The Red Queen's Race

There's a part in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass that I think sums up the life of a performer--or, let's be real, grownupitude in general--pretty well. Alice has just met the Red Queen (not to be confused with the Queen of Hearts, who, while still pretty great, is from a different book entirely), who explains to her that the geography of Wonderland is set up like a giant chess-board and that the way to advance one's position is to advance to the other end of the board. Alice begins as a White Pawn and wishes to become a queen. And then this exchange happens:

'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.

The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'

Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'

'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'

'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

 For the last couple of years, I've been doing a lot of running, and it's easy to feel like I haven't gotten much of anywhere. Audition season is often like this, but the past year felt particularly demoralizing. Coming off the high of my first 5K and singing the most musically difficult role of my life (oh, Turn of the Screw, you gorgeous sadist), I spent a couple of weeks in New York City, got new headshots, recorded new pre-screening audios, and reformatted my CV. I was on this.

And then the invitations for a live audition just . . . didn't come from most places I applied to. The few auditions I did get didn't lead to gigs. And, as a singer, someone whose instrument is literally a part of her body, it was easy to internalize this rejection as a reflection on my worth as a person and/or artist, rather than just an indication that maybe the roles that were available weren't a close fit for my voice or personality. This impulse to beat myself down was a rookie mistake, and I'm not proud of it. So, my first truly miserable audition season in the books, I'm preparing for the start of a new round this fall.

That's the thing with a lot of life--unless you were born with an insane level of talent, plus a great work ethic and understanding of your field, PLUS some stunning family connections, you're going to get rejected a lot, and it's going to suck, and you're going to have to either keep trying or find something else to do. Audition season is absolutely the Red Queen's Race. For three to five months at a time, we sprint from room to room to room across Los Angeles or Manhattan or wherever, and we get a breathless four-to-eight minutes to prove that we are the answer to whatever question the casting director is asking himself at the moment. Some of those rooms are too small or too hot or have terrible acoustics, but we do it because the only way to even have a chance at progressing to the status of Queen (or, like, convincing somebody to pay us for singing high notes, amirite?) is to keep moving. The second we stop, we may as well be moving backwards.

All of this is to say, it's been a really long time and I missed writing for the two or three of you who actually read this shit (hi, Mom!). Here's a reaction gif to illustrate how I feel about being back:

So. Now that that long-winded and heavy-handed metaphor is out of the way, here's some stuff that happened over the last, like, two years:

1.  My hair was short, and then long, and then short again. It grows fast, so we're pretty much back to status quo now. Yes, I know you give a shit about this, and you're welcome for the update.
2. I visited New York, like, five times, and Los Angeles three or four. I have developed a grudging appreciation for both of these places (and a very enthusiastic appreciation for my amazing friends who live there), but it's cheaper to live in Chicago, so I'm gonna stay here a while.
3. Last summer, I spent a month in Hawaii and somehow came back paler than when I had left the Mainland. This may be due to the fact that I even wear a cardigan to the beach.
4. After my beloved Camry was destroyed in a car accident right before Christmas 2012, I bought a Toyota Corolla, whose name is Napoleon, who is now paid for in full. I feel good about this.
5. I saw the following shows during various audition trips to New York City: Matilda (twice!), Pippin (circus-y!), Cabaret (Alan Cumming!), On the Town (?!?!?!!!!), and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (patter songs!).  There's still a list of things I'd like to see despite being THE POOREST, but discount ticket vendors are the actual best thing ever.
6. In September 2014, I left the mostly-full-time job I had held for nearly 3 years and decided to see if I could support myself on substitute teaching and tutoring alone which is mostly working so far? Ten months later, I have just taken on a fourth part-time job, still live and die by Google Calendar, and am no longer suffering from at-least-weekly migraines.
7. And finally, this jerk still lives in my apartment. We play fetch, and sometimes she gets to come on road-trips.

So there we have it. I've been a bum, and I'll be around more now that the obligatory "I'm sorry for my protracted absence" post has been written. I love you all.

They're American planes, made in America

In lieu of an actual post (and I am so very jet-setting and whirlwindy these days that I haven't had time to write anything real down), I thought I would take a moment to transcribe what I typed into my phone in an attempt to stay awake at various points during my recent return to the US from a weekend in London. Also, all of the preceding was just one sentence. Wow. In any event, this is what I'm like over the course of a few hours when running on little-to-no sleep:

11 March 2013, 4:10 a.m. GMT (or thereabouts)

Waiting on the train to Gatwick. No wifi. Haven't slept yet and probably will not until we depart for Manchester (2.5 hours UGH).

In the station (which is freezing): squatters sleeping under the escalators, man who has sneezed but not wiped his nose pacing from one end of the station to the other, kid doing first push-ups and then the Electric Slide to stay awake. Three kinds of people in Victoria at 4 am: homeless, crazy, and on the way to Gatwick.

Missing Chicago not because of the weather or because I don't love London but because I miss my own bed and the cat, electric heating pads and hot showers and peanut butter, which nobody thinks about till they have been in a foreign country and craved it but the shops sell only Nutella or Marmite (worst of all possible fates) because THERE IS NO PEANUT BUTTER IN EUROPE. Thinking about becoming a peanut butter evangelist. Eventually, though, the Toast Spread Crusades would inevitably follow, which would be a damned shame.

No sleep in 22 hours now. Nausea setting in, headache settled behind the eyes, imagining that the train is rocking back and forth. Sore from my long walk and imagining that my body is poisoning itself with lactic acid seeping from muscles into veins. Feverish but no fever. Entire body is vibrating. So tired.

Took tomorrow (today) off from work. Plan on taxi-ing home, feeding Pen, taking muscle relaxant, sleeping till tomorrow morning. Might sleep on plane, will probably sleep on plane, but never any guarantees.

Train moving. Stay awake. STAY AWAKE.

- - -

About two hours later:

Did not stay awake. Got a blissful thirty minutes of sleep on the train.

Shin splints made the jaunt between the two terminals an adventure. Can't wait to sprint from my gate in Manchester to the gate for the flight to Chicago.

Breakfast at a French(-style) cafe: omelette, fried potatoes, coffee. The waiter offered orange juice and I was disoriented to say yes so I had three beverages, including water, which he found very amusing. Feeling more awake now, but only just. The nausea is, at least, faded, and that was the part I was having difficulty with.

Boarding now.


I feel compelled to add that, despite the above bitching and moaning, it was a relatively pain-free journey from London back Stateside. There were no unnecessarily long waits at customs or security, and there was only a minor scare in Manchester where my seat had been changed due to a flight delay and I was interrogated by a man about my business in London as two military men with the biggest assault rifles I have ever seen looked on. Probably not all that frightening if you aren't completely disoriented from lack of sleep.

Next adventure: Florida. Will post updates from the road, if at all possible. 

Putting it together; or, BS reassembles her jigsaw life

After the accident.

It took about five days for the initial shock to pass. Christmas night I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special (of course) and then went to do something else around the house, and happened to pass the television just as BBC America aired the very end of "The Angels Take Manhattan" which is, as anyone who watches Doctor Who knows, soul-crushing. This was the thing that broke through the post-accident brain-fog, and the thing that broke me down. After five days, I finally cried--a lot. It was, I think, a reaction to the realization of just how bad the accident was, and how much worse it could have been. The car that hit my Camry was a Hyundai Sonata, going between 35 and 40 miles an hour; a larger vehicle, or one traveling faster, could have seriously injured or even killed me. My airbags didn't deploy. Somehow, no glass was broken, I didn't hit my head, the most serious injury was the bruising from where I slammed into the driver's-side door.

I've been back in the city now for a little over a week, and it's beginning to feel as if I'm coming out of the stasis I was in during my visit to my parents' house. The holiday season, usually stressful, had a little extra kick this year, because in addition to the fallout of the accident, we also made the decision to say goodbye to Macavity, who had been a member of our family for seventeen years and nine months, after  taking a sharp turn for the worse between Christmas and the New Year. All in all, I have decided to consider this holiday season to be the lowest possible point, from which things can only improve. And, I have to admit, it's impressive that this holiday season finally edged out the year I was seven or eight and Mom had to take me to the hospital on Christmas Eve because of a high fever, after which I projectile-vomited the fluorescent pink medicine the doctor had prescribed all over my grandmother's house. That year, I opened gifts with the family while lying on the floor. That was the year my grandmother bought me a copy of Monica Furlong's book Wise Child and a collection of female-centric fairy stories called Tatterhood, which is, it is possible, are the books which first gave me an awareness of feminism.

