Thoughts from the Labyrinth

Broom making

2011-08-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

My experiences with and through the labyrinth continue to delight and amaze me. I decided to make a broom to sweep the labyrinth.

I "knew" that the sweeping portion of the broom would use rosemary, lavender and coyote brush. I also "knew" that the broom handle would be from the tree who spoke to me on my birthday in 2010.

I'd been thinking about making this broom for almost a week now, but kept finding other things to do. This morning, as I was hanging clothes on the line I knew that I needed to just go try to make this broom. So I headed out to the tree to see about finding a branch. I found the perfect branch, with a fork at the bottom about twelve inches apart.

Taking that with me, I headed to the pond where the rosemary and lavender are. Clipping away, enthralled with the incredible smell, I think, "Okay, let's go make this thing!" And then I notice the coyote brush that was pushing its way through the fence. "Oh yeah, coyote brush!" Not sure why, but okay. . ."

Well, it turns out that coyote brush also smells intoxicating! And, another of its common names is chaparral broom!

I lay the rosemary, then the lavender and then top it with the coyote brush between the fork at the bottom of the stick. Using purple yarn, I start to wrap everything together. Trying to pull it tight, but realizing that this is yarn that we had used to support pea vines last year, I knew that it wasn't the strongest thing I could use, but it was so beautiful!

The broom is together, everything smells heavenly! I head out to the labyrinth and begin to walk in. I'd already found out that I was to sweep from the center out, so I walked in with broom at my side. Sometimes watching the tip of the broom, and then when that made me too dizzy, looking back at the path.

Passing the copper bowl that I'd placed a few days earlier, I notice that the water has all evaporated away, "Every day." I hear. Ah, I'm to bring fresh, clear water each day in offering. This bowl is the beginnings of an alter. It's placed in the notch on the outside of the spirals between the mother and crone spiral. The heart space at the center looks out at this alter spot.

As I was writing that, I realized that I was about to try to describe this piece of wood and didn't want to have to, so I just headed out to the labyrinth with the piece of wood (it's the bit on top, with the hole in it). Megan joined me and the two of us created this.

I would have included a picture of the broom, but it fell apart as I was using it! The Crone spiral got swept (and I discovered that coyote brush is perfect for this!), with bits of lavender strewn about as they fell out of the broom. I left most of them there, but gathering up some to put in the center of the alter.

I kept walking, just carrying the broom, through the Mother spiral. It was not lost on me that the broom that I had made wasn't strong enough to sweep the Mother spiral, with all it's oak leaves and acorns. I'll be making a new broom, using the broom handle again, with hemp twine instead. And I know that I'll be making the broom again and again as the herbs in the center die.

In the meantime, the labyrinth smells heavenly! And the alter is starting to come together. It's becoming more and more magical as I walk and listen.

Here fishy, fishy. . .

2011-08-16T17:55:00.000-07:00

We've been transferring our Shubunkin (a Japanese/American Carp) from our old pond to the new one that Mark has been working on all summer.

The water in the old pond had gotten quite mucky, so mucky in fact that that was what prompted my begging Mark to create a new home for the fish.

This morning we bought two actual Koi (the requisite black one and a white one with black zebra strips named Mr. Spot, don't ask, I have no idea. . .I think the girl helping us pick them out named him, not that we know that the fish is a male, mind you.) for the bigger, lower pond and four new Shubunkin for the upper pond.

We let them acclimate to the water temperature and then released them into their new homes and then started moving the other fish.

Angela Rose, who was with us for the inaugural water pouring, asked if we knew how many fish needed to be transported, and I blithely answered, "Fifteen!" Because that's how many we'd had when I could last see down far enough in the murky water to count them all. That was months and months ago.

Mark said, "Honey, I think we've lost a couple." But I was having none of that. There were fifteen fish in there and we would move them.

This was easier said than done.

We caught a couple who came up to eat when we fed them, but the rest completely freaked out when the first two got swept up in the net and down to the bottom they went.

They were already pretty freaked out because yesterday Mark dug around in there and brought up the now-huge water lily whose roots had completely blanketed the bottom of the pond. So the already mucky water got even muckier.

Okay, so we've got two, but now the rest have gone to ground. What to do? Mark pulls the hose that runs the filter out of the water, so now it's pouring outside the pond, rather than back in it. This means two things. One, that the water is no longer being filtered and returned. Two, that water is being pumped out of the pond, so the water level is getting lower and lower.

We let it drop until there was about 6-8 inches of water left on the bottom of the pond. This pond is 4 foot by 4 foot, by 2 foot deep, so getting to the bottom is going to get tricky. I manage to snag a few more fish, but then I get discouraged and stop. Mark comes over and starts dragging the bottom with the fish net. He's bringing up mud and sticks and small rocks. I start to panic that he's stirring up the water even more, but the reality is that he's pulling up fish as well. So, he catches them and puts them in my waiting bucket filled with clean water. He dumps fish and mud into the bucket, I mess with the water, trying to put the least amount of muck into the new pond, since the filtration system in there are the plants, and they take a little longer.

And then I get to release the fishy into the water and he hollers, "Got another one!"

About four fish in I decide to move a rock from the rock pile over to the flower bed ledge for each fish that we move from the old home to the new pond, so that I don't have to keep that number in my head and get confused about how many fish we've moved, because we've got 15 to move and damn it, we're going to move 15 fish!

We get 11 fish safely transported to their new luxurious, clean pond, and then Mark has to go drive Kyle and a friend to the beach. I elect to stay home and continue, because there are still four fish to be found!

But the water has been being pumped out of the pond and there is probably 4 inches of water there and the bottom of the pond is filled with mud and bricks.

In all of this, I've on several occasions shifted the filter around such that the hose that runs the water up and out of the pond comes off and needs to be put back on. Do I get out of the pond (which I'm now in, mud up to my ankles)? No, I simply reach down to settle the hose back on its nozzle. Well, the pump is still running, so now I've got stinky, fish muck splattered all across my face and chest and arms.

So, I'm dirty and mucky and I smell bad, because the sludge at the bottom of this pond reeks!

But there are four fish to find!

I notice in the deepest corner a fin, moving slowly. I sneak my net it and get it! It's one of the bigger fish! Excitement ensues.

I climb out of the pond (with that squelching sound that happens when you pull a bare foot encased in mud), and take the fish to its new home. Hooray, just three more fish to find!

Back I go. There, in the same spot is another fish. This one a little smaller. It's a beautiful white one with orange spots. We had all of these fish named last year, but they've grown and their markings change as they grow so I have no idea which fish this is, but it looks beautiful to me as I gently place the bucket into the new pond so that it can swim out and join its brethren. This one hesitates, as if it wants to stay in the blue bucket.

And now there are two more fish to rescue.

At this point I realize that there's only a few inches of water left on the bottom. And it's not really water any more. It's more like silt. It's a thin mud substance. But I'm bound and determined to find those last two fish. And then the filter quits working, so no water is getting pumped out of the pond. The water is too shallow to run the filter any more.

I hop out (okay, clamber laboriously out, dripping mud everywhere) and go into the sunroom to pull the plug on the filter so it will stop making that horrendous racket!

Ahh, it's quiet. But wait, I've got fish to save! Fish that I've put into this situation where they need to be saved.

This thought sends me down the rabbit hole of how Heros require victims to rescue. If we hadn't started draining the water the fish would not be in danger of drowning in mud.

But, onward and upward, I'm looking around for something to continue bailing the water out of the pond.

Oh look! Cinder's bowl! That will work, I'll just wash the heck out of it when I'm done.

I'm back in the hole, bending over, scooping small bits of muddy water after small bits of muddy water out of the pond. The walls are starting to bend inward now, so they're creating pockets where fish could hide!

So, I push, with all my might, the wall back and continue bailing. There is now half an inch of water, but I'm not giving up! I will continue bailing until there is no more water left. Until I know for certain that I am not leaving fish to die!

But my back is aching and I'm tired and I really don't want to continue. But I feel responsible for those fish. I'm heroing those damn fish that were so scared that they had to hide deep in the muck so that they wouldn't get swept up in the blue net to go to some unknown place.

Now, I'm almost crying because my back is hurting so much and it smells and I'm hot and I really don't want to do this any more, but those fish, they're calling me. Those fish that I can't see any trace of.

Wait. I have this ability to ask my body (everybody has this, not just me) and my body wisdom can help me determine things. I've tested this over and over again. So, I get out of the pond and stand firmly on the ground, close my eyes and ask, "Are there still live fish?" Yes. "Am I willing to stay and bail out muck to find them?" No.

No? I'm stunned. I'm heartbroken that I would give up on these fish. I start bawling at the thought that I am not willing to continue to look for fish.

I'm crying at my shadow. Its very existence. I have a dark side. We all do, but I try to hide mine from myself as if that were possible, or even desirable.

Yes, it's just "silly" fish. But these are fish that I've talked to every day for years, watched grow, named, spent time with. I've bonded with these fish. Would I have felt like this if I hadn't bonded with them? I don't know.

What I know is that it broke my heart to think that I wasn't willing to keep scooping muck to rule out any possibility that there might be a fish to rescue. But I wasn't. So I stopped. I may find two dead fish at the bottom of that pond when the rest of the water dries up. And I'll cry again then. Or it could be that Mark is right, we lost two already, and I've already rescued all that were available to be rescued.

But now that I've been down that rabbit hole, and I've wallowed there until I was done wallowing, it's time to pop back out.

I've got a beautiful pond to gaze at and 13 original fish in the pond to co mingle with the two koi, and four new Shubunkin in the upper pond.

Hawaii

2011-07-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

I've been on the Big Island of Hawaii for the past three weeks. Integrating, journaling, playing games, reading books, falling in love with the two dogs who live here, getting to know my father and his wife more deeply and just Being.

