking vitamin supplements with names like "Wellness Formula", "Juice Plus" and "You Eat Like Shit So You Need All the Help You Can Get" all along? OK, so I made that last one up, but still! She has been haranguing me for years to take immune supplements with B12 and Q47 and such and God, if she's right, I'm going to need more than a vitamin. I've been fighting the supplement wars for so long I don't think I can go into the health food store without them recognizing an enemy in their midst and pelting me with vitamin E capsules that will explode and blind me so they can inject echinacea into my bloodstream without my taking them down.

I have no voice and my sinuses hurt. I had pleurisy last month. What is this, 1815?? Pleurisy?? I want to go home. I want Mentholatum and French onion soup. I want my mommy. I'll even tell her she was right.

I need a mantra to chant at auditions.

When I was small, I had grand fantasies of fame on stage. What I was doing on stage, however, was always a bit blurry around the edges as I never imagined myself as an actress, like most little girls. Years later, after choral singing and developing some stage lust, it seemed logical that I would do musical theater, and that fit into my schemes as I had sung in musicals in high school and had memorized Camelot and could irritate an entire busload of kids with "Where are the simple joys of maidenhood". I had never seen an opera and, although the movie Amadeus fascinated me when my pianist cousin made me watch it, that world was so foreign that I may as well have suddenly contracted a desire to be a Russian socialite as try to be an opera singer. It wasn't until I got half way through college and started loitering in the music department with my fellow choir members who did want to sing classically that I found out that you didn't have to be studying from the time you were twelve and be the product of a stage parent. Hell, I liked Bach, and I thought I could sing the shit out of him. I found out, though, that my drive was lacking. I hated practicing as I could never make my voice do what it needed to do and I'd inevitably end up frustrated and bewildered. I made it through my undergrad recitals by force of will, graduated, moved to Seattle and started over with the teacher my former college roommate was studying with and who had taken her from a light soubrette to a dramatic coloratura in the short space of a year. I found out that my voice was good but my technique was absolutely dismal. So very dismal. Over the next few years, while my voice improved, I never took any chances and I didn't do much to aid it along. I didn't coach with important people and I didn't try to make any connections. And still I never doubted that my turn would come. I just had a feeling, and my feelings tended to be right. Well, at 25, I thought EVERYTHING I felt was right.

Then I utterly crashed. I started having terrible panic attacks and the anxiety that had been subdermal my entire life erupted like shingles. I was incapacitated. For months, I didn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I just cried. As "movie of the week" as it sounds, I knew that the only thing that could disperse the crushing worry was singing. Not practicing at home (I hated being home), but being in a production. I started auditioning for local groups and got some work in operetta. I still didn't do any of the things other college graduates did, namely audition for young artist programs and compete, but I couldn't have as I didn't even know they existed. So, I sang in town and worked at an assistant job and thought that I was doing what everyone else was doing. Well, it wasn't. I was behind. So behind that, when I finally did catch on to where I should be, I had no resume, no professional credits in opera or concert and no way to quit work for singing, which I would have to do if I wanted to be a young artist.

So, rather than take a chance and try as hard as I could, I convinced myself that I didn't have to go that route, that I could keep working my job and audition for local compaines that rehearsed at night, I'd get heard and people would looooooove me. All of my years of not making contacts came back to bite me, though, and other people got cast ahead of me. People who weren't as good but who were known, favored and friends with the director of whatever company couldn't even be bothered to send out a "thanks, but no thanks" letter. I got into the Seattle Opera chorus, and have worked steadily with them, gratefully, since 2002, but I see what happens to choristers. They're always choristers, and I'm way too much of an attention whore to be in the back forever.

So, now I'm 33 and time is almost up. I've made some very painful but realistic observations in the past few years. Most singers I know who are making a career are supported by family or a spouse and have not had to work. They are good networkers, ruthless self-promoters and rarely show emotion. Singing is a business, and like any other business, weakness is frowned upon and the strongest and most cunning survive. Kind of like nature. A singer friend made the astute comment that I often seem self-conscious, an unforgivable failing when dealing with other professionals. We're all teetering on the edge much of the time and no one wants to think that the person they just hired is about to pitch over the precipice.

I've come to a crucial point. I'm sick to death of hating my day job, of being exhausted and frustrated. It's all of my own doing, I know, and I have to struggle with bitterness more often than I care to admit, bitterness directed more towards myself than others (except when I make the grave mistake of reading other singer's bios and then want to hire a hit man to remove them from the competition). I have had some good singing jobs lately, and I need to make them grow into more. I need to get off my ass and stop feeling as though I'm inconveniencing someone when I ask to sing for them or coach with them. I need to prove that I'm capable and strong.

In the next few months, I will audition for two early music events in which I desperately want to be involved. I HAVE to make this happen. I will NOT be a 40-year-old woman who worried her way out of the thing she could do best. And I'm not talking about filing.

I hate working next to the NICU.

You've seen nothing until you've seen a two pound preemie. Incubate, little peanut. Incubate.

Only my skirt merits a comment.