Now that I think of it, I don't have that many memories of childhood, but the ones I do have are vivid.

So. I'm piecing my life back together after re-entering the world of the living. My re-entry was, it must be noted, not half-assed in any way: I arrived in town on Tuesday morning, and on Tuesday night a friend and I went to Hansel and Gretel at the Lyric, after which I attended an opera-affiliated networking event at a swanky bar. The next night, I went out with a friend in Wicker Park. And then I didn't leave the house for two days, because being social is work, man.

Speaking of work, I have been doing a lot of it. In fact, work takes up approximately 50% of my life (the remaining 50% is split between sleeping, drinking coffee, and reading books I hated or avoided reading in high school). I will not talk about work here, because work takes up too much of my life already without infiltrating my blog.

I taught at a high school yesterday, which was a nice change of pace from the everyday grind of making phone calls to musicians to talk about other musicians. This time it was sophomores, and the subject was chemistry (a class that, for the record, I somehow avoided in high school). Thankfully, the teacher left a worksheet for the class to do, and the subject matter basic enough that answering questions wasn't too difficult. During my planning period, I read Of Mice and Men because I had finished The Jungle while the students were working on homework during academic lab. The Jungle is an excellent book, and Of Mice and Men kind of made me hate everything. I guess one could argue that both books involve terrible people doing terrible things to other terrible people, but at least the over-the-top call to action at the end of Sinclair's book reminded me of the over-the-top choral endings of Shostakovich's 2nd and 3rd Symphonies, and those always made me smile.

This entry is terribly scattered. I suppose that's the result of my brain being shocked into almost-frantic action after doing so little during the holiday. Well, we'll just have to go with that, I suppose. I have more to say than I had expected.

A student in one of my classes yesterday had a birthday. He turned sixteen, and I realized that there are students in high school, which is damned near adulthood, who were born either the year Monicagate happened or the one before it. This is the first time I have been aware of a group of people who, for the most part, have their own thoughts and ideas and are well on their way to being independent human beings, who are too young to remember a major cultural event I remember reacting to (and, for the record, my reaction at the time was, "Really? You're calling his leadership into abilities into question because of that? Really?!" I was a precocious twelve-year old). It occurred to me, as it sometimes does: I am nearer to thirty than twenty, and I don't feel any older than 22. Is this a thing that happens to everyone, the feeling that there is a huge discrepancy between the age one is and the age one perceives oneself to be? Either way, it's a strange moment of self-awareness for someone who still occasionally gets carded while buying tickets for R-rated movies (which did happen in November, when I bought a ticket for Lincoln).

Speaking of R-rated movies, I am currently half-watching a pre-rehab Robert Downey, Jr. movie called In Dreams and I have no idea what's going on. I'm less lost than I was during The Expendables, but still . . . 

I think I've said about all I want to say for now, though. In the future, there will be book talk! There is a truly terrible book I've been meaning to write about but I needed to take a couple of months before going back to it, because it may be the worst thing I have ever read. Hilariously so. More on that later.

Winter is coming; or, BS's continued adventures in narrowly-averted disaster

To be filed under: things that could have turned out much worse than they did:

I am writing about this, first of all, because my mother asked me to. Last night I was in a car accident in which both cars were totaled. Thankfully, no serious injuries were incurred, either to me or the driver of the other car, but the experience shook me pretty badly. Everything happened very quickly, and I went immediately into shock, so my memory probably isn't to be trusted completely, but here is the sequence of events as I remember them:

Some friends from book club (more on that later) and I had made plans to hold a holiday party, and as my apartment is both large and centrally-located, I volunteered to host. The whole event was thrown together very hastily, so I had decided to drive over the grocery store after work. The weather was, as everyone who was in the Midwest last night knows, terrible: freezing rain transitioning into wet snow flurries, low visibility, and extreme darkness. As it was rush-hour, I decided to take a side street rather than the heavily-crowded intersection of three streets, where cars were backed up at least two blocks to the south. I paused at a stop sign and inched into the intersection to see whether there was any oncoming traffic, but I didn't see anything so I went through the sign. I didn't see the other driver until just before she smashed into the passenger-side front door of my car, so I must have missed seeing the car approaching because it was obscured by some larger vehicles to the right of the intersection. There was a loud metallic crunching and scraping sound and the sound of breaking glass, my glasses flew off my face, and I was knocked toward a row of parked cars. I don't remember much from the next few seconds, other than that I somehow managed to avoid hitting a parked car and pulled my vehicle to a stop in the oncoming traffic lane.

I had bought a six-pack of beer at the grocery store; in the collision, the bottles were shattered and beer was soaking into the floor-mat. I remember being very afraid that the police would think I had been drinking, since the car reeked of alcohol. Someone driving by who saw the accident pulled over and called the police, who sent a State Trooper to take witness statements. A friend who was going to attend the party at my house took a taxi to sit with me as I waited for the police report to be written up, and another drove over to pick us up after the car was towed. Apart from the very few vivid memories I have of those horrible two hours (listening to the rain through the gap created by the smashed door, a pedestrian stopping to ask for directions to the Oglivie train station, explaining the concept of the Assassin's Creed series to the friend who waited with me as the State Trooper prepared the accident report to distract myself from the fact that I was sitting in a totaled car waiting for someone to come take it away), the entire experience is very much a blur.

I have only been in one other serious car accident in my life, when I was 17 and backed my Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight into an irrigation ditch during a blizzard, then crawled out of the door and up through the snow to sit on the side of the road as I shook and rocked back and forth. It doesn't feel real. The only confirmation I have, the things I keep going back to to re-ground myself in reality, are the photos I took of the damage as I waited for the tow, the fact that my car is no longer parked on the street, and a soreness on the left side of my body where, I assume, I was slammed into the driver's side door by the force of the impact. The woman driving the other car was not too badly injured; her airbag deployed, and the only injuries she suffered (at least, that she told me about) were scrapes on her face and some bruising on her chest from the force of the bag hitting her. Opa's Camry, which my family bought from him when I was finishing high school, is most likely finished. Mom says that the fact that my injuries were so limited must be due, in part, to the fact that he is still keeping an eye on me, even now that he's gone. I don't know that I believe in an afterlife or that the people we love continue to watch us after they're gone, but what I do know is that this accident could have been much, much worse than it was, and that the fact that no one was badly hurt is a small miracle. And, oh, there are the tears I've been waiting for the last 24 hours. I suppose that means the worst of the shock is over, and I can start to process what has happened.

I just move on; or, BS Lives And Dies by Google Calendar

I run so fast
a shotgun blast
can hurt me not one bit.
I'm on my toes
'cause Heaven knows
a moving target's hard to hit.
-"I Move On," Chicago

Very, very suddenly, there has been an extreme uptick in the number of calls I get asking me to substitute teach. And by "extreme," I mean "at least one call every day for the past three weeks." This is, at least, a much-needed additional source of income, even if I feel guilty every time I have to turn down a call. Now I'm slightly less hesitant to turn on the heat in my apartment, meaning I don't have to work morning shifts at my other job wearing a scarf, hat, sweater, and fingerless mittens. Si, mi chiamano Mimi, indeed.

It seems unthinkable these days that there was ever a point in my life where I eschewed the use of Google Calendar; now, with my life simultaneously so packed with things to do and so up-in-the-air, I can't imagine keeping track of everything without being able to switch appointments around on my phone as-needed. Also, those half-hour empty blocks that appear periodically in my schedule? That's a friendly reminder: Eat something. Because otherwise I'd forget.

(Penny is rolling around on the floor, playing with a catnip mouse and occasionally getting distracted by the texture of the fireplace bricks. What a stoner.)

As I write this, I am planning for my first real audition season. Quelle aventure! Already there are two lined up in two weeks, with the very real possibility of a third to be scheduled in the near future. Among the other singers I know, I am late to this particular party, but, as a very wise woman once told me, it is the responsibility of every working musician to find a path that works for them, and not to bind herself to any predetermined idea of what one should have accomplished by a certain age. Finally, at 26, I find myself vocally and emotionally prepared to deal with the insanity associated with this process. So, come on, Audition Season 2012: let's do this.

