Melissa's Mind Sweeper

Sumer is a goin oot..

2010-09-02T19:10:00.008-04:00

Greetings from the tail end of ~~sumer~~ summer. As is usual this time of year (for the past three years) I decided to go down to the pool that I haven't been to all summer long because I'm too lazy. If it weren't for Goal 63 I'd never go at all, I guess.

I know I know I know all three years I've worn the same black bathing suit, so I thought I'd show a picture of the pool pass to prove it was really this year and not last year's pictures dragged out again...Because I know how skeptical and distrustful people can be.

And by the way, I fit into the bathing suit a LOT better now, though I'm not mercifully as skinny as I look in the floating picture. That image is totally an illusion, a product of some light refraction thing I managed to resist learning about in high school physics.

I kick myself every time for not remembering how nice it is in the pool. And how stupid is it that on yet another day this summer when we have record heat, I'm sitting in my office FREEZING. I'm wrapped up in a fleece shawl drinking green tea.

Musicophilia

2010-09-02T11:46:00.009-04:00

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Oliver Sacks

Interesting Fact that I Didn't Know until I Read the Wikipedia Entry Just Now: Sacks's middle name is Wolf. Also a lot of scientists don't like him. To some, he is a better writer than scientist, one critic remarking on Sacks's "idiosyncratic and anecdotal approach."

Another interesting fact: you can't download an image of the book cover that won't have that "Look inside" link attached to it.

Oliver Sacks, as you probably know, is the real-life hero of the movie Awakenings (starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro), based on his book of the same name, about a neurologist who treats people suffering from a 1920s sleeping sickness. His actual work in that field has been criticized for not being scientifically thorough, the studies not double-blind, and what-have-you. Still and all, Awakenings is a pretty bloody terrific story, and there are some awfully good stories in Musicophilia as well.

There’s an amazing tale of a musician who almost completely loses his memory. Not just past memories, but any memory at all, say of what was at the beginning of a sentence just uttered. Can you imagine how debilitating?! For some reason, he was able always to recognize his wife when she visited him and was overjoyed to see her, and was also able to play and conduct music.

If you’re very into music, especially classical, you will find most of this book riveting. I did not realize, for instance, that the way one’s brain processes music is broken down into different aspects of it. Sacks and other scientists know this through people whose brains have been damaged. One person might lose the ability to distinguish pitch, another any sense of rhythm.

Another fascinating thing is how music can help heal people with brain injuries. In particular, Sacks’s final chapter on Alzheimer’s patients is profoundly moving. His assertion that even advanced Alzheimer’s patients still possess their souls—and that it becomes evident when you play music to them—really resonated with me. (My mother-in-law is an Alzheimer’s patient.)

It’s always annoying to me reading books with copious footnotes, and this book was no exception. Anybody else have this issue? I try to ignore the footnote numbers in the body of the text, but as a compulsive reader, I can’t just turn the page and continue the flow of a narrative and leave footnotes on the page unread. I prefer endnotes—then if I really want to have something elaborated on, I can turn to the back and read it. But that’s annoying too…

Now I’m reading a book with no footnotes—David Sedaris’s When You Are Engulfed In Flames. I just started it this morning on the subway, and Sedaris is proving to be awfully good company.

Horace Leighton Kelley 1922-2010

2010-07-25T16:26:00.005-04:00

My father died early in the morning on April 29th. We had very little warning.

He had a rich, full life and was loved by so many people. It is a constant ache in my life now that he is gone.

I took this picture the morning of his funeral in Kentucky. I was sitting in my mother's bedroom being all distraught, and she said "I'm going to go cut you a rose; I think you need one." So she did--one of the really fragrant floribunda roses that grows at the corner of the porch. (I'm not sure whether she thought I needed cheering up or that my outfit was way too somber. I was the only one in all black, but then I wear all black an awful lot. I work in NYC after all.) I pinned it at the collar and wore it all day. I still have the dried petals and they still smell.

I was still pretty distraught when I decided I'd take this picture of the rose and my father's photo. As you can see he was a really handsome man--movie-star handsome. And my mother looks pretty awesome, too. They were an incredible couple. I'm so glad, after my first fears for her, that she seems to be handling things pretty well.

Needless to say, this event threw me for a loop for a couple of months. But I'm recovering.

You just never have all the time you think you're going to have.

Sabbatical is over.

2010-07-22T16:46:00.005-04:00

It's been a while. But I have been very busy and not neglecting my goals! Just so you know.

I've also been very, very busy being a grandmother. So here is a nice picture of Baby Jack and his lovely mother. More posts on the way...I have a lot of catching up to do.

Poem of the Month - "Anyway"

2010-04-04T21:34:00.011-04:00

This is known in some sources as Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem, because she apparently had it posted in her room. I don't myself actually consider it a poem; it's just a fairly plain-spoken philosophy that has some symmetry to it. Our priest quoted it in his Easter sermon this morning, and I liked it--enough to remember it and go google it when I finally got home. In a sense, it's about being stubborn, which I kind of am, so that must be what appeals to me about it.

Happy Easter.

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES

2010-04-02T16:32:00.005-04:00

Okay, I know I know I know I've been a really terrible blogger lately, but 1) my day job has suddenly gotten extremely busy!!!!! which is where I was largely composing my posts during slack time and now there is no slack time, and 2) I am now a devoted grandmother which can be very time consuming. When I'm not actually babysitting or visiting, I have to spend a lot of time on the computer obsessively poring over the voluminous photograph archives and watching videos over and over again.

But I will try to make it up to you: here is a beautiful photo of Baby Jack:

And just to show you that he can look as silly as any other regular baby who is not The Most High Regal Baby Jack, here is my latest iPhone grab from my last babysit:

And....The Second Fatbet is over! I lost. BUT I also lost 8.2 pounds!!!!! YAY!!!!! That's what's so neeeet about Fatbets; it's a lose/lose situation. Even if you know you probably won't win the bet, you're motivated to get as much as you can for your money. Or in this case, lose as much as you can. If my math is right, and it always is, I spent $12.20 per pound lost. Wouldn't you?

So I am now--*drumroll*--only 1.8 pounds away from my Goal 45-Weigh ≤130!

The Fatbet Ladies are going to meet in Midtown for dinner on April 21st. I decided I would extend my bet 'til then: I told them if I had not reached ≤130 by then, I would buy all their entrees. That ought to motivate me.

In other news, my new wardrobe (per Goal 78 - Go clothes shopping with someone knowledgeable and come back with at least two good outfits) is growing by leaps and bounds, and I'm getting a reputation as a fashionista!!!! Somebody whose looks I revere (who is also young enough to be my daughter) asked me if I would pick out a new wardrobe for her!!! I had to, sadly, inform her that I have no taste whatsoever in clothes and that my wardrobe was the work of a professional. Note, though, that I didn't actually pay anybody, even though I was prepared to. I just went into Variazioni between rehearsals because they were having a winter coat sale and I needed a new coat, and there was this nice swanky looking saleslady who outfitted me for free because I had the bright idea of saying, "Show me something else that I should buy." From there on, it was all downhill. I also went in several days later and she had another go at my wallet. All very, very much worth it. Yes, I know, I don't have any pictures to prove it yet, but there will be some. The other day I bought a silver raincoat! :-)

AND--*drumroll*--I have almost achieved the impossible: to wit, Goal 31 - Get all papers filed! I did this by throwing some money at the situation and hiring an assistant. Believe me it has been worth it. She found some checks for $200 plus--actually she also found a $2000 plus check, but it turned out to be already dealt with. I'm telling you, being disorganized can really cost you money!!!

More on that later. We're still working.

I deserve all kinds of congratulations, so as Mizfit likes to say (who by the way has a must-read post today), please to hit us up in the comments!

(Psst...Fitbit, Inc. Rocks)

2010-02-15T13:15:00.006-05:00

(Don't tell anybody, but they gave me a new Fitbit for free because I have been so nice to them.)

(NB: This is not their usual policy. And I was totally prepared to buy a new one--I ordered it, appending a pitiful message about how much I missed it and needed it right away, and they e-mailed me a nice note that they had cancelled the order and were sending me one post-haste in return for valuable information about how I lost it and how I used it so that they could improve their product.)

(I just had to tell somebody how wonderful they are. I did ask them if they preferred me not to mention the replacement publicly--not that this blog is all that public--and I did not hear back. The ONLY time they have not been responsive. But I just have to say, don't expect free replacements in the event of loss...though if you do buy one you can expect a great product and sterling customer service!)

And BTW, the Fatbet is going swimmingly. For everybody but me, that is...I seemed to be stalled out at about minus three pounds. Still have some time though...

I seem to be bogged down in ellipses today...

Upcoming: I knocked off Goal 78 (Go clothes shopping with someone knowledgeable and come back with at least two good outfits) and exceeded my goal to an amazing extent. More on this later. ScottieDog keeps trying to take pictures of my new outfits, but we are really not good fashion photographers. For one thing, he's so tall and all the pictures he takes are from above which make me look like I'm about four feet tall and as wide. We'll get that figured out sooner or later...

... ...

Must We Be Idiots? (No...)

2010-02-13T14:29:00.009-05:00

Every now and then it will occur to me that I'm an idiot. Not generally, just about one particular thing or other.

I've been working really hard knocking off a bunch of goals, and actually revising some that I didn't really care about to others that I did actually want to accomplish, like re-organizing my kitchen.

I should actually break that down into smaller goals, but what the heck.

Today I organized my antique pie safe! Which I am actually using as a kitchen cabinet, there not being many of the ordinary variety in my approximately 10-foot-square kitchen). Here's a "before":

What you don't see in this picture is all the stuff I DO use stacked all over the dining room table and the wine rack and sitting on the floor behind doors and stuff. Why on earth would I be storing a whole bunch of stuff I never use in this cabinet???? Idiocy!

So I rolled up my sleeves and started looking at the junk in there as though I'd never seen it before. Like those humongous schooners up on the top of the cabinet--we never use those, and they just sit up there and get covered with greasy dust. Out they went. Also out went serving dishes we never use, a set of old measuring cups I didn't even know were in there, a whole dish full of water bottle caps...you get the idea.

Now I have room to put all the humongous wine glasses I got for Christmas! Plus some of the old ones. And the Chardonnay glasses I'm planning to buy.

After I clean out the bottom of the cabinet--NOT looking forward to that--I'm going to put all the random Rubbermaid containers down there, and possibly the KitchenAid mixer which is now sitting on the floor next to the new Cuisinart.

You'll notice the top of the cabinet is slightly less picturesque than before, but that's because I decided to put only stuff that we actually use up there every now and then, like the wok, so it doesn't sit there for ages and get the greasy dust thing going on.

There were Splenda packets in the right drawer that must have been eight years old. And I swear we must have fourteen boxes of birthday candles...I have to be selective what I put in these drawers because they don't open and close very easily. This is a VERY OLD piece of furniture. Well, by American standards, anyway--circa 1810.

So NOW I have a whole bunch of stuff to throw out/store/give away stacked on the dining room table and sitting on the floor, etc. Wonder how long it will stay there...

As a reward for reading all the way to the bottom of this very boring post, here's a bonus picture of the spice system I put up several months ago and having been meaning to brag about. I don't have room for a spice rack anywhere, and I've never liked them anyway because you're limited to however many the rack will hold and if it held a lot it would be a great big thing to have sitting around in your kitchen. Anyway, I heard one day about magnetic spice containers, and I went straight online and bought some. I forget how much the whole thing cost--I guess about $75. But what's it worth not to spend your entire cooking life having to dig around for the spice you want and usually knocking several of them off the shelf unless you keep them in a drawer like I used to but can't now because I have no drawers to spare. And I can always buy more jars if I need them. I even keep them in alphabetical order (except ScottieDog keeps putting them back wrong). (But that's okay because I really appreciate his cooking.)

BTW that yellow apron was a Christmas gift from the lovely AC! Isn't it the cutest thing? It has rickrack on it.

BLEccchh!

2010-01-23T19:40:00.009-05:00

"I'm so sorry, Grandmother!"

Week of utter disaster (in three parts).

1. Massachusetts discovers its inner idiot.

2. The Supreme Court issues the worst decision in the history of the court.

(I went to a lot of trouble to write the following for a post elsewhere, so I'm pasting it in various places.)

[getting up on my soapbox]

From the WSJ: "the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech."

Here's the problem (aside from the issue of whether corporations are people): they keep conflating money with speech. Everybody already has free speech in this country. It isn't as though a corporation can't issue as many press releases as they want in support of whatever they want, or an individual can't get up on a soapbox in the town square or write a letter to the editor or sign a petition without fear of persecution.

What is at issue here is that money is not speech. It is power. Those who have more money have more power. If you conflate that with speech, then those who have more money have more free speech? What kind of democracy is that?

Speech will no longer be "free." You'll have to pay through the nose to keep up with what the corporations are doing.

AND...

3. I lost my Fitbit. I was babysitting the adorable Baby Jack (see above), and he kicked it out of my pocket, or kicked it loose enough to fall out when I went home, and I feel bereft and abandoned. We can't find it anywhere. I put in a Lost and Found inquiry to the MTA, but it takes ten days at least to find out anything. So I just bought a new Fitbit--I figured somebody somewhere could use the extra if it turned up--but that won't get here until the middle of February.

BUMMER.

But at least there's a sweet picture of Baby Jack.

In Love with my Fitbit!

2010-01-07T15:07:00.007-05:00

Well, hey, everyone!

I have been super busy with holidays and packing on some poundage, but all to the good since I've just gone on another FatBet today!

I'm so pleased to be starting at exactly 140. That's counting the holiday poundage, but before that I was maintaining my last weight (after the last FatBet) pretty darn well. This time we have four people! $400 is on the line, and ten pounds is the goal. If I get to 130 I will be thrilled, since that's Goal 45.

But about my Fitbit...*sigh* It's the greatest. We are never apart! We even sleep together. I found out on the Fitbit community site that people are naming their trackers! Well, they're so cute--but somehow I'm not catching on; "Fitbit" seems like a good enough name to me.

Check out my sleep charts for today! I got a 100% efficiency on my nap!! I really zonked out. (You can't see the time in this shot, but it was 32 minutes.) My first 100%! And last night I got 90%. That's pretty good--usually I get in the low 80s. (Sorry about the low picture quality; I had to shoot the screen with my iPhone. I couldn't do a screen grab.)

Yesterday I got all 10,000 steps in and my activity score was up in the 800s (1000 is the goal). That was undoubtedly because I was babysitting Baby Jack!!! And I know you're dying to see a picture, so here you go:

(Well, okay, it's three pictures, but it's not like you can have too many.)

I got to feed him peas and rice cereal!! Every time I gave him the peas, he went "mmmmm!" God, I love being a grandmother.

Fitbit! Better than FatBet?

2009-12-18T13:07:00.007-05:00

So far, the answer to that question would have to be yes. The FatBet was truly motivating, and I spent some quality time with my friends who were in it with me. I don't really miss the social interaction, because everybody wants to look at my Fitbit Tracker and ask me questions! There is also a function on the website interface where you can invite friends and compare scores. I'm going to see if I can goad some people into joining me there. It's so motivating, you don't really need to plunk down the money for a FatBet. You don't even necessarily have to buy a tracker (it's $99 plus shipping), you can enter your stats and food and activities.

But the tracker is SOOOO CUUUUTE. And so fun! I'm so glad mine finally shipped. And I'm glad that they refused to send it out until they had worked out all (or hopefully most) of the kinks.

You can see how little it is--just two inches long. They keep calling it "thumb-sized" but really it's smaller. At least smaller than my thumb, and my hands aren't that big.

Below is what the readout looks like. (Sorry it's fuzzy, but it's so tiny you have to get really close. I can however read the numbers without my glasses.) You press a little button and it shows you how many steps you've taken that day. (My goal is 10,000.) You press it again, and it shows how many miles you've gone. Another click and it shows the calories you've burned. One more click and you get a little blue flower that grows as you get closer to your goal! (Shoot, I should have taken a picture of that.)

A really cool feature of the tracker is that you can put it into sleep mode and wear it to bed. There's a silky-soft cuff that you put on, and it has a little pocket for the tracker. It records your movement during the night, and can give you a pretty good picture of how well (or not) you're sleeping. Last night I got a score of 89%. I'm not sure how good that is. I was awake from 3:00 to 4:00. This morning I checked the interface online and got a very interesting chart that showed my sleep pattern during the night.

I like the Fitbit interface too. Entering your food for the day is a lot easier than using the Weight Watchers interface! And it has all kinds of little charts that automatically generate and tell you how you're doing.

The Fitbit support people are superlative. I had a glitch downloading the software--just a strange fluke that they had never heard of before--but the support people responded very quickly, and I was up and running in no time. Yesterday I even complained to them about a grammatical error. Today I got an email saying, "Thank you for noticing this and we will contact the website administrator about it." :-) [UPDATE: They actually corrected the error!!! OMG.]

So we'll see how this goes...I'll be posting more about it as I follow the program. (And I lost a half a pound already.)

Mission Accomplished!

2009-12-09T14:31:00.013-05:00

Goal 5 - Attend The Nutcracker

Melissa in the ticket line

I was SO JAZZED by this you have no idea!!! ScottieDog said he'd never seen me so happy at a performance. [Actually that might be an overstatement. I was pretty darn happy at Spamalot!] It was SO. GREAT. Scott said it was certainly the best production he'd ever seen, so much better in fact that he enjoyed it thoroughly all over again.