Only three people at work on Monday noticed that I cut six inches off my hair and completely changed the style. One person did comment, however, that she and I had the same skirt. Apparently, people look more at my ass than my face.

Niblets

I was privileged to spend time with the nephews in all their fabulousness on Saturday. Jayden was very proud of the poo he made all by himself IN THE TOILET rather than on the floor and he had to show me, prompting me to comment, "Ah, I see you had corn for dinner last night." He had the good sense to wrinkle his little nose and say, "ewwww," in that tone usually reserved for use by teenagers who see their parents kissing.

Republicans and the Arts

It is an inherent irony that those who support the arts (the wealthy who are often Republicans) and those who create the art (the poor who are usually Democrats) so heavily rely upon each other for their entertainment/livelihood but wouldn't spit on one another if on fire.

In Die Fledermaus it is tradition that, during the Act Two party, special guests, usually benefactors, celebrities or politicians, are announced by the Butler character and are invited to sit on stage during the ballet number as a sort of "Gee whiz, aren't you keen to be a supporter of our little art form, so thanks and here's your chance to fulfill that fantasy of being on stage without having to answer uncomfortable personal questions about your campaign donations (well, for the politicians, at least)". While I wasn't surprised that Slade Gordon and his wife were the special guests on Saturday night, it was a devious little bit of programming as it was broadcast night and none of us could boo without everyone in the world hearing it.

Clever. Very clever.

(I edited this after consuming revivifying amounts of caffeine. Never blog when exhausted.)

The Bus Rules shall now be renamed Rules for Everyone

Everyone needs to take a shower every day. Every, single day. And wear deoderant. And wash their clothes. Or at least change them. And wear underwear.

Please wear underwear.

I shall from this point on be known as Louise.

I want to have an iconic haircut, one that, when friends see it on other people, think, "Oh, that's Suzy's cut. It looks better on her." I want to be content with one do and one color and retain both for many years, so every picture of me looks like me and clerks don't have to ask for four pieces of ID, including one with my current hair color, to confirm that I haven't stolen some blonde's wallet.

The problem is that I've never been able to adequately describe how I want the stylist to cut the back of my bob. I want it shorter in back and longer in front, and I want the back blended from the lower edge of the bob down my nape. I don't want a little hair wedge that comes to a point and looks like bangs on backwards and I don't want a precarious precipice. This is not 1985.

Shall I try again? Shall I throw my hair and caution to the wind and call the stylist who did my updo for New Year's who seemed to understand when I asked her if my bob description was clear? Shall I????

If I shall, I shall post pictures.

I also like to kiss his little drumstick legs.

I love Fritz's smell.

He smells a little bit like his pellets, a little bit like the outdoors and a little bit like poo. The first thing I have to do when I take him out of his cage is sniff the narrow space on his back between his wings. When I breathe in and out of my nose really fast I can lift the soft little feathers up and down and make them flap like he's flying. He looks very rumpled when I'm finished. I do make certain to only do this when I don't have a runny nose.

One of these days I'm going to accidentally suck up a loose feather and get it lodged in my sinus. Then I'll have to have it extracted and I'll be written up in a major mental health journal for my bizarre and troubling behavior and a case study will be done on women in their thirties who have made their pets into surrogate children. There will be TV ads for drugs to treat this condition in which a woman with a tragic expression on her rapidly aging face is surrounded by a shower of little falling feathers. The drug will be named Surraxate, or some other such name invented to imply the elimation of the need for displaced affection.

And here I thought Paxil would be enough. Apparently not.

I will not be bringing a salad, entree OR dessert.

I am morally opposed to potlucks. Not church potlucks or neighborhood potlucks, mind you, where either the organization cannot afford to feed the hordes or the organizers merely wish to bring people together and the food is incidental, but work potlucks, where the organization can pay, and where staff are expected to spend $20-$50 out of their meager paychecks to make a dish large enough to feed all of the other employees, most of whom don't bring a dish themselves. AND, inevitably, at our potlucks, I can never eat what the other people bring anyway, as the ersatz chefs get faux-posh and put things like anchovy paste in the sauce and then top their quiche with pine nuts. Rat bastards.

Therefore, I will NOT be bringing a dish to the Valentine's Day potluck. I know my artichoke dip will be missed.

Do I look like I can fit into a tutu?

Never let a choreographer run an opera rehearsal. Wearing an unfamilar dress weighing upwards of ten pounds, three inch heels and a very hot wig while having to trot and conga and fling ourselves about the stage all for the sake of a parallel line does not for happy singers make. We are not light or light footed. We are not dancers. We're big people with much weight to be borne by teetery shoes and our muscles and joints can't comfortably take the unfamilar strain. Yes, I know we need to exercise. Shut up. But, there is no reason on God's green earth to EVER run a scene three times at a dress rehearsal. Never, ever, ever. If we don't have it by now, we're not going to get it, as should have been painfully obvious by the blank looks on choristers' faces when asked to move even the tiniest bit from the spot they SWORE they had been blocked to. Worst. Rehearsal. Ever.