For a Few Dollars More is on television, and I am left thinking how incredibly weird I find the entire concept of Spaghetti Westerns. Obviously I don't have much experience watching them, but it's so strange to see a movie where all of the dialogue is dubbed, and even more so one in which one or two of the characters are obviously speaking English and the rest are obviously not. Watching someone's mouth moving out of sync with his words jars me in the same way as a movie string quartet composed of people who have obviously never played a string instrument: the incongruity is shudder-inducing if I pay too much attention. (Also, why is there nudity in this film, but no blood when someone is shot?)

So, that's life at the moment: running. So much running. Last-minute changes to plans and lots of narrowly-averted disaster. And, in the end, I guess that's where I feel most content.

All through the winter I'm alive; or, The Return of BS

First things first: the chair in which I currently sit is the best chair. Following the sudden departure of my second roommate in five months (and, no, not going into it, possibly ever, so let's pretend this whole second-roommate thing never happened in the first place), I found myself bereft of items of furniture in which to sit as I do things like, for example, blog and watch Gilmore Girls. Penny and I drove up to visit the parents for a couple of days, and while I was there I found the best chair. It is short, plush, and upholstered in the most hideous 1970s velveteen, which has faded everywhere except on one side of the seat cushion. And it was $30. I haven't taken a look-at-my-freaking-awesome-chair photo yet, but Penny, who is currently perched on the back and is purring, has apparently given her seal of approval. Oh. She has moved, and is currently draped over one of the arm-rests.

And now my lap. Cat, there is not room for both you and my MacBook.

(This is really how my life goes.)

So my life kind of fell apart for a while there, which is the best explanation I can offer for my recent radio silence. It happens.

I spent much of my month away from the blogosphere not sleeping. This wasn't by choice, obviously, and it took me more than two weeks to realize that my sleeplessness was connected to the CVS debacle detailed in my previous entry. As it turns out, the staff of the drugstore ended up calling the police on my behalf, and not, as I had previously thought, because two homeless guys had gotten into a fight outside, although that did happen.

But now the cat wants my attention. I just wanted to send a message out into the void and say that, hey, two people who read this, I'm still alive.  For your trouble, here, have a music video:

Thank you and goodnight.

My life goes on in endless song; or, BS takes a moment to breathe

Tonight, on the way back from rehearsal, I stopped by CVS to pick up a soda for my roommate, who is exhausted by unpacking and was craving. I grabbed one for myself, and only noticed when I took a sip a half hour later that it was Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. 

Then, I went to make a salad (my one meal today was consumed at the family-owned Italian restaurant down the street as I sat with the staff, watching the Euro 2012 Final and exclaiming rude things in Italian at the screen). As I cut into the avocado I had bought earlier today, I noticed that its flesh had gone brown.

The fact that these are the two biggest disappointments  I faced today may be a sign that, for the moment, my mood is in an upswing. 

That's not to say that life is not completely overwhelming. Having finally found a roommate to share the (relatively inexpensive, but still inconvenient when paid out of one's minimal income) rent and bills, I cleaned the apartment to allow her some space to move her things in. Moving is always messy, and one always seems to have so many more belongings than one needs until they are removed from their cardboard boxes and put away. Movers are also very messy--the amount of dirt tracked in as they unloaded box after box after box actually rendered one floor-runner basically unusable (bought at Goodwill and easily replaceable but still, gentlemen, wipe your damn feet) and left me itching to vacuum the floor. My knee-jerk reaction was panic. However, after 24 hours or so had elapsed, it became clear to me that my new roommate is potentially the most organized person I have ever met, in addition to having more energy for unpacking and sorting than I had ever imagined possible, and is getting on admirably in a situation that would have reduced me to a useless puddle of anxious tears within half an hour. I expect that my previously-spartan little apartment will look considerably more lived-in (in a good way, a way that says "people actually live here and have real-people lives" rather than messy) by week's end. Even in my room I have managed to set up a small workspace that doubles as a sewing table and home office. 

And, oh, am I sewing. A shop in my hometown, owned by a high school friend, has agreed to sell some of the purses I make, so I have very suddenly found myself needing to treat sewing as a Real (very-part-time) Job. As things are still being unpacked however, there is no place at present to set up an ironing board. Tomorrow I ship out my first two bags, with plans to make as many more as possible during our five-day break from Don Giovanni rehearsals and send them home with Mom when she visits.

Don Giovanni is also taking up significant brain-space at the moment. I blame the combination of Mozart writing obnoxiously catchy melodies and having to repeat those melodies so frequently in rehearsal. I've always had an affinity for this opera over all of the others Mozart wrote, mostly because it gives me so many Feelings--I've got a whole other blog entry locked away in my brain concerning the characters and how the trap with Giovanni is to fall back on convention when it comes to characterization rather than letting the characters sort of develop themselves--and, to be honest, I would say that characters like Leporello or Elvira or Zerlina or even Giovanni do a fair job of asserting their own personalities, desires, motivations, quirks, &c., and the best thing to do when portraying one of those roles is not to try and impose your own limitations on them. There are so many angles from which to consider Don Giovanni, and even twelve years after the first time I watched it, I am still fascinated by the intricate ways in which the characters interact (but mostly Elvira and Leporello, who put up with more of Giovanni's shit than anyone else in the show), and I still start shuddering when the statue begins speaking. Every. Single. Time. Because a damn statue comes to life. And that statue is vindictive as hell (uh, literally). And that is terrifying.

"So why then, Bee," you may be asking, "when your life is hectic and full of crazy, did you take an interview for a part-time barista position?" 

The answer: masochism. Obviously.

But--and this is the strangest thing--I know that I am busy. Intellectually, I am able to look at my GoogleCalendar (the fact that I rely on GoogleCalendar to remind me that I must, twice a day, eat something, Bee, you are not capable of photosynthesis, is probably a good indication of just how busy I am) and say to myself, "Damn, there's not a lot of free time there." But, as I experience everyday life, it is the busiest days and weeks when I feel the most free and easygoing. I suppose this can be chalked up to momentum, to the fact that when I have so much to do my thought process speeds up and it is as if the events of my day go by in slow-motion. With that in mind, knowing that I feel the most centered and comfortable when I have a set of goals to achieve in a specified amount of time, why the hell not try to find a second job, one that can keep me from having too much time to think (which inevitably leads to overanalyzing, which often leads to panicking about Who am I and what am I going to do with my life?!) after this show wraps?

And, of course, all this positive thinking could go to hell tomorrow. This is another thing I know intellectually. But right now my cat is ridiculous (especially when she tries to intimidate my roommate's cat by hissing, which is more adorable than menacing), there is someone to talk to, my monthly financial burden has just been slashed in half, Dave Eggers just released a new book, and it is thunderstorm season in Chicago. Yes, life could definitely be worse.

Sumer is icumen in

Well, then, as threatened ages ago, I skipped town for the duration of the NATO Summit, which, as I saw on the news, was equal parts riot (in the area immediately surrounding McCormick Place) and deserted (everywhere else).

As a matter of fact, I found myself in Orlando, Florida for a week, navigating all the typical tourist attractions on my own, even swinging by Universal's Islands of Adventure for a day, since how on earth is someone so unrepentantly geeky as me supposed to pass up the opportunity to visit fake-Hogwarts? It was hot and humid--in Florida! imagine!--and, as such, I drank gallons of water, did multiple passes on any Disney ride with a short enough line (air conditioning is golden, even if it means riding a slow-moving cart through the most terrifying moments of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), and even passed up the chance to see Micky Dolenz perform at Epcot (to be honest, Micky, m'dear, I'd prefer to remember you the way you were, and I certainly won't wait for two hours in someplace with no shade for nostalgia's sake).

(As I was finishing that last sentence, the timer went off on my bread machine, and I had to wander to the kitchen to knead the dough and set it out for a second rise on the stovetop. Consequently, I have lost my train of thought. Where was I?)

(Ah. Yes. Florida.)

The excursion to Orlando combined my old love of traveling alone and my new love of traveling off-season--and, of course, airports are the worst, but everyone hates the awkwardness of going barefoot through O'Hare security and having to repackage shampoo and conditioner into travel-sized containers, so I figure my adventures with air travel can be inferred by the reader rather than stated outright--but I digress. Traveling alone. It is the best. No passive-aggressive shilly-shallying is necessary in order to make dinner plans and, for that matter, restaurant wait times are significantly reduced when seeking a table for one as opposed to, oh, four or five. None of the hassle of coming up with a daily itinerary which can be agreed upon by all members of the party. No fighting over the TV remote at one in the morning when you want to flip between a replay of the day's Rays game and the latest Game of Thrones episode. And, of course, on the day when it was hellishly hot and even the combination of coffee, water, and the two doses of Tylenol Extra Strength I purchased at Epcot's Germany pavilion failed to make a dent in what may have been the Worst Headache Ever, I was able to head back to the hotel and sleep without having to explain anything to anyone. Because it was just me.