It's been an interesting experience, coming without an agenda. I "knew" few things about this trip. I knew that it was supposed to be a month long. I knew that it was supposed to be a "writing retreat," though I had no idea what that would look like, and for the first three weeks, it looked like journaling. I've always thought that I should journal. I know that many people speak to the healing that can come from journaling, but I could just never get in the habit. Well, I've journaled every day for three weeks now. Some days I would write a lot and other days I'd barely manage to write a half a page, but I wrote every day. I let the journaling call me the way the labyrinth calls me. So I didn't have a set time of day, only the intention to journal every day.

Today, after 21 days of journaling, a book started to emerge. I'm writing about my journey through the triple spiral labyrinth, and I'm imagining that I'll be including some of the blog posts from here, but really, I still have no completely clear idea. No outline, just following the path that seems to be set before me. Taking one step at a time. As I do with the labyrinth.

I've been writing for almost two hours this morning, which seems like a long time and no time at all.

I'm flanked by the two dogs, as I have been each day that I've sat down at the computer to write.

One of the mornings I decided to not let the dogs in the rest of the house, because their normal routine is to have access to the kitchen, but not the rest of the house when Ron and Barbara are off to work. This is mostly because one of the dogs, Maka, likes to chew things, and he tends to prefer Barbara's left shoes. She has a multitude of right slippers (the Hawaiian term for flip flops) left over from pairs that Maka has claimed as chew toys. The two of them set up such a racket, barking and whining at the door when they realized that I was in here at the dining room table and they couldn't get to me that I finally relented and let them in. They came in, wiggly and asking for pets and attention, which I gave them for a bit, then they circled a few times and settled down on each side of me to nap while I wrote. But all I was doing was journaling and then playing computer games or watching things on netflix or hulu.

Then this morning, or maybe last night as I was reading a Rumi poem, it occurred to me that the story that I've been using to keep me from writing - the story where I tell myself that everything that I've ever thought has been written before by much better writers than me, got busted because it occurred to me, that yes, everything has been written before, but not from my personal perspective. And my perspective, while not applicable to the whole of humanity, holds value for some. There are people out in the world who will benefit and be propelled on their own journey if I write about mine. They might find solace, they might find offense, they might find any number of things, but they'll be spurred on to their own learnings, just as I have been spurred on on my path by the writings of those who've come before me. I don't need to worry about who these people are and how they might find me. They'll find me the same way that I found Rumi and Byron Katie and Richard Bach and Ursula Hegi (to name only a tiny few of the writers who have influenced me and my being).

I just need to write. So I'm writing. I wrote on the book this morning and then had the urge to post, so I'm here writing, updating you and me at the same time, as I find happens as I write. I end up writing things that I didn't actually have clear thoughts about yet. The thoughts become clear as I put words to screen. (I wanted to write pen to paper, because that's the phrase I like and am familiar yet, but it's no longer accurate. I'm sitting in front of my husband's laptop, my fingers gliding on the smooth keys of the MacBook Pro along the keyboard that before this trip I hated. Now that I've adjusted to it, I find that I love the feedback sound of the clicks, soft and almost papery (if that makes any sense at all) and the feel of the slight impression that I have to make as I hit the keys. It's all very satisfying to my senses, sight, sound and touch. With Maka's head leaning gently on my right shin, and Pono's white body, fur ruffling in the breeze coming in through the open window, I feel peaceful and calm.

Oh, and now I'm bored with this. So, bye to you all. I'm off to write more, or maybe shower and then write. We'll see. Right now I'm still typing. . . Okay, on the count of three, we'll both say goodbye at once, right?

One,
Two,
Three!

Children in the labyrinth!

2011-06-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I most love to do is share the labyrinth with kindred spirits, and children seem to be the most able to feel the spirit of the labyrinth. Then again, children are most able to feel the spirit in just about anything, especially if it's out in nature.

These are visiting children. There were others, but a few were still on the trampoline when this picture was taken. It was fascinating to watch them as they traversed the labyrinth. Some "knew the right way," others were telling other people "the right way." Some approached it shyly, quietly, as if it might startle if they were too loud, and others raced it laughing with glee.

As I'm reflecting now, I have approached this labyrinth in each of those ways and more. I imagine that the way that I approach the labyrinth has everything to do with me and pretty much nothing to do with the labyrinth. The labyrinth is simply there, there for spiritual awakening, there for exercise, there for awareness to bubble up, there for solace, there for whatever it might be needed for.

My own learnings, these days, seem to be coming fast and furious, and I find quiet in the labyrinth. For the past week I'd been walking it quite slowly, feeling the sacredness of it. Today I felt the joy again. It's not that something sacred isn't also joyful, but it feels different to me. Hmmmm, as if the sacredness is always there, but feeling the joy bubble up from underneath is especially wonderful. I'm struggling with words here. And of course, it isn't the labyrinth that has changed. So, a joyfulness is what's bubbling up in me right now, through the sacredness, flavoring the sacredness in the way that only joy can.

Walking with Unicorns

2011-05-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

Today I walked the labyrinth with a unicorn. Okay, she's not really a unicorn in that she's not a white horse with a golden horn, but she's a unicorn in that she's a rare creature of great beauty and wisdom.

I walk the labyrinth with a dear friend who is unicorn-like. As I walk, following her, touching lingering fingers as we pass, I feel grounded, as I always do when walking.

I am coming to love walking with other people. I love my times walking alone, and I love the experience of feeling another energy being swirling through the spirals.

Today we walked in silence. I was so dedicated to the silence that when my daughter and her boyfriend came out to stack wood, I left the labyrinth to ask them not to. It surprised me as much as it surprised them.

In backward reflection, it occurs to me that I noticed something that I didn't want and I chose to do something about it! Hooray me! I like that.

Not-quite-ripe-peach

2011-05-28T15:47:00.000-07:00

I am talking with my husband, prioritizing the "to do" list with him when I notice that my chest feels tight, as if a band of metal were surrounding me and slowly tightening. My throat feels thick and sluggish. My lower back feels spiky. I put voice to some of these body sensations and the tears well up behind my eyes. I tell my husband that I'm going to go walk the labyrinth.

As I head towards it (past some of the "honey do" things which precipitated the conversation), noticing the weight that I had previously felt on my shoulders start to lift. I pause at the entrance, standing on the heart-shaped stone that marks the beginning of the journey, take in a big breath, and start walking.

My pace is quick and jerky feeling. I notice the same feeling of slight irritation at the switchback at the center of the maiden spiral that I always feel, and keep walking. My feet are sliding around in my shoes. I don't like that sensation, but I choose not to do anything about it. That's a very familiar pattern. Noticing that I don't like something, but being unwilling to change. In that moment, I choose to stoop over, move that big rock that has been bugging me, adjusting a few rocks around it, and feel a sigh ripple through my body. I wonder quietly to myself how different it will feel on the way back out.

I get to the center, spin around and head back out, determined to figure out what the name of the plant that grows in the center is. As I notice the "determination" I notice that my pace slows down. I breathe more deeply, pausing to run my fingers through the fragrant unnamed plant and quickly bring my fingers to my nose, remembering that its scent is incredibly fleeting. My pace is getting slower and slower. My determination to "figure out the name" is forgotten and delight, quiet delight in the scents and sights of the labyrinth take over. I'm noticing now, as I write this that I was not aware of sound while in the labyrinth this afternoon. Interesting.

My head is clearer, my pace is less frenetic, and the tears have passed on through. I can still feel an edge of as yet unexpressed something in my body, but it also doesn't feel ripe. I've never noticed that before, that my emotions can feel ripe. In fact, that's usually the way I experience them, almost overly ripe. Bursting out the way the warm juice from a peach will squirt out as I bite into it.

I feel like an unripe peach in this moment. Firm, barely perceptible, yet delectable scent, the promise of ripeness to come.

I've been watching other people "become ripe" in different settings and wondered at my not quite ripeness, though I wasn't thinking of it in those terms. Right now, I'm content to be an unripe peach. I'll be ripe soon enough.

Smiling quietly to myself, thinking of myself as a peach. I like that image.

New Connections

2011-05-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a break from blogging, but not from my beloved labyrinth. I continue to walk daily, alone, with friends, one time through, three times through, once a day, or multiple times a day. When she calls, I come.

A few days ago I had the wonderful opportunity to walk with three dear women from my lane. These are women who I've felt a connection with, but haven't done anything about that potential friendship. One of the women I see frequently on the road. I stop (I'm usually driving, she's usually walking to the mailbox with her dog), we chat for a quick bit, and then I'm off. On one of the quick chats, I told her about the labyrinth and that she was welcome to visit. She told me several times that she wanted to come and we finally got down to specifics and she and the other two came over.

I got excited about the labyrinth, so the story was coming fast and furiously out of my mouth. I noticed how quickly and loudly I was speaking. It makes me smile to think of just how excited I still am about sharing the labyrinth with others.

I explain that there's no right or wrong way to walk this labyrinth and then ask if I should head in first. I've found that folks new to my labyrinth want to follow someone, and I'm always excited to walk it, so I head in. The others follow fairly quickly. As I round one curve, I notice that the last woman in has chosen to take her shoes off. Great idea! At the next curve closest to the entrance, I pause to shuck my shoes, tossing them through the arch and continue around. I love passing people in the labyrinth. Feeling the different paces and movements as we spiral in and out.

I get to the center and turn to watch these beautiful, strong women, whom I barely know, striding towards me. The first reaches the center and we hug. Heart connection, clear and strong. The next comes up and we hug. Again this truly strong heart connection. I continue down the path, third woman, again - heart to heart, open, raw, sweet. Big smiles as we head back out the way we came in. They, in turn, hugging each other until we've all hugged.

We exit the labyrinth and words start to bubble up and out. "Wow!" and "That was almost overwhelming!" and "Thank you!"

A wonderful conversation ensues as we stand under the entrance archway to the labyrinth. A realization that I've never touched these women before and yet it seemed so natural to hug. One of the magical bits of the labyrinth or any other type of heart opening experience is that touch becomes essential. A way of connecting wordlessly to communicate those things that we don't have words for.

Homework

2011-05-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

I've already walked the labyrinth this morning, three trips around, it was lovely. Now I'm walking again, this time with the express intention of finishing homework set for the Mastership circle focusing on Surrender.