Well hey, it's Balanchine, after all. What I didn't know is that Balanchine essentially rescued The Nutcracker from relative obscurity and established it as a Christmas classic at the NYCBallet in 1954. I had been assuming it always was--like Handel's Messiah--from day one. But apparently when it was first performed in Russia, people kind of went "meh..." Amazing.

All the little kids were great! And the mouse costumes were amazing! And the big Christmas Tree! Oh gosh... And the dancing! And the snow!

I could go on and on.

Here are some random shots of the evening:

Clockwise from the upper left: 1) the David H. Koch Theater, 2) the humongous stage, 3) Melissa by the newly renovated computer automated Lincoln Center Fountain, though it wasn't doing much at the time, 4) two big strong ladies in the lobby who do great things for Melissa's body image.

(ScottieDog has some great pictures on his iPod that I might post later.)

Then we went out to an Irish pub that turned out to be the hangout for the ballerinas and the ballet guys (ballerinos?). Several of the principal dancers came in after us and sat down at the table in the picture. But by then I was not in a picture-taking mode, being busy with my Southern Fried Chicken. It was pretty good, but real Southern Fried wouldn't have had such a crisp eggy crust on it.

Dammit, no more yoga!

2009-12-08T14:26:00.012-05:00

So anyway, it turns out I have mechanical sacroiliac joint dysfunction. (SIJ) At least it's not arthritis. I decided to go get it looked at since it's been bothering me for years, and because I keep getting hurt.

But get this: the therapist says I can't do yoga anymore! Or at least not a lot of the poses. She says yoga is for mobility, and I have too much mobility. She doesn't want me doing anything with one leg that I'm not doing with the other leg. For instance, the pose in the picture is a big no-no. I wanted to say, does that mean I have to hop upstairs, but I didn't. Still wondering about that, though. (That would make for an interesting Sunday morning, because the choir loft is three flights up.)

I'm also wondering about the "yoga is for mobility" thing, though. I think there are a lot of strength poses in the yoga I've been doing. Even in the Sun Salutation. It's not for wimps.

And I can't cross my legs anymore either!!! Or stand in that cool model pose with the hand on the hip and the weight on that leg... She says I have to stand in the army at-ease position. Great. That'll look elegant.

So anyway, now I have to do Pilates instead. I changed my Goal 49 to say "Take Pilates classes," and I'm in the process of registering for one, except they have to have my doctor's approval. Bureaucracy... (Speaking of which, did you read this???? Counterbureaucracy Scary!!!)

But here's the good news: Tonight I am going to go see The Nutcracker!!!! (Goal 5) For the first time in my life!! Just one of those weird unexplainable gaps in my musical entertainment experience...

ScottieDog is all excited; he's seen it a bajillion times growing up in Chicago, but I never did except for bits and pieces on TV. I asked him if he minded taking me, but he said "God no!" He explained that it's like having your child's first trip to the zoo: you get excited all vicariously. He did say it was an awfully "girly" ballet.

Again, I have to say I would never have scheduled this, or a lot of the other things I've done in the past year, if it hadn't been for my "101 Goals in 1001 Days" project. I'll be lucky if I get 50% of them done, but just look at what I've accomplished that I might not have done! I got to see Jon Stewart!!!! And the stars!!! (The real ones.)

I'm making a very big effort to get a bunch of them done before the new year. I slacked off majorly here lately, and I have some lost ground to make up for.

I was going to try to do another December of Discipline, but I'm off to a very late start for various reasons, such as SIJ. Still, I think it's a good idea. Get a running start on those New Year's Resolutions with me!!!

Habit-forming

2009-11-24T19:20:00.010-05:00

Revisiting Goals 80 and 81

Acquire five new good habits and get rid of one bad habit.

The bad habit I got rid of was leaving my shoes all over the house. And this really stuck!!! I hardly EVER leave my shoes anywhere any more. Of course now they're all thrown into the closet cluttering up the floor, because I'm too lazy to put them in the shoe thingy, but still. I call that an improvement.

The good habits I've been trying to acquire...hm, I just hope I can even remember what some of them are. (Must I reread all my posts? Oog...)

1. I do know the first one was trying to get my makeup on before I leave the house, and though I've done well mostly, I have lately slacked off majorly. I credit the spiral-down with this development. I keep sleeping until the last possible minute, if not beyond.

2. And one I addressed in the last post, processing the mail every day.

3. Oh geez, flossing. I really need to do better with this one.

4. Getting over myself already. I've been trying to do better with this, but my reputation as a Wincer, at least, is still alive and well, according to my colleagues. And I don't think I did so well in one of my recent concerts; I got so worked up I started gagging when I started to sing. Not the solo stuff, thank God, just the ensemble stuff. And I hate those concerts where I have to go back and forth between solo voice and ensemble voice...it's really hard.

What's number five....? Maybe I didn't start one. I'm sure something will occur to me.

One thing that strikes me revisiting these goals--you really have to keep reminding yourself what your goals are.

Revisiting, Remotivating, Retailing...

2009-11-23T15:32:00.005-05:00

Whoa, it's not a good idea to take so much time off from blogging. Not that I was really "taking" time off, time was sort of taking me. But whatever. It's been so hard to get back into the groove.

(In fairness, I should note that most of the time I used to spend blogging I now spend looking at pictures and videos of Baby Jack. Or actually looking at Baby Jack.)

But here I am again. Since it's coming up on the end of another year, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit some of the goals I've accomplished and the ones I'm working on...and to see if I can't knock off a bunch of them. (The Nutcracker ought to be an easy one this time of year.) [Update: bought tickets for 12/8!]

Here's the first goal I posted about:

Goal 31-Get all the papers filed.

Well, hm. I did make some excellent progress back in June when I had to throw a big party (Goal 86). Then I kind of slacked off. It's not nearly as bad as it was before, though.

At one point I decided I would try to develop the habit of dealing with the mail as soon as it came through the door. This actually worked for a while!!! We were doing great! Then came my little spiral-down and I got to where I would come in the door and just stare glumly at it. I need to get that habit up and running again, because it was working really, really well. I would take care of the days mail, and after that I would make a stab at one of the stacks of accumulated clutter as well. It took fifteen minutes at the most! I figured the stacks would have to get smaller and smaller every day, and eventually I'd be down to just doing the day's mail.

IN OTHER NEWS

Two big huge goals got whacked owing to my receiving a ****load of money in my personal injury lawsuit: to wit, Goals 16 and 17, pay off credit card debt and save an additional month's expenses. Lucky me. (By the way, I do not recommend breaking your right hand and suing somebody as a financial strategy.)

[Update: I did not actually get the settlement from the city but from the property owner. NYC is a little stingy that way.]

So anyway, now I'm going to go shopping. I'm going to throw out all my clothes except for this really neat sweater I bought at the Gap a while ago and a couple of other things. I mean it.

In Which Baby Jack Tries to Eat Grandmother

2009-11-07T18:04:00.004-05:00

Greetings to all you remaining readers...those who haven't given up on me yet. I just had a spiral down thing there for a while.

Depression isn't something you ever get over, no matter how exciting and wonderful your life gets. In fact, I think sometimes excitement and wonderfulness can be so stressful it can bring on an episode. Especially if you have a doctor who refuses to give refills, so you're continually running out of your medication at the end of the month and have to pig along without until the office finally calls in a new prescription and you actually have time to go get it refilled. I'm changing doctors.

So anyway, I am BACK. So much better.

I'll try to catch up on all my news, all that's fit to print anyway, at some later date. Meanwhile, here's a sample of the wonderfulness I've been trying valiantly to cope with:

Oh Baby Mine! Special bonus video.

2009-10-08T19:14:00.017-04:00

Bonus first, because it's chronological. This is me and my gurlz at my daughter's baby shower, singing, appropriately enough, "Oh Baby Mine." It goes on a bit long because I couldn't remember how it was supposed to end. But it's worth it to wait for the mom-to-be's "Baby mine..." right before the end. (She's singing baritone. And I'm singing bass.)

And hey!!! It's been almost a month since I posted anything. I can't believe it. But I've been busy. Start of the concert season--and precious Baby Jack had his precious christening last Sunday evening! Omigod, it took me days to fully recover, it was so precious. Here's a bunch of pictures:

Of course they made THE GRANDMOTHERS put him in his christening dress, and boy was he mad. He wouldn't unbend his arms, and trying to get them through the sleeves made me think we were going to be there til midnight. Irish handkerchief linen is not stretch material. (BTW I'm in a choir robe because most of us were singing in the choir for the Evensong beforehand, and because I was doing wardrobe, I didn't have time to take it off. And I was wearing my sexy black suit, too...)

With godmother

With Daddy

He looks like something off the ceiling of an old Italian church in this one. Except not so naked...

Starry Night

2009-09-16T15:31:00.016-04:00

(I did not actually take this picture.)
What a nice little vacation I just had! I went to a friend’s daughter’s wedding in Kentucky (my home for my first fifty years), and I saw people I had been longing to see forever! And family, of course. I spent four whole days there. Poor ScottieDog had to stay home, and I missed him, but it was still fun.

Over the long weekend I managed to knock off Goal 79 – Drive out into the country on a clear night and look at the stars. It was awesome! Nothing like getting away from the New York Metro Area to get a little star action. Of the actual star variety, not the celebrity kind--and not just the major planets which is all we can usually see, unless there’s a humongous blackout which happens once in a blue moon.

I had a reservation to rent a little car to get around in, but when the shuttle from the airport let me off, there was this really nice black convertible sitting in front of the rental office. So I went in and jokingly asked, “Could I have that one?” And they said, yes, I could have that one for sixty dollars more (for the whole four-day weekend), and I said “I'll take it!” It was a Volvo hard-top convertible, and boy, was it swanky!

(I’m kind of addicted to convertibles now, ScottieDog having bought one last year over my strenuous objections. Scott was so proud of me for upgrading! I wish I'd thought to have somebody take a picture of me with it. This one is one I took at the rental office; the nice lady coming up on the left is going to show me how to put the top up and down.)

So I promptly went out (literally I drove right to a mall from Enterprise) and bought a nice black suit to match the car. I had in fact been going to buy something to wear to the wedding because the stupid dull green silk matronly outfit I brought with me, which was the only thing I owned that was halfway appropriate, was depressing. And it would have looked really stupid with the convertible.

My daughters were all proud of me for looking so soignée at the wedding, and they sure got a kick out of watching the top go up and down on the car. It was like a Transformer or something.

The effect was somewhat modified (not for the worse, I don’t think) by my carrying the adorable Baby Jack around all the time, because his mother and her sisters were all of them wedding attendants and I offered to do the grandmother thing and look after him. And indeed, I have a lot to learn yet about being a grandmother. For instance, these are not grandmother shoes:

I soaked my feet that night in very warm water and then in very cold water and they hardly hurt at all the next day, but my biceps and quads were KILLING ME for two days. Carrying Baby Jack around is like carrying a cannonball. I think it’s safe to say that he is thriving.

Baby Jack and his mother and aunt left for New York the next day, but I stayed behind with my middle daughter Sylvia (who is hilarious as well as beautiful, BTW). We spent the next twenty-four hours having a Kentucky Experience. We visited the farm and saw my parents and sister and grand-niece, we sat out on the deck and traded memories, we had a mini-recital, we went to Lexington and had a late dinner downtown at a really cool bistro, and then (this was worth the whole extra sixty dollars) drove out with the top down way into the country towards the Kentucky River, and looked at the stars. “Venus looks like a porch light!” Sylvia expostulated.

At one point we stopped by a big field, and Sylvia made me turn the lights off and climb over the gate so we could get out from under the trees and get a better view of the night sky. (The ticklish part was the cow-catcher grate on the other side of the fence. It was constructed so as to “catch” grandmothers, too, though I don’t think that was the intent. I’m lucky I didn’t break my leg.) I let Sylvia drive on the way back so I could lean back and do the star-gazing. It was almost more impressive from that point of view than out in the field. It was pretty damn coolish by that time, but rather than put the top up we turned on the seat warmers full blast. No fools, we.

*Sigh* Can't wait to go back! We're supposed to go for Thanksgiving. I wondered aloud to ScottieDog if they would still have the same car and if so could we rent it, but he sagely pointed out that it would likely be too cold in late November to make getting a convertible worth it. (No fool, he. :-P )

Dumb Thing #3

2009-09-06T13:37:00.005-04:00

I've already posted about the two dumb things I did while at Bard, and was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it took almost the entire two weeks but it finally happened.

So you remember how I whooped it up at the Spiegeltent the second week. Which was okay, except that (you have to realize I really dance vigorously because I tend to forget that I'm actually superannuated) I overdid it and pulled something in my right hip, I think it was my gluteus medius. I pulled that in my left hip a couple of years ago doing an aerobic workout, and I had to go to physical therapy to get that resolved. At least I remember the treatment and all the exercises. Now I just have to remember to do them.

I did, however, get to the pool on Friday!!!! It was just barely warm enough, I thought, but wow it was so pleasant. One of the things about swimming on a not-so-hot day is that once you get in the water and get acclimated, when you get out it feels a little chilly and so it feels really warm to get back in the water. I didn't swim a long time, but since I'd been a little inactive because of the pulled muscle, I felt like I got a real workout.

Scott wasn't home, so I didn't have anybody to take a picture of me in the pool. So I took one with my iPhone of my toes in the water. You just have to take my word for it that they're my toes.

I have this goal in a headlock. One more summer to go.

Bummer, No Summer

2009-08-30T17:07:00.007-04:00

Goal 63 - Swim in the pool every summer

I am having a real hard time getting to the pool this summer. It's been cold and rainy. When I was off at Bard, the weather got real hot, like in the nineties, but then like I say I was off at Bard. And ever since I got back, the mercury dipped quite a bit.

Today it was supposed to be 82, but hey, it isn't. I just went out on the balcony and it's windy and coolish-to-warmish. It almost has to be in the upper eighties before I can go swimming. I hate getting cold and wet like a cat. The dumb 10-day forecast (which changes radically from day to day) says it might heat up to 84 later next week, and MAYBE I'll get myself down there before they close up the pool after Labor Day.

The point of this goal is that we spend so much money on rent (Google rents in the NY metro area sometime, for a two-bedroom high-rise apartment with doorman and parking and pool), and we don't take advantage of all the facilities. I forgot to mention the gym. At least I do get down there once in a while.

I DID, however, use the pool because I had the lovely AC take my step-granddaughter down there when she was visiting. So maybe I can make that count toward the goal! I even think they went down there twice!

Book Report!

2009-08-27T13:45:00.026-04:00

(Goal 61 - Read all the books on my reading list)

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde

Random Fact:Wilde was so extremely disliked at Magdalen College, Oxford that his fellow students dunked him in the river and trashed his room.

One word review: Lordy.

Okay, I'll elaborate. First I'll back up: when I was making up a reading list I consulted various "must-read" lists floating around the internets--the ones that claim in order to be considered well-read or educated, you have to have read the following, blah blah blah. Dorian Gray was on at least one of them, and I thought it would be entertaining, since Oscar Wilde usually is.

I whiled away the long idle stretches of rehearsal last week (at the recent Bard Festival) with this carbuncle of a novel. A fellow "literati" had warned me, when I told him that Dorian Gray was next on my list, that it was a bit "ugh," and sure enough it is. This exercise in decadence is beautifully and overly wrought, and the story is extremely unpleasant if fascinating.

The plot is well-known, but I'll excerpt the Wikipedia summary here:

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward...Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, expressing his desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form.

So, you gotta know this isn't going to end well.

Wilde's prose is very, very purple, ornate and exotic. Not that it isn't beautiful. Every now and then he throws in a witticism; the most famous one in this book is uttered by the impossibly effete Lord Henry: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Dorian late in the story calls Lord Henry "Prince Paradox." I'm not sure whether that was because he considered Henry personally paradoxical, or because of Henry's penchant for uttering paradoxes and passing them off as witticisms (unless we should really credit Wilde with that). That first one isn't bad, but they become annoying as the story slithers on. (Lord Henry's witticism formula: "[noun] is [superlative] except for when it isn't.")

To give Wilde all the points he deserves, his anti-hero's long spiral down into debauchery and cruelty seems to point up the limitations of the aesthetic philosophy that Wilde held, or professed to hold, so dear. Or maybe it illustrates, or he hopes it does, that if you make something really beautiful it doesn't matter if the subject is depraved. I guess the question is how beautiful it really is.

I will now, absent Oscar Wilde, go dunk this book in the river.

Second Random Fact: the cover image for this edition (Barnes & Noble Classics) shows a portrait of the composer Franz Liszt by Henri Lehmann. (Coincidentally we just "did" Liszt at the Bard Festival a couple of years ago.)

Auf wiedersehn, Wagner...

2009-08-24T18:49:00.005-04:00

It's hard in some ways to pack up at Bard and come home, but on the other hand, we live in a dorm, and I'm attached to my creature comforts. At least this time I took an actual lamp, and a big pillow so I could sit up in bed, and two bouquets of flowers. I meant to take a dhurrie rug but I forgot it.

I meant to post up at Bard last week, but I inadvertently erased all the photos on my iPhone. I was transferring them to my Mac at home, so they're all here, but they were inaccessible up at Bard, so I didn't get to post. Well, I could have, but I think posts with no photos are kind of boring. Unless there are good stories.

