Return of the 36-hour day; or, BS is back in the Midwest

My parents' cat Max makes the most terrifying noises. Some day I must remember to record them for posterity, because those are the strangest sounds I have ever heard coming from a cat.

This means, of course, that I have returned to the Midwest after two years in Seattle, and while I'm desperately missing the friends I made there, it is nice to be back in a geographic location which is, if not ideal, at least familiar. There was a thunderstorm this afternoon, my first in over a year. At first I wasn't sure what was going on, why my cat was suddenly so agitated and clingy, or why it felt like someone was moving furniture above my head. I looked out at the skylight at that point, at the water-blurred glass and dark sky, and it all made sense. The storm moved south, so by the time I drove north into town the worst of it was over--not the most impressive display of nature's pyrotechnics, but it was a nice welcome back to my hometown.

Because I never learn, I pulled another all-nighter on my return trip to Michigan. Mom forced me out of bed at nine on Sunday (dreadful after a weekend of packing and panic attacks and a final performance of Dido) so we could return the rental car, have brunch downtown, and bus back to the apartment. At dinner, I remembered that Thai food is something which never lives up to the expectations I have for it, and the grease from the vegetable fried rice made me queasy. As my final illegal act as a resident of Seattle, I rode to the airport on the floor between the seats of the moving truck, my legs tucked up against my body until we reached the terminal. I checked in three hours before my scheduled departure and, because I am an unrepentant dweeb, I watched YouTube videos on my laptop until boarding was announced.

I knitted a slipcover for my laptop, by the way. It looks like this:

The finishing is pretty rough (I'm lazy and wanted it finished before I returned to Seattle in June), but for a project knitted without a pattern, I'm pleased with the way it turned out. There will undoubtedly be a Laptop Slipcover Part Deux knitted sometime in the near future, after I finish the gorgeous fingerless mittens I've been working on (slowly) for the past couple of weeks. As it turns out, a cross-country move hampers productivity significantly. Regardless, here's a Hipstacam photo of the left hand:

 

Someday I will have free time again (ha! ha!) and start taking custom orders. Until then, I have the right-hand half of the coziest red fingerless mitts and some kind of for-a-baby project to keep me occupied (since I've been invited to a friend's baby shower on the 17th--why must everyone my age begin procreating? I'm not old enough for this, right?).

The past few days I have been sleeping almost constantly, and the cats are more than content to keep me company. I arrived at my parents' house around noon on Monday and almost immediately fell asleep--until 6 p.m. I was up until 7:30, then fell asleep again while watching the Tigers game (it was just as well--they lost). I woke up again at midnight, read most of The Hunger Games, and went to bed around 3 a.m. Yesterday I slept until 2:30 p.m. After the show, the stress resulting from Opa's death, and moving, I suppose my body was starved for rest.

I must be off now, though, to buy some supplies for the Super Mystery Project I'm planning to make for Dana's baby girl. Must get to JoAnn's before closing time. Next time on How Inconvenient!, an update on the (too many) books I'm reading.

Last days; or, BS prepares for another transcontinental move

What is the opposite of an Indian Summer? Is there a word for this phenomenon? Because there is clearly a serious heat wave affecting most of the United States right now, but here in Seattle we are bundled tightly in our sweaters and scarves and hipster-chic fingerless mittens--except I'm not sure if hipsters still wear fingerless mittens. Maybe by now that's passé, although skinny jeans are apparently still not.

I digress.


It is cold as hell in the Puget Sound area, which has apparently not gotten the memo about it being the middle of July. The Seattle PI reports that we have had a total of 78 minutes of summer so far this year,  "summer" here being defined by temperatures exceeding 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Translation: I have five days left to spend in this walk-in refrigerator, and I cannot wait to get back to a part of the country where there are seasons and they make sense. Also, I miss thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are cool.

Tuesday Paula and I conducted our last Seattle shenanigan, since yesterday she flew to New York to surprise her gentleman friend. We picked about a thousand pounds of raspberries outside the house where I was cat-sitting (except it was probably more like two pounds, but we did fill two colanders, which we then emptied into a giant bowl), and then ate most of them while we sat around the kitchen table reading back-issues of Time. We are clearly very exciting people. Paula decided to re-enact a scene from her childhood, and also from the beginning of Amelie, and I immortalized it through the magic of Hipstacam:

And then we saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part deux). You guys. YOU GUYS. There is a movie theater just north of Seattle that is not only 21+, but which has waitstaff who will bring you food and grown-up beverages during the film. We split a pitcher of sangria because we are classy ladies like that, and cried like little girls during the sad bits. I still hate the Epilogue more than anything, but, as it turns out, the narrative functions better as a film than it did as a book, and also Alan Rickman is a genius. On the drive back to the University District, we were nearly run off the road by someone who swerved into our lane at 70 miles per hour without signaling, which, sadly, is the type of driving I have come to expect in Seattle. We didn't die, which is the important part, but I did yell a few rude words.