I've been struggling with this homework. The assignment is to identify attachments I have and then rate them with a fear factor of how upset I would be if I lost the item I was attached to. The second half of the assignment is to look at how I define myself and then assign a fear factor for these as well. How do I want others to see me? What would I not want people to think about myself?

I started yesterday, and worked at it half-heartedly, really not wanting to look at the attachments I have, because I know that the goal is to surrender to those attachments. When I'm in a state of detachment, these things seem incredibly simple, but while in a state of attachment, I feel completely hooked by them.

So here I am, sitting in the center of my labyrinth. Yes, it's an attachment, with a fear factor of 0 and of 10 - when I'm in the labyrinth, centered and grounded, I understand, feel to my core, that the labyrinth is always here, a part of me, whether it's here physically or not, whether I'm here physically or not, so it's a 0. When I'm not centered and grounded, my fear factor for losing the labyrinth is a 10. This is my main tool for coming back home to myself.

I'm writing things down as they come to me. I'm distracted by my daughter's cat, who has just come trotting up to me, calling and purring and rubbing herself all over me. Head butting me. "Please get up and come feed me, Mom!" Back to the homework. Here comes the cat again. I've just written down that part of how I define myself is as a Two on the Enneagram. That's the Nurturer or the Helper. The cat is helping me to see just how strongly I identify with that, because I'm still petting her while trying to write even though I'm annoyed.

"Stop!" I speak loudly. She shakes her tail and heads off to stand a few feet away from me on the heart stone that is at the entrance to the labyrinth. Her back is to me, tail twitching wildly. Above there is the squawk of a squirrel who is trying to tell Sugar to leave. I'm distracted by the squirrel, so my attention wanders from the homework paper. Now the cat has come back and the dog is nudging me and licking my face. "Come feed us, Mom!"

Laughing, I start to stand up. This is slightly hampered by the fact that the center of the labyrinth slopes, so I'm working against gravity, putting my hands in the plants that are growing up through the rocks here. What is that incredible smell? I have no idea what this plant is, but there is a fabulous aroma emitting from it. Smelling eucalyptus-y and minty. Lovely, medicinal smell. I put my fingers to my nose to sniff deeply and the smell is gone. I rub my fingers once again against the plant, then quickly to my nose. Ahhhhhh. There's the smell. A few seconds later it's gone. Talk about having to be completely in the moment!

I am attached to many things and nothing. I have a fear factor of Zero and of Ten, seemingly simultaneously.

Present Tense

2011-05-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

I've been on a boat for the past week and I really wanted to write about that, or at least I thought I did. I wrote several different starts to posts yesterday after walking the labyrinth, felt like wave after wave of different things flowing through, but nothing felt right. Ordinarily I sit down and the words just flow through my fingers.

Today as I was walking I started thinking about tenses in languages. And how this blog wants to be written in the present tense. It feels awkward to write about anything other than what is happening for me now. When I write about my journeys in the labyrinth they become present tense almost immediately.

I'm walking the maiden circle, speeding up and slowing down, playing with my physical tempo because I've read a book called The Way of the Labyrinth by Helen Curry, which presents the labyrinth as Labyrinth, capital L. And I'm noticing that I like to play with the tempo. I'm not interested in what Should happen in a labyrinth, but rather what Is happening in a labyrinth, and I picked up some shoulds from that book. They may or may not have been there, but I read them into the book.

Ack!

In Maiden, I'm speeding and slowing, as I round the curve to enter the Mother spiral I notice all the fissures in the ground. There are cracks, mostly in the Mother spiral, that radiate out from the center of the spiral. Floods of metaphors pour into my head about fissures on the Mother path, radiating out from the center, then I round the curve to head into Crone. The fissures stop, the mind quiets, everything quiets. I'm in the center. The birds are still, the trees are still. I am still. Integrating the bits of thoughts from the previous two spirals. Integrating what has come before with what is happening now to the extent that I allow it to integrate.

I don't have the words to describe my learnings. That's happening more and more.

I simply know that some old story has dropped away and in its absence is peace.

Walking silently

2011-04-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

When I walk by myself, technically it is a silent walk, because I'm generally not speaking or singing out loud. I'm audiating. I hear my voices and my songs in my head, but they're not audible to anyone else (as far as I know).

Yesterday I walked the labyrinth with my mother and a dear friend of hers from Alaska. We walked silently. I've not walked it with others silently before. It was an interesting experience. Feeling their energy bodies and seeing their physical bodies as we moved through the walk together. Sweet, quiet, peaceful. Interspersed with the two dogs frisking about around us. My dog, Cinders, and Sue's dog, Bohdi, both border collies, so black with white, balls of energy and light and love. It felt joyful and peaceful at the same time.

Today's walk brought new thoughts. It occurred to me, as I was standing in the center in the unknown, that this labyrinth, with its three spirals of maidenhood, motherhood and crone, represents a life time, and walking it multiple times could represent a multitude of lifetimes. Each walk is the same in form, and yet not the same. Each revolution has a subtly different feel to me. Tempos change, some walks are brimming with new awarenesses, others are simply quiet, some start out fast and furious.

It made me think about the arc of my life and what that would look like from afar. It made me smile. Made me think of mud and cold and warm sand and breezes. Made me realize that there is a part of me that is longing to walk it in the heat. And that thought is funny, because my preference is not for heat. It's for cool. This weather, right now, is perfect. Cool, crisp air. It's funny, the air feels more like autumn than spring and I'm not sure why that is, or what that might mean.

But my feet want to walk the labyrinth when the whole of the walk is warm. I like the contrast, but want to experience the other as well.

barefoot again!

2011-04-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

I have been choosing not to walk the labyrinth barefoot because it's been wet and muddy and cold. It was still a little cold this afternoon, but I had been walking around the house barefoot and then decided to walk the labyrinth and didn't feel like finding my shoes.

So, I am reminded that the asphalt driveway alongside the house, past the shed is very rough, and my tender feet were hollering loudly about uncomfortable sensations. As I put my attention on those sensations, they shifted from "uncomfortable" to "prickly, icy-hot, buzzy." And the contrast of walking on the asphalt to walking on the soft earth with twigs and crispy oak leaves was lovely. I imagine that if I'd taken my shoes off at the labyrinth, I might have thought that the oak leaves were hard and prickly, and in fact they are, but because I'd had the contrast of the asphalt, the sensations were distinct, rather than generic "ow!" And I've been noticing that distinct sensations are just that. They become information when I put my attention on them, rather than "something to avoid."

Walking the labyrinth, I once again get to enjoy the contrast of the very chilly earth and the warmed earth because it's underneath trees, and it's mostly shaded, so I get only small patches of warmth, but those patches are glorious! And the chilly earth has such a lovely, slightly squishy feel to it that I enjoy those sensations as well.

Being held by the labyrinth

2011-04-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

I walk up to the labyrinth this morning, over the mole ridges, smashing them down slightly to make the path more smooth for my mom, who is coming to visit and then take us on a grand adventure.

I hear the neighbor chickens squawking from two doors down. The air is still, the filtered sun (filtered both by the trees and by clouds) puts a faint glow on the rocks and moss and sand and mud that is my labyrinth.

My husband told me this morning that he had walked the labyrinth while I was gone and then leaned in conspiratorially to say, "but I didn't get any specific learning from it."

"What did you get from it?" I ask.

"A peaceful, calm feeling."

"Hmmm, sounds like you got out of it what you put into it."

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it makes sense to me in this moment. I expect to have some alchemical experience while in my labyrinth and so that is what I get. Mark doesn't have a specific expectation, but that area of land has always felt calm and peaceful, so that's his experience.

I had been noticing thoughts that I might be crazy, or seen as crazy, for walking around and around in circles every day. I notice that those thoughts only come up when I'm in the labyrinth, and the beauty of that is that it's so easy to find the laughter and joy in those thoughts when I'm actually walking. I am noticing now that those thoughts seem to come up when I think of my labyrinth meditation practice only has walking around in circles, which wraps back around to the thought that I get out of the labyrinth experience what I put into it, or what I expect from it.

That doesn't mean there aren't surprises. There are always surprises, but it still feels all part of the whole.

I just looked up and noticed the title that I had given to this post and it reminded me of why I wrote that. As I was walking, I noticed that I felt guided and held by the labyrinth. The rocks marking the sides hold me in from the sides, the curve helps me to curve around; because of my experience walking it in the dark with a flashlight, I'm much more likely to be paying attention to just this step now, so I feel like the earth is coming up to meet my foot as I place one in front of the other. I am upright, not leaning back or forward, because it feels right and good to do so. I am moving at the pace that feels right this morning, and as usual, the songs that come into my head either cause me to slow or speed or change the song as the tempo in my body dictates. I am neither ahead of nor behind time. I'm not in the past or the future, but in the present, because the labyrinth asks that of me and I agree. For me, this walking meditation is a reminder of how to be in the present time, balanced between air and ground (neither too heavy nor too light, feeling the extremes of those polarities, but balanced within them), and fully part of the world.

I Am Here Now

2011-04-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

I was in New York for five glorious days, now I'm here for this glorious day. Coming back to the labyrinth after having been gone was lovely. It is familiar and not familiar at the same time.

The rocks are still mostly in the same places I remember. The ten feet in front of the entrance to the labyrinth is now crisscrossed with mole tracks, so these funny mound-y, ridgy sort of things curve around in front of my approach. They make me smile. The day is quiet and overcast. The air is still and crisp. I can feel the moisture in the air as I breathe it in, cool on the throat, smooth and clean as I inhale through my nose.

My toes are chilled. My cheeks red from the cold and that icy-hot sensation that comes from cold. Mass in Blue popping in and out of my head as I walk. The mind surprisingly quiet, or maybe not surprisingly. I see my thoughts, I love my thoughts, but for now, I simply find them amusing. I am here. Now.

I was in New York.

I was walking through pouring rain with new found friends, laughing with joy as the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed and the rain pounded down, as my shoes filled with water as I waded across the streets swollen with rain.