So I thought I'd post some random artsy photos from the week. (Keep in mind they're only iPhone pictures!)

The one at the top was just some interesting shadows I saw on the side of the Ward Manor gatehouse. I somehow thought that the shadow of the lantern was a touch ironic. And pretty.

The one below is one that I snuck over the top of my music of Leon Botstein, with the men in the chorus in the background. When you realize that that's like three rows of men and the semicircle of the chorus goes all the way around the room in a big arc (I'm at the end of the semicircle on the other side), you can tell how big a group it is.

The music is part of the vocal score to Die Meistersinger. The thing about singing Wagner, and Brahms for that matter, one of whose pieces (Triumphlied) we did on the same program--it has three dynamic levels for most of the time: 1) loud, 2) stun and 3) kill. At least for this program we didn't have any siegs that I remember, though we did have a lot of heils. I kind of hope I don't have to sing any Wagner again for a long while, by which time I will be too old. But it was kind of fun. Die Meistersinger is a very cute opera, for Wagner.

Bard-y Girl

2009-08-16T20:57:00.014-04:00

Wow, I had the best time last night. One of the big attractions at the Bard Summerscape Experience is the Spiegelpalais, which most of us call the Spiegeltent because it's more of a tent than a palais. (Spiegelpalais means "mirror palace." It's full of mirrors. AND a disco ball.) But it's a pretty substantial tent--with a big dance floor and bar and restaurant. They have shows there, bands and singers and things, all summer long. It's great when we're there for the Bard Festival, because all the people come out of the concert, performers and audience alike, and head over to the tent for some party time.

Yesterday we had a grueling agenda--a marathon choral concert at 5:00 and then a whole bunch of Wagner excerpts at the first big orchestral event of the festival at 8:00. That's a lot of singing. The choral concert was an ordeal--Wagner, Palestrina, Bruckner, Liszt and Brahms. Lots of Brahms, because he has a ton of great choral music. (And Wagner supposedly didn't even like choruses, though he used them a lot in his operas.) So at the 8:00 concert, screaming excerpts from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin seemed like a walk in the park in comparison. Mostly because the orchestra and soloists did all the heavy lifting. (We actually, really, in the Lohengrin part, sang "Sieg, heil!" at the top of our lungs. But not for long.)

So anyway, the ever-lovely AC and the handsome Scottiedog came up for the weekend. After the 8:00 concert, I changed into my jeans, and we made a beeline for the Spiegeltent. Where we proceeded to do some serious cardio and core workout. I had a bunch of wine, but I don't know how much because my glasses kept getting bused while I was out on the dance floor.

Today my kneecaps hurt; it's the strangest thing.

ScottieDog took this picture when we got back to the room; I think it was about 3:15 a.m. (The Spiegeltent closes at 1:00 a.m., but we went and played poker after that. We party hearty.)

Here are some pictures of our outing this afternoon:

Blithewood

This is a mansion that just happens to be on campus. Ward Manor, which I mentioned earlier, is sort of a "getaway" cottage that was part of the Blithewood estate, if I'm remembering correctly.

This is the Blithewood garden. It's heavenly.

ScottieDog and AC in the Blithewood garden

P.S. I have not had any more f-ups after all. But I feel like I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop...

Back at Bard

2009-08-13T14:10:00.006-04:00

Hey all, Bard Music Festival 2009 is under way here at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, and I have already sung more Wagner in four days than I ever have in my entire life. Or probably ever will again.

It turns out, though, to be a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. And my voice is, unbelievably, holding up.

This picture is the gatehouse to Ward Manor, which they made into a dorm a long time ago. Ward Manor kind of looks like this except bigger. I pass by the gatehouse walking back and forth to the cafeteria . I'm not staying in Ward Manor this year for the first time in my seven years of coming to the Festival. This year I "get" to stay in the new air-conditioned dorm (see below), which is pretty comfortable but short on atmosphere. And bugs.

A couple of dumb things have happened: first I locked myself out of my room on the First Day...and had to call Security to get back in, and they made me sing something over the phone to prove I was who I said I was. I thought that was pretty weird. It took forever for them to come, too, so I must not have made much of an impression.

The second dumb thing is that I muttered under my breath during a rehearsal and was overheard by the conductor. This guy is Leon Botstein, who is extremely brilliant and kind of crazy, not that there's anything wrong with that, and also really effing funny. From time to time, like once or twice per rehearsal, he goes into a long story or speech about something--at which point the room gets extremely quiet because you don't want to miss what he has to say, because it will be interesting and there will always be a big laugh somewhere along the line. For some reason he was going on about the faithlessness (or stupidity) of Elsa, the heroine of Lohengrin, and he got off on this satirically misogynistic thing about weddings being a march to the scaffold or something, and then he interrupted himself to say that in some cultures they play the same marches at weddings that they do at funerals. At which I muttered under my breath, "You're making that up." So then he slewed around and looked right at me, and said, "You think I'm making that up? I'm not!" He wasn't frowning, or anything, so I sure hope he knew I was kidding.

Since supposedly things come in threes, no doubt I will do something dumb at this afternoon's rehearsal. If so, I'll be sure to let you know.

Bag Lady Wins!!!

2009-07-28T16:52:00.005-04:00

Hey!!! Bag Lady won the Baby Jack I caption contest with this entry: "NO, don't look at me - I haven't brushed my teeth yet.... oh, wait, I don't have teeth yet..." (You have to look at the last post for this to make any sense.)

Oddly enough, the runner-up (on Facebook) had kind of the same theme going..."ScottieDog, you have bad breath.". I can't believe how many people responded with only a comment and no caption at all. Not to take anything away from Bag Lady's awesome comment...

So while I think up some post, any post, that is not Baby Jack related, here's another Baby Jack CAPTION CONTEST (If you double click or right click on the picture, it will enlarge in a most satisfactory manner--I think...):

Bag Lady wins a drawing on any subject of her choosing. Seriously. :-) (Drawing will be posted on this site and will count toward my Goal #2 Draw 10 pictures 6 down, 4 to go!)

Random Monday (CUTENESS ALERT and CAPTION CHALLENGE)

2009-07-20T13:49:00.005-04:00

What a weird sight I just saw when I was out getting my lunch. As some of you know, I work in Lower Manhattan, right next to the WTC site. Across Cortlandt Street from my building, there's a small pizza bar where, if you want to eat on the premises, you have to stand up at a counter, if there's room. Patronizing this establishment was a large group of nice young ladies (teens) in spiffy yellow tee shirts and shorts, evidently pausing for refreshment while visiting ground zero. There were way too many to fit into the pizza bar, so about twenty of them were SITTING DOWN ON THE SIDEWALK NEXT TO THE CURB with their pizza. And I mean they had SHORTS on.

I VERY NEARLY stopped and screamed at them, "WTF do you think you're doing??? Only crazy homeless people sit down on the sidewalk!!! Get your behinds up from there!" But I didn't. I was too tired, or stunned or something. (Does that make me a bad person?)

One has to wonder where their chaperones were. I mean God only knows what was on that sidewalk...besides the filthy chewing gum residue, no doubt several kinds of bodily fluids. Ugh. I thought about taking a picture to post, but then I thought, No, the world is ugly enough. So here is a nice picture of Baby Jack instead:

He is seventeen days old here. And getting so BIG. I have to say, being a new grandmother is really interfering with the bloggery. Sorry about that. So here is another picture (with ScottieDog), to make up for my sparse posting lately. Feel free to suggest captions! I may be moved to bestow a reward on the best one...

Baby Jack and Little Brown Jug

2009-07-09T12:00:00.004-04:00

("Baby Jack" sounds like a kind of cheese, doesn't it?)

I know you're panting for more baby pictures, so here is one I took yesterday with my iPhone. It takes really pretty darn good low light pictures! Better than my "real" camera.

I got to babysit yesterday for almost an hour while The Parents took a stroll round the neighborhood. Little Jack was disposed to be fussy at first, so I sang him "Little Brown Jug" about 20 times and he SOOO loved it. After a couple turns up and down the hallway, he started dropping off in the most melodramatic way, and then settled into a long nap on my lap. Thank God I had my iPhone nearby. After I took as many pictures as I could of Sleeping Infant in Cute Shirt in the Same Position, I resorted to playing Solitaire. Between periods of just staring at him...

Babylicious!

2009-07-06T14:09:00.005-04:00

Well as you can plainly see, Baby Jack is one of the cutest babies in the known universe. He is only a few hours old in this picture, and already he needs a haircut! The nurses brushed it up into a stylish mohawk.

The family is home now resting comfortably and doing fine as far as I know. I hope I get to go see him this afternoon! He is so spectacular!

As part of my ongoing effort to emulate the Bag Lady, here is some food porn:

These are my famous deviled eggs, which I made for the fourth of July. We also had watermelon and hot dogs and hamburgers. We had to broil the hot dogs and hamburgers in the oven, though because it was way too windy out on the balcony. I didn't really notice any inadequacy of flavor, though. The Macy's fireworks were okay--they were on the Hudson this year, but rather far away from us. Still, it's great to sit on the balcony and watch about 50 firework shows going on all around.

Here is a very special video (one minute) of Baby Jack being comforted by his brand-new daddy. He is such a good baby!

And yet another baby picture, just in case you need one.

The Little One

2009-07-01T14:50:00.003-04:00

He finally got here! Got a little bit stuck, so they had to do a C section this morning, but I'll take him however I can get him. He is. The. Cutest. Thing. Ever. All of 7 pounds 11.8 ounces.

My son-in-law scared me out of 20 years growth, though, by messaging that my daughter was going in to surgery and then not calling back. After sitting around for hours (only two but honestly it seemed like twelve) getting more and more frantic, I schlepped down to St. Luke's to see for myself what the heck was going on. I was sure there was going to be some degree of awfulness when I got there; I've never been so terrified! Seriously. AND I had the grandmother of all hangovers from drinking too much Chardonnay while I was waiting up last night. (You do not want to be on the NYC subway terrified out of your wits AND hung over, take it from me. Just don't go there.)

But no, they were all just fine, just not thinking of doing PR and busy worshipping the baby. I was glad of that, and so did not shake my precious son-in-law until his teeth rattled. I'll tell you what, though, I really hope (without their incurring any actual harm) that Little Johnny scares the bejeezus out of him at some point, and then I will point and laugh and say remember when you did that to me??? Hm???

Whew. :-)

Flowers and Candy

2009-06-30T13:05:00.007-04:00

It's Mid-Year!!! Golly. I have been so slacking off lately, I don't know what the trouble has been. And now here it is my daughter's due date--I'm going to be a grandmother at any moment!!!! [UPDATE at 2:12pm: BABY IS ACTUALLY ON THE WAY!!! ON HIS DUE DATE!!! WHEN HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED????]

So here are some flowers. I've been buying flowers like a maniac ever since we had the baby shower. It was so nice to have them all over the house, though I have discovered I really don't like flower arranging much. I went on Amazon today and bought a new pair of flower shears; maybe that will help. I have sort of developed a procedure wherein I keep whatever is in the vase that doesn't look dead and put that into a new vase with new flowers added. This week I added pink spray roses to what was there before, mostly chrysanthemums and alstromeria. (The alstromeria is I think almost gone, but it still looks nice. Almost like orchids.) So it's kind of a motley bouquet at this moment!!! And the roses are a bit :-| because I got too tired to rearrange the flowers yesterday and let them just sit in water in their cellophane thingy. Martha Stewart I'm not.

And I never did post my Proof of Goal Attained picture for "Goal 37 - Get tugboat picture framed." Here it is:

I absolutely adore tugboats, of which there are thousands around here. I hope so much to get to ride on one sometime, though I understand they are rather loud, being almost all engine. My Buddhist therapist once told me that I probably like them so much because they are Bodhisattvas, sort of. They help people get going on their journeys. Okay...I thought I liked them because they are so cute. (I realize you can't see the tugboats very well in this photo, but believe me, they're there.)

This is an etching that I bought on eBay. The title is "East River Basin New York," but the signature I can hardly make out. It looks like "CurtSgakasoy." ?? It's an awfully nice etching. Doesn't have a date, but I believe the eBay listing said it was somewhere around the turn of the century. (1900 or so)

As for the candy: I was just watching a Facebook link of Jon Stewart interviewing Oliver Sacks on The Daily Show, and it's all about the effect of music on the brain. Sacks's favorite composer is Bach (mine too!!!), and the clip shows a scan of his brain while he's listening to some Bach. It's so cool: it lights up orange. And Beethoven leaves him kind of cold. But anyway, Jon Stewart asks him, "Is Bach candy?" Sacks says, "Yes," and I would have to agree. Here is my proof. You're welcome.

My Bad (And Poem of the Month)

2009-06-14T18:04:00.012-04:00

Oh yes...as POD deemed fit to comment recently: "I seem to recall you writing this blog about goals. I better go back and see if slacking off blogging is one of those goals."

It's so true. Except I had a good excuse--it's the end of the season and I had a lot of singing and catching up to do. AND I had to suddenly produce a lot of documentation in the broken hand lawsuit. I am just so tired.

But I have to say also that I am having a terrible time with a couple of my goals, namely, Goal 74 - Listen to a CD every week and Goal 82 - eat at dining table at least once a week. Though we did have dinner at the table last week (see above), I made pepper chicken with crushed red pepper instead of green chilies because I didn't have any chilies and it was WAY TOO HOT. So it wasn't a big success.

I've been thinking if I buy flowers for the table, that will make us want to eat at the table so we can enjoy the flowers. I just have to come up with some better menus.

But the CD thing: I just can't hack it. I have to come up with a replacement goal. I DON'T WANT to have to listen to a CD every week. You have no idea how hard it is. I just want my ears to be left alone... Please don't judge me too harshly. I have an audio-intensive career.

As compensation I'm posting a link to an audio clip of a concert I just did. It's the hardest tonal work ever written for choir. This piece is toward the end of a larger piece, about 25 minutes long, and we were exhausted by the time we got to this last one, so the blend is a little off. You'll hear that it's for two competing choirs. Mine is the first one you hear (in stereo, it's the one to the left). Sometimes we sing together, but mostly it's a dialog. (The high E at the end: that's mostly me.) (BTW each choir has only 8 singers in it--2 on a part. I tend to dominate the sound of my 2 voice section, but that's because I'm really tired, and it's hard to blend in when you're tired.)

The text is a poem by Paul Eluard written during World War II. The program notes say it was "smuggled to [the composer Francis Poulenc] under pseudonyms; Eluard stayed underground to avoid imprisonment for his support of the French resistance. Likewise, the musical score had to be smuggled out of France for the first performance, which took place in London, on March 25, 1945. Thus, the themes of death, war, oppression and liberty that fill the pages of the work have a deeply personal resonance, for both Eluard and Poulenc, as well as for all of Nazi- occupied France."

So not only is this my guilty compensation, it's the Poem of the Month (I especially like the part about the dog):

[PS It looks like a really long song, but the words go by FAST.]

VIII. Liberté [Liberty]

On my school notebooks
On my desk, on the trees
On the sand, on the snow
I write your name

On all the read pages
On all the empty pages
Stone, blood, paper or ash
I write your name

On the golden images
On the weapons of warriors
On the crown of kings
I write your name

On the jungle and the desert
On the nests, on the broom
On the echo of my childhood
I write your name

On the wonders of nights
On the white bread of days
On the seasons betrothed
I write your name

On all my blue rags
On the sun-molded pond
On the moon-enlivened lake
I write your name

On the fields, on the horizon
On the wings of birds
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name

On every burst of dawn
On the sea, on the boats
On the insane mountain
I write your name

On the foam of clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On the rain, thick and insipid
I write your name

On the shimmering shapes
On the colorful bells
On the physical truth
I write your name

On the alert pathways
On the wide-spread roads
On the overflowing places
I write your name

On the lamp that is lighted
On the lamp that is dimmed
On my reunited houses
I write your name

On the fruit cut in two
Of the mirror and of my room
On my bed, an empty shell
I write your name

On my dog, young and greedy
On his pricked-up ears
On his clumsy paw
I write your name

On the springboard of my door
On the familiar objects
On the wave of blessed fire
I write your name

On all harmonious flesh
On the face of my friends
On every out-stretched hand
I write your name

On the window-pane of surprises
On the careful lips
Well-above silence
I write your name

On my destroyed shelter
On my collapsed beacon
On the walls of my weariness
I write your name

On absence without want
On naked solitude
On the steps of death
I write your name

On regained health
On vanished risk
On hope free from memory
I write your name

And by the power of one word
I begin my life again
I am born to know you
To call you by name: Liberty!

Click to hear it (you might want to open another tab and click it so you can go back to the words):

The New York Virtuoso Singers sing "Figure Humaine" by Francis Poulenc (Movement 8)
www.box.net/shared/8qvzfzf40q

Check! It! Out!

2009-05-26T14:49:00.008-04:00

Goal 31 - Get all papers filed.

BEFORE

AFTER
Well, okay, they're not really all filed unless you count moving all the extraneous boxes of mother-in-law documents into public storage at great expense, as well as the six boxes of old stuff I moved into the closet last year, and then throwing everything that's not glued down into other boxes and stacking them in the newly cleared space in the closet. But hey, it seems to work, at least for me. Now I guess I have to take the boxes out of the closet one at a time and deal with the contents.