By the way, grown-ups and potential Disney travelers, I can tell you from experience that, although Epcot has a reputation for being the most boring of the four parks in Orlando, it is also where they keep the booze. While my only hands-on experience was grabbing a glass of prosecco at the Italy pavilion while waiting out a rainstorm, I saw more than a few margarita stands, and not just in the Mexico pavilion. Have at it, lovers of delicious alcoholic fun and parents of unruly children!

But every vacation inevitably comes to an end, and so it was with the complete panic that marks my existence that I realized, upon checking my phone after lunch on my last day in Florida, that my flight had been rescheduled to depart two and a half hours earlier than I had planned. And, oh, I ran--well, drove, and then walked with great haste, and then cried a little when the ticket agent couldn't find my reservation. Because I am BS, and my life is chaos, and this sort of thing is a fairly common occurrence.

I can't say that life has been too thrilling since I returned to Chicago, although summer seems to have arrived, signaling the beginning of three months of constant skirt-wearing. I work, I sleep, I have strange dreams which are probably brought on by the heat (last night: I had recently become a vampire and was distressed at the fact that blood, which could be purchased on tap at any neighborhood bar, tasted like watered-down V-8 juice), I yell at my cat for sitting on the kitchen counter. Most of my Chicago-based friends seem to be either out of town or busy with Grown-Up Responsibilities, so I have taken to re-reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series and marathoning episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

One new thing in my life--opera-related, of course, because when is it not?--is a sudden interest in singing French arias from the Romantic period. I don't know if other musicians are like this, but I tend to favor music from different stylistic periods according to a seasonal schedule. In the spring, of course, it is Baroque opera, where everything is fresh and energetic and awake after the long months of cold, dark, moody winter (German and Italian verisimo, usually--lots of Strauss and Puccini). And in the summer, I just want to sing in French. My current fixation is "Adieu, notre petite table" from Massenet's Manon, although next week it could be "Ah, je veux vivre" or--I don't know. Whatever. For right now, it's Manon, who is possibly the most amoral fictional character I have ever loved.

And, to be honest, at this point I've run out of things to say, and I'm just waiting for my bread to finish baking so I can go to sleep. Twenty-five minutes to go.

Thank you and good night.

And after the earthquake there came a fire!; or, BS's continued adventures in calamity

I truly did mean to write a follow-up to my most recent post. And, then, of course, life delivered me a swift kick in the ass. Because that is what life does.

It is a running joke between my friends and myself that my life is infinitely blog-about-able. And, more or less, that is true. The trouble, however, with having the sort of life which is continually filled with adventure is that there never seems to be enough time to write any of it down. The only solution seems to be to jot things down quickly as they are happening, and move past the stories that pass to quickly to be recorded. That being said, I do tell a lot of stories to my friends and family, and most of them are the sort that are too strange to have been made up. For example: on St. Patrick's Day I met some friends at a bar and was propositioned by a young man in the most ungraceful way possible (Do people really say "DTF" outside of the Jersey Shore? Really? And does it ever work?) before going home with his gay brother-slash-temporary-roommate, who cut my hair. Upon telling my father this story, he informed me that "I've come to expect that this is the sort of thing that happens on a regular basis in your life, so I've stopped worrying about it."

The fact is that, for about two weeks, it was hot in Chicago, the kind of hot that makes me nostalgic for Italy in June (with or without the infected mosquito bites). It may not be a big deal to people in Texas or Florida or below the Mason-Dixon Line in general, but those of us up in the frozen North generally expect to be shivering in our winter coats until well into April. Those two weeks of 80-plus-degree weather caught the entire city by surprise and between the weather and the impending holiday (St. Patrick's Day, during which the whole of reality shifts sideways and drunk becomes the standard, sober the exception), people did some crazy things.

My roommate, for example, informed me that she was moving out two months before our lease expired.

Without going too far into the situation--about which I am still fairly emotional--I will say that my roommate's sudden departure forced me to make a lot of plans very quickly. With rehearsals for Elijah increasing in frequency and free time becoming more and more scarce, my life devolved into chaos in a hurry. This past weekend, that chaos reached a climax: we gave four performances of the show, I competed at the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition, and most of the furniture in my house was packed up into a moving truck and driven back to Michigan. And then I came down with the epic cold virus making its way through the Elijah cast.

One of the most important things I continually forget about performing, particularly with a small cast, is that if one person in the cast gets sick, no matter how many precautions you take (handwashing, Vitamin C, sleep, fluids), you. will. catch. that. virus. I woke up Monday morning feeling as if I had swallowed a handful of razorblades. I have been sleeping on the couch because it takes too much effort to climb the stepladder up into my loft bed. Because I have a loft bed. Because I am an adult and because I can. I have also gone through nearly an entire box of Kleenex over the past three days, which is making me very glad that I decided to buy the three-pack of Kleenex boxes the last time I got groceries, before I got sick. As previously stated: I am a grown-up. BOOM.

So, given the chaos of the past month, my current task is to put my life back together. But, hell, at least I have a plan. The gas bill has been switched over to my name; cable service has been cancelled, since I haven't watched TV in almost a month, and I am now paying only for internet. Tomorrow I will switch over the electric bill to my name, and then the apartment is all mine. I am looking for a roommate to take the small bedroom for the summer. If I can set up a voice studio with 8-10 students during those three months, I can afford the place all by myself. And that would be something really amazing.

The Heights and the Depths, pt. I; or, the triumphs and trials of being BS

Well.

There is enough to say about the past few weeks, I think, to fill three or four blog entries. Suffice it to say that at the moment I feel very much as if I am living the part of Through the Looking Glass where Alice and the Red Queen have to run as fast as they can to stay exactly where they are, and while I'm not proud to say that I have been flighty and inconsistent and rapid mood swings have caused me to lash out at people  who absolutely don't deserve it, I am very pleased to have survived. So far.

First, the good: March provided me with about a thousand opportunities to hear early music. This was due partially to the fact that the Lyric's last production of the year was Handel's Rinaldo, featuring not one, not two, but three countertenors. A countertenor, for the uninitiated, sounds like this or this, and sings roles traditionally written for castrati--and I'll just let you Google that one on your own, because I don't feel like going into particulars about the methods and socio-political reasons behind the rise of the castrato voice in liturgical and secular music in the 16th and 17th centuries just now.

Never one to pass up the rare opportunity to see a countertenor In The Live (as opposed to on a CD, YouTube, or Met HD Simulcast, which is rare enough), I purchased the cheapest, nosebleediest tickets I could find for the first show which fell on a night off from Elijah rehearsal. A friend whose husband was covering the role sung by this fellow had warned me about the "loopiness" of the staging--something about a giant floating harpsichord with balloons attached--and, yes, the soprano heroine did spend approximately half the opera imprisoned in said floating harpsichord, but damn if the cast didn't take some of the most out-there staging I've seen and run with it. Rinaldo Team Chicago: I salute you for your commitment to duty, and while I'm sure it felt ridiculous, it looked amazing. In fact, it looked so amazing that I purchased tickets to see it again the following Friday and, during first intermission, sneaked from the upper balcony to the orchestra level so I could pay closer attention to the staging. The audience, apart from the destroyers-of-fun who walked out after the first act (we didn't want you there anyway), loved it, and, at one point, broke into applause three times during the opening aria of Act II.

Chicago's Baroque Band also presented two concerts featuring Maestro Harry Bicket (the conductor for Lyric's Rinaldo) and countertenor Iestyn Davies, who sang the role of Eustazio--thankfully, I have a friend who keeps abreast of local early music happenings and was able to let me know about this event before it happened. On March 9 we drove down to Hyde Park to see the first of these performances, featuring nearly two hours of Handel arias accompanied by a period-instrument orchestra. I believe my brain shorted out at some point during this performance, because all the description I can offer of this event can be expressed only in the form of an animated GIF:

For a couple of weeks, I was floating three inches off the ground. Handel! Countertenors! Improbably complicated plot devices! Coloratura with back-up dancers! All of this was a beautiful and welcome distraction from the looming sense of dread concerning my impending loss of health care coverage and the US government's apparent growing disregard for policies which benefit the majority of its constituency. Everything was going to be okay, and, with Holy Week coming up, I could at least take a one-off church gig to cover the extra money I spent in March in order to afford tickets to Rinaldo (twice!) and the Baroque Band concert. If I wasn't completely content (and who ever is, really?), at least I was hopeful for the future.