I was laughing with joy as I swayed on the subway with other friends, watching our stop rush passed us because we've gotten on the Express, rather than the Local, much to the delight of my college-best-friend's eight-year-old daughter.

I'm listening with quiet awe to this same small child sing a melodically and rhythmically complicated song beautifully.

I'm feeling my hip catch as I quietly yelp with the jolt of pain as I walk the streets, realizing that I'm going to need to slow down.

I'm laughing full belly laughs with the Nancy Quartet in a bar near Lincoln Center.

I'm enjoying the steady, easy companionship of Stacey.

I'm singing on stage, completely in the moment, feeling everyone on stage completely in the now in that way that always happens for me when I sing. Completely cued into the sight of Elena's conducting, Will's broad smile over the piano, the sound of the drums and the bass and the piano thrumming and our voices rising and falling following the melodic and rhythmic lines.

New York is exhilarating, Santa Cruz is exhilarating.

I am exhilarated.

Migration

2011-04-13T08:36:00.001-07:00

I'm in the process of migrating this blog to triplespirallabyrinth.com, its new domain!

In the meantime, I seem to be pretty preoccupied with the whole getting up and running, and figuring out how to move all of this lovely content over there.

I am still walking the labyrinth each day, sometimes more than once a day as I find that its calming influence is helping me weave my way through the twists and turns of this migration.

I'm also headed to New York on Friday. I'll be singing at Lincoln Center (the Avery Fisher Hall) on Monday with Elena Sharkova, Will Todd (the composer of the Mass in Blue, which we'll be performing), and some of the Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale and others. Should be quite an exciting adventure.

I will be back, but words will be sporadic for a bit.

Happy labyrinthing or whatever brings you peace and calm to each of you!

The shoes we walk in

2011-04-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

This morning I walked the labyrinth wearing heels and "Fancy Nancy" clothes. I felt like dressing up for the Immersion Workshop and the musical rehearsal that would fill my day, so I did. (Although, I'm noticing now that I didn't claim the desire. In fact, I covered it up by saying that I didn't have any clean clothes, which was not true at all. That's interesting to me. I'll have to think about why I wouldn't want to claim wanting to dress up. Or at the very least, pay attention to that the next time I feel inspired to dress up.)

This evening I walked it again, wearing my ugg slippers. The heel marks in the mud from this morning brought a big smile to my face, and then as I headed around for the second turn, the big, ridgy footprints of my slippers made me laugh out loud.

I love the thought of how many different shoes I wear in the world. A little like all the different hats that one wears, only the metaphor today is with feet.

Comfortable shoes, beautiful shoes, practical shoes, funny shoes. I love them all. They are all me. I am all them.

Joy, joy, joy!

2011-04-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of mine, one whom I don't see often, but when I do see her we fall into deep heart connection immediately, came up to walk the labyrinth with me this morning.

What an incredible experience it was to walk the labyrinth with her. From her Oh! Oh! Oh! as she walked towards it, to her I LOVE THIS! as she's walking, and Oh! I'm getting dizzy! Such excitement and joy. It was another very cold morning, and she wore beautiful leather flip flops, so I figured that she'd want to walk it once and head back inside to the fire to get warm, but she was inspired by how I often walk it three times so she said, as she was heading out the first time, "I'm heading back in for the second time. I want to walk it three times like Nancy!"

So we did. Joyfully hugging as we crossed paths and then moving again with joyful speed. It didn't feel rushed in any way, but the tempo of the walk was quick.

I love that I have friends who, even though I don't see them very often, when I do, I fall deeply in love with them all over again. It's not like I fall out of love with my friends when I don't see them, but maybe that I don't remember just how much I love them.

I feel nourished by my journey with the labyrinth and nourished by my friends and family. I feel nourished. Breathing deeply, drinking everything in, all the lusciousness that is my life.

Pulled by the Vortex

2011-04-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling more and more pulled by the vortex that is life. More and more I find that I'm moving before thought, but not in a compulsive, must-react kind of way, but rather, as if I'm moving with the current of life, with the flow of the "river."

This morning my eyes didn't want to open when the alarm went off, so I asked Mark to wake me on his way out to work if I hadn't gotten up yet, and then I drifted for awhile in that half-awake half-asleep place. Quite lovely. Thinking about the dream segments from the previous nights.

And all of a sudden, I was throwing the covers off and headed to the shower. Not in a rush, but in a "let's get going on the day" sort of way.

Walking the labyrinth this morning was lovely as usual. And different from any other walk, as usual. The air is brisk. My cheeks feel hot and cold at the same time. I feel "full of vim and vigor." Ready for what the day has to offer. The air is cold, the sun is clear, the clouds in the sky are moving quickly today, but the breeze down here, close to the ground, is gentle.

My toes are cold.

I thought, several times, about walking barefoot as I noticed my feet sliding around in my shoes, but got a full body NO to that idea. I was getting plenty of sensation through my shoes this morning. My toes are still cold! But in a pleasant sort of way.

The dog is excited, bringing me pine cones to throw, wiggling and dancing about to get her scratches in just the right spot on her body.

I shared my labyrinth with a neighbor this morning. I do so love sharing it with others. I'm usually so excited about sharing it that I want to say everything that comes through my head, and I know that I prefer to walk it in silence. It's this odd paradox of wanting the meditative quality of the labyrinth and wanting to talk about that same meditative quality, thereby changing the energy. So I'm playing with how I introduce it. I'll have three opportunities this week, which seems appropriate to my metaphorical mind. One has already happened, and I was chattery. I commit to paying closer attention to what wants to happen with the next two introductions.

Walking Barefoot

2011-04-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

I was inspired by a new friend to walk barefoot around my labyrinth yesterday. It was in the afternoon, so the ground was mostly dry and warm in spots where the sun shone through the trees. Very lovely.

This morning I headed out to walk and thought to myself, "Oh, no, I'm not walking barefoot this morning. The air is still a little chilly and there's no way that the ground will be warm from the sun yet."

I took a few steps into the labyrinth and noticed that I was bothered by how my feet were slipping around in my sandals. Out I went, off with the shoes and back in again.

The redwood duff is still a little prickly, but oooh! there's a soft spot of sand! This spiral of the labyrinth is built on where we had a twenty-foot by forty-foot sand box with a big play structure in it, so there is some residual sand left underneath the moss that has grown over most of it.

I notice that I'm walking more slowly, not because I think the small twigs will hurt my feet, but because I'm enjoying the sensations coming up through the ground. Chill, solid, yet with a slight give on the bits that used to be very muddy. Noticing where the gopher has decided to put an exit hole at the edge of one of the inner paths.

Yesterday I had been tromping those ridges down. Wanting my path to be smooth. As I walked out I had the thought that it might be interesting to see how long the gopher would keep that entrance/exit hole if I didn't keep ruining the tunnel by squishing it. She'd seemed pretty determined to reopen the tunnel, so maybe I'll give her a chance. (No, I don't know if she's a she, I only know she's a gopher, but I like thinking she's a she, so a she she shall be.) (And I really like how that parenthetical sentence sounds when read aloud.)

I like feeling all the new sensations that come from walking barefoot. And I, of course, like the metaphor that comes with the thought of walking barefoot through life. Could be a simile, I never could keep those two concepts straight. Metaphor, simile, whatever. I like the farther reaching idea of walking through life barefoot. Adding the sensations of my feet to everything else that is informing me moment to moment.

Sharing my learnings versus "teaching"

2011-04-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

I get all hung up with I think I'm supposed to be "teaching." I start to try to hard, and what I have to share becomes pedantic or lethargic or just plain boring, but as long as I'm simply "sharing my learnings" then magic can happen.

That's not to say that it always happens. The only place for me where magic consistently happens is in the moment. And that can happen anywhere. I happen to be more consistently in the moment when I'm walking the labyrinth.

This morning as I was walking, I was mentally singing a song, as I'm wont to do anytime, but very often in the labyrinth. It's a new song from the Cold Porters rehearsal last night (the Cold Porters trio asked me to join them to sing, so when it's the four of us, we're the Cold Porters Combo). The song is "It's All Right With Me." A fun, upbeat song, but I wanted different lyrics, so I switched to Skylark (another new song for me in the Cold Porters Combo),which has lovely, poignant lyrics, but the tempo was WAYYY TOOOO SSSLLLOOOOOWWWWWWW.

And I realized, or rather remembered, that I walk in rhythm, so when I switched songs, I had to slow down and I really didn't want to slow down, so I picked up the first tune again, took out the words and kept on going.

Does this mean something? Sure. Maybe. I don't know. What I'm learning is that I don't have to make up a story to get a learning. My body learns, my brain just likes to be entertained. Or maybe, and this feels more true, my body knows, and my brain likes to be entertained, so really, I'm just finding new ways to entertain my brain, while allowing myself more access to my body wisdom. Does that make sense? Do I care if it makes sense to you? If I start to care if it makes sense to you, dear reader, then sometimes I lose the actual meaning of things. Silly me. You get whatever it is you get out of these words, and my thinking that I can lead or teach or somehow guide you is fraught with peril.

(I love that phrase, fraught with peril, no idea why, just love it. Just as I love how the black cat sits on the bass before we rehearse each Monday night. The bassist comes in, puts his bass down and heads to share a glass of red wine with the guitarist, and the cat heads to the bass. She sits atop it and I gaze adoringly at her. I almost wrote "gaze longingly" at her. As if I wish that I could lounge on top of the bass looking all sleek and gorgeous. )

Where was I? Does it matter? Nah.

Close to Hand

2011-04-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

Stillness. Quiet. Vision. I can see where the meditation hut/coaching space wants to be. And it's not where I first thought it might be. As I was walking the labyrinth I began to realize that I wanted the entrance to the labyrinth and the entrance to the space to be in the same area. I didn't want to have to walk around the labyrinth to get to the meditation space. I'm funny that way. I like things close to hand.

Mark is always laughing and occasionally frustrated at how many garbage cans I have about the house, but I don't want to have to get up from what I'm doing to throw something away. I like things close to hand.