So this goal is not actually accomplished yet. But hey, it sure looks better!

They say the best way to get your house in order is to throw a big party, which is what we did. I co-hosted a baby shower for my daughter, along with her mother-in-law. Since her mother-in-law lives out of town, we had to have it at my place, and I seized the opportunities afforded by this crisis, like Rahm Emmanuel says to.

Along with boxes of documents, I took all non-essential furniture to storage as well, and gave some of it away to our progeny who showed up for the baby shower. Yay for opportunities! Then we hired a cleaning company to come in and clean. Nothing like throwing money around in a situation like this. Fortunately I had a little bit to spare at the time, and I think it was money well spent. The place looks so great!!!

Bonus picture:

Happy Expectant Family (in clean apartment!)

Flora and Fauna

2009-05-19T17:06:00.006-04:00

My friends The Bag Lady and Mary Anne from Kentucky are always posting nice pictures of plants and animals and sunrises, etc. I thought I'd see what I could do....

I pass these pansies on my way to/from the bus stop. They really are electric purple.

The wisteria is right smack in the middle of beautiful downtown Fort Lee. The house used to be a nice little florist's shop, but now it's a hair salon. It's not so electric purple, but it's my favorite. I adore wisteria!

And this is the view from my balcony! If I were taking the picture to the south (to the right in the picture), you'd see Manhattan and the Empire State Building and all that. (Well technically that is Upper Manhattan just beyond the high rises, and the hills beyond that are Queens.) But I was taking this because of the rainbow over to the east.

And aren't ScottieDog's window boxes nice! He says the tree tops out there are our "lawn."

The fauna specimen in the far distance is my neighbor. He's Russian! Not a cute little newborn calf or anything, but still.

And the Winner of the FatBet Is.....!!!

2009-05-06T13:08:00.007-04:00

Nobody.

None of us lost ten pounds, but two of us lost significantly, so we feel great about that. We're currently considering donating our $100 to something worthy instead of taking it back. After all we did lose the bet.

But hey, since I drew the picture of me on the scale, back last August, I have lost 10.6 pounds! Not bad for an elderly lady. Let's see now, that's just over a pound a month.

I'm only slightly more than five pounds away from my goal weight!

And I have to say I feel great. I feel so much lighter and I even walk differently. I guess I must have been waddling slightly or something. AND, I have worn a tucked in shirt with a belt several times in the last few weeks. It's been at least four years since I've had the nerve to do that.

I don't think I'll ever diet alone again. This was the most motivating experience!

My plan now is to try to maintain my current weight and concentrate more on exercising. And after another month or so, two of us are going to have another go at a FatBet.

In Which Melissa Escapes a Burning Bus...

2009-04-27T16:13:00.004-04:00

Oh, so you thought I was kidding. I was not.

There I was last Saturday sitting in a little shuttle bus getting ready to cross the George Washington Bridge, just minding my own business, or maybe putting the finishing touches on my makeup (in defiance of Goal 80), when it suddenly started filling up with smoke. People jumped up and demanded that the driver open the door--a couple of guys opened the emergency exit in the back--and we all got out into the heavy bridge traffic and made our way to what little shoulder there is on the bridge. (I decided to jump out the emergency exit in the back, because that was way cooler than going out the regular way.)

So there I was on the side of the road with all kinds of people crawling by and NOT ONE offered to give me a ride over. I was on my way to a dress rehearsal, so I called my contractor and told her what had happened. (It turned out later that someone going to the same rehearsal had just driven past the bus and had seen the smoke and people getting out.) As I was talking to her, the fire escalated and flames started bursting out, so I decided to get away from it in case it exploded. Oddly enough, I was the ONLY one who left. I don't know what the rest of them did, maybe they walked across to the other side.

Owing to my quick thinking--I walked through the (now-not-moving-at-all) traffic back through the toll gates and up to the taxi stand and had a taxi take me over the bridge on the lower level, which was somewhat backed up by people diverting, but not too bad, and then deciding to take another taxi downtown because the damn A train wasn't running from the bus station--I got to my rehearsal only four minutes late, and they hadn't even started singing yet.

It turned out that another singer had been in a taxicab accident right before that and she was a lot later. What a day... I still think mine was the more dramatic excuse. People are in cab accidents every day; but burning buses...

I took the picture because I looked back at the smoke and it was getting bigger and blacker...and I thought, hey I have a camera on my iPhone! I hardly ever remember to take pictures. Too bad you can't see the bus and the flames, but really, I'm not such an intrepid photojournalist that I was going to go back in for a more dramatic shot.

The construction guys didn't say boo to me when I walked right through their worksite. You can tell from the photo they don't seem too concerned. No doubt they see buses burst into flames all the time.

St. Melissa

2009-04-23T12:30:00.004-04:00

Okay, I did put on a pound because I had to go to a gala dinner, and I seem to be hanging on to it. But I'm working on it. Less than two weeks to go on the FatBet, and my dear, dear friend and co-bettor Michele is gaining on me. I mean losing on me.

I am very proud of myself, though, because I have processed all the mail this week as it has come in. Nothing has been added to the piles! And it's not hard to do, hello!!! I've also been chipping away at the piles, and maybe in a year or two that will all be taken care of and filed.

I am also mostly exercising my new habit of getting my makeup on before I leave the house. Mostly.

And, I very rarely leave my shoes in inappropriate areas of the house any more.

Melissa's Recipe for Developing Good Habits

1) Figure out what really annoys you or disappoints you about yourself.
2) Pick one aspect that you know you can change. It's good to start small.
2) Decide how you're going to change your behavior.
3) Write down what your new behavior will be.
4) Publish it in a blog. (not optional)
5) Then do it.
6) Post regular progress reports.
7) Pat yourself on the back a lot.
8) Remember, if you're anything like me, you're probably going to be reading all your old posts later in life. So it better be a good story.

Goals 76 and 80 - Virtuosity!!

2009-04-15T13:27:00.003-04:00

I knocked off Goal 76 yesterday! I returned some music and books I had borrowed years ago. Several months ago I thought to put them in the foyer where they would be a constant reminder that they didn't belong in my house--and there they've been sitting waiting for inspiration to strike me about how to transport them. The last couple of days I carried them around in my backpack, which was a pain, and then yesterday the iron was hot, so I struck it. I was fifteen blocks from their destination, so I called the owner and hiked uptown and delivered them! He didn't even remember they were gone.

AND, I have decided on a new virtuous habit (Goal 80 - Develop 5 virtuous habits):

Bust that Clutter!

Most of the clutter in my house is paper. Specifically, mail that has arrived and not been dealt with.

So I hereby resolve to absolutely deal with the mail as it comes in every single day. That is: 1) throw away junk 2) open all the envelopes 3) put whatever it is away, i.e. file anything that needs filing, or put whatever it is where it's supposed to be, like in the ScottieDog pile. Yesterday I did two days worth. And of course there are huge piles of backed up mail sitting around (see illustration above--NOT MY ACTUAL PILE, because I don't drink sodas, but you get the idea) that I will have to try to deal with in pieces...I guess I can tackle some of that along with my daily mail duties, and then eventually it will all have gone away! That's the plan, anyway. Wish me luck!

Goal 61 - Read all the books on my reading list

2009-04-09T11:27:00.005-04:00

The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver

Interesting Fact that I Didn't Know until I Read the Wikipedia Entry Just Now: Kingsolver is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band consisting of published writers, including Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Stephen King among others. Also, she grew up in rural Kentucky, like me.

I loved this book so much, I'm not sure how I can possibly convey it in this stupid little book report that I've been wondering all week how to write so as to do the book justice. I now have to put all Kingsolver's other books on my reading list.

My decision to read this book in the first place came from an odd place: one of those peculiar quizzes, "What novel would you be if you were a novel?" I can't remember where I came across it. I have this vague idea it was from one of Cranky Fitness's Random Friday posts, which are always entertaining. So I took the quiz, and I came up as The Poisonwood Bible. This meant nothing to me at the time, but I thought the title was interesting, and I had heard that Kingsolver was a great writer. So I noted it down, and when I got around to making my reading list, on it went.

Having now read it, I have to say I am hugely flattered at the idea that I would be The Poisonwood Bible if I were a book. It makes me impressed with myself.

The bulk of the story takes place in Africa, but it's about Americans from the state of Georgia (USA). This bare plot fact didn't speak to me that much, and I might not have read it because I'm not that into Americans in Africa, so I'm glad I had an impelling reason to read it, or I would have so lost out.

I can't reveal any more of the plot than that.

This book is so beautifully and, yes, entertainingly written, that it took me forever to read it, because I had to go so slow and savor every word, and sometimes go back and re-read sentences because they were so great I had to "hear" them again.

The last part of the book becomes slightly less musical and more historical than the first, but it is all riveting. It is also heartbreaking, so be warned.

Read it, and you'll not only find out a lot about Africa that you didn't know you wanted (needed) to know, you'll experience incredible adventures with some truly amazing characters.

Weekday Update

2009-04-06T12:57:00.004-04:00

I'm really having a spell of frantic activity here. Just to get up to speed: the FatBet is going strong, I'm still in the lead with almost five pounds lost (out of the goal of ten). We're more than halfway through though, so I really need to buckle down to it.

I finished The Poisonwood Bible and am working on my book report. What a book! If you haven't read it, get a copy and get going right away.

I need to review my goals list. I'm working really hard on several big long-term goals, but I need to see if there are some I can knock off pretty quickly. I'm not really stuck at 11/90, but it kind of feels like it.

And it refuses to be spring here in the New York Metro area. I hope it's better wherever you are, all you out there in the blogosphere.

FatBet Revisited

2009-03-25T17:15:00.004-04:00

Golly, life is just going on to such an extent around here that I hardly have time to blog. I took a day off today so I could practice and run errands and generally get my breath.

I'm kind of way ahead in the FatBet!!! AND we ~~were advised by non-idiot people~~ decided to extend the deadline to a reasonable date. We three matronly types would have had to go on a some kind of dangerous fast or liquid diet to lose 10 pounds in five weeks. So the new deadline is May 6th.

This is our weekly average graph:

The reason I'm way ahead is that I switched to low-carb. (Look at the dramatic rise in the blue line at the two-week point where I did that.) It's just so much easier. No obsessing, math and/or diarying, just eating.

I am a little worried about one thing, which is many people who lose weight on low-carb diets find that they gain it back quickly when they reach their goal. Does anyone have any ideas for how to avoid this? Obviously getting my exercise act together is helping and will continue to help. I even thought that on reaching my goal weight, I would revert to Weight Watchers maintenance plan or something.

So now I weigh 135.8--not too far from my Goal 45 - Weigh 130 or less!!!

Saving the Planet, One Concert at a Time

2009-03-16T12:19:00.010-04:00

(Can you tell I like to sing?)

I was just sent the most amazing piece about music, and I had to share it with everyone I know.

It is Karl Paulnack's welcome address to the freshman class at Boston Conservatory, which ends thusly:

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do.

To understand how he arrives at this conclusion, read the whole thing here: Karl Paulnack's Address to the Freshman Class It is totally worth the time and effort!

Paulnack also relates his own NYC memories of the post-9/11 tragedy. I personally have never felt I provided so much vital service as I did singing for God-knows-how-many funerals in the months that followed. Listening to music is about that only thing that people can bear to do when they're that grief-stricken.

I'm reminded, too, of a passage in William Byrd's (Virginia planter) diary where, in order to make the point that his African slaves were not as intelligent as whites, he offers as evidence the fact that after a hard day of labor, instead of going to bed and sleeping and getting their rest, they danced and sang around the fire, further wearing themselves out. I always thought that this proved just the opposite: that the slaves knew perfectly well what was good for them and that Byrd was a dumbass.

Anyway, I love what I do, and I agree that it's vitally important to the planet. Here's another concert picture: ScottieDog giving me a reward for a job well done!

(P.S. Obviously these are really old pictures, from back when I had my Hillary Clinton hairdo.)

[ADDENDUM] One of my ensembles did a school event just this morning (3/17), and during a Q&A session a kid asked "How do you keep your voices so crispy?" (We had him repeat the question several times, so we knew for sure that was the adjective he was using.) My friend Stephen said afterward that he wanted so bad to answer "We have to get fried on a regular basis," but he wisely refrained.

FatBet Week Two

2009-03-10T12:15:00.008-04:00

Most peculiarly, all the divas are now exactly tied in the race to lose ten pounds. All of us have lost 1.8--we have quite a task ahead of us if we're to make our goal by April 1!

I wasn't doing well on Weight Watchers this time--it just gets so obsessive, thinking about every little thing you put in your mouth. So I switched to low carb. It's so much easier, and immediately I started losing.

I have now broken into the 130s!!!! I'm so excited. I feel like my long-term goal (Number 45) is within reach very soon! Ta da!!

Also, I found myself with an unexpected opportunity to knock off one of my other goals: #51--Try green tea. I was on my way home from a rehearsal with a friend, rather a long drive, and we stopped because she wanted tea time. I wasn't sure what I wanted exactly--I didn't want regular tea--and then I noticed they had green tea. At Dunkin' Donuts! Who knew? So I had some. It's great!!! It has only a slightly different flavor from regular tea, and now I think I'm a green tea drinker! I'm going to try some more brands.

So my friend took my picture to record the event.

(It doesn't look very green, does it?)

Poem for Early March

2009-03-05T15:46:00.005-05:00

"I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing robin, sing:
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring."- Christina Rossetti

I'm not a big Christina Rossetti fan, but this poem sure hits the spot for me right now...

The Rocky Road to Success

2009-03-02T09:27:00.003-05:00

Well, as you can see from the graph, the Three Divas are experiencing the vicissitudes of competitive dieting. (BTW, the Three "Less" Divas title is a play on 3 Mo' Divas, which one of our friends is in--AND whom we're trying to involve in the bet--she's been dieting, but is a little shy about betting. But she's on the mailing list.)

I know the day I shot back up over starting weight (I'm the blue line), I had been kind of dumb the day before. But even so, with the WW point system, that's supposed to be okay as long as you don't go over your extra points for the week. Since then I've been real good, and I still gained .2 pound yesterday. Gaahh!

However, and I've said this before, working out feverishly tends to make me heavier, I think because the muscles inflame just a little bit and retain fluid. Or something. Anybody else have this issue??? I'm not going to stop working out, however.

MizFit will be glad to know I broke out the Latin Rhythms Core workout DVDs that I won over on her site! What a hoot! I've only done the Quick Workout so far, and boy do I look dumb in the mirror when I do it. I'm going to have to move the mirror. MizFit is right, it's a fun core activity, and I'm glad I won it!

Everybody else had a "bad day" yesterday, too, thank heavens. At some point maybe we'll decide not to be such eager beavers and stop weighing ourselves every day, but we all feel we need the daily scrutiny or we'll slide into entropy and death. Or maybe we should do the daily weigh-in but the weekly average.

Encouraging comments welcome!!!! :-P

The Great Big Fat Bet is ON!

2009-02-27T12:27:00.004-05:00

I'm jazzed. I've bet $100 (now sitting in a special PayPal account) that I'll lose 10 pounds by April 1st.

Two of my friends are competing against me. Well, actually we're competing against ourselves; we'll all get our money back if we lose the 10 pounds.

Last time I posted about this I weighed 142.6, and was trying to maintain that until the bet started, but lo and behold I lost two pounds in the interim! I have no idea how. So I had to start at 140.6. And today, *simper*, I am proud to say I'm at 140 even. 9.4 pounds to go...

The others started off with a bang, losing almost a pound the first day, and I got a little worried, but both of them had an off day yesterday, so I think I'm actually ahead now. I can't believe it! I was hoping to have some of that fluffy watery fat to melt off early on, but apparently that all went back when I had the flu.

I should make a progress graph for us! That would be fun.

I highly recommend this approach--I've never been so motivated.

[BTW, that's a picture of the scale I'm using, it's an Omron body fat measuring scale. I like it a lot.]

Get over yourself, already.

2009-02-24T20:28:00.011-05:00

I discovered another bad habit!!! And I thought I only had one.

I thought I'd count breaking this bad habit toward Goal 80--developing 5 good habits. Because it's my goal list, and I get to say.

As some of you know, I am a professional singer in New York City. I sing solo stuff here and there, but most of my work is with ensembles, some of the best anywhere, and it's really a lot of fun. Unless I go off half-cocked, as I too often do, about tuning.

It's a lot easier for a group of violins to tune and blend, because they sound more or less the same. It's harder for a group of singers, because not all the voices sound alike. Those of us who can really blend our voices with everyone else and tune to the nth degree are on the A list. Those of us who can't, even though they might be really good singers, well...let's just say nobody wants to stand next to them in a group (or in worse cases, hire them).

Sometimes I get really hacked off when I think people aren't even trying. The sound just comes barreling out of them, as though they had no idea it takes a whole different technique to sing ensemble than it does solo. And a lot of my friends have absolute pitch, which means that they can pull any note out of thin air any time they want. I don't--I have to find a pitch in relation to all the other pitches I'm hearing at the time. The problem with having perfect pitch, though is that it makes you kind of inflexible (though some can adjust, a lot of them don't, and then it drives you crazy, especially when their "A" isn't a 440 "A", it's a 445 "A" or a 435 "A").