If past experience has taught me anything, however, it is that, the moment you begin to feel as if everything is going to be all right after all, some shock will come to drop the floor out from under you. This sudden sensation of falling is something to which I ought to be accustomed by now, but, yet again, it caught me completely off-guard . . . 

( . . . To be continued . . . )

A Degree in Calamity; or, BS's continued adventures in narrowly-averted disaster

Every performer, I have been told, has a recurring nightmare in which one finds oneself in the middle of a performance for which one is thoroughly unprepared.

This nightmare scenario just happened to me In Real Life.

In early November, I applied to participate in NATSAA (the National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Award), a biennial competition requiring vocalists to prepare an hours' worth of repertoire meeting a series of requirements relating to language, stylistic period, and composition date. The District competition was scheduled to take place on the 25th of February, allowing ample time for the competition's organizers to collect and review applications and make preparations for the event. This is, for the most part, what happened. 

Until the informational e-mail sent out in mid-January was eaten by the internet. This e-mail included, among other details relating to the event, the vital information that singers were to provide their own accompanists for the District and Regional auditions. It never arrived--was never even filtered into my Spam folder--so I did not receive this information until February 22. Three days before the competition. 

At this point I feel that it is important for me to point out that this type of crazy random happenstance is fairly typical of my luck--if there is a pit in the cherry pie or an eggshell in the brownie batter, that slice of pie or brownie usually finds its way to my plate. So, really, given my history, I probably should have expected something along the lines of an e-mail containing crucial information disappearing into the vastness of the internet and reached out to The Powers That Be much earlier. However, I did not. Instead, I waited. And then I had a crisis.

In the end, it took me all of about four hours to find a pianist--and, thank goodness, I found one who was  both willing to and capable of learning a recital program's worth of incredibly difficult music (Ravel and Marx and Barber, oh my!) in a span of 24 hours. We ended up winning Districts and, although I didn't win Regionals, the judges were very positive and encouraging. And so, NATSAA, I will see you again in two years, when I will no longer be the youngest competitor by a margin of 4-5 years.

My mother, who was a witness to this entire situation as it unfolded (including many tearful phone calls and a particularly harrowing last-minute search for a copy of Handel's Messiah), has offered the following advice: "Get used to it. You chose this life. Also, maybe you should start looking for a copy of the music you need before the day of a competition." Words to live by.

And I don't feel any different; or, BS does New Years

First of all: I am not going to make any jokes about the Apocalypse. I am sick to death of the word "Apocalypse" at this point. Since I am, in general, very interested in eschatological scenarios, this is a clear sign of how saturated our culture has become with end-of-world predictions of late. The world will not end in December 2012, and if it does, at least people will stop talking about how this is the year the Apocalypse is going to happen. Finally.

The New Year was rung in quietly at the BS household (that is, in my apartment): Mom drove me back to Chicago, since I refused to celebrate another New Year's Eve in my tiny hometown, and, since my roommate was working late for the holiday, we sat on the couch and snacked on apples and cheese and watched the 2009 BBC Emma. All four hours of it. I didn't get blitzed at some divey bar and I didn't watch the ball drop in Times Square--although at midnight someone in my neighborhood began setting off fireworks--because with every year that passes, New Year's Eve just makes me feel increasingly old. I mean, obviously, in terms of years spent on this earth, of course I get older every year, but now, where I used to be able to stay up till all hours drinking bottles of cheap red wine with friends and talking about which composers we'd most like to invite to a dinner party (Schubert, obviously, and maybe Puccini but definitely not Wagner), now just the merest idea of getting dressed up and going to some club to dance exhausts me. Graduate school, you have robbed me of my youth!

I have made a few New Year's resolutions, for once:

• Aided by Wii Fit, Zumba for Wii, and living in city of pedestrians, work out at least 4 times a week.
• Eat meals. Actual meals. Made of actual food. A spoonful of peanut butter does not count.
• And, most importantly--in the immortal words of The Specials (and Prince Buster before them, and Guy Lombardo first): "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think."

One thing I have been enjoying, and immensely, is reading. A good friend of mine, Lindsey, occasionally lends me a paper bag full of books she has read and enjoyed, and while in college/grad school I never got around to reading as many of those books as I meant to--although, through Lindsey's recommendations, I discovered several wonderful books I might have otherwise not looked twice at, like Neil Gaiman's American Gods or The Time Traveller's Wife (which was gorgeous, but terribly sad). At the moment, she has me reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog and it is SO FRENCH: the two main characters, whose shared occupation seems to be musing about the meaninglessness of life and the beauty found in simple things, have just had their first face-to-face interaction--nearly two hundred pages in. And I love it! It is a translation, albeit a very good one, and I would like to one day read it in the original French, as well as Muriel Barbery's first book, Gourmet Rhapsody (I have just looked up the book on Wikipedia to determine the correct spelling of Mme. Barbery's name, and, of course, she is a professor of philosophy, which is unsurprising, given the content and tone of the novel). A couple of reviews I came across dismissed The Elegance of the Hedgehog as "pretentious," or of being devoid of actual plot, but I, for one, don't find this problematic, especially when considering the alternative; Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons certainly have a lot going on but, when you get down to it, they are basically glorified self-insert fan fiction, where Dan Brown invents for his alter ego the discipline of "Symbology" (I always think of The Boondock Saints and Willem Dafoe here: "I think the word you're looking for is symbolism. What is the ssssssymbolism here?") and concocts improbable, if readable, stories in which he traipses across the globe with attractive women in whose presence he can display his considerable . . . ahem . . . knowledge. So, yes, with that in mind, I have no issue with reading an introspective, philosophical novel every now and again, between my re-readings of the Song of Ice And Fire series and Jane Austen's comedies of manners. And besides, what semi-intelligent person who paid attention in college writing classes doesn't cringe when someone grossly abuses grammar or selects the wrong your/you're, even when jotting a brief note?

I'm not a snob, really, I promise. I just love words, and I paid attention in school for twenty-one years, even when my grades (Music Theory) didn't reflect it.

But what else? I have been knitting and sewing like a fiend; during the month of December break I finished six projects, and an seventh upon returning to Chicago in the New Year. I have just cast on for a hat that I don't need, and will probably frog in the morning, but I need something to do with my hands to burn off all of this nervous energy. I finished a purse whose main panel features a tsunami print, of which I am immensely proud. It holds, at the very least, two books, my wallet and checkbook, a knitting project, and a bottle of wine, all without becoming unbearably heavy. Soon I plan to begin making headbands/earwarmers like the ones I have seen everyone wearing this season, with a knitted flower (I can't crochet, I'm sorry, it's a personality defect or something) and a button in the back. I do have those buttons I never managed to use in any of my projects . . .

So that's my life. I am busy. The things going on around me often seem surreal, but this is probably due to the fact that grown-up life moves so quickly, and, to keep up, I always seem to be running, running, running, phoning orchestras in Europe and putting the kettle on for another cup of tea before dashing off to a voice lesson or opera rehearsal. After four months of what felt like complete stasis, it is comforting to have settled into a routine and gained momentum. Life is good, for now.

Oh by golly; or, BS does Christmas

Christmas Eve! The holidays snuck up on me this year, probably due to the fact that I was working up until two days ago, so everything seems to be happening very suddenly. For example, wrapping presents! Well. Wrapping one, and writing IOUs for the two I haven't yet finished, because nothing says Christmas like an IOU in a box. 

What else says Christmas? My mother watching 2012 political ads promoting the Republican Presidential candidates, all of whom seem to be increasingly crazyface. Ron Paul has apparently ripped off a Ford Truck commercial. This is the latest news from the S house this afternoon. This holiday season, I am most thankful for politically progressive parents, especially my blog-reading mother. I wish as many people paid this much attention to political goings-on, as opposed to repeating the hated words: "I just really don't like politics." Well, yes, most people don't like politics, but as the goings-on of the government affect us on a daily basis, we should be involved, or at least aware of what is going on.