My apartment, meanwhile, is in a state of chaos at the moment. My parents arrived Wednesday morning to help me pack, but between practicing for the piano proficiency exam (again), work, and Dido, I haven't been able to contribute as much as is necessary. How does one acquire so many things in a two-year period? I packed up two garbage bags full of clothing to donate, as well as a mess of canned food, a box of books I'm never going to read again (sorry, Mary Barton and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan), and nearly all my kitchenware. Yet, still! My apartment is filled to the top with cardboard boxes full of things that need to go either to my parents' house or to the new apartment in Chicago, and the messiness of it all makes me dizzy. I could clearly never do any of this on my own, so thanks be to my parents for being better at moving than I am, and for helping to keep me motivated during this stressful process.


It has occurred to me, meanwhile, that the Oxford comma, which I never used before it was stricken from the Oxford Manual of Style, and now I use it all the time--twice in the last paragraph alone! Curiouser and curiouser.

One small step; or, BS tries to focus on the little things

First things first: I rode the Church Lady's bus again today. Her braking and accelerating technique is incredibly unsubtle and the road along which the route travels is badly in need of repair, but, in my opinion, it's all worth it when your bus driver looks like Dana Carvey in drag.

It has been the longest and most stressful month of my life (I exaggerate, of course, since I have said this about once every quarter since beginning graduate school), but it is finally opening night of Dido and Aeneas, and I couldn't be more pleased that the rehearsal period is over. There is a unique set of challenges associated with performing outdoor opera in a damp, temperate climate--most notably, I have obtained my first Washington mosquito bites during the past week, and I am still working on perfecting the crucial skill of Not Walking Into A Cloud of Gnats While Singing. Our director is no further along in that regard than I am, and on Wednesday night during the dress rehearsal, a gnat flew into his eye and, we can only presume from the amount of swelling that then took place--the poor thing ended up in a makeshift eyepatch, which I suspect he secretly loved despite the irritation, since it made him look slightly more like Wotan. That was the first night it really felt like the opera (or Dido, in any event--we'll see about Savitri) would come off successfully. I suppose the costumes made it feel more "real," rather than just another rehearsal we trudged through--we're dressed in togas (shockingly comfortable), with the chorus in masks that make them look like slightly menacing statues. This is also my first time performing opera without shoes, and there is something entirely unique about singing an aria while running barefoot through the grass. My feet were hopelessly damp by the end of the rehearsal Wednesday, but it was nice to feel the grass squishing between my toes. I believe I mentioned this in my last entry, but anyone in the Seattle area who's interested in attending can find further information here at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra's website, and tickets can be pre-purchased online at Brown Paper Tickets, or at the door (which is not really a door, obviously, because we're outside) prior to the show.

In light of the crushing stress of the past few weeks, life offered me a small consolation this morning: at the Starbucks near my apartment, the baristas accidentally double-marked my cup (once when I ordered, and then again when my drink was rung up), and I wound up with two double-tall caramel macchiatos instead of one. It's a simple mistake on the part of the Starbucks staff, but for all intents and purposes, I am considering it a blessing from the Beverage Gods as a reward for my patience, and for not punching anyone this week.

I didn't go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter last night, mostly because I am a grumpy old lady who needs her rest and, after all, too old to be frolicking with all those young whippersnappers late into the night. I did wear my Slytherin scarf today, though, and Paula is bringing me a Harry Potter cupcake because she went to the midnight showing last night and I am pretend-making her feel guilty about that. Also, hey, free cupcake.

Relatedly, I would really like to buy this, but I really don't have the money right now.

I haven't got much more to say, I'm afraid, so I'm just going to leave a full recording of Savitri here for anyone who would like to listen to it (and, more importantly, for me, to help me forget that a patron in the library honest-to-god, just pronounced "Wagner" incorrectly--ha!)

That's all for now. This interview's over.

Bigger on the inside; or, BS escapes

I've been thinking a lot about escapism lately. This is, I'm sure, at least partially due to the fact that I'm feeling a bit trapped at the moment in one of those in-between places I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. Doubly frustrating is the feeling of being trapped not only situationally (a few obligations to complete before I can move on), but also physically (it being obscenely expensive to get from Seattle to anywhere else, and me being poor). How does one fulfill the need to "escape" without actually being able to escape, particularly when one is so tired of one's surroundings?