But anyway...you don't have to have perfect pitch to be vain about your tuning ability. Prime example: Moi. I'm pretty good at it, and I think I have a pretty good reputation in that respect. On the other hand, I sometimes think, "What if it's ME?" And it very well could be, I have to admit. (My friend POD has a post over on Thuffering Thuccotash about this flying finger of frowny-face coming back to point at your own self. Her post actually started me thinking about this!)

So this is my bad habit: making terrible faces when the tuning goes awry. Sometimes to the point of putting my hands over my head. I just think it's probably really unprofessional, and so far it hasn't done anybody any good whatsoever, that I know of.

Starting last Sunday morning I really tried to keep a poker face, and for the most part I succeeded. I nearly jumped out of my chair once, when during a tuning discussion one of my friends said "Is that the place you were making a face about?" "WAS I MAKING A FACE??" I cried out. She said not really, she was only looking at me from the side. Apparently even a slight puckering of the lips passes for making a face. Apparently my reputation for making faces is at least as big as my reputation for impeccable tuning.

What I'm hoping is that with controlling my outward reaction I can control my inner reaction a bit and not get so control-freakish. (Except about controlling myself.) And I'm going to start carrying my Korg tuner around again and monitoring myself. Just to make sure it's not me...

More on the Great Big Fat Bet...

2009-02-18T14:30:00.002-05:00

We have about got our Fat Bet underway. So far four people have indicated that they would commit.

The plan is to lose ten pounds in five weeks, at $10 a pound. So I have to cough up $100 into an escrow account, and if I don't lose the 10 pounds, I lose the $100. I don't know what your financial situation may be, but that's a motivator for me. And if I do lose the 10 pounds, I get my money back, plus a division of whatever lost bet money may be in the escrow. So it's a Lose-Win situation.

The start date should be coming up here shortly as soon as we get our act together.

I have a little problem right now in that I just got over the stomach flu, and lost a bunch of weight. My weight this morning was 142.6, down a pound from the last weight I recorded back in December. (I had gained a bunch during January when I was being bad!) So right now I'm trying to just maintain that weight until it's time to start. If it creeps up a little bit, that's all right with me.

I have a feeling that a lot of exercise video reviews are in my blogging future. Stay tuned...

Melissa's Blah Post

2009-02-13T14:42:00.003-05:00

I got the worst stomach virus this week. And I was TRES bummed that I didn't get to sing the concert Wednesday night. They did all right without me, though. The NY Times review was great. But I really wanted to sing the pieces, especially for an audience. Rehearsing is great too, but I feel like a big part of the experience is the rapport with the audience.

There was a recording made for possible broadcast (the dress rehearsal was recorded too, so I might be on at least part of it). If I get a copy of it I might post an audio clip. Or a link, if it IS on radio.

I still feel awful. I got up and made myself oatmeal today, which is the only solid food I've had except for half a piece of toast last night. Then I promptly went back to bed because I felt terribly blah and the oatmeal didn't seem like such a good idea. But I feel lots better after a nap.

I've had more sodas this week than I usually do in a year.

Hope everyone stays well!

Fat Bets

2009-02-09T11:46:00.004-05:00

I read this article in the Times the other day: Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is. The more I thought about it the more brilliant it seemed.

So a friend of mine is also interested in the idea, and we're currently thinking about ways to make the bet fair. She's a lot smaller than I am, but I think we have sort of the same body situation. Not obese, but carrying an annoying amount of extra.

Has anybody else done anything like this? Any suggestions on how to calculate fair goals?

Fatbet.net and www.makemoneylosingweight.com (referenced in the Times article) seem to be good resources--I checked them out.

I'll let you know how it goes!

What if you gave a funeral and nobody came?

2009-02-04T16:33:00.004-05:00

I was all worried yesterday about getting too tired, because I had a long rehearsal (of really hard music, it turned out) and then a concert. And this morning I had to go in at 9:00 and sing a funeral.

I was relatively okay--I needn't have worried so much. My practicing and exercising has been paying off in increased stamina.

I was unprepared for what actually happened at the church this morning. Nobody came. The only people there were the priest, me and two altar boys. And the funeral home people. And of course the deceased. So I stood there and sang away into the void as best I could. I felt so sad. I wanted to do a good job anyway.

Apparently the elderly lady for whom I was singing had arranged her whole funeral, including flowers, and prepaid the entire thing and arranged to have it in our humongous gorgeous church. She had a son, I know, who was unable to attend. And apparently nobody else.

I think there's a lesson in this somewhere...

Back to the OLD Comments

2009-02-04T13:13:00.003-05:00

THAT didn't last long. I decided the new comment thing added no value, so I ditched it. Sorry for the inconvenience!!

There was a VERY neat feature that linked your comments to your own last blog entry, but unfortunately it only works on WordPress and some other blog thingy I've already forgotten. But Blogger isn't it.

So we're back to normal!

Kewl Updates!

2009-02-03T10:09:00.005-05:00

I just found an interesting way to manage comments through CommentLuv.com. So I went through all the processes, which weren't that hard, and now you'll notice the comments have a radical new look. You can also rate comments and reply to them.

Just thought I'd try it for a while and see if it is value added or just a nuisance.

In other news, not so kewl but good anyway, I'm doing fairly well getting back on the discipline track.

I mysteriously pulled something in my back, so that I felt for a couple of days like I had a broken rib or something and couldn't breathe deeply without it hurting. So I decided to do just some Sun Salutation sets and a minimal practice yesterday. (I was pretty vocally tired with squealing at the TV during the Superbowl, anyway. By the way, I think that's the first Superbowl I've ever actually sat down and watched. I was at a party.)

Today I'm gearing up for a slightly longer practice and a real Yoga workout. It sure makes you feel good! I have a heavy day of singing ahead--long rehearsal and then concert, so that will be plenty of vocal workout for the day.

Also I cleaned the kitchen. Yay! And flossed. It's not all that hard; I realize you just have to be mindful. I'm such a forgetful person--sometimes I forget to eat. (You'd think I'd be less portly.)

Excuse me, do you have the time?

2009-01-30T14:58:00.005-05:00

There are so many things I want to do—even beyond the 101 things (or the 91) that I have on my list.

Lately I’ve been trying to work on my exercising and practicing and hand therapy. This isn’t going so well. Things keep interfering; I have a bad night’s sleep or get to bed really late, and so I wake up late and rush out the door. Or I have too much to do in the day. Like last week when I was putting in 12-hour days several days in a row.

All this and I’m supposed to be flossing my teeth every day, too.

And I’d sure like to 1) keep the kitchen cleaner, 2) make and adhere to menus for the week, 3) get back to some of my shoulder and knee therapy, 4) get back to drawing cartoons, 5) oh whatever…

I know people who actually get stuff done like this every single day. Why is it so hard for me?

I’m taking a good hard look at my daily activity, trying to see where everything fits in. One place I really fall down, besides getting up too late, is when I get home in the evening all tired out from my commute. I sit down at the computer with a glass of wine and putter around on Facebook, or I sit down with the ScottieDog and watch political shows on TV. Or both. I think it’s called vegging out. (Vedging out?)

Obviously I’m not going to reach my goal of daily discipline if I fold up every night when I get home. I’m hoping that if I do get my exercise in regularly (I was doing really well at this in December), I’ll feel lots better and have more energy and can use some of my evening time for projects.

Does anybody else have this problem? How do you plow through all the things people are supposed to do every single day? Like make up your bed?

At least I’ve been really good about getting my makeup on before I leave the house. (Goal 80)

This week I’m going for the discipline thing again: I’m going to get to bed early and get up with ScottieDog so I’ll have time to exercise AND practice—haven’t gotten to do both in the morning yet. Who has an extra two hours in the morning? Consider Obama. He gets up at the crank of dawn and goes to the gym and then does president stuff all day. But he doesn’t have to practice. I wonder how well he would do if he had to put in at least an hour of vocalizing to boot.

So we’ll see how this goes…

Music of the Forest Monster God

2009-01-28T12:24:00.005-05:00

CD of the Week - Goal 74

Sibelius: En Saga, Finlandia, Tapiola, Swan of Tuonela, Oceanides
YYYYY

I keep forgetting that Sibelius is one of my favorite composers. Even trying to listen to this CD on my iPod on the subway with all kinds of competing noise, it was mind-boggling.

If you liked The Lord of the Rings you would love this music. I don't know why they didn't use it for the movie soundtrack; it is spine-tingling. En Saga is my favorite, but Tapiola is right up there--I always imagine walking in a big scary forest in Finland and happening upon a monstrous spirit-being...which is sort of what the piece is about. Scariest. Music. Ever. So if you like being scared, Tapiola is the sort of thing you'd like.

Don't get me wrong, though, it's also insanely beautiful. As are all the other pieces on the recording. It's very high Romantic style, but with a edge to it.

[Note I have started a rating system. I Y this particular recording five Ys.]

SLOGGING AROUND AFTER YOU-KNOW-WHO

2009-01-27T21:50:00.007-05:00

Goal 61 – Read all the books on my reading list

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J. K. Rowling

The Brothers Karamazov was such a slog (not that there’s anything wrong with that) that I thought I’d choose some lighter fare for my next book --how about a nice children's book, I thought. Boy, was I mistaken.

These poor kids (Harry, Ron and Hermione), after about the 53rd page or something, never get to sit down and eat a square meal. It’s just one damn thing after another. And they misunderstand each other a lot, and get mad at each other and stuff. That’s how it goes when you’re on a really dreadful trip. You know it’s a bad vacation when school looks like paradise. And when you keep running into big snakes.

And then poor Harry finds out close to the end (SPOILER ALERT—almost) that he has to essentially kill himself if he wants to kill You-Know-Who (for various reasons I won’t go into). Life’s a bitch, and then you die, is how the story seems to be going. It certainly does for a lot of the characters in this tome (759 pages). Rowling ratchets up the destruction factor about fiftyfold for this series finale.

Rowling really, really likes to write. There are a LOT of words in this book. And for me, some of the wallowing around in mundane wizardry (as opposed to the extraordinary kind) gets kind of boring. The last several of the series have gotten kind of bogged down in that respect --I was really not enjoying the big huge Quidditch tournament several books back (When will this be over, I was saying to myself)-- and also from the fact that poor Harry sits around in various states of anxiety and frustration for long stretches. When he's not slogging. That being said, Rowling has amazing imagination and vision. And the plots certainly pick up speed as you go along…these are some of the most exciting endings in literature. Really. Rowling sure comes through with some interesting existential situations for her little guy. This is not so much a children's book, I'm thinking (as I suppress my sobs).

I started the Potter series way back in 2002 or so when two of my daughters were moving to New York from down South, and I was helping them drive a big U-Haul full of stuff. We took turns driving, and those who weren't took turns reading The Sorcerer’s Stone. I found it extremely entertaining. I was bummed when we ran out of book before we ran out of road trip. When I broke my hand last year, it seemed like a good time to embark on the rest of the series. It was the only part of my recovery that I enjoyed. Well, except for the Percocet.

I’m glad I wasn’t on painkillers, though, when I read The Deathly Hallows—because it requires concentration. By the way, I thought the Deathly Hallows was a place, for some reason. It isn’t. I mean they aren't. I’m not going to tell what they are, either. (Not telling what happens to Harry, either.)

HAPPY NEW ERA!!!

2009-01-21T14:30:00.001-05:00

I inadvertently put off my New Year celebration until now. I even had a huge quantity of champagne last night, and stayed up past midnight…something I didn’t do at the actual start of 2009. Wasn’t interested.

It occurred to me only this morning, when I jumped out of bed all energetic (and strangely enough, no hangover), fired up and ready to go, if you will--Ack. I had hoped never to encounter that phrase that again. (I mean the “if you will” part—forever in my mind associated with Cheney. Why the hell did he keep saying that? Like we had any choice?)

NOW I’m ready to jump into my diet/exercise/whatever other resolutions I can come up with at this late date. Being a better person, etc.

For years and years now I’ve been yearning for somebody to ask Americans to take some responsibility…something Bush obviously felt we were either incapable of or that it would be a terrible imposition (projecting, maybe?). And it finally happened! Hooray!!! I felt like I had almost written Obama’s inaugural address my own self. Or at least the outline. He is so right—there’s nothing like a good challenge to get the blood flowing.

I couldn’t tear myself away from the television until the Obamas had danced their last dance. I was thinking during the parade that they must have been so exhausted—though they stood there for hours smiling and cheering. I somehow felt that if they had to endure the entire rest of the day, running the gauntlet of the inaugural balls, I would just see it through with them (albeit from the comfort of my couch).

I’ve been cynical about the comparison of the new White House to Camelot—Barack Obama is no Jack Kennedy, and I mean that perhaps in a good way. I believe that Obama has a lot more going for him—for one thing he’s a lot healthier, both mentally and physically. Well, okay, Kennedy was funnier. It began to dawn on me though, that I was experiencing something like déjà vu, or nostalgia, in spite of myself.

I realized as I bounced down the street this morning on my way to work that part of the glow I was feeling was healing, not the healing I was expecting from the emotional and spiritual wounds of the last eight years, but something else as well.

I was fifteen when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and it was a trauma that haunted me for years and years. I always believed that that same trauma drove everyone who lived through it a little mad, drove the craziness of the rest of the sixties.

With succeeding inaugurations, there were always odious comparisons in my head, always the feeling that the energy, élan and aura of the Kennedy years would never be recaptured. That the world would never look at our leader again with that same mixture of awe and respect. Until now.

That wound--still gaping all these years, though I didn’t realize it—has finally closed.

God and the Secret Service keep them safe.

Goal 61 - Read all the books on my reading list

2009-01-19T14:26:00.006-05:00

The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky

(I didn't know until today that Google Books has entire books up on the web including this one--see above link.)

Finished it, finally!

Golly, this is Some Book. It appears on almost every list of the "essential" books that you have to read if you're to be considered an educated person...so I had to read it to keep up appearances. I started reading on November 21, 2008.

I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, which is supposed to capture "the musical whole of Dostoevsky's original." I wouldn't know about that, but The Brothers Karamazov is certainly the most passionate book I have ever read. This edition (paperback) is 776 pages long not counting the end-notes, and it is VERY small print. I had to buy stronger glasses.

For the most part I confine my reading to my subway commute, and this is a good place to read a book like this. I actually like reading the "great" literature, and this book was kind of hard slogging for me at times. On the subway almost any diversion from reality looks pretty good.

I just finished it, lolling around in bed for the first part of the MLK holiday today. (I had to break up my reading with several short naps, but that was probably because I stayed up late watching the Obama Story and not a reflection on Dostoevsky.)

Karamazov is actually a page-turner for the most part, but at times characters go into long philosophical discussions, which is only a diversion if you're into that kind of thing. (Which I hasten to add that I am, up to a point.)

Aside from containing several philosophical treatises (the three brothers and one other exalted personage have at least one treatise apiece), the plot includes a sensational murder mystery which I will not "spoil" here. Suffice it to say that, here at the last, I'm questioning the sanity of every single character in the book, including the "exalted personage."

This is not really a review, because I read the book in short spurts over a long period of time, and the totality of it has not quite sunk in. There is a repeated idea in the book that all the Karamazovs have a tendency toward selfish sensuality, but it appeared to me that the plot mainly explored the characterization of the three brothers as sensual, intellectual and spiritual, each brother taking one of those attributes. Kind of like a Beethoven symphony, really, and it even has a kind of Ode to Joy at the end.

So that's all I have to say about that for the moment. (I reserve the right to post any bright ideas I have about the book later on.)

Breakfast Date!

2009-01-16T16:16:00.004-05:00

Another thing I kind of forgot about was "Goal 85 - Have a date with Scott once a month." Well I did have one lined up for December, but the show got cancelled. And December was awful.

So this time, we went to one of the local diners on a breakfast date! I decided I'd have pancakes, and remembered too late that this is never such a good idea as it seems before you order and are ravenous and nostalgic for the gluttony of your youthful breakfasts. About a third of the way through the stack I was regretting 1) no whole grain flour in them at all which made me feel like I was eating a stack of warm wet cardboard and 2) no real maple syrup, which once you have become accustomed to you can never go back to Log Cabin or Aunt Jemima's.

Scott took a picture of me watching the snow outside the window, which was coming down like in a snow globe. The snow isn't so nice right now, the temp being down in the teens, and what's left of the snow being hard as a rock. And they say there's more to come this weekend. I just hope it gets to be more of a reasonable temperature. (Especially if any more planes decide to land in the Hudson River--that must have been really uncomfortable.)

Poem of the Month - "The Wood-pile"

2009-01-13T13:08:00.017-05:00

Talking of motivation--and I believe we were--because of this poem, I went back to school and completed my bachelors degree at age 32 or something like that. I have returned to the poem again and again over the years, and it always impels me to reflect and to look at things I've started and abandoned for some reason or other. I read it to my freshman arts class at Berea college back in the early 90s. They (predictably) tolerated my whim until I got to the last bit--which they really responded to. Maybe some of the greatest last lines in the history of poetry.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). North of Boston. 1915.

16. The Wood-pile

OUT walking in the frozen swamp one grey day
I paused and said, “I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.”
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went down. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year’s snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year’s before.
The wood was grey and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labour of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

I have been so bad!

2009-01-12T19:55:00.007-05:00

I totally slacked off, feeling all proud of myself for not slacking off too much in December. AND I got real busy doing a concert.