But I digress. It is Christmastime, and I am a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant looking to celebrate. I should point out right now that it has been a long time since Christmas represented anything terribly religious (the birth of Jesus not being anywhere near the most important event in Christianity--that distinction belongs to either the death or resurrection, in my opinion--and said birth not having even occurred on December 25, in any case), but rather a time of year to gather with friends and family and do nice things for each other. Colored lights, hot spiced wine, and animated holiday specials are also involved. To that end, I would like to share with you, dear reader(s), a list of my five favorite movies to watch at Christmas time. Aaaaand awayyyy we go:

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

A friend of mine once told me that, as a child, he had never seen the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas. "We had a VHS tape of all of these Christmas specials--Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman--and Charlie Brown was the last one, but the tape ran out five minutes from the end of the special, which made it really depressing: 'You suck, Charlie Brown. Go die. Aaaaaand, scene.'" I always thought the last five minutes felt a little tacked on, myself, but I do appreciate the character of Charlie Brown and his disillusionment with the modern commercialization and commodification of Christmas, and Schroeder's squabbling with Lucy Van Pelt over "Jingle Bells" makes me giggle every time I watch it. Charlie Brown, congratulations: you have made the list.

2. The Snowman (1982)

The Snowman, based on the children's book by Raymond Briggs, is the first video I remember watching as a child every winter. It is not, strictly speaking, Christmas-specific, but where stories about children befriending magically animated snowmen are concerned, I prefer this to the old Frosty the Snowman cartoons. As a child, I watched this 20-minute-long animated short on a beat-up VHS tape my parents had owned since, I assumed, the invention of the VCR. As an adult, I sought it out on DVD and now make friends and family watch it every year at wintertime. The plot, which follows a young boy and the snowman he has built as they sneak out of the house without waking the boy's parents, fly through the air to a snowman dance, and meet Father Christmas, is told entirely without dialogue, but through music. "Walking in the Air," the song which accompanies their flight to the North Pole, is still one of the most gorgeous pieces of music I have ever heard.

3. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

Firstly, I am absolutely not talking about the 2000 live-action film of the same name, starring Jim Carrey in the title role. That movie was awful, and does not even deserve to be considered in the same league as the 1966 TV special. So, to the explanation: I will confess to occasionally exhibiting Grinchlike tendencies during the holidays--a bit more subtle than Ebenezer Scrooge, I am less apt to "Bah Humbug!"than to wince at the noise from screaming children opening their toys, saying, "Oh my God, will you please shut up?!" This year, however, I am living with a roommate who is brilliant at living with a Grinch and insisted that we put up Christmas decorations, including multicolored lights with candy canes hanging from them, two days after Halloween, thereby effectively forcing me into the Christmas spirit. Also, we bake a lot, and baking makes me think of winter holidays. Since then, my heart has apparently grown three sizes from its previous two-sizes-too-small, because I cry at just about everything remotely sentimental. So, there. This is probably my favorite of all the Christmas TV specials, and not just because I find the stop-motion claymation specials from the 1960s and 70s incredibly creepy.

4. Peter and the Wolf (2006)

I am aware that Peter and the Wolf is not, strictly speaking, a Christmas film, but for some reason I always find myself watching it during the winter holidays, possibly because it is set during the Russian winter and features several characters who are animals and believe they are people? I guess? Either way, as the daughter of two musicians, I have always been aware of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, been able to sing all of the themes and identify their corresponding instruments, and have watched/listened to about a thousand different versions. Suzie Templeton's 2006 stop-motion animation is my favorite of all those I have seen. Maybe this preference is due to the fact that this version removes the traditional narrative voice-over, thus de-cluttering the story and allowing the music to move the plot along. I do know that I like the ending, which is unlike any Peter and the Wolf I have ever seen, and which tends more towards gritty realism than tacked-on happy endings. Either way, this animated short is stark and funny and sad and beautiful, and I look forward to forcing my friends and family to watch it with me for many years to come.

5. Nativity! (2009)

This one is a bit of a late edition, as I just recently had occasion to watch it when it was made available for Instant Streaming on Netflix. And oh. my. God. Martin Freeman, whom I have long considered to be The Perfect Human Being, stars as Paul Maddens, a failed actor-turned-primary-school-teacher, who has developed an antagonist relationship toward Christmas after being chucked my his girlfriend on Christmas Day but is nonetheless selected to direct a group of misfit students in the school's Nativity play, assisted by a character best described by the words "idiot man-child." And then everything goes horribly wrong. I laughed until I cried, and then I cried because it was all so heart-warming (again with the unexpected warming of my cold, black heart), and then I laughed a little more. I have loved Martin Freeman since he was Tim Canterbury on The Office, and I'm so pleased that he's finally getting a bit of international recognition with the success of Sherlock and the upcoming Hobbit films. So, Nativity? Watch it. The DVD isn't available in the United States (I've looked), but it is on Netflix.

And now I must be away, as it is about time to order the Traditional Christmas Burrito from the local biker bar/Mexican restaurant. No, I am not joking, except about the "Traditional" bit. My family, you guys. My family.

Living la vie boheme; or, Life imitates art

At last! After two weeks of sitting shivering in my makeshift home-office in front of the heating vent, fingerless mittens on, a scarf wrapped twice around my neck, and a blanket over my lap, I have located the source of the draft in our apartment. Unfortunately, all this gets me is a sense of accomplishment, since the draft is coming from our laundry room and I can't actually do anything about it. Later this week, I may stop by JoAnn to pick up some fleece to block the space between the door and the floor, because this is going to be ridiculous come Thursday.

A slew of knitting commissions rolled in suddenly a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm rushing to finish them all before Christmas. So far, the benefit of living in a cold climate seems to be an increased appreciation of warm hand-knit goods. In addition, there are two finished pairs of fingerless mittens about to be listed on my Etsy shop, and several purses worth of fabric to cut and construct. The sense of productivity helps my mood during the holiday season which, as usual, has its difficulties.

Here's the thing about the holiday season: every year, it seems as if society is scheming to make us all self-loathing between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. It's clearly no accident that the holiday season inevitably marks a sharp uptick in the amount of advertising money handed over to every major television channel by online dating services and weight-loss companies. The strategy is brilliant: as we head into a holiday characterized by gift-giving, we are told, as individuals, that we are somehow less complete because of our lack of material possessions. How do we regain our feeling of self-worth? By seeking out romantic relationships. What do we feel makes us more desirable to others? Weight loss. The  extreme self-denial required by most fad diets advertised on television leads to a feeling of physical emptiness, and to fill that void we purchase more material things, and so forth.

This is, of course, a long-winded explanation of (although certainly not a justification for) the utter Grinchiness I have been dealing with at work in recent days. Listen, I understand that most people don't have home phones any more, that text messaging has made us a more casual society, that fewer people are aware of the basic rules of etiquette, blah blah blah kids these days and their haircuts and their rock music, but there are a few important things to remember when working in an administrative setting and dealing with telephones. The doctor is in:

• When answering a telephone at your place of employment, please state its name, as well as your own name. This eliminates the need for the inevitable awkward "Have I reached the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? May I please speak with Albus Dumbledore?" exchange, in which the caller has not reached Hogwarts, but instead the Royal Philharmonic of Durmstrang.
• If you have questions, please ask them one at a time and allow a reasonable amount of time for a response between them.
• Never start a sentence with "I'm sure you're a lovely person, but . . . " because the second half of that sentence is rarely anything short of a thinly-veiled insult.
• It is rude to hang up on someone. It is rude to hang up on someone. Even if you said goodbye, if you cut the other person mid-sentence and did not hear them say "Goodbye" as well, you have still just hung up on someone. And you may just be a terrible person.

Do you know who I love so far, though? Every single person with whom I have spoken in Scandinavia, and most in Switzerland and Belgium. Attention, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and Belgium: the next time I have a party, you are all invited. Germany, you can swing by, too, but try not to start any fights--I've got my eye on you.

This new life as an Employed Person/Actual Productive Member of Society (as opposed to my previous state of Embarrassing Drain on Society) is nice, though. I'm tired almost all the time, but I'm insanely productive most of the time while still managing to cut down majorly on my coffee intake and sleeping the recommended number of hours per night. As a pleasant side-effect to getting enough sleep, the desire to punch someone in the face occurs far less frequently, which is important for reasons of I Don't Need An Assault Charge On My Record Right Now. At the moment, life feels a little bit like an indie comedy film, something between Garden State and Harold and Maude. And maybe a little bit like La Boheme, since I can't really afford to turn up the heating much above 65 degrees and, sometimes in my knitting, I make flowers that "ahimè, non hanno odore." My voice teacher said in my last lesson, "My God, so you're actually Mimi, huh?" Yes. Pretty much.