I wonder what else I like close to hand, other than things? I don't know. Interesting thought though.

I like a longish view (for example, the windows that I face from here are twenty feet away, and the trees outside them another twenty feet. I like that distance). I love views - is there anyone who doesn't? another interesting thought - and I like things close to hand.

Polarity. It's everywhere I look these days.

Quiet

2011-04-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

Enjoying the quiet. There was a bird call this morning as I was walking the mother spiral that sounded like a Jew's harp. It had this cool, buzzy quality to it.

Today's walk felt peaceful and quiet. No words. Actually, I haven't been getting "words" the past few days. Just peace.

A settling in my body as a counterpoint to the wild, chaotic energies that have been running through me. Wild, calm, chaotic, quiet. Back and forth, a lot like the paths on the spiral, first I'm winding up, then I'm winding down.

Ahhhhhhh.

the Face in the Mirror

2011-04-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

Facing into the anger within. Right now I feel calm and quiet. Last night a storm was raging.

I remember hearing about something called the primal scream, some sort of therapy, group-workshopy kind of thing from the 70s, and I have tended to discount a lot of what was going on then, because I was a teenager, but the reality is that much of what people were up to then, we're up to now. Maybe the words to describe it are slightly different, but the core tenants are true. We're looking for our essence, what's at our core, and there is a darkness there that many, and most specifically, I don't want to look at. Or haven't wanted to look at. That's where the primal scream bit comes in.

Mark worked from home yesterday and so we were able to head down to our couple's mastership circle together. I was sniping at him. No need to go into the actual story, suffice it to say that I felt hurt and so I was lashing out in a completely "on the triangle" kind of way.

When we got to the location I was buzzing with unexpressed anger. I chose to move some of it through my body. I was still running on the story that had triggered the anger (or rather, had allowed me to access it, since normally I keep that shit buried as far below the surface as I possibly can - I'm working on this, but it's still my main M.O.).

Anyway, a series of things happened that ended up in our whole group accessing that anger, in turns, with the express intent to "out" those feelings, and to have an opportunity to "hold space" for those feelings as well. I did both, express and hold space. I was able to express far more than I thought possible and I was able to hold far more space that I thought possible. It was a powerful experience and I have so much gratitude for the courageous people in this group, who are willing to take those leaps of faith, to walk through what looks like fire, to find the peace on the other side.

Deep connections were made last night through watching and experiencing one after another expressing. It was mostly a feminine storm and the masculine holding space, though there were forays into the masculine rage and the feminine version of holding space.

I had the opportunity to hold space for a very powerful woman. I had no idea I could stand in that much rage and simply be. And she came at me with everything she had. It was beautiful to watch. I got to see her in her power, standing strong, standing for her NO! And I found out that I could hold space for all that and more.

I am much stronger that I knew.

We all are.

In the Moment

2011-03-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

I'm pleasantly surprised that I got this shot. Normally when I try to take pictures of the animals, they notice me and trot up to say hello, completely ruining any chance of my taking a picture of anything other than their left eyeball.

Chocolate (the black cat in the picture) was out watching me walk the labyrinth, as he often does. And Cinders was there as well, walking right in front of me multiple times. This was an anomaly. Normally she hangs out around the labyrinth, gnawing on pine cones, or eating grass, but today, she wanted to eat all the taller grass bits that are growing around the stones in the spirals. So, it seemed like every time I made a turn, there she was. It certainly changed the pace of my walk.

And it made me laugh, which is great. Laughing often happens in the labyrinth. Usually I'm laughing at how funny my mind is, but today, I got to laugh at the dog. She likes it when I laugh (or at least I like to think that's so).

On a totally unrelated note, yesterday I had an interesting encounter with one of the neighborhood children. I was driving home when a smallish, pixie-like child (well known to me) stood by the side of the road outside her house and raised her hand to indicate that I should stop, which I did.

I roll down my window and say, "Why hello young miss, what are you doing today?"

"I'm selling this." She said, holding out what looked to be a leaf folded up in a tight square.

"Ah." I said. "What is that?"

"A thing that you smell."

"Ah." I said again. "I'll give you a quarter for that."

"Oh, but it's a dollar."

"Hmmm, well, I only have a quarter." I'm lying here, because I knew I had a dollar, and I also knew that I wasn't willing to pay a dollar for a folded up leaf, no matter what its name. I ought not to have lied. But it's what I did.

"Oh, okay."

We exchanged quarter for A Thing that you Smell and I drove off, breathing deeply from my Thing that you Smell. Best twenty-five cents I've spent in a while.

Rubato

2011-03-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

Rubato is a musical term that means: "Rhythmic flexibility within a phrase or measure; a relaxation of strict time." It is sometimes said that the time is "stolen" from the measure after the rubato.

I was noticing the rubato as I would swing around the center of each spiral. I could keep a steady beat or tempo, walking around the outside circles of each spiral, but when I got to the center, at the turnaround, I had to steal from the timing of the rhythm. I slowed down to make the turn and then sped up just a bit to get back to the tempo I was in.

I've been feeling guilty about taking time for myself after the Brahms Requiem marathon last week, when I realized that I will, as I always do, "make up" that time when I'm done with this bit of slowing down.

This is the point behind the "sprint and recover" model of thinking. Run flat out, top speed, reveling in the excitement, and then slow, rest, recover, back to the "regular" tempo. then sprint again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

So, this is me rinsing. . .

Learning to love what is

2011-03-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the labyrinth right now, there are muddy tracks from when I was walking in the dark and through the mud puddles. I love those tracks and am distracted by them at the same time. My perfectionist self wants those tracks to be flattened out. My wild, chaotic side loves the messiness, and there's a whole other part of me that likes the evidence of devotion that those tracks provide.

It's funny. There's more to say and nothing more to say. So, today, I am choosing brevity.

Poetry.

Stillness.

Wildness of Heart.

Getting Ahead of Myself

2011-03-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

Lots of chuckling in the labyrinth this morning as I write Title after Title for this blog, catch myself, laugh and go back to being in the moment and then noticing that AGAIN I'm writing a new Title.

I can't remember a single one of those "brilliant" titles now, which is great, because of course that's really not the point of walking the labyrinth.

In between the title writing, I heard Brahms. Each day, as I've walked the labyrinth this last week, I've had a different Brahms phrase repeating in my head. Today's was from the glorious 5th movement with the soprano soloist (sung by the incomparable Lisa Vroman!). I was singing Ich will euch trösten, wie einen seine Mutter tröstet, which translates to: As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you. The musical line there is so comforting, soft and shimmery.

I'm laughing at how disjointed I feel trying to write this blog this morning, and yet, it's exactly how my thoughts were running in the labyrinth. Could be an indication of how the day is going to be, or it could just be that right here, right now, I'm highly distractable. It's all good.

In the midst of writing, I have been stopping and attending to other things, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. Am I finishing those other things? Sometimes. I did manage to eat breakfast, take a shower, walk the labyrinth, but in fits and starts. And clearly I have judgments about doing things in fits and starts, because I'm feeling completely uncomfortable about the whole process.

Is this an upper limit from the incredible Brahms experience? Entirely possible. Or maybe just a result of having fully immersed myself in Brahms and now having to come back to this other version of reality. This other version of who I am. Last week I was a singer, a part in a magical, musical experience. I got to give myself over the the music each night, with the electric energy of the audience to loop with, making the experience even more vast.

And now, I'm mom again, mom who has to figure out what the heck to do to motivate her self. Mom, who's got animals and humans to feed and a house to keep clean. Errands to run, bills to pay, tax questions to answer, all those seemingly mundane things that keep life moving.

I'm great at starting things, I have good ideas and I love to initiate. But maintaining things is tougher for me. I get bored, want to move on to other things. It's funny, some routines are set. Each morning, I have a set routine for how I take a shower, take care of my skin and teeth and hair, get dressed. I have things set up in my car so that I have everything to hand (kleenex, hand lotion, nail file, cough drops, emergency things like an ace bandage, arnica gel and homeopathic pills, bandaids, etc. My purse is a mini version of that, so I don't have to think when I head out. I've already thought of those things.

But, what's for lunch? What's for dinner? I have no idea. I haven't wanted to cook in quite some time, so we're eating out a lot. I'm wasting less food, in that I'm not buying lots of fruits and veggies and then composting them. But we're eating crap.

How did I get here? Writing about this? See what I mean about distractability? My monkey mind is jumping all over the place.

So, I'll be laughing quietly to myself, whispering, "breathe here now" over and over again today it looks like. Or, at any rate, that's what this very moment looks like. Let's not get ahead of ourselves now, shall we? That is where I started! I'm so funny.

Love, love, love to my distractable selves, all of them!

Grumble, grumble, grumble

2011-03-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling grumbly. The first two days of the routine of waking up at 6:00 and walking the labyrinth were exciting and new and fun in an odd sort of way. Part of how I have always defined myself is by those things that I will do that others won't. (Like jumping in the ocean at midnight on New Years.)

Last night Mark said that he wasn't going to wake up at 6:00. He sounded (or rather, I heard him as sounding) defiant and determined. And I know that in the past, if he gets woken up in the morning, it's hard for him to go to sleep, so partly to "hero" him and partly to "hero" myself (because its always about me at the bottom layer of any "heroing" that I do), I decided to simply walk the Labyrinth when I woke, rather than setting an alarm.

I woke up countless times in the night thinking, "I don't want to walk it now!" It was dark a bunch of those times. I didn't even do the contortion to see the clock to see what time it actually was, deliberately not looking at what time it was.

I finally got tired of this game at about 8:15. I got up. Today it really is pouring rain. Yesterday it only sounded like that.

I got up, dressed, fed the animals (I'm stalling, I know I am), and then finally head grudgingly out to walk the labyrinth. This beautiful art form, magical place that has been calling me to it for weeks now. I went grudgingly. When and how did this happen?

I have made it a "chore." I don't want that. I loved the idea of a commitment to it, and I can see that I did have a commitment, just not one that looks like what I apparently think a commitment to a routine should look like. My commitment was to come when she called, and to listen for her call.