But I'm back at it now. One thing I did do was Review My Goals. I realized I had started new projects and then forgotten about them in the press of other events, like hand surgery, etc. Such as "Goal 74 -Listen to a CD every week." After that one post (after the jump) I never listened to another CD! I thought about it from time to time, but I got really busy. I'm telling you, you have to keep reviewing your goals or you'll forget about them.

Anyway, I listened to an actual CD. This was Olivier Messiaen: "La Nativite du Seigneur," nine meditations for organ. It's performed by an organist friend and colleague of mine, Renee Louprette, who is about the most amazing organist I've ever heard and can totally make stuff up out of her head on the spot that sounds like some major composer wrote it.

I'm really fond of Messiaen, and I hear his work a lot, being in the pro choir of a big church with a huge important organ. Listening to the CD wasn't as big a thrill as listening to it live, but it's still pretty amazing.

Messiaen was a super-religious person whose "faith was the sole reason for his composing," according to the liner notes. He used stained glass as a sort of "muse" for his music, and listening to it is actually a little bit like looking at really amazing stained glass. (Ever been to Saint-Chappelle in Paris? Wow.) Even on the little computer speakers the last meditation of the set made the hair rise on the back of my neck. I have to listen to it again on my iPod. Preferably reclining with my eyes closed with a glass of Chardonnay. That would be the way to do it. If you can't actually listen in the organ loft, which would be my preference. IF they would let me have a glass of Chardonnay up there.

My Jumpstarted January

2009-01-04T14:44:00.005-05:00

Hey there all--my December of Discipline seemed to work, even though I was kind of half-assed about it! Things just got so hectic!

I jumped on the scale the other day, and I only gained two pounds, so I was thrilled. After I catch my breath and get back into the daily grind, I'm going to go back to the good fitness regime. I've learned a lot about the way I handle this kind of thing, and hopefully I'll remember it all when next December comes around!

#1 on the list: figure out to do with the Pecan Cake before you make one. My husband is only tepidly interested in it, because it's not meat, and the kids aren't around that much, being off on their own now, so I'm the only one who eats it, and it's a humongous cake! I'm just now finishing up the last of it! And I figured up the WW points, and it's somewhere around 6 to 8 per slice! Oog.

The culprit

To explain, the Pecan Cake is my great-grandmother's recipe, and Christmas is not Christmas without it. It's kind of like a fruitcake, except it has a lot more pecans in it and only raisins. Okay, and a little orange juice and a lot of Harvey's Bristol Cream--that kind of counts as a fruit. And butter and eggs and spices, etc. It's really, really good. But next year I'm either going to make it in three small loaf pans, or cut up the leftovers and take them to work or choir or something. I can't eat a steady diet of Pecan Cake like this! I'm amazed I haven't gained 10 pounds. (With a glass of milk it makes a very tasty breakfast. Or lunch. Or both.)

Breakfast

Incidentally, by popular request I made this cake for my daughter's wedding. Except I covered it in marzipan so it would look more bridal. I used to have a picture of it, but now I can't find it. >:-(

#2 on the list: PLAN AHEAD. I can't make wise decisions about what I'm going to eat or if and when I'm going to exercise unless I figure it out ahead of time. Menus for the week are a must. Or at least a day ahead! The parties etc. are not such a big deal for me. And the concerts and services are so exhausting, I don't feel like partying that much anyway. Doing Messiah twice and then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day--I think I lost five pounds during that week. Seriously. I'm convinced singing is an aerobic excercise.

Hope everyone's holidays were great! I'm looking forward to a great year!

Drawings 5 and 6

2008-12-29T15:17:00.003-05:00

Above is the Christmas present I drew for my daughter A.C. Her cats are her life!

I have killed two birds with one stone here, or rather four birds with two stones, because below is the portrait of my step-granddaughter that I did for her mom. These drawings also count toward my goal 65 (Make Christmas presents for everybody in the family). The jpg of the portrait came out rather rough. The actual rendering is much softer and more subtle. It was so subtle we had to use color "enhancing" options to get it to show up at all, which is what makes it look more cartoonish than it actually is.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2008-12-24T10:08:00.009-05:00

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
. The flying cloud, the frosty light:
. The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
. Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
. The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
. For those that here we see no more;
. Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
. And ancient forms of party strife;
. Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
. The faithless coldness of the times;
. Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
. The civic slander and the spite;
. Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
. Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
. Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
. The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
. Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Angels and Unicorns!!!

2008-12-22T11:03:00.020-05:00

Goal 7 - Visit the Cloisters

I had the best of reasons for fulfilling my Cloisters goal: my daughter was in a highly acclaimed performance of the The Play of Daniel there this weekend. She was an angel! ~~This is a picture of her that appeared in The New York Times today!~~ This is a picture taken by a production member after I realized that I had dumbly put up a copyrighted picture. At least I realized it without being hauled off to jail first. You can see the really spectacular picture in the review link, below. (There was also another little one in the Times last Friday.) She had a small solo part toward the end where she foretells the birth of Jesus, but she was also in a lot of other singing and carrying on. The angel part was so great. She was pretty much front and center for the rest of the performance. (And in case you're wondering, those vaguely Oscar the Grouch figures are lions. They were the surprise hit of the show.) The review was a rave!

I also got the chance to walk around a little bit, though I had to get to a concert of my own later in the afternoon. I managed to snap a few pictures:

I knew the unicorn tapestries were there, so I made a beeline for that room. It's so dim in there because light is bad for the tapestries--but I snapped a blurry Treo picture just for proof.

I have to go back though, because I meant to go for a longer time and with ScottieDog. It is so beautiful! I'll bet in the spring it's like heaven, and we could walk around in the park. Agenda for a whole day, I expect.

Someone Understands!!!!

2008-12-16T08:37:00.003-05:00

Get a load of this article:

So you think you can get along without your pinkie

Well, at least someone ELSE who understands. I've had at least a couple of sympathetic commenters/commiserators. (commiseraters? That doesn't look right.)

Though I have to say, the lady of the article really had it easy. I, unfortunately, had a comminuted fracture and TWO surgeries, and the metal in my finger is driving me crazy. The doctor said it may eventually be a good idea to take it out, though I'm not reacting to it as badly as I was before. It's just so uncomfortable. I can't stand anything touching my hand there. Which makes drawing quite a bit uncomfortable. So I have to wear a bandage all the time unless I want to risk accidentally brushing up against something.

I 'tooned a 'toon today, oh boy.

2008-12-12T20:21:00.001-05:00

A Great Way to Spend December

2008-12-12T13:29:00.007-05:00

I have been SO good this week, except for one day when I went way over my wine limit. As my yoga DVD says, tell yourself one healthful thing to keep in mind for the day. I keep telling myself "Enjoy the discipline!" And I think I am, actually.

My weight today was 143.6, down two pounds from last week. Of course WW goes "tsk,tsk" because they think that's too much to lose in a week. Screw them. I'm eating all my points per day, most days, and going over into my flex points. I used 22 flex points last week. And it is, after all, December, so the shrinking is bound to ease up a little.

I'm feeling pretty good about my food. THE KEY IS to keep that afternoon snack going. Got to have my piece of fruit. If I don't, when I get home I tend to fall upon whatever is most handy and devour it. The cats are starting to keep out of sight when I come in the door.

One other thing: I'm eating no "diet" food. I use regular salad dressing, and regular butter. And of course olive oil, all in moderate quantities.

I've been getting fairly good grades except for that one day (see above) when I got a D+. The hardest thing is to make sure I do enough hand therapy per day. Yesterday I went to the actual hand therapist so I got a good workout. And my hand is so much better! I saw the doctor this morning and she was very impressed!

Exercising is going great! If I don't get to the treadmill or a long walk, I can always fall back on my yoga DVD, which I'm starting to love! I ordered another one this week, and also an aerobic DVD from The Firm. We'll see how that works out.

I'm telling you, this is a great way to spend December. Much better than feeling all apprehensive about how much weight I'm going to put on over the holidays, and looking forward to a January of restraint. I recommend getting a jump on your New Year's fitness resolutions.

P.S. I'm also really excited about a couple of Christmas presents I'm making. More about that later, because I don't want the recipients reading about it in my blog.

Creativity

2008-12-09T09:40:00.005-05:00

Remember back when I was trying to get filing done, so I took big stacks of it to work? I decided to take all my tortuous hand therapy equipment to work with me and get some done there. I call that thinking outside the box! And hey!--my hand is really starting to improve!

The apparatus in the picture is my hated neuromuscular stimulator. You hook those electrodes up over the correct tendon and put on the splint, and when it gets going it gives you some low-level but nasty sustained shocks and makes you bend your finger. Actually both the little finger and the fourth finger bend, because they share a tendon. And you have to work really hard to try to bend it a little further. It makes my neck and shoulders really tired because I forget to relax everything else. But I can really tell the improvement!

Next time I'll post a picture of my putty! That'll be interesting, because it's green.

Anyway, my December of Discipline is moving right along. I've discovered that weekends and leisure time in general are the enemies of discipline. I get a lot more done when I've got a lot to do, if that makes any sense. Over the weekend I made a B- and a D+ (ack), but yesterday I got back on track with a good solid A! And I'm still 143.8 lbs.

So far...

2008-12-06T11:14:00.002-05:00

...so good. I'm down from 147.4 to 143.8. Mostly bloat, no doubt.

Thursday I got a B and yesterday I got an A-. Averaging 1.5 glasses of chardonnay a day--not too bad for me. It's a strange thing about being on WW--I've noticed it before--that I don't really like drinking wine that much.

Hand therapy is not going so terribly well--I'm soaking and exercising but I haven't been able to hook up to the neuromuscular stimulator machine. I keep putting it off, it's so annoying. Tonight for sure.

Exercise is going okay. I wish I could do 2 points a day, but I've been too busy. Maybe today...

The thing with yesterday is, I was going to do my old VHS beginner workout, but I put it in the old TV and it promptly got ATE. Hm. So I got online to see if I could get one on DVD, and used up most of my exercise time trying to find something comparable. Does anybody have any favorites? For someone really kinda out of shape??

I also spent way too much time trying to figure out my new iPod, but no doubt all the studying will pay off in the end. I don't know why I can't get it to understand that I don't want it to copy every single dingle thing on my computer iTunes. So irritating. (I have a lot of "work" stuff on there.)

December of Discipline, Gol-durnit!

2008-12-04T13:26:00.005-05:00

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

I had two Thanksgivings, one here at home on Wednesday night and another with my extended family in Kentucky on Saturday afternoon. This is NOT such a good idea if you're trying to lose weight. I gained five pounds. :-P

It's a shame Thanksgiving and Christmas come so close together (not to mention Halloween, though I'm not too big on sweets) because it puts the people trying to pursue fitness at a double-whammy disadvantage. No wonder New Year's diet resolutions are so popular. SO, I decided that on all the days this month that I'm not partying, I'm going to be observing as much discipline as I can. It would be great if I could start the New Year a little better off instead of worse off!

I started WeightWatchers flex program again, because I feel good on it, and I won't drink so much, and it encourages me to exercise (so I get to eat more).

I'm hoping to reach Goal 47 (drink <2 glasses of wine a day for one week) and Goal 96 (practice voice 5 times in one week), and work on 45 (lose weight), 56 (exercise 3 times a week), 57 (hand therapy), and 65 (make Christmas presents).

My Rules: I'm going to grade myself each day on how well I do. I will have to 1) stick to diet, 2) not drink too much, 3) exercise, and 4) hand therapy -- all four in order to get an A for the day. And obviously continue to whack away at what other goals I can manage.

We'll see, I guess, whether I've got the right stuff...

The Designated Driver

2008-11-25T13:29:00.003-05:00

Internet is back up! Whew.

Internet Withdrawal

2008-11-24T15:39:00.006-05:00

Well, our DSL modem is down. What a bummer! It's severely cramping my blogging style.

So this is just to say that I will be a bit sporadic in posting. We're going to take a trip to KY to see my family over Thanksgiving as well, so I probably won't be posting until we get back next week.

But just so you know, I'm reading away at The Brothers Karamazov, and so far it's pretty fascinating except for a spell where the Elder went on for pages healing and preaching--not that there's anything wrong with that, and I think all that is going to have some bearing later on down the road. Right now where I am in the book the father and son are vigorously arguing and creating scandal. So that's all right.

I have also managed to hang on to my New Habit of not leaving my shoes all over the house.

I haven't done so well exercising, but after all I did have surgery and the aftermath has been a little harrowing. I did buy this DVD:

And I'm really loving it when I can remember to find time to do it. I've been trying to do it right when I get home instead of just coming in, throwing things down and pouring the cocktail. When I do 20 minutes in the morning, with a Sun Salutation set, I feel so great. My whole body feels different all day.

Some of my other goals/new habits suffered a bit, but I'm back on track now, more or less. When I get back from KY I will renew my efforts!! Hope I don't pork out...

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Goal 61 - Read all the books on my reading list

2008-11-20T15:56:00.018-05:00

Founding Brothers
Joseph J. Ellis

I finished the first book on my reading list! (Ahem.)

Interesting facts:

1. The author of this book looks a little bit like Gerald Ford and a little bit like Jimmy Carter.

2. Founding Brothers won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2001.

3. Joseph Ellis got into trouble right after he won the Pulitzer for exaggerating his participation in the Vietnam War (he was in uniform but served in America, not Vietnam as he claimed to students and media), and as a result was suspended from teaching history for a year among other punitive actions. Rather ironic.

4. Washington and his vice-president, John Adams, considered the vice-presidency as a legislative office based in the Senate.

I think it’s a fascinating book. Disclosure: I was a graduate student in history once, with a special interest in the Early Republic. Still, I think any person reasonably interested in history would also find it fascinating, especially in light of the many constitutional crises of the past seven years. Frequently passages are poundingly resonant with current times. The book is fairly well written and easily comprehended (though I caught some misspellings (apart from the weird free-style spelling of the 1700s) and one strange phrase: “shades of light.” ??)

Ellis concentrates on the personal dynamics that roiled the politics of the Founding and the early Republic. The personal stories and interactions of this "band of brothers" are what makes the book a compelling read.

Ellis admits to taking a “disarmingly old-fashioned” approach to this history, instead of following a modern trend which focuses on “recover[ing] lost voices” and “ignoring mainstream politics.” He writes:

In my opinion, the central events and achievements of the revolutionary era and the early republic were political. These events and achievements are historically significant because they shaped the subsequent history of the United States, including our own time. The central players in the drama were not the marginal or peripheral figures, whose lives are more typical, but rather the political leaders at the center of the national story who wielded power.

The book is cleverly organized into six segments, each following a particular story or vignette:

1. The Duel – A riveting account of the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and an illuminating “back story.”

2. The Dinner – The pact that Jefferson facilitated over dinner in June of 1790 at his lodgings at 57 Maiden Lane in New York City (right around the corner from where I’m writing this, in fact). The other partygoers were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton (who by the way is buried in the churchyard just down the street). Jefferson manipulated the other two into coming to terms about federal assumption of state debts. This was a controversial issue because some of the states had already paid their own, and other states had humongous amounts owing, and it was of course not fair. But Hamilton (treasury secretary at the time, as you well know) was desperately determined to repair the public credit, and the whole thing was in congressional deadlock. By bringing the two prime movers and antagonists together and making them come to terms, Jefferson extracted the condition that the new capital of the new country would eventually settle in what was to become Washington, D.C.

3. The Silence – A heartbreaker…the “silence” referred to in the chapter title actually descended after the events of this chapter, the debate over slavery at the Constitutional Convention.

4. The Farewell – Eight words: George Washington was the Father of our Country. This account is also illuminating and heartbreaking at times. I wish he were alive today.

5. The Collaborators – More of the machinations of Thomas Jefferson. The chapter starts off as though it’s going to be about John Adams and Jefferson, the president and vice-president at the time, but it ends up being about Jefferson and Madison and their undermining of the Adams presidency (to vastly oversimplify--and in their defense they thought they were saving the Republic.)

6. The Friendship – This is my favorite chapter, I think. It brings the book to an appropriate climax and summation by exploring the personal relationship between Adams and Jefferson, the bitter rift that grew between them, and the repair of the relationship in their old age. The story of this friendship encompasses the whole of the Founding, and the enmity between the two illustrates nothing less than the birth pangs of the country. The ending is priceless.

Obviously from the chapter titles, the book doesn’t follow chronological order. Each event is placed in the context of the larger story of the founding, and the impact of the event on history, which makes each chapter a little history in itself. I sometimes felt that even within the chapter narrative, backward and forward jumps in time got a little confusing. But that’s a minor complaint.

As a student of history, it didn’t come as any surprise that Thomas Jefferson was a devious bastard, but anyone coming to the book with a typical high school/general studies view of the Founding Fathers might find his Machiavellian approach to politics a big surprise. Get this:

[Jefferson’s] conduct in providing clandestine instructions to Adams’s cabinet undermined the constitutional authority of the executive branch in ways that would have landed him in jail in modern times.

[I’m moved to recount some personal description of Jefferson that struck me as a student: he had a very soft voice (they called his second Inaugural Address the “Second Inaudible Address), he would hardly look anyone in the eye, and he padded around the White House in bedroom slippers. He was also described by contemporaries as having immense personal charm. Go figure.]