Books have always been my way out of "real life," I suppose. My family didn't have any sort of video game console when I was young, even though Nintendo and Sega and Playstation were all released during my early childhood (unless you count Atari, which I don't, really, although my four-year-old self thought Astro Grover was a massively cool game), but we did have a lot of books--most notably the entire collection of Agatha Christie mysteries, for which I was probably too young but which I slogged through anyway because I loved Miss Marple. I was bored a lot in elementary school, and my teachers used to send me on my own to the library when I finished my schoolwork early (which was always) and during that time I read Little Women and all of Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books. High school was miserable, and during that time I discovered Vonnegut, Ginsberg, Tolkein, and other authors who wrote about horrible things in beautiful ways.

A lot of people asked me in college when I found time to read "for fun", and my honest answer was always that I made time for it, that I carved it out of the time when I would otherwise eat or sleep, because I needed to force my brain out of the place where it was constantly analyzing all the things it took in. It was in college where I re-learned how to read for fun, and during this time I re-read Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables (and its sequels), The Chronicles of Narnia, and His Dark Materials, among about a thousand other things. In grad school this need for an intellectual escape became so intense that, when under extreme stress, I often found myself in one of the used book stores near campus, looking for anything "classic" I hadn't read yet (I still hate Wuthering Heights, by the way).

Before I realized the time commitment required by the activities I had said yes to this summer (Dido and Aeneas, I'm looking at you), I identified several "projects" to complete over the holiday, which, of course, means I came up with a reading list: George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series--all of it--and all of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries. I'm making a fair amount of progress on the former, although the late addition of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has relegated the Doyle to the status of bedtime reading.

It has occurred to me that my summer reading choices are relatively unromantic, something which was unintentional but which makes sense, given my current frame of mind regarding relationships. This probably has something to do with the imminent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pt. 2 and the absurd quantities of Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny showing up on my Tumblr dashboard over the past few weeks. And it is at this point that I have to make a shocking (and probably unpopular) confession:

I didn't really like the seventh Harry Potter book.

I bought it the day it was first released and read the entire thing during my shift (I was, at the time, working slow weekends at a museum), and when I finished the last page, I thought, "Hm." This reaction couldn't just have been due to the fact that I had outgrown the books, as I still, three years later, go back and re-read the first four books in the series when I'm in need of an intellectual cool-down or some easy bedtime reading. In retrospect, I can only conclude that I couldn't ever really lose myself in the story because throughout the book I felt that I was being emotionally manipulated. Each of the characters who died was, in my opinion, killed in order for the plot to have the greatest possible emotional impact on the reader--furthermore, Rowling killed off too many named characters, which began, after a few hundred pages, to desensitize me to the deaths which occurred later in the book. And the romances. Oh, god, the romances. The One Big Happy Weasley Family ending drove me mad, mostly because it happened so abruptly, and for no good reason. The plot would have functioned just as well--or probably better--without the romantic subplots.

(I did go back and read the book later, of course, after reading that affront to the entire history of literature, Twilight. After that, interestingly enough, Deathly Hallows felt like Tolkein or Pullman, so maybe the key to enjoying the later Harry Potter books is contrast.)

My book of the moment, by the way, is George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords, the third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, and I'm enthralled. I bought Game of Thrones just before school ended in June, and am tearing through the series at breakneck speed, at least given my work and rehearsal schedules. There are so many characters to love in this series--Arya! Tyrion! Daenarys! And, recently and unexpectedly, Jaime? I appreciate that, although romantic subplots happen, they are not the main focus of the story, and therefore are rightfully strapped tightly into the backseat. This is something I have always loved about Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, and also something I appreciate in formulaic TV crime shows (Criminal Minds is the best example of not allowing its characters' relationships to overtake the plot).

I'm open to book recommendations, by the way, if anyone has them--it's unlikely I'll get to any new books before the fall, but ideas will certainly be considered and added to The List.

Re-toxing; or, BS is back on the bean

As it turns out, During A Show is the wrong time to quit coffee. Granted, so is Right Before Independence Day, but this is something I really should have figured out the last time I did a caffeine detox, which was also the day we started full choir/orchestra rehearsals for the Grand Rapids Symphony's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. As you can imagine, that, too, was a disaster. And so, as of Wednesday night, my detox has become what I am referring to as a "re-tox," because a BS without coffee is like a hamster without a wheel. Or something. One can only hope that, as my blood becomes infused with caffeine once more, my ability to form coherent and clever metaphors returns. Until then, we'll all have to mourn the absence of my cutting wit.