I noticed that I didn't walk the labyrinth yesterday or the day before after I'd done my walk and blog in the morning. I had time, and on other days, I might have heard her calling, but I don't think I was listening. In fact, I was pretty stuck yesterday, stuck in my thoughts about crazy personas. Uncomfortably so. But did I head out for the wisdom of the labyrinth the way I have since it was built? No. I wasn't listening.

So, today, I'm learning about what commitments actually look like for me. And I find that I like the one that I had. To listen in each moment to what wants to happen, to where I feel the most aliveness and support for growth. I felt it in when I was asked to wake up at 6:00 the next morning, but I thought that was something other than what it was.

There are other ways to play with routine, and I will look for those.

I like the magic of the labyrinth, and I allowed my ego structure to take that magic away. I may decide each morning when the alarm rings that I want to take that time to walk the labyrinth, instead of laying in bed while Mark gets up and gets ready for work. But I will stay in the moment, checking anew for what wants to happen.

Anytime I decide I "Have" to do something, things shift for me, into something sticky and tarry.

So, today, right now. I'm choosing this moment. I can already feel the pull of the concert tonight, a pull that I wasn't feeling yesterday. I know that I "have" to sing, because I made a commitment, but I want to sing because it brings me joy and aliveness.

As I was walking the labyrinth in the rain I had this funny experience of being both really grumpy that I was there walking in the rain, and also loving the sounds of the water droplets plopping on my leather rain hat, and the dancing ripples that appeared in the rain puddles in the spirals. As if I were popping from a stuck place, out to joy, and then popping back again. Grump, Joy, Grump, Joy. . .What I notice right now is that my right hand is tingling a little as I type and that I am appreciating the shimmery quality of the rain as it blows sideways past the window above my computer screen.

Breathe Here Now. LOL! I never once thought that in the labyrinth this morning. My tool, my trick for getting me back into the moment. And yet I still managed to pop out to joy in the midst of my sturm und drang. There's hope yet!

Laughing at myself.

A Test!

2011-03-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

It's been pouring buckets of rain. Pissing rain, my husband might say. I woke up at 5:30 to quiet and thought, hmmmm, should I just get up and go out now, while it seems to not be raining?

No! It's warm in this bed and cold out there and I don't wanna go! Okay. So go back to sleep. Toss, turn, toss again.

Beep, beep, beep! Six O'Clock and All's Well. I get up, get dressed and stop to kiss my husband.

"Are you really going out there in the rain? You're going to turn that Labyrinth into a giant mud puddle."

"I've been worrying about that," I said (whined is more like it.)

And then I felt this wave of NO! rush through me at the thought of not going out. I popped up and said, "I'm off!" and headed down to gather rain gear, my flashlight, go pee, get a drink of water and then out the door.

It's only sprinkling! That must have been wind we were hearing. The air is crisp again, the mist makes everything look magical.

All the usual flooding spots were flooded and muddy, boots-sticking-in-the-mud muddy.

I spend a lot of the time chuckling to myself and thinking or actually saying, "Breathe here now." or "Come back!" as I notice that my mind has wandered ahead to writing this blog, or behind to trying to redo something in my past.

And then the Brahms Requiem floods my brain with music and song. Bits of last night's concert come back. And the feeling of being in the middle of all that sound. 107 voices and HUGE orchestra. Glorious, glorious music.

So happy to be walking the labyrinth and singing in the dark on a drippy, breezy morning!

Walking in the dark

2011-03-24T07:03:00.000-07:00

I wake with the alarm. Leaping out of bed in the dark. Dressing in the dark. I'm excited to be up. But it's DARK! Mark had pointed out yesterday that this would be the case, but it's different now that it's here.

Find my boots, and my layers and head out to the labyrinth, deliberately with no flashlight. I enter the labyrinth and trip on pine cones.

What wants to happen?

A flashlight. Oh! Okay, back to the house, get the flashlight. The dog is confused but happy to be out exploring in the dark.

I head back and walk into the labyrinth. It's different in the dark. My pace is much slower and way more wobbily. Those curves are throwing me for a loop! I giggle and chuckle a lot as I catch myself trying to write this blog ahead of time.

One step at a time. I chose a small flashlight, so I can only see one step ahead of me, with the stones to guide my way. I'm shining a light on the now.

The air is crisp and the squelching sounds that my boots make in the mud is enchanting. Big smiles as I make my way around the spirals.

I get scared at one point, thinking that there could be a mountain lion up in the trees above me. We've got a female who's been tagged and who's never been more than 3/4s of a mile from a house further down my street.

Then I remember that I'm safe. And that with my pea green woolen pea coat and rubber boots I wouldn't be a very tasty treat, I'd be fuzzy and rubbery. Ewww!

As always when I walk my labyrinth, I find myself wanting to share it with others. I like the idea of inviting people up for the night and then having them walk it with me in the morning.

There's a spot just to the left when I'm standing in the middle that is perfect for setting up a few small tents. Mark wants to built a fire pit out there somewhere.

So, a campfire the night before with marshmallows and song, and a quiet alarm ringing at 6:00 in the morning. Stumble out of the tents and. . .

Oh look, I'm doing just what I was laughing about in the spirals. Getting ahead of myself. Right now I can only see what's in the sphere of my flashlight. Just the three or so stones on either side of the pathway where I am. I can't get lost, but it's easy to lose track of where I am on the journey.

I'm safe; I can't get lost. Shining my flashlight on the now. Breathe here now. The only tool I need. Breathe here now.

So if you see me wobbling, just know that I'm trying to get ahead of myself and I've forgotten that there is nothing to do but take the next step. I'll figure it out, just like you'll figure it out.

Who am I talking to? Oh right, me!

What wants to happen?

2011-03-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

Misty, quiet, grey day. Muddy Labyrinth. "What wants to happen?" That's the question I walk in with. I get distracted (?) by what looks like a bubbling spring. Oh, it's where the snake hole was, and now it's become an underground rivelet. Look, mud puddles! And I've got my rainboots on! Whoo hoo!

Oh! And I can try pulling out the oaklings that are trying to grow in my labyrinth. They slip easily out of the ground through the mud and water. I'd been working really hard trying to get them out before, when the ground wasn't so wet. Silly me. Things move when they're ready.

Winding into the center. Standing there taking in the sights and sounds. Hmmm, I'm half way through the crone spiral. How did that happen? I don't remember even starting back out.

Commitment. Moving oneself in a chosen direction. I've been letting the labyrinth call me, and that felt good, but now I can feel a call from the labyrinth to make a commitment to her. I will walk her each morning at 6:00. Three times, or multiples of three. Really? But what about those little ones in me who might not want to do that? What? Make it a game? Oh yeah, I remember how much fun Omi had when Letta said, "Wanna follow me?" while they walked this very section of the labyrinth.

Do you want to follow? No! I wanna lead! Okay, so now I'm almost skipping back down the path. My arms are flapping out, my whole body posture has changed. This is fun! MUD PUDDLES! Sloshing through them.

Back and through and back again. Three times through. I like this.

I tried to argue with the time when it popped in. Really? 6:00? Can't it be 6:30? No? Okay, and tomorrow? Do I really have to start tomorrow? Yes? Okay. Oh yeah, I can nap in the afternoon before tomorrow night's performance.

I'm so funny!

Love, love, love! from the labyrinth to you!

Not Yet

2011-03-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

I was talking with my fellow Triple Spiral Labyrinth enthusiast, who said that each time she walks into her labyrinth she walks in with an intention or a question.

I don't always do that. This afternoon, I stopped at the heart shape rock at the entrance and thought, "What is my purpose?" No half measures for me, no asking simple, small questions, I want the big ones! As I walk I hear, "just listen."

Okay, so I listen and I notice. I notice the contrast of the beautiful water droplets sparkling in the bits of sun as it finds its way down through the clouds and the trees. So beautiful. I think, "it's all about the contrast." That's something from my quilting world. One of the things that makes a great quilt is the use of contrasting colors. This starts me thinking about polarities and the value in those, and paradox, where two completely, seemingly opposites can be true at the same time.

And then my mind drifts to more mundane things until I get to the center of the spiral. What I call the unknown. I stand there looking at a space just off to my left where there's a beautiful, cleared out area where something wants to happen, or where I want something to happen and then I laugh and think, "It just needs a floor!" We can put up tents or chairs and tables or any number of things. . . And then I think, "What is my purpose?"

What I hear is "Not Yet." Is that the universe? My tree talking to me? Or is that some smaller part of me who's not ready yet? Truthfully, it doesn't really matter. Because if it is Spirit or The Universe, then the answer is Not Yet. And if it's some smaller part of me, the answer is still Not Yet. So I will look to those smaller parts who might not be ready and listen to them and stay as in the moment as I can, so that I am open to whatever wants to happen next.

I'm getting lots of practice with this labyrinth. It calls to me. I walk it when it calls. This feels like practice, practice in listening, practice in following impulses (yesterday's walk turned out to be in the rain!), practicing in being in the moment. Each time I enter the labyrinth space, I enter the Now. So if I've forgotten, I have a reference point, and if I've not forgotten, it's a reinforcing point.

I'm spending more and more time each day in the Now, in the Present moment.

Of course, singing the Brahms Requiem also helps with this. Music in general is a great place for me to get "in the now." And this particular piece of music feels like it has a hold on me in the same way that the labyrinth does. I feel like it's got me by the scruff of the neck. Not in a you're in trouble kind of way, but rather in a mama cat has the kitten by the scruff of the neck and is moving her to a safe place kind of way.

Metaphor

2011-03-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

As I was walking the labyrinth this afternoon, I got the "hit" that the labyrinth speaks to me in metaphor. Or I hear it through metaphor. Whichever the direction, I learn through metaphor.

For example, I went on a retreat last weekend. Mark and I have been part of Grace Caitlin's Transformation/Immersion program. It is personal growth work on steroids. Lots of learnings, all the time. There are thirteen of us in this program and I learn so much from my interactions with each and every one in the program.