I was very gratified, however, to learn more about John Adams, who I’ve never really delved into much because he has seemed an unsympathetic character. It’s great to get below the surface of his reputation and find an immensely passionate, brilliant but erratic, and funny person. I think he might just be the funniest of the founders.

The last chapter brilliantly explores the building of the Narrative of the Founding—something Jefferson excelled at. Speaking of the words he penned for the 50th anniversary of independence (incidentally, the day he died, and Adams as well), Ellis writes:

[This] uniquely Jeffersonian message…was inherently rhetorical in character—that is, it framed the issues at a rarefied altitude, where all answers were self-evident and no real choices had to be made. And that was the ultimate source of its beguiling charm. The Jeffersonian vision floated. It functioned at inspirational levels above the bedeviling particularities, like a big bang theory of the American Revolution…

Jefferson was positively Reaganesque in his ability to package himself and the Founding in glowing idealism, while Adams insisted on the down-and-dirty “bedeviling particularities.” It irked him no end that Jefferson was going to go down in history (oh yes, Adams knew he would) as the iconic figure that he spun himself, and that he, Adams, would end up as the irascible, faintly ridiculous figure that he knew he was (big ego or no big ego).

Here are some choice random quotes from Founding Brothers:

Adams on ideology:

Adams claimed to be fascinated by the new word “upon the Common Principle of delight in every Thing We cannot understand.” What was an “ideology”? he asked playfully: “Does it mean Idiotism? The Science of Non Compos Menticism. The Science of Lunacy? The Theory of Delerium? [sic]” As Adams explained it, the French philosophes had invented the word, which became a central part of their utopian style of thinking and a major tenet in their “school of folly.” It referred to a set of ideals and hopes, like human perfection or social equality, that philosophers mistakenly believed could be implemented in the world because it existed in their heads. Jefferson himself thought in this French fashion, Adams claimed, confusing the seductive prospects envisioned in his imagination with the more limited possibilities history permitted.

Jefferson on political parties:

“In the present situation of the United States, divided as they are between two parties, which mutually accuse each other of perfidy and treason…this exalted station [the presidency] is surrounded with dangerous rocks, and the most eminent abilities will not be sufficient to steer clear of them all.” Whereas Washington had been able to levitate above the partisan factions, “the next president of the United States will only be the president of a party.”

On Washington’s military strategy in the Revolutionary War:

…By 1778 he had reached an elemental understanding…namely, that captured ground—what he termed “a war of posts” –was virtually meaningless. The strategic key was the Continental Army. If it remained intact as an effective fighting force, the American Revolution remained alive. The British army could occupy Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and it did. The British navy could blockade and bombard American seaports with impunity, and it did. The Continental Congress could be driven from one location to another like a covey of pigeons, and it was. But as long as Washington held the Continental Army together, the British could not win the war, which in turn meant that they would eventually lose it.

Hm.

Next up: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. (By the way, I think it’s really weird that there’s a cruise ship named the MS Fyodor Dostoevsky. Don’t you?)

Goal 26 - Clean out coat closet

2008-11-20T00:29:00.006-05:00

Woo hoo, I totally did it! And I didn't even mean to. Of course I forgot to take a "before" picture, but here is the after picture:

I mean I'm so excited, you can totally see the floor!! (Even if it does have these weird stains on it that have been there ever since we moved in and I have no idea what they are.)

So, the story is, I got this great new iMac for my 60th birthday, and it's AWESOME. I still love my sunflower mac, but still. This is really awesome!!!

I got up today determined to get my new iMac in gear, so as to make room in my office area, so I plunged into (I think) Goal 31 -- Get papers filed, which has really languished of late, and I made really great headway, until I realized I was going to have to clean out the coat closet in order to store the boxes of papers I was creating. So that's how I ended up fulfilling Goal 26. It was an accident.

However, in the process, I discovered that we had 13 winter scarves, 10 baseball caps, and four complete pairs of gloves. I was getting ready to go buy a new pair for the winter. I threw away at least eight odd gloves and one baseball cap and several scarves that were beyond the pale.

I SO made such great headway in the papers. I unloaded all my mother-in-law's stuff AND "filed" it, meaning I put it in her file cabinet in no particular order. (This is from the boxes that they've been in ever since the move from Florida, so I mean "in the order they were in in the boxes".) AND I purged all the stuff that didn't have any relevance whatsoever, like advertisements and brochures and clipped articles she will never use now.

So our little home office looks a lot more sane now, and ScottieDog put up my new iMac when he got home. We transferred everything from the old iMac and it is working great!

I am posting pictures of all the trash and stuff that I generated, just for evidence. It's still not all done yet...whew! But hey! We can now move around in our little office area! I am SO proud of myself. It's really going to get done!

This is stuff that has to be trashed but also has to be shredded.

This stuff is just trash. The rest I "filed."

And this is me watching the transfer of the old iMac data to the new iMac!! THRILLER!!!

Now We Are Six-ty

2008-11-17T09:52:00.006-05:00

Birthday greetings to all of you from me! Because it's my birthday. Well, it was yesterday, but the celebration is going to continue for a while.

You'll be glad to know that turning 60 actually feels pretty good! My sister went there before me a couple of years ago, and that's what she said at the time. I was somewhat dubious. She was right, though.

We had a nice family dinner out last night which was fun and delicious! I got an iPod Nano, which means now I can REALLY put together an exercise mix and not have to carry my clunky Treo downstairs to the treadmill. I also got a copy of the new NYTimes HUGE coffee table book of all the front pages from 1851 to 2008! It's fascinating--and oddly enough I had just been salivating over it in the NYTimes advertisement that morning. AND later this week a new iMac will be arriving.

We're hoping to have a big home turkey dinner soon for everyone here in New York, because we're going to Kentucky for the actual Thanksgiving holiday. Yay, I get to see my mom and dad! And Sylvia! Sylvia's trip to NASA for the shuttle launch was one of my best 60th birthday presents! She has some souvenirs for me, too.

(I have more pictures from last night but for some reason I can't upload them from this computer. Later.)

Shuttle Launch!!

2008-11-14T14:43:00.003-05:00

My sweet "middle" daughter Sylvia is watching/reporting on the launch of the Endeavor tonight! She wangled her way into the press corps and is having the time of her life! You can read all about it at her blog: Fun with Hypergols!

I am one excited mom!

The Beggars of New York

2008-11-12T21:38:00.005-05:00

[I wrote this essay for my OpenSalon.com blog, but I thought I'd copy it to here for those of you who don't read OpenSalon.]

I moved to New York ten years ago with my youngest daughter A.C., who was then fifteen, thinking if we could make it here, we could make it anywhere. Though we come from a long line of diffident Southern Belles, we bravely put on the armor of enterprise and plunged into the raging current that is big city life.

We had been in New York City before under the protective wing of a talent agency (showbiz tryout stuff), but had never done anything then so nitty-gritty as ride the subway. We saw that it wasn’t that bad and learned to navigate nicely, though the NYC subway admittedly is a mighty, mighty strange place. I made A.C. interpret the maps and signs while I was with her, and she soon picked it up and was able to travel on her own. Not that the whole thing wasn’t a culture shock. Venturing off the tourist track, we saw a good deal more of the peculiar and astounding character of NYC than we were prepared for.

I remember particularly walking down Sixth Avenue, when A.C. suddenly sidled close up to me and said in a shocked voice, “Mommy, that lady is wearing garbage bags!” Sure enough, sitting on the sidewalk up against the side of a building in the shade was a withered woman clad in a couple of black plastic garbage bag knotted together. Despite what I had heard for years about the plight of The Homeless, this was the first time I was right up against it. It was an eye-opener.

We took to carrying change in our pockets to give to the beggars who asked, and for the street and subway performers who worked for the money (some harder than others). We soon learned to stop being afraid of them. One day A.C. confessed she was worried about giving money (however little) to people who might use it for alcohol and drugs, or for people who were only pretending they were hard up.

My response to her was that it wasn’t our job to determine those things. Our job was to give away our excess money to people who asked for it, not so much for their benefit as for our own. I don’t actually believe that the love of money is the number one root of all evil, but it’s got to be right far up there. I told A.C. that it was simply letting the coins fall from our hands that was the point. That seemed to make sense to her.

That being said, I have looked the other way lots of times. I don’t as a rule give money to people riding the subway, because I don’t want to encourage them to be lawbreakers. Twice I gave money to performers on the train because I really enjoyed their work, one a group of South American Indian guitar players and singers, and the other an outgoing group of drummers. (Usually the drummers annoy the hell out of me, but these guys were really entertaining and not too loud. I even took a video of them with my Treo.)

I’m used to the beggars by now, and truth be told, they do get a little tiresome after a while. As time went on I got to where I would just give all the change in my pocket to whoever asked first, and the rest of them were out of luck that day.

Once around Christmastime a rather belligerent guy came up to me at the 125th Street station where I was waiting for the A train, and asked me if I would give him twenty dollars. He wasn’t very nice about it, and I didn’t have it to spare, so I said, “No.” He went away not bothering to hide his disgust. I wonder if he ever got it.

…..

Rarely do I give very much money, only spare change or a dollar at most. I’m not an even half-way rich person. Once for several months, I was pretty well off, or thought that I was. One snowy day in that auspicious time, I was walking not two blocks from Fifth Avenue where the St. Patrick’s Day Parade was winding down. I had just passed several pipers in full regalia coming down the sidewalk, when I noticed huddled against the railing of St. Ignatius Loyola Church was a family, a short sweet-faced woman with a young boy, a small teen-age girl and a baby in a stroller protected with a plastic cover—all very decently dressed and presentable—and they looked to be miserably cold.

The woman reached out to me and began to plead for help. They had just been evicted from their apartment in Queens because her husband had lost his job. She didn’t want to take the children to the shelter because it was so dangerous and horrible there—she began to cry. She had just come from the 92nd Street Y, where she was told they could all be housed for the night with meals for $93, but they didn’t have enough money. I chewed my lip, and finally I gave her $20, which was pretty much all I had on me. Then she and the girl both still pleaded for further help; they acted as though I were the only person that had paid them any heed and were reluctant to part with me. I told them I was out of cash and out of time almost; I had somewhere to be. Then because they looked so distressed and were sobbing, I told them to stay there, I would be right back. I ran to an ATM, drew out some cash, ran back to them and gave her $100. I figured that would be enough for them for one night at least. I told them not to cry any more that day.

That’s the most I’ve ever given anybody. I worried about it, though, like my daughter had before: “What if they were con artists?” I talked myself down by reasoning that if they had that kind of Oscar-level talent, they wouldn’t be out on the street. And if they were scammers, they did such a creative and first-class job that they deserved the money. What a way to make a living, though, if so. I guess I always feel that if someone is so desperate that, for whatever crazy reason, they come up to people on the street asking for change, then they probably need it in some sense. I try not to judge; I just let the coins go.

…..

There is this division in the population of people in NYC who ask you for your money: on one side is the group I classify as real beggars, because they don’t give anything in return, and on the other side are workers—performers of some kind. There’s also a gray area where it’s hard to say which they are.

Some of the beggars hardly beg at all; like the pitiful garbage bag lady, they lie or sit listlessly with a handwritten sign: “Please Help.” Others are the “brother can you spare a dime” (or a twenty) sort. Then there are those who make an effort at quid pro quo, like the elderly man who hunkered down at the subway tunnel at 175th, playing his boombox for the edification of passersby.

The George Washington Bridge subway station at 175th has a longish pedestrian tunnel from the train to the terminal, and it is a popular site for those hitting up the crowd with varying degrees of success. These denizens encompass a wide range of functioning—from the poor guy who generally just sleeps, covered by blankets and cardboard (out of sight of the booth) with a battered paper cup sitting out for any coins that might fall his way—to the gray-bearded saxophone player—everybody calls him “Sax”—who is so well-known he’s had his picture in The New York Times playing in the subway tunnel, sitting on his milk crate, always in sunglasses, skinny legs crossed. Sax is a fabulous musician, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he made a decent amount sitting there. You wouldn’t believe how long he can hold a note. I sometimes think he must have a playing job somewhere and that he just fills up the rest of his time making some on the side off the commuters. Probably not, though.

Then there are those in between, a well-meaning elderly singer-guitarist (also with sunglasses) with only one volume (loud), one chord and only two sentences to his lyrics: “Oh yeah, it’s all right. It’s gonna be all right,” he wails.

One of the stand-outs of the in-betweeners is a young man who calls out to commuters in a mellifluous voice, giving them compliments and blessings as they pass (“Beautiful sister…how lovely you look…have a wonderful morning”) only occasionally asking very specifically for “a quarter, if you have it…” Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him for quite a while. I wonder if he’s okay.

Several years ago a thin, pleasant-looking, spectacled black man appeared, always sitting on a crate just above the stairs coming out of the platform. “Can anyone help me out?” was his line. He became the person who benefited from my “first asker” policy more often than not. I would see him, and I would empty out my pocket in his palm. This happened so often that he began to greet me when I came up with “Hi, how are you?” and would wish me a good day. These social niceties eventually gave way to actual short conversations. The weather was bad, his glasses broke, no, he didn’t like the screeching from the platform emergency exit because people would go out that way even if they weren’t supposed to (my pet peeve), but he was more annoyed by having to listen to the same songs over and over by musicians further up the tunnel. He met my husband a good many times, was alarmed at my breaking my right hand last spring, always asks about my recovery (it’s been a good six months, with two surgeries, so there’s been plenty to talk about).

One particular day I asked him how he was, and he replied that it was a great day for him. He had given up a vice, he said, and he was awfully happy about that. I don’t know what he meant, and didn’t want to pry, but he did look awfully happy.

…..

This is one of the most rewarding things about New York City. Really. Living in the middle of the so-called “heartland,” I never, that I can recall, came into contact with anybody remotely near the lowest level of the social strata. Now I almost literally bump into them every day. I see them on the subway. I sit next to immigrants of every skin color, as well as upscale types (also of every skin color) on their way to midtown offices or Wall Street. Languages—Spanish, German, French, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Polish, Czech, Dutch, and some others I haven’t been able to identify—flow constantly like the Tower of Babel. Everybody is mixed up with everybody. It’s an amazing, everyday scene. This kind of perspective is almost impossible to acquire if you live in “real” America.

I suppose it would be possible to hermetically seal oneself off from this broad spectrum of humanity in New York City if you rode around in limos and only frequented the Upper East Side and the Hamptons accompanied by bodyguards who protected you from anything untoward. (Does anybody think this would be a good idea?) My guess, though, is that even Donald Trump has had run-ins with the beggars of New York. And Mayor Bloomberg rides the Lexington Avenue subway.

Tough times are coming. I broke my rule just yesterday by giving money to a beggar on the subway, because I had a pocketful handy, and I guess I’m just extra worried about the economic crisis. Food pantries are running out of food, shelters are overflowing, charitable giving is down. I don’t know where they’re all going to go for help, this city’s poor, and their ranks are swelling.

Winter is coming. “Oh yeah, it’s all right. It’s gonna be all right,” the man sings. The coins drop, a few at a time.

Laid off! Hah!

2008-11-10T13:35:00.004-05:00

I managed to knock out a 'toon today! My hand is still a little averse to being set down on a sheet of paper, but if I keep activity short and simple it's okay.

Now I think I should have put "FIRED" on the elephant instead of "LAID OFF", but whatever. I have a bunch more I'm thinking of...

UPDATE: this 'toon got Editor's Pick today on OpenSalon.com!!! Yay! I love when that happens!

Goal 50 - Try pomegranate juice

2008-11-09T15:08:00.011-05:00

Been there, done that. It's pretty good! Kinda grapey, kinda cranberry-ish, and (as my youngest says) with pumpkinish overtones. It's very strong, not as sweet as I expected, and it leaves a dry aftertaste. I guess I could get used to it.

UPDATE: Hey check THIS out: Pomegranates in Afghanistan

Kidnapping Update

2008-11-07T12:32:00.004-05:00

Yes, my mother-in-law is on her way home and should be arriving early this evening. In the same clothes she had on when she left--she's been wearing them the whole time.

UPDATE: She's at her home now, and in the clean clothes I brought over for her. This is ScottieDog, Mom, and Big Brother, all of whom are very much relieved.

HOW IT WENT DOWN:
Scottiedog was advised by a psychiatrist at his work (who was formerly a lawyer) to call the FBI (though I thought it would be fruitless), and they ended up taking over the whole rescue mission. They also called up a Chicago PD squad car, since "Sarah" has been known to lose her temper pretty aggressively.

Turned out "Sarah" was at home, so it was great they got involved!! (Otherwise, poor big brother!!) She was not at all pleased, but apparently felt it would be fruitless to try to stop them from taking Mom, so everything went pretty easily. Big brother got Mom out right away, leaving the FBI agents there, and when we got an update from them, they said "Sarah" just refused to talk to them. Which is a lot better than being aggressive.

No charges are being brought. The FBI definitely considers this a kidnapping, but they say when it is inter-family, the prosecutors tend not to prosecute because it's usually not a winning case. HOWEVER, they felt it was their duty to help resolve it so no one got hurt. Hooray for the FBI!!--I'm so impressed!

(Now back to getting on with my own life!)

Bizarro World, abductions, and other lame excuses

2008-11-06T12:48:00.007-05:00

Well, you won't believe what happened to intrude on my plans for getting back to my fitness regime now that the election is over. My mother-in-law was kidnapped.