We're a week from opening night of Dido and Aeneas, and I'm certain that this is going to be one of those shows that mysteriously comes together at the last second, baffling everyone involved, because right now we're in a bit of a panic. The principal cast has, thank goodness, been the same throughout (apart from one soprano replacing another as the titular character in Holst's Savitri, which happened early enough in the process that it was more or less a non-issue), but we've had a hell of a time holding onto a chorus. The poor director was scrambling at the beginning of last month trying to secure a small group of eight singers--two each of SATB--and thought he'd found most of them, until they began dropping like flies (by "like flies," I mean, of course, "like people who suddenly realize what they've committed to and begin frantically inventing excuses to back out at the last second"). As a result, actual staging rehearsals and act run-throughs have been pushed aside a few times in favor of music rehearsals and chorus-only staging reviews. I'm confident that we'll come through, as those who remain, and the brave souls who joined the cast at the last moment, are talented, hardworking folks, but we've still got some Sturm und Drang (oh, yes I did) ahead of us.

Incidentally, if you're in the Puget Sound area and you'd like to come see us perform--and the music is absolutely gorgeous in addition to being beautifully sung--we will be giving three performances on July 15, 20, and 23, all at 8 p.m. Further details are here at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra's official website.

No bus adventures during the commute today, unless you count the fact that my bus driver this morning bore an uncanny resemblance to the Church Lady.

Summer laziness has begun to set in, partially due to the fact that it was, for some time, oppressively hot (by Seattle standards, which is sweater-weather by, say, Houston standards). I've fallen shamefully behind on my knitting, due partially to exhaustion--most days, upon arriving home, I collapse on the futon, where I may or may not sleep for the remainder of the evening--and partially to this niggling desire I have to frog the entire progress of my current project and start again so it will be "perfect." However, I've got to finish this project so the needles will be free for the Super Mystery Project I'm knitting for a friend's baby shower next month. Motivation! I have been waiting for it. This weekend will probably involve a fair amount of Sherlock Holmes (the old-school Jeremy Brett stuff, which has been kindly lent to me by the Dido/Savitri director), herbal tea, and quick knitting. It's rained this week, so temperatures have returned to Seattle-normal and my apartment is no longer an oven.

Must begin making real progress on packing, as well, since my return to the Midwest is imminent. I've never had much use for transitional periods--I much prefer going straight from one thing to the next with as little shilly-shallying in between as possible, so this business of having to wait ages between finding an apartment and moving into it has been agonizing. This is due in part to my abhorrence of clutter, and the fact that packing makes such a disorganized mess of everything. As a result, I often put it off until the last second, which I'm sure will not please my parents when they arrive in Seattle to help me move.

But, oh, this move will be worth it. I am so, so impatient to move on with my life, and since I don't plan on settling here, I don't see why I should have to spend any more time here than it takes to complete my studies. I prefer to be in constant motion, and paying two months extra rent to work part-time for minimum wage (no matter how much I like my job) and perform an opera role for the sole benefit of being able to add it to my resume is, at times frustrating. In addition, this two months in Seattle has made one or a few of my  friends/acquaintances here feel as if it is their place to criticize me for my decision to move.

Whoa.

Let's take a moment to delve into the implications of that for a moment, shall we?

By second-guessing my decision to leave the West Coast (best-case scenario), or by trying to make me feel guilty about "leaving them behind" (worst-case scenario), these friends/acquaintances are simultaneously embodying the passive-aggressive behavior that has frustrated me so much since  moved to Seattle, and suggesting that

1. Despite the fact that I am 25 years old and therefore an adult, I am incapable of making decisions based on experience, intuition, and my own needs.
2. Rather than taking the steps necessary to pursue my chosen career path, I should instead stay behind because, in leaving, I might hurt someone's feelings.
3. Their thoughts, ideas, and needs are more important than my own.

Except, yeah. The hell with that. I am in my mid-twenties, strong-minded, and unattached. I am neither leaving a particularly lucrative job nor having to compromise my needs with those of a significant other. I have considered my options, written about a four thousand pro-and-con lists on the subject of conducting another cross-country move, and, as all of them came through as overwhelmingly pro, I feel justified in having made this decision. What frustrates me is when people who have checked off the ticky-boxes alongside the list of goals such as "'real' job" and "discretionary income" and "house" and "children" assume that these acquisitions mean they are better-qualified than I am to make decisions about things which influence my life, as if the fact that I am not willing to settle for the sequence of events society dictates makes me somehow less of an adult. I feel like a teenager again, shouting, "Oh my god, Mom, I know what I'm doing!" I hated it the first time around, even though, in that case, my parents were probably justified. But now I am a grown-up. I buy groceries and pay bills and know how to operate a crock-pot. I don't appreciate being talked down to, especially by peers. In conclusion: if you feel that the past few paragraphs have in any way described you or something you have done, kindly back the hell off.