The curse of Sallie Mae

And, in addition to tragedy, we have comedy. It turns out that we owed back payments to Sallie Mae as, when we changed our checking account last summer due to some punk ass shithead stealing our outgoing mail and said mail containing checks, we didn't change our direct debit for SM as we changed it for 10,000 other things and that one got missed. Well, they never contacted us with payment requests and they tanked my credit. As soon as we found out (a credit check was run for a refi and my heretofore perfect credit had dropped by 100 points), we electronically sent them a payment for the total amount owed.

Today, I received an email saying that the bank returned the payment as they couldn't find our account. WHAT??? I want to know why on God's green earth all this shit is happening now. I thought this year was going to go so well.

And I swore I'd never post anything of import...

I hate it when bloggers try to be deep and meaningful and just end up sounding pretentious. However, in light of recent events, I can't help it. You will listen, and you will like it.

I'm very sad. I know that it takes a while to get over losing a pet you adore, but I'm unnerved by how deeply I'm feeling Stanze's loss. We only had her since last July, and she was a tremendous challenge, but I think her difficult nature made me love her more. We worked so hard with her trying to understand why she behaved as she did and trying to modify her more aggressive tendencies. When she made progress, though, I never felt such pride, or as much love as when she would let me pick her up without any resistance. She was so alive, so clever and so vibrant that seeing her hanging from my hand would overwhelm me and I'd have to kiss her. She was so beautiful and tiny, so precious. It's impossible to forgive myself for not being gentler with her. I end up justifying it to myself that she has been so deft and agile and disliked being handled so much that we couldn't keep her on any perch or finger or horizontal surface for long, so, on some level, I thought that when I pulled back, she would jump off her perch and be fine. That didn't happen, though, and I'm sick with guilt and anger. I will never again forget that these tiny creatures are immeasureably fragile. No matter what bites I may get or what aggression surfaces, I will never handle any pet with anything but tenderness.

I just hate that Stanze had to teach me this lesson with her life. It's so unfair and horrible. We've tried so hard to be the best pet owners we could be, researching and providing them with the best of everything, but it obviously wasn't enough. I don't think I'll be able to get another bird to be a companion to Fritz. We'll have to be his flock, now, and no bird will ever be treated better.

We come in a distant second.

Because many aviculturists think that wing-clipping is inhumane and keep their birds fully flighted, they have to be very careful about open windows and doors. Now, our birds are fully flighted (or were) because I just can't stand to see them pathetically flapping their tiny wings and crashing into the baseboards because they try to fly and can only get about two feet before plunging to the ground and inevitably sliding across the wood floors and into the walls like hockey players on ice (but without the helmets or missing teeth). So, we kept both of them flighted and, while it was causing problems in that they both knew that they could get away from us and to each other with little effort, and there's nothing as hilarious as a tiny green bird navigating its way through the Christmas decor to get to its mate, we thought the tradeoff of seeing them fly through the Pottery Barn beady garland was worth it. Yes, I'm cruel.

One of our morning routines is to bring one of the birds into the bathroom while I'm showering and drying my hair. Stanze loves the blow dryer and it's a good time to work with her where she can't hear Fritz chirping for her and consequently get so agitated that she actually turns herself upside down screaming for him. I crack the window as the room is tiny and gets very hot, but I usually open the bottom, which is screened. Well, we left the top of the window open over night and I forgot to close it when I brought Stanze into the bathroom, and, on Monday, she made a mad dash for freedom. I don't think she quite realized how cold and wet freedom would be, though, and she only made it to the cedar tree in our backyard, where she eagerly hopped down branches until we could get her and bring her back in and dry her off with the low setting.

It was a terrible moment, seeing her little feathery form shoot out of the two inch opening. We both screamed like little girls and ran outside in the rain half naked. We took both of them to get clipped that day.

One unexpected benefit of this happening (and our isolation of her in the room next to the bedroom where she can't hear Fritz because the bite she gave him on Sunday was HORRIBLE) is that she now realizes that we are her FRIENDS and that we are not trying to steal her love to barbecue him. He wouldn't be very meaty, anyway. Christian was beside himself last night as she let him take her out of the cage without ripping off a finger. Below is proof.


We'll see how long it lasts.

I ended up in Puerto Rico via Russia

New Year's Eve went well. Really well. So well, in fact, that the man himself complimented me last night while at rehearsal for Fledermaus. He said I was wonderful. The word phenomenal was also used. About me. With the word acting in the same sentence. Hee. Of course, he was probably just being nice. I did end up sounding Russian when I tried to put on a Puerto Rican accent. However, he is a very kind and gracious person. I'm sure he was just being nice. Yeah.

People at the after party pulled me aside to tell me how much they liked me. I was stared at. I'm hoping it wasn't because I was continually having to hoist up my dress. Note to self: add straps to dress. Big boobs + strapless dress + gravity = high class.

Mom's jacket and the accompanying dress were much admired.

The girls were all fabulous, as always.

I need to grow out my bangs. I have a potato face. Eep.