Yes, indeedy, she was; it was an inside job. Her rather, shall we say, "mal-adjusted" daughter, who lives in Chicago, (We'll call her "Sarah" but that's not really her name) arrived unannounced (in a stretch limo, no less) at her assisted living residence in Edgewater, NJ on election day, proclaimed that she was going to take Mom to vote (she's not even registered) and to dinner and that they would be right back. Then Sarah put her on a plane and took her back to Chicago with her.

Last night Sarah called the assisted living residence and told them that my mother-in-law was going to live with her now, and that she (Mom) wouldn't be coming back, and would they please send Mom's cat.

We found out about it yesterday morning when the home called me just as I was dipping into The New York Times and told me what had happened and that they were worried she hadn't come back, and they thought they ought to let us know. I promptly hyperventilated, told them to call the police, and then called ScottieDog at work who promptly hyperventilated, and so the whole day yesterday was an ordeal like you wouldn't believe. It took us hours to find out even where they were, with help from a network of friends all over the country.

(And needless to say I was extremely disappointed not to get to savor the election results.)

There are lots of bizarre details that I won't go into, but suffice it to say that ScottieDog's brother is on his way in a car to Chicago, where as I write Mom is sitting all by herself in Sarah's apartment, anxious, confused and sad. (Mom has moderate Alzheimer's, by the way--AND she has none of her medications.) [UPDATE: She now has some medicine because her residence staff put together some doses and we FedExed them last night. Scott phoned earlier today and confirmed that she'd received them.]

The plan is for Big Brother to get there before Sarah comes home from work, put Mom in the car, and bring her back. Ta da!!! I sure hope this works. My sister-in-law, who by the way I've never met, is a somewhat difficult person and tends toward violent behavior if thwarted.

Now we're shopping for lawyers who specialize in elder/domestic issues.

Not your average procrastination excuse, but it'll have to do.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!!!! Omigod, the FBI and Chicago police got involved!!! They escorted Big Brother to the apartment and confronted the Big Sister, and all is well, and mom is now in the car with Big Brother and they are on their way home!!! WHEW!!!!

Poem of the Month

2008-11-05T23:39:00.005-05:00

Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse.
Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war.
A people sometimes elect an honest man.
Sometimes decide they care enough that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Sometimes some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen.
May it happen for you.

[The author of this poem has asked that her name not be published with any copy of the poem. Apparently she thinks it's corny. How weird is that?][PSST: but you can google the first line and find out the name of the author anyway.]

VOTE.

2008-11-03T18:13:00.006-05:00

Hey all you 'muricans, time to gird your loins for the democratic process. Go O!

I went as Sarah Palin for Halloween (we have a big party here every year for all us vocal musicians--I was aiming at Scariest Costume, but they didn't have that category, just Best) and I won SECOND PLACE!!! Hoo-hah. It almost makes up for the weirdness of being Sarah Palin for the night--you wouldn't believe the looks I got.

I thought there'd be at least 10 other Palins, but no, there was a hockey mom (player) and a pig in lipstick, but I was the only real impersonation. What's perturbing is that people keep telling me I look like her even though I'm not wearing the makeup and glasses any more. (I colored my hair darker for versimilitude; I think that's it.)

See what you think (you have to just imagine the really high heels I was wearing all night; nobody got a picture of them):

I Miss the Bloggery!

2008-10-28T10:58:00.004-04:00

Hey all,

I'm still here. I have been exerting myself. To wit:

*I bought a bottle of pomegranate juice. It's sitting in the fridge.

*I bought two books on my list: The Brothers Karamasov and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

*I bought three items of clothing yesterday, (in an actual physical store), only one of which is black. (Because you can't have too many pairs of black pants.) This doesn't actually apply to my goal of going shopping with somebody who knows about fashion, but I still feel like it was a big accomplishment.

*I drew a picture of my friend Eileen for her 50th birthday. The actual picture looks more like her than this jpg, but it's still more of a "drawing" than a "portrait."

About the hand: not so good. It is somewhat less painful, off and on, and I think it looks a little better, but I don't know how much better the doc thinks it ought to be. I'm hoping to do a few cartoons this last campaign week. Most of the good ones I thought up are already stale, and the campaign is getting less and less funny. (Though I supposed a political cartoon doesn't actually have to be funny.)

I sure hope things perk up soon, because I miss whacking away at my goals list. It's such a good antidepressant.

Thanks to all of you who are checking up on me!

Goal 57 - Get Right Hand Back into Shape (groan)

2008-10-20T18:35:00.007-04:00

Sorry to be such a slacker here lately. Times have been rough!

This is my hand right before the surgery. Note the way the pinkie is definitely oriented toward the west. If that's not an oxymoron.

This is my right hand today. (Not very clear, sorry.) You can sort of see that the pinkie is now "facing" up, looking at the nail, however the swelling is pretty bad and is pushing the finger out away from the hand. I sure hope that goes down soon. I wish I'd taken a photo a week or so ago, because it looked so much better!!

I had kind of a bad week because, as I think you can see in the photo, there's some kind of reaction going on, and the site of the surgery is getting very red and swollen. It doesn't look like infection, though the doctor put me on antibiotics--it looks more like an allergic reaction. She shot me full of cortisone right in the hand, and it hurt like a ************. I sure hope nobody ever does that again. There is some concern that the reaction is from the titanium that's holding the finger together. (aarrgghh)

The doctor said I had to suspend hand therapy until this resolves.

So things are kind of....meh.... And I'm getting absolutely nothing done.

[WILL Melissa pull herself together this coming week??? WILL the right hand simmer down and act right??? Check back for the thrilling conclusion!!!!]

Scottiedog: Once, Present and Future King of Husbands

2008-10-13T09:10:00.004-04:00

I sort of dropped off the face of blogger earth there for a bit. I forgot what an utter pain the hand therapy was, especially at the beginning. It takes so much time and effort and my hand hurts like the dickens, which kind of saps my energy and will to get anything done, like blogging, drawing, or cleaning.

I do want to give props to Scottiedog right now, before any more time goes by, for his excellent care while I was (briefly) down. Here he is bringing me supper in bed!! (N.B. the curious Ivy at the left of the picture, trying to score a sniff.)

And this is the delicious supper: steak, veggie melange saute, and creamed spinach. This represents a terrific effort, because he hates cooking vegetables (or eating them). (This picture is kind of weird and dark. When I get home I'll see if I can perk it up a little.)

Veep Debate

2008-10-04T16:44:00.005-04:00

This one is way overworked, but I and my hand are feeling too blah to edit it down. Like when Groucho Marx said "sorry this letter was so long but I didn't have time to make it shorter."

I know I haven't chipped away at my Goals List much here lately, but I've been bogged down in No. 57.

I had the stitches out yesterday and IT LIKE TO KILT ME. Oog. I totally wasn't expecting that.

Cheers to all!

Back in the Saddle Again!

2008-10-02T11:42:00.003-04:00

Thanks again to all my well-wishers! It's a bit ouchy, but I think my drawing hand is already better than it was before!

Cast Off!!

2008-09-27T13:22:00.006-04:00

So much for cartooning left-handed! I cannot believe I'm already typing, with nine fingers.

All you well-wishers out there, I can only say you must have sent out some sterling wishes and some really efficacious prayers! I went in yesterday to have some tingling and numbness checked out, and they cut the cast off and did x-rays, and Dr. Kang said, "Wow, it's really starting to heal up already!" So she put a little tiny splint on, and wants me to start therapy next week!

I can now sign my name! Like I used to! So I must be able to draw--now I have to get my brain back into gear, thinking of some graphics.

Scottiedog never got to blog for me--but he did take pictures! Here's me looking as bad as I ever look:

And here's a picture of me recuperating with the little book-end cats on guard:

I just can't believe how fast it's all gone--I was in AGONY for four weeks last time!

So mucho thanks to all! More later!

Guest Poster -- ScottieDog

2008-09-22T22:25:00.002-04:00

Godspeed all, I am shutting up shop for the nonce, and the obsessive cartooning will cease--unless I can figure out how to do it left-handed.

Surgery is tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. ScottieDog will be posting updates for me, and as soon as I can function, I'll be poking around on the laptop trying to find all of you!

Thanks to all of you for your good wishes!

Throw That Elephant Overboard!!

2008-09-21T19:04:00.004-04:00

One more day to draw, then my right hand will be shut down for renovations.

P.S. I decided to experiment with dialogue balloons. I think they can be very expressive.

Goal 9 - Attend The Daily Show

2008-09-19T08:16:00.024-04:00

Melissa waiting in line at The Daily Show

Us old people have to sit down. You have to wait in line for two hours.

So ScottieDog and I went last night, and we saw Tony Blair!! We saw Tony Blair sweat!! Jon Stewart is just beautiful. He was merciless with Blair, though funny. After the end of the taping, he was asking us if he had been too much of a dickhead (his word), and we said "no." Blair is really likeable and such a gentleman, so we cheered him anyway, even though he wasn't giving up much.

We were too tired last night to watch it (be warned that it's quite an ordeal to go through a taping--you have to participate! And it's LOUD!!) but we definitely want to catch the early rerun tonight so we can see it up close. We did have big monitors to look at, but who wants to look at TV when Tony Blair is sitting right there in front of you? (And JS?)

John Oliver had an annoying bit at the beginning--I wanted to hear Jon Stewart, and Oliver was just muscling in being a jerk. Then the Blair interview went way long, so they taped the beginning of the show again without the Oliver bit. Don't know which one they'll use.

ScottieDog asked the best question! (Jon likes to have a Q&A as warm-up.) He asked what date Sarah Palin would be on. Heh heh. JS of course said in a very gentlemanly way that she had been invited and would be welcome any time, though the Palin group had not RSVP'd. Of course.

Here's ScottieDog waiting in line with some light reading.

And below, some other very nice people with light reading! (ScottieDog went around being photographer and interviewer.)

These nice ladies are Margaret Ikeda (The Rest Is Noise) and Jenika Gallon (In Defense of Globalization).

And these nice ladies are Karin Wagner (I think she's the one with Food Matters), Charlotte Gill, and a friend. I'm not sure who is who!

It is duly noted that ScottieDog only interviewed ladies...hm.

The thing I like about the one of the hot dog vendors is the banners of JS hovering over them. And I love the one with the heavenly rays descending!

Cheers to all! (Surgery in five days--:-P)

A New Veep Candidate?

2008-09-15T20:51:00.008-04:00

Whew, my latest addition to my portfolio. I worked my butt off all day at my day job and couldn't get around to drawing until 7:30 pm, and then I couldn't get it to look right, because I was in too much of a hurry. I'm always terrified somebody will have my idea already before I can draw mine. If I make myself clear.

UPDATE: Just upgraded the image.

Other than my obsessive cartooning here lately, and my working my buns off all day long (like heavy lifting for six hours, really), and my being really dog-assed tired, things have been pretty okay.

Well, okay, no, I'm stressed out that hand surgery is only a week away. But hey, at least I'll get to slack off for a while.

Sheesh! Another one already...

2008-09-13T17:36:00.004-04:00

It has forcibly occurred to me over the last day that in just a little over a week I WILL NO LONG BE ABLE TO DRAW. Not for at least two months.

For some reason I thought drawing 10 pictures would be a reasonable goal, but now that I've started I've become a little obsessed.

And hey, people are paying attention. My Miss Piggy picture was an Editor's Pick yesterday on Open.Salon.com, and I got a request from TheZoo to post my work along with their other nationally syndicated cartoonists! Maybe I should look into syndication.

Howsoever, cartoons weren't the kind of drawings I had in mind when I made that goal. So I'll count one of them, but I'm saving the other eight for more traditional work. We'll see how that goes.

So here's the latest one: I woke up at 2:00 in the morning with an idea, and couldn't get back to sleep so I just got up and scribbled it down. Cleaned it up a little this afternoon and fired it off! I think I can draw a better caricature of Palin than this, but it still works, I think.

DRILL HERE...DRILL NOW...

Building Surrounded by Newspeople this A.M.

2008-09-11T19:12:00.008-04:00

Well, it's 9/11, and I wish I'd remembered before I traipsed off to work. I usually meander in about 10:30 or so, later today because I was trying to fix the toilet, so I was able to get into the building by going around to the Broadway entrance. Some were complaining that at 9:00 a.m. they couldn't get in at all. (I should explain I work in One Liberty Plaza across from WTC.) I guess Obama and McCain were around there somewhere, but I was feeling too irritable to gawk.

One of the attorneys I work for (in my day job) refuses to come to work on 9/11. Now that I think of it, I do think it should be a national holiday. I mean not a holiday but a day off.

So I consoled myself by drawing another picture. Love to all.

UPDATE: Wow, this cartoon got Editor's Pick on OpenSalon.com today!!! And another site asked if they could post my work! Yay! I love making people happy.

UPDATE 2: This cartoon was ALSO picked up by TheZoo! Check it out! TheZoo

Politics makes me sick.

2008-09-10T17:28:00.004-04:00

I have to put myself on another news blackout. Does anybody else get so stressed that they stay awake at night? And have chest pains?

I'm thinking I might make some t-shirts with my cartoon on it! There's a very cool site where you can upload your art and see what your shirt looks like before you order. The internet is so great.

Now I have two drawings down, eight to go.

UPDATE: This cartoon was picked up by a major political blog, TheZoo. Check it out at TheZoo

So far so good...

2008-09-08T11:42:00.012-04:00

As promised, I have awarded myself a goal for breaking a bad habit (leaving my shoes all over the house). Yes I know I said I back-slid a bit last week, but I renewed my efforts, and it's been over a month, so I'm claiming it.

(Hey, these are actually the shoes I bought to wear to my daughter's wedding. They are currently up on the closet shelf in a box. They are a lot sexier in person.)

I also renewed my exercising efforts. Yesterday I had to get on the elliptical because for some reason the treadmills wouldn't start up. I discovered that a lot of my workout mix that hadn't meshed too well with my walking works just fine on the elliptical! I think I'm going to need two mixes, a fast one for walking and a slower one for the elliptical.

And I need HELP with this. I know hardly anything about rock/pop music. The songs I have currently (my daughter AC put a mix together for me) that I really groove to are "Let's Dance" (Bowie) and "Cocaine" (Clapton). I think I'll have much more incentive to exercise if I have some really fabulous, driving, fun-to-listen-to music, preferably not too bubble-gummy. Any suggestions???

ALSO, I have pretty much settled on another virtuous habit: establishing a flossing routine again. I was doing pretty well until a couple of years ago when a series of accidents put a real cramp in my style. At one time I had both hands in braces, from falling down and hurting my wrists. And I also broke a rib. Not that time, another time. And now I have this hand thing going on.

I'm not going to put off developing the habit until after surgery--I'm going to try to cope with dental hygiene right through the recovery period. My dentist sold me a nice Water-Pik, AND I have another new ally in my quest: I only discovered this brand lately because my stepdaughter left it behind when she moved out. What a revelation. My teeth are really close together and really hard to floss. This stuff makes it easy!!! And fast! (Please don't tell me it doesn't do as good a job as the regular floss.) And yes, it is more expensive, but it makes it so much less onerous a task. In fact hardly onerous at all.

My first product review! (*simper*)

Slacking off...

2008-09-05T13:06:00.006-04:00

Well, I have been very bad the last couple of days.

I went out yesterday without all my makeup on and packed no lunch. So I had to buy lunch with all the paper and plastic that that entails. (In my defense I had to be at work way early.) And I didn't exercise this morning as I had planned.

AND I left my shoes out a couple of times this week. I think it was Wednesday morning ScottieDog woke me up and said my sneakers were on the bed! I remembered that I had been going to put them on the night before but changed my mind. I think that's a first--sleeping with my sneakers.

Eighteen (18) days until surgery. :-P

(UPDATED with link)

Goal 54 Done!!! (Whew)

2008-09-02T17:45:00.004-04:00

So if you voted DENTIST, you win. Gosh I should have had something to give away to the winners--I supposed there's always the contents of my goodie bag.

I meant to take a picture of some kind, but I was so wigged out I forgot.

When I first asked the assistant about the gas, she said she didn't think I'd need it, they would be very careful not to hurt me at all, so I started to cry. Little do they know. I mean it's not really the pain that does it. The nice dentist (I really like him better than my last one even) took one tiny poke at a tooth with that metal pick and I let out a shriek--

So I ended up gassed into oblivion as always. Had to pay $100 out of pocket for it, too. Insurance doesn't cover weenies. There is NO WAY I could have had that cleaning without benefit of drugs. Maybe next time! And yes, I DO have another appointment already made for my next checkup in March.

I also left with a new Water Pik which they said would help me when I have my hand surgery. No way I'm going to be able to floss!

I know Andy over at Bloginyourface has a thing about dentists too. Anybody else??

One Summer Down, Two to Go

2008-08-31T16:15:00.006-04:00

For a while there I didn't think Goal 63 was going to come to fruition, but the weather warmed up finally. ScottieDog and I went down to the pool this afternoon. It was GREAT!!!! The water was perfect!

The thing is, we pay a lot of money in rent, and it has recently occurred to me that we pay for a lot of things we don't use, like the pool and the gym. I've only swum in this pool twice in the ten years I've lived here. How silly is that?

ScottieDog got a lot of pictures of me looking like a white whale, but I'm not going to post them here now. Maybe later, if I reach Goal 45. They're definitely good "before" pictures!!!