A sense of accomplishment; or, BS attempts productivity

I baked tonight, as anyone who has interacted with me at all via social media can tell you. And the thing about me is, when I decide to do something, it's rarely half-assed. In this case, a decision to bake in celebration of the completion of Boheme's iTunes recording and imminent opening (Saturday night! Saint John Cantius! Get yer tickets!) turned into nearly four dozen cookies and fifteen blueberry muffins. Another (little-known?) BS fact: I don't often eat much of my own baking. With the exception of loaves of bread, I generally make things for the sense of accomplishment it gives me, have two or three, and give the rest away. This was especially true during the rehearsal period of Hansel and Gretel last fall, when I lived alone and suffered from a significant amount of character bleed that led to much baking experimentation.

It's been a long time since I've shown my face here. Depression (in retrospect, probably circumstantial and due in large part to my state of unemployment) is to blame, of course, but I'm not going to go into that in any depth, as the brilliant Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half recently dealt with the same thing and addressed it more brilliantly than I could ever hope to.

Very suddenly, though, I'm feeling all right. Last week I visited my parents--which is, let's face it, an excuse to see my grouchy sixteen-year-old cat rather than an expression of my desire to return to the small town where I attended high school--and it was nice to get out of the apartment for a while, however nice said apartment is (and it is--Stephanie just decorated for Christmas, so it's all very homey). I drank coffee and read a book and considered going to see a high school production of Phantom of the Opera before experiencing a return to sanity and subsequent decision to not see Phantom after all.

Oh, Phantom of the Opera. My relationship with that musical is fairly complex. Here's the thing--despite the fact that it is the bane of every single opera singer's existence ("What do you do?" "I sing opera." "Oh, like Phantom of the Opera?" "No. Not even."), I actually sort of enjoy it. The music is pretty and easy to listen to in the first half and, given half the chance, I would play Carlotta in a second because she's hilarious. The whole thing is written to be a complete spectacle, which is why I would have loved to see it in Las Vegas last spring had I not gotten so sick during my time there. But the writing is just cruel, especially to the Phantom and Christine--the approach to the Eb in the title song is about as difficult to sing as anything. Never mind the fact that I worry about a seventeen-year-old soprano singing a high E in the first place, even if it is within the reaches of her range. So I thought better of it. Also, my mom didn't feel like going, so we went to dinner instead.

To get to my hometown and back, I took Amtrak, and had the wildest of all possible times on both trips--at least as far as train travel is concerned. On the way there, I sat a few seats away from a toothless and possibly drunk man who had apparently fainted in Union Station while waiting to board the train, and who spent a good deal of the hours-long trip attempting to engage those of us around him in awkward conversation and having a very loud and vulgar conversation with someone who I believe to be his . . . girlfriend? wife? I know it isn't polite to eavesdrop, but, honestly, even with my iPod in I couldn't help but overhear him as he shouted down the phone about how, yes, he loved her more than his previous what-have-you, and that's why he was going to get a tattoo with her name, and he was going to get the tattoo of his ex-wife's name removed as soon as he had the money.

And then on the train ride back, I contracted what might have been food-poisoning and vomited in the train car's restroom. There are some places where no one wants to worship at the porcelain altar, and the Amtrak train's restroom definitely makes the top three. The girl sitting next to me on the train was extremely nice about the fact that I repeatedly had to get up and go to the restroom, and after we finally arrived in Chicago, a very nice man saw that I was exhausted to the point that I was completely unable to lift my suitcase and did it for me, asking me if I was feeling all right, but none of this makes up for the fact that a pair of nice-looking Amish (or possibly Mennonite, given where I was coming from) gentlemen undoubtably heard me performing reverse peristalsis and probably assumed I was some drunken young English suffering the earthly consequences of the previous evening's sinful behaviors.

And I would most definitely be asleep by now, but while baking I forgot that I was also doing laundry, so the dry cycle began much, much later than I had intended and now I'm waiting until I hear it finish so the sneaky Polish dental students upstairs don't steal my socks or, whatever, I know they actually would never do that, but I like to know where my panties are. There's so much more to tell, such as why I am actually paying attention to when I go to bed--which is that I am employed and it's a Guy Fawkes Day miracle. I won't say just now what it is I'm doing, but needless to say, it involves phoning both Russia and Italy on a semi-regular basis and, no, I'm not in the Mob.

I think I'll just let (those of) you (who don't know me in Real Life) wonder about that for now.

Tick-tock goes the clock; or, BS gives an update on the state of BS

I just took two Chlorpheniramine Maleate pills and a Tylenol PM, so this post is a bit of a race against the clock--how many words can BS manage before she loses consciousness? Coherent thinking is already a bit of a challenge (but isn't it always, really?), but if nothing else, there's a possibility I'll get a laugh out of this in the morning.

(That makes one of us.)

The last time I sat down and wrote an entry here, I was finishing up my first temp position. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, I am headed off to start a second position--underemployment is a sad, sad, way to live when you're in your twenties--and this time I will be taking inventory of public parking spaces for the company that manages the city's parking meters. What this means, as I have been led to understand it, is that I'm basically being paid to take a long walk on my own while occasionally writing things down, and, what's more, during my favorite season. The ungodliness of the hour aside (because, really, 7am is cruel), I'm actually pretty excited about this assignment, given that the four days I work are nonconsecutive. As long as no one mistakes me for someone who writes parking tickets, this should be just fine.

What else, what else? I learned that my upstairs neighbors are Polish dental students at the nearby university, and that they occasionally have get-togethers in our house's back yard with their Polish dental student friends, where they sit around speaking Polish and doing Polish things, like cooking sausages and drinking vodka. I had made a batch of cookies on Friday evening, which I brought out to share with them since it's good to get to know one's neighbors, in my opinion, and to reassure them that you are not some weird recluse who sings opera at inappropriate hours of the night and barely leaves the house except to buy coffee to enjoy while reading biographies about manic-depressive Dutch painters, of course you are not. In fact, I had meant to bring some of those cookies to a friend's house the next day, since she was doing a Mary Kay product demonstration, but the baked goods were, it must be said, annexed by Poland. On the whole, though, I must say, well done, Polish-speaking, vodka-drinking, potluck-having housemates, you kids definitely know how to throw a party, and the back yard wasn't even too disastrous-looking the next day. Although--it must be said--there has been a charred hamburger sitting on one of the multiple outdoor grills back there for probably three weeks, and I have no idea where the cover that goes to that grill has got to, and frankly, I'm a little afraid to ask.

It's autumn, so of course I'm baking again. Some day I will branch out from chocolate-and-butterscotch-chip cookies, but for now they're pretty delicious. I have some ideas about cinnamon-raisin bread, and there's got to be a recipe in one of the four zillion cookbooks we have sitting around the apartment. The Roommate and I obviously can't manage to eat six dozen cookies on our own--or, I guess, we could, but it wouldn't be very good for us--so I have been bagging them up and bringing them to the baristas at the Starbucks near my apartment. As it turns out, giving people baked goods is generally a good way to make them like you--at least temporarily, and only as long as you're actually okay at baking.

Aaaaaand I've started to go a little cross-eyed, so that plus the knowledge that my alarm is set for six means that I should probably climb up into my bed and wait for sleep. It figures, I guess, that the one night I actually have things to talk about--the show I'm in, the production of Lucia di Lammermoor I saw last night, how much it warms my cold black heart to see protestors carrying their homemade signs to Occupy Chicago on the Blue Line train--also happens to be the night I'm teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Well done, universe. I salute you.

- - -

E.T.A., four minutes later
Tagging these things is always such an adventure. I briefly considered adding a tag called productive member of society, but after about forty-five seconds of deep thought, I decided that anything I could discuss there could also probably be filed under the heading of grown-upitude. So there you go. I have also added a tag called almost unconscious, which I suspect will see a lot of action in the coming weeks/months/LIFETIME.