Anyway, the group has been meeting since September, and we had a three-day retreat. Lots of fabulous things happened at the retreat, but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to speak to our leaving. One of the things that Grace said before we all left was that she's found it extremely useful to "call back" her energy when she leaves a place. She said that when you do that, you don't leave things behind. And that had been my experience with that particular ritual.

This time, we called back our energy as a group. And then we all went hustle-bustle gathering our things up and setting the place to rights again.

I felt secure in the knowledge that I had gathered up all of my belongings and my energy and headed out feeling sated and glowing.

The next morning, as I was contemplating the gathering I realized that I had, after all, left two things.

Here's where the metaphor language comes in.

I left behind the lid to one of my soup jars. And the bottle of dishwashing soap that I had brought for the group to use (because I'm very picky about scents and I knew that I would want to have my own soap there.)

So the lid I came to see represented the lid that I've been keeping on my outrageous self. I no longer need to keep a lid on the outrageousness that is me!

And the soap metaphor comes from not needing to worry about the messes that I make. Knowing that there is a cleanliness that comes from being messy and authentic and in integrity. I don't need special soap to clean up my messes anymore.

Hmmmm, this is interesting, because in my head these metaphors make so much sense, and writing them down here, I don't seem to have quite gotten the flavor of them. Interesting.

I still know what they mean to me, but I don't know that that knowledge translates. Interesting. I'm also getting that it doesn't matter if it doesn't translate. I need to know for me, but not for anyone else.

Be Prepared, that's the Boy Scout's marching song

2011-03-18T16:11:00.001-07:00

Be prepared, as through life you march a long,
Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well,
Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell . . .

Boy, do I love Tom Lehrer and his clever lyrics and singable songs.

And, yes, I feel much more prepared for whatever the next moment may bring.

The pantry is now filled with canned goods, water, medical supplies. Oh, I forgot to get more candles. Well, that's on the next list then. I've got candles, but I like to have lots of candles, so it's a great excuse to buy more!

On the way back to the labyrinth today, I had the thought to check the level on the propane tank. It's at 30 percent. They usually come and fill it when it's around 25%, but it felt good to call and get that delivery scheduled, rather than just waiting for it to happen.

And, so, after moving the fear through me yesterday, and acknowledging that I'm committed to scaring myself, I let the one who likes to get scared out into the open to be seen. She was so excited! I think I let out a little scream of excitement when Diana asked if I was willing to acknowledge her.

(That may sound a little vague and possibly confusing. So, I'll explain a little bit. My beloved husband and I go to "Mastership Circles for Committed Couples" every two weeks, led by the incomparable Diana and Matt Chapman.)

I love that I walked into the circle space completely freaking out, crying so hard that I was gulping air (but only for a short bit as I spoke about how scared I was), and by the time I left, three hours later, I was laughing and joyous. Solidly so, not "on top of" the fear that I walked in with, but having moved through the fear.

Sometimes the labyrinth is not enough. Sometimes I need people to help me move through things. Last night I needed people who could see me and show me what they were seeing and people who were working through their own stuff.

And sometimes, like last week when I was so angry, I was able to move through the anger with the labyrinth. In the moment, I know what I need (unless of course I'm completely crazy, and then if I can, I ask for help.)

Just tallying up the tools in my toolbox, and the supplies in my pantry and feeling like I am as prepared as I can be in this moment, and we'll see what the next moment brings.

Defining and Redefining Fear

2011-03-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

Today I watched a news report about the high probability of a large quake here in Northern California and Oregon, most likely to happen between March 19th and 26th.

I will be rehearsing for performances of Brahms's German Requiem.

I can feel this place of total fear as I think about the earthquakes. I was in Alaska for the 1964 quake that keeps having it's "number" upped. Today I heard that that quake was said to be a 9.2. I was two years old, and didn't think I remembered much of that quake until I was here in California for the '89 quake (a 7.1). For about a week afterward I kept having the strangest dreams. I was surrounded by giants, I was able to walk underneath tables without ducking, I could see the trees outside my window bending down to touch the ground on both sides, swaying back and forth as if doing side bend toe touches. It took me a week to figure out that these were not strange dreams, these were the memories I had of the '64 quake.

And now, I might be living through yet another major earthquake. My father once asked me why I thought it was that I needed to experience two major earthquakes and I had no answer. And I still have no answer. I may have an answer if this big quake comes to pass.

And in the meantime, I prepare. We live up "in the mountains", so have a generator at the ready, and I've asked my husband to get the gas for it. We've got some, but not the full complement because we've had to use the generator a few times already this winter.

And I'm off to Costco to pick up bottled water, even though we've got a well, and canned soups and chilis and chicken, veggies, etc. Plus, it's time to restock the candles and first aid supplies. It feels good to be doing something rather than "stewing" about what it might be like.

I catch myself starting to wind up the fear, with no breath and crazy thoughts, and then I head out to the labyrinth. I'm glad that I can use that to quickly and easily get back into a state of calm. I know how to do that without the labyrinth, of course, but it's nice to have that as well.

So, I'm breathing and preparing and breathing some more as I head into this next week. Looking forward to singing some breathtakingly beautiful music.

Breathing,
Nancy

Defining Beauty

2011-03-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

I seem to be shifting how I view things, finding my authority from inside, rather than from outside. Yesterday I was looking at what made something Sacred and today, Beauty, and my definition of it, seems to be easing towards something new.

As I was looking out from the center of the labyrinth, my gaze fell upon my compost bin. Normally, I look up, past it, to the Stag Tree that is behind it and focus my gaze there, usually almost consciously not looking at the compost bin, because I have judged it not worthy.

Today, I noticed it, noticed the interesting pattern that the wire makes, with the rich, brown compost below and the piles of green bits on top. The potato and beet and onion sprouts that are getting taller, and just appreciating the whole decomposition.

I don't turn my compost pile any more.

I stopped turning my compost pile the year Megan was six, 1998. It was Buddha's birthday. Here's why I remember all of this.

It was a beautiful weekend day in spring. Megan and Kyle were playing around in the yard, Mark was down at the bottom of the property working on clearing ditches or something. I was moving compost from our pile down to the flower beds in front of the house. As I was digging up the compost pile, I hit a large pocket of straw. This seemed odd to me, but I didn't think a whole lot about it.

I wheeled the barrow down to the front of the house and dumped the compost in the bed. As I was spreading the compost out with my shovel, I thought, "Potates? We have potatoes growing in the compost pile?" And then, "EWWWW! It moved!"

As I bent to look at what I had found, I discovered that it was a a baby gopher. At the time, I didn't think kindly towards gophers. They ate the roots of my veggies, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it.

I headed down to find Mark to see if he would be willing to kill it (it makes me cringe now to think that I was even thinking about that, but I was). At that point, Megan ran up and asked what was going on.

I showed her the gopher and she said, "Momma, what are we gonna do with it? We need to make a nest for it and find a home for it! Can I keep it?"

Well, no, you can't keep it. Hmmmmm, so I ended up calling around, finding the local native gopher rescue place and we took the baby gopher there. It turns out that the gopher was probably between 4-6 hours old, and there was probably another one left in that straw bed that I dug up. If there was, it was gone by the time I went back to look.

This spirals me back around to defining beauty. Before that event, I didn't like gophers; I could only see their destructive powers, but holding an infant in my hands changed all that.

Now, the compost bin stays where it is, because if there is a gopher nest below it, I don't want to disturb that. I'm content to know that my vegetable waste is being composted and may possibly be providing warmth and shelter for a family of gophers.

What makes something sacred?

2011-03-15T14:59:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's post made me think about how I created the labyrinth, and got me to thinking about sacred geometry and what that might mean. The ancient labyrinths are built upon sacred geometry. And I was realizing that I don't know how far that definition goes, so I was thinking that my labyrinth wasn't made with Sacred Geometry, and that thought made me sad.

And then, I started thinking about what actually makes something Sacred.

When I'm walking the labyrinth that I built in my backyard with mostly my intuition and a picture from the internet, an experience in a friend's labyrinth and the mathmatical help of my husband, it feels sacred. Whether that feeling comes from the reverence with which I entered it, or the emanations from the Redwood tree by its entrance or the Oak trees standing tall all around, with birdsong and wind and sunlight or moonlight, rain or snow, I have no idea. I only know that walking the labyrinth gives me the same feeling I get when I walk into a beautiful church. I come into presence in a way that is easy.

I can drop into "presence", that magical place/feeling that all is right with the world, no matter what is happening, much more easily these days, and I attribute some of that ease to my daily practice of walking the labyrinth.

I was at a "Consciousness" retreat this weekend with other people who are walking this path that I'm walking. Spending three days with people deeply committed to their aliveness and learning and growth and expansion was thrilling and breathtaking and scary and wild. And now I'm sitting in the quiet, after walking the labyrinth, and letting all those learnings settle.

I was able to see behaviors of mine that I had not been able. The post about a week ago about letting my Villain out was the precursor to my learnings this weekend.

I learned that it is possible to evolve one's Villain into a Challenger. That there are healthy ways to provoke. And I learned that while I thought I was provoking "cleanly," I was not. I got a clear picture of that. A good reference point.

And now, I can shift that pattern. If you can't see the behavior because it's in your blindspot, then it's not shiftable. So I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to see this. A very brave woman spoke up, knowing that she could incur my wrath, and yet willing to stand in her truth.

I had a meltdown this weekend. And I was fully supported by the folks who were at the retreat with me. I am grateful and in awe.

Feeling that gratitude and awe,
Nancy

Logistics

2011-03-14T10:42:00.001-07:00

I had a request for information about how I created the labyrinth, and I'm really psyched to be sharing this process!

This morning I went out to actually measure the beautiful creation (because my dear husband did the math, and I simply held the string while he figured out how wide the spirals should be and where we should be measuring from to determine things like the diameter of each spiral, et cetera.)

I discovered that the maiden circle really is smaller than the other two. I knew that the pathway felt smaller, and in fact it is. The diameter of the maiden spiral is 18 feet, whereas the diameters of the other two are 19 feet. This was not consciously intentional.