The sun is shining now, sort of, so I'm off to lunch and back to my book.

03:45, No Sleep; or, BS Tries to Kick the Bean

An update regarding the thrilling adventure of my addiction to caffeine: today is my fourth day with no coffee, and I'm not dead. I decided last week that the extended holiday weekend, free of rehearsals and morning shifts at the library, would be the ideal time to cut out coffee entirely, limiting my caffeine intake to tea, and even drinking that no more than twice daily.

It went pretty much as expected.

I functioned more or less normally on Saturday--got up before noon to see Super 8 with a friend, walked the entire 2.5 miles home, then took a nap, did laundry, and had Paula over for movie-watching-and-YouTubing times. Sunday I slept in, went to a friend's place, and then--

How? How is it even possible that, just as I am giving up caffeine, I should be hit with a severe bout of anxiety-driven insomnia? No lie, I went to bed Sunday night (Monday morning) after the sun had risen, and then again last night, when I lay in bed until about 2:45, thinking, "Good grief, why am I not asleep?!" It really is the most irritating thing to be lying in one's wonderfully soft bed, one's apartment for once hovering at a comfortable ambient temperature, no noise apart from the distant dull thud of neighborhood children (teenagers?) setting off explosives in celebration of our nation's independence, and to not be able to sleep. This is particularly true when one has to be at work by 9 the next morning. The dreams are back, too, and I'm not sure what that means.

It's understandable, I suppose, considering that I'm under a bit of stress right now, but it's nothing compared to Autumn Quarter (Hansel and Gretel in three weeks!) or, for that matter, Spring Quarter (Topics and piano exam and no time for sleep!), but after the relative quiet of my convalescence following wisdom teeth extraction, it's probably the contrast that's getting to me. Finances are a major concert at the moment--obviously I'll pull through, but it does get tiring after a while to live from one (minuscule) paycheck to the next. I lay awake at night sometimes worrying about the year to come--between rent, voice lessons, paying on school loans, budgeting for groceries, and traveling for auditions, I worry that I will never be financially stable. This worries me primarily because I would like to be able to travel while I'm still unattached and young enough to enjoy myself, and because I would, despite my aversion to achieving the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant goal of a husband and a house and 2.5 children, someday like to own property--ideally a house with a library, because can you imagine me owning a home without a library? So I lay awake thinking, How am I going to make the amount of money I need to survive? and What will I have to sacrifice to do that? It's a terrifying prospect, and one that carries all the weight of grown-upitude, and I don't like it.

But I'm functioning reasonably well for someone with a fairly serious dependence on coffee who has recently given up said substance for a short time. The purpose of this abstention is not, obviously, to give up coffee forever and completely, but instead to manipulate my body/brain, through forced withdrawal from a chemical to which it has become at least somewhat desensitized, into having a greater reaction to less of said chemical at some point in the future, and thereby to save myself some money, because I am a musician/student (and therefore poor) and also, in at least one way, stereotypically Dutch-American (and therefore cheap). And, my, that was a lot of words, wasn't it?

The headaches haven't been nearly as severe as I had expected, which is a pleasant surprise--although yesterday I did have one which settled behind my eyes and lasted all day, even through a lengthy afternoon nap, increased water intake, and some painkillers (look, everyone! I've just used an Oxford comma without realizing it!). It started out dull and irritating and grew significantly exacerbated in part, I'm sure, by the most comically oversized dead raccoon which lay rotting on the side of the row near the bus stop where I finally caught the 65 after deciding not to walk the remaining mile and a half home (I had already walked a mile before coming to that decision). And that raccoon, you guys. It was bigger than a nine-month old baby, or the largest pug I have ever seen, maybe even the size of a bear cub. I almost laughed, but it smelled so terrible that I just stood there waiting for the bus and thinking, Please don't let the wind shift, please don't let the wind shift.

It's just noon and I've already reached my self-imposed daily limit of two cups of caffeinated tea. There is a headache beginning to creep in behind my left eye, more dull and irritating than sharp and throbbing. At some point, I should eat something--there's still that bit of spaghetti squash in the refrigerator at home. None of this forgetting-to-eat business these days, not when I'm under stress and limiting access to addictive substances.