I'll get you a copy of that memo; or, BS's long-standing affair with office supplies

It's nice to know that, if this music thing doesn't work out, or if it at some point becomes something which no longer makes me happy, I have a promising and enjoyable career option in office work. Because I've been temping for a nonprofit this week, and, you guys, the love for alphabetizing which emerged when, as an eight-year-old, I categorized and alphabetized my parents' VHS collection (and then alphabetized the categories), has not diminished with age. As a temp, I have basically been given free run of the office supplies, so since Monday I have been merrily filing invoices and collating documents and making piles and putting sticky notes on things.

The four or so of you reading this, I'm sure, are probably thinking, "God, what an unrepentant dweeb this BS character is. Who actually looks forward to arranging things in alphabetical order?" Answer: I do. Also, sticky notes are the best.

In all seriousness, though, the best part of finally being assigned to a temp position is that I feel less like a useless drain on society and more like a Competent Grown-Up Human Being who pays bills! and wears trousers! and goes on coffee runs while her superiors are in meetings! One day I did wear a skirt to work, but after a particularly harrowing lunchtime venture to the staffing agency to drop off my tax documents in which the wind repeatedly blew my skirt up above my knees and I traversed the sidewalks of the Chicago Loop clutching at its hem like Paranoid Marilyn Monroe, I thought better of that decision and went back to slacks the next day.

It has been nice this week having some occupation to take my mind off things going on in the rest of the country, which, frankly, terrify and confuse me. On Wednesday night I sat wrapped in a blanket watching the DemocracyNow live broadcast of the nonviolent demonstration against the execution of Troy Davis (the link, as if any of you were unaware of the case after its coverage this week), wondering exactly when we as a country began executing prisoners whose guilt could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt--and before the question is asked, yes, I am aware that a second man was executed that same night in Texas, but although I believe that the death penalty is heinous and immoral no matter what crime it punishes, I cannot find myself feeling upset over the death of a man who confessed to a hate crime and, just prior to his death, admitted that he would do it all again if given the chance. I have also been, in my spare moments, following the protest on Wall Street, of which I have seen almost no media coverage, which surprises me, given the extreme importance of its message: that it is wrong for the government to grant tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans while offering no such amnesty to those living at or below the poverty line. Sometimes I check the status of bills which would affect educators in my home state (including my parents and sister) on the Michigan Educator's Association website, but mostly that breaks my heart. I am ignoring the Republican Presidential Debates as much as is possible in a 24-hour-TV-news culture, and not just because I burst into hysterical giggles whenever anyone says "Santorum" (if you don't understand why that name brings out my inner thirteen-year-old boy, and if you have a strong stomach, Google it).

The world is disappointing, I'm realizing a little bit more every day. Is this what growing up means? As we get older, do we just gradually accept that the world isn't as shiny or logical as we thought it was? And my response to this overwhelming sense of disappointment is, I'm finding, to find joy in small things: sticky notes, opinionated kittens, pretending to be a secret agent, pluots, fingerless mittens.

Promise I'm not dead; or, This is mostly a list

I rode the Red Line back north from rehearsal tonight before taking a cab the rest of the way home and had a nice chat with one of the Boheme chorus baritones--I was telling him about how I spend so much time alone, and how for a couple of weeks I was insanely productive, baking bread and cleaning all the things and basically being very housewifely for someone who is neither married nor planning to be, but at some point I was just bored with no one to share ideas with.

Anyway, here are a few unremarkable things that have happened to me since I last wrote anything here:

1. I have knitted two pairs of fingerless mittens and started on a third, which are pink. Pink.
2. As an experiment, I tried Greek yogurt with honey, because I wanted to know what all the fuss is about. And the verdict is: acceptable. It certainly breaks up the monotony of a diet composed primarily of granola and prunes. I am an old woman at 25.
3. I have gotten my roommate addicted to Doctor Who. I started her on the first episode of the fifth series, and she likes Matt Smith. The Weeping Angels episodes gave her a nightmare, which means she is human. In related news, I have cried watching the two most recent episodes of Doctor Who.
4. The Tigers clinched the AL Central Division. I bought two bottles of wine, because it is going to be a long postseason.
5. My mother visited me today--yesterday? Saturday--and took me grocery shopping, because I am, if not destitute, then at least underemployed. At the deli counter, I asked for provolone and the man working there asked me how I wanted it sliced. I was very confused. Um, with something sharp? Into slices? Then he clarified that he was referring to the thickness of the slices. I have never been asked that question at a deli before. It made my whole day feel surreal.
6. While my mother was here, we ate lunch at a diner in Boystown, where we were served by a very friendly waiter who showed me his tattoos (I was impressed) and gave me Halloween costume advice (I was grateful).
7. I spend a lot of time reading in the Starbucks near my apartment because it is one alternative to sitting in my apartment all day watching trashy reality TV. Recently, a barista's name and phone number were written on the side of my cup--I don't even know, I'm pretty sure it was a prank played on the owner of said cell phone. I sent a text to the number pretending to be an undercover CIA agent, because I am a Grown Up and that is what I do when I receive an unsolicited phone number. If anybody knows what "The mongoose has left the henhouse" means, there is probably something very wrong with you, because I made it up.
8. I have never seen a mongoose, or even a picture of one. I only know they exist because of a 1980s cartoon adaptation of Rikki-Tikki Tavi my family had on VHS when I was a kid.

That's all for now, I think. It's almost 4:30 a.m. now, so clearly I can't be bothered with being witty. I just wanted to put it out there: "I am alive! I am not dead! I hope life gets easier soon!"

More of the same; or, Yeah, whatever, I guess

My recent neglect of this blog has been pretty shameful, I'll admit.

But, in all honesty, nothing much has been going on here, so there wasn't a whole lot to report, apart from my newly rediscovered love of formulaic dance films (Step Up 3, you gorgeous thing, I am looking at you) and my continued unemployment, so there you have it.

I've sent out resumé after resumé after resumé over the past few weeks with very little response, although I do have one "recruitment seminar" on the retail end of an incredibly successful company tomorrow afternoon, so fingers crossed that I don't get lost in the shuffle of potential employees. I'm sending out about seven more resumés and cover letters tonight for administrative positions, and hoping that this dry spell of mine (in many aspects of my life, not just professionally) is winding down, because--here's an unsurprising revelation--housewifery is not really my bag. That's why I was never really showed much interest in the "wife" part of it. But lately my life has involved emptying the dishwasher, doing laundry, baking bread (which, actually, I haven't done in a week or so, so I'll make that a weekend project), and watching a lot of trashy reality television--and to that end, why has no one told me about Dance Moms before now? It's like Toddlers and Tiaras except infinitely more horrifying, and it absolutely exemplifies everything I hate about whitewashed upper-middle-class suburbia--so obviously I can't stop watching.

A recent upper respiratory virus managed to coincide with a bout of fairly severe depression, which, if I'm being fair, is probably caused at least in part by this feeling of not having anything to do during the day, so at least depression hasn't hampered my fast and furious distribution of resumés. If anything, it has caused me to send out more applications, since the resulting insomnia gives me more time to do so. Insomnia, by the way? Also not my bag. So I've got my fingers crossed that something will turn up, even if it's part-time and for minimum wage, because I'm pretty much over this constant feeling of ennui.

It occurs to me now that if I had both a) more money, and b) more patience, I could take up playing video games. The patience part has historically been my problem, though, especially when there are zombies, constrictive time limits, or jumping puzzles involved.

(The Oxford commas just keep on coming)

I'm going to be honest, I really just want to add to my "dreams" tag, so I'll mention that the other night I made the mistake of drinking alcohol and then taking cold medicine, which resulted in a pretty spectacular and unsettling drug-dream in which Draco Malfoy and I were told we were staying in a nice hotel somewhere in the continental United States with a bunch of other students (in this dream I was still a student, but I'm not sure of what, or from where), but soon realized that we had instead been tricked into participating in some sort of experiment where we were kept in a full-scale replica of Rome's Ancient City, given cannons and gunpowder, and watched to see how quickly the group could create its own society from nothing and then how quickly that society would unmake itself. So, yeah. That happened.

But returning to the subject of things that are Actually Happening in my Real Life, and on a more positive note, the newest man in my life is a potted rhododendron named Irving, who, despite my complete lack of a nurturing instinct, seems to be thriving in his little spot on my bedroom windowsill, right beside the Waldorf and Statler beanies I bought at Disney World forever ago. I don't know how he does it, but he seems to have figured out a way to not only reach toward the sunlight, but even grow, even though I continually forget to water him. So there's one thing I'm doing well right now--Irving. Irving is all right.