Because I came at this purely from having walked Patria and Geoff's Triple Spiral Labyrinth, and some minimal research on the internet. I feel like I know everything about my own labyrinth and nothing about the "traditions" behind labyrinths in general.

And I'm happy to share my process because this labyrinth feels important to me, and not just to me. It feels important to our evolution. Those people who are called to it, will find their own path, and I'm simply playing my role as an early adapter.

So, bring on the questions!

Poetry in Motion

2011-03-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

Languid and indolent. Those words popped in as I was walking this morning. And as I reflect now, I was watching two of the cats square off on opposite sides of the labyrinth. Languid is the perfect description of Chocolate, my son's black cat, unless it's when he's being distinctly clumsy, and indolent often fits my daughter's tortoise shell cat.

I wasn't thinking of those words in terms of the cats at the time, but the thoughts have merged now that I'm back out in the "real world." Although, I have to tell you, sometimes the labyrinth feels like the "real world" and all this other stuff that's happening "out here" doesn't feel so real.

In the labyrinth, time stops. I notice things, my mind chatters, but time stops. I can come back to the house and find that I've been gone for five minutes or an hour.

I can walk into the labyrinth completely riled up and angry, or ecstatically, over-the-top happy, and I always seem to come out calm and grounded. Some new thought percolating in my head as I think about bird song, or the myriad different colors of brown on the ground. If I walk in with a question, sometimes I walk back out with an answer, and sometimes I walk back out knowing that I wasn't asking the right question.

I have been noticing that if I don't have the question right, then I don't get an answer. And usually, if I don't have the question right, it's because I haven't uncovered the next level of what wants to happen. It's not good or bad, it just is.

Poetry in motion. That's what I feel like as I walk the labyrinth. A physical form of poetry. I can't quite explain it right now. Maybe I'll think on that the next time I head into the labyrinth, and maybe I won't.

That's another thing that I've noticed. Sometimes the thoughts that are running through my mind as I head back to the labyrinth (and really, it's not that far away, so it's probably not even 15 seconds to get back there) are not the thoughts that stay. Sometime happens as I walk through the arch.

Oh! I placed an archway over the heart rock. I like how it looks and feels to walk through that archway.

Coming around again

2011-03-08T12:41:00.000-08:00

This morning's labyrinth walk was thoughtful and quiet, punctuated by the scree of a hawk. It made me curious about why they make that sound. I always think of them as hunting when they're making that sound because I can see them up there in the sky circling, but really, if they're hunting, why would they make a sound?

But I digress. What I was mostly noticing was the actual path through the spirals. When I start to walk in, I'm walking the outside path, curving towards the left, but when I circle back around I'm now two pathways in, as if I've jumped a level, but I know that I'll "go back" and do that level again. And this thought was such a gentle reminder that I move "forward" and "backwards." I make judgments about those movements. Forward is "good" and backwards is "bad." But the truth is that it's all just part of the journey and it only looks like I'm going forward or backwards. What I am is on a journey, so every step is forward in that the end of this part of the journey is death. And I'm always moving towards that.

Nature was reflecting another thought as I stopped in the center and appreciated the light play on the forest floor. Parts of the ground were illuminated and others were in shadow. I thought about how on a bright, sunny day, with nothing to shade the sun, I find that it's "too bright."

So, I'm appreciating light and shadow, masculine and feminine, so many different polarities. Seeing the value in each side of each polarity.

What am I looking for?

2011-03-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

News flash to self. If I put my attention on how I don't trust the masculine, then the masculine will show up looking untrustworthy.

I got a reflection yesterday from a dear friend who showed me just how unfriendly and unyielding I have been with my man.

I have been waiting for him to "man up." Telling him I'm going to test him and wait to see the result, not realizing that I HAVE been testing him, relentlessly, and he's been standing strong and I just haven't seen it because I was looking for untrustworthiness, and therefore, that's what I found.

Are things perfect now? Of course not, we'll drift as we drift, but in this moment, all I am seeing around me is the support and wisdom and trustworthiness of the masculine, and of my man in particular.

The Triangle

2011-03-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

In this way of life that I've been exploring for the past seven and a half years, there is a concept called the Triangle. Some refer to it as the Drama Triangle. The basics are this. There are three basic positions in life that we play until we choose to play another game. Those are the Victim, the Hero and the Villain.

As I was standing in the middle of the "unknown" in my labyrinth this morning, water dripping from the redwood tree branches above me, it occurred to me that the three spirals could also represent those three positions on the triangle. There are things to be learn from each position, and eventually, what I want is to be mostly in the unknown. Not playing those victim, hero or villain games. When I'm in the unknown I'm taking 100% responsibility for what happens to me and for how I impact others. I'm also "in the moment."

Oh bloody hell, here I am trying to teach. I didn't want to do that with this blog, and I will stop now.

Here's what I noticed. I noticed that when I thought about the labyrinth in terms of the triangle, I laughed out loud. A happy, joyous laugh, seemingly contrasting the grey, drippy weather.

I love the notion because, this is my triangle dance. In that order. Victim, Hero, and then Villain. And for years, I didn't acknowledge the Villain. Well, right now, baby, she's coming out. Eventually I will get to sit consistently in the unknown. But for now, I'm honoring my Villain. I will be messy in this as I learn what lessons she has to offer. In fact, I'm committing to being messy with this.

Scarcity of Trust

2011-03-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

I do not trust the masculine to take care of me, to be able to handle all the rage that I feel inside. All the wild, chaotic, destructiveness that is me. I am love, of course, I am love. We are all love, but right now that love wants to show up as righteous anger. I feel rage rushing through my body as I feel into how disconnected I feel from community. I feel rage as I notice the thoughts that no one truly knows or values me. (and a tiny voice inside my head says, "who doesn't know or value you? Would that be you who doesn't trust, value or know yourself?" Bloody hell! I feel crazy. Everything inside me is falling apart. Everything I thought I knew about myself feels like a lie. I am not love. I am anger.

I AM ANGER.

I AM ANGRY.

At the world, for being so polarized. At myself, for being willing to put up with this smaller version of myself that I show to the world. At myself for not valuing my big energy.

Big breath. The thoughts above were what was coursing through me as I felt a wave of rage take over.

After a few missteps, I headed towards the labyrinth, walking briskly. As I headed into the labyrinth, I found myself moving faster and faster. A little like a whirling dervish. I had the feeling I got as a kid when I was spinning as fast as I could, arms flung out to the world, just surrendering.

I was through the maiden spiral and into the mother spiral before I even realized it. I kept moving, noticing how I wasn't paying attention to where I was in the spiral, only that I was moving, no real thoughts, just fleeting ones that I couldn't catch (or wasn't interested in catching.)

I came to the center section, the unknown, and realized that I want some way to just spiral around in there so that I can get spit back out when I'm not ready to stop and stay in the unknown. I spun around and headed back out, almost running. I don't even really remember what happened for me on the second time through the labyrinth, but by the third time I noticed that I was singing "One Note Samba" in my head. "This is just a one note Samba, based upon a single note. Other notes are bound to follow, but the root is still that note."

I am a one note Samba. And, in the past, I have judged that as bad. Just one note, one repeating note. What I notice about this song is that what's so cool about it is that the singer is singing that one F, over and over again, but the chords are changing around it. So, it plays a different role in each of those chords. It's not just the "root", the "tonic". It becomes the seventh and the third, etc. And each note's position in a chord changes it slightly.

So, as I move through the world as my one note, others are shifting around me, creating other chords, and I am shifting, retuning, as others shift and retune, to create ever different chords.

And then the note changes, and the words reflect that: "Now this new one is the consequence of the one we've just been through. As I'm bound to be the unavoidable consequence of you!"

"There's so many people who can talk and talk and talk and just say nothing, or nearly nothing."

"I have used up all the scale I know and at the end I've come to nothing, or nearly nothing."

What's interesting to me about this is that those last two lines are chromatic runs, up and down, using every note in our western scale. So the contrast of using a lot of notes and saying nothing feels powerful to me.

"So I come back to that first note, as I must come back to you. I will pour into that one note all the love I feel for you."

"Anyone who wants the whole show, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, do, he will find himself with no show, better play the note you know."

I am one note, and I am looking for the beauty in that one note, all the love and anger and sadness and fear and joy and creativity in that one note that is me!

Familiars

2011-03-03T12:37:00.000-08:00

I had the thought to walk the labyrinth three times in succession today. I walked in with a headache that had started several hours before. The birds were loud, but not raucous. The spirals are not flooded, but definitely muddy. As I walk through, the youngest of our cats, Sugar, shows up. She's dainty and lithe - leaping across my path multiple times, scampering just out of reach.

I continue walking, monkey mind chattering away about what I'm going to write when I get back. I gently suggest to myself that those thoughts weren't likely to be what gets written, and in fact I can't remember the "profound" thoughts I was having in that moment. (I'm grinning broadly as I realize this now.) I continue walking, noticing the pain in my head and the "catch" in my right knee as I work the turns. I notice that the pace feels faster than I want, so I slow down. I head into the crone wheel, appreciating the contrast of the dry, grey stones on the dark earth as I work my way to the middle. I break into a big grin as I pass the stone that Bez placed. It's just on the last circuit before I enter the "unknown" area at the center of the whole shebang. Her stone stands out because it's much lighter and because there is a hole in the stone, worn there by some other stone that was there while it rested in a moving body of water of some sort. I'm assuming that Bez picked it up on the beach somewhere, but I don't actually know this.

I sit on the log, knowing that my bottom will be damp when I get back up, and not caring in the moment. I stay there for a while, listening to the birds and feeling the pulsing sensation in my head. Then I head out. As I'm walking through the mother spiral I think, "I don't want to walk this again, let alone a third time." Ok, I give myself permission to change the plans and I continue walking. As I enter the last/first spiral (depending on whether you're heading in or out), Chocolate, my son's black cat appears. He's slower moving. His coat is radiantly silky and shiny in the overcast light. He moves with purpose. I spiral out of the labyrinth and stop to watch the dog digging another hole. In a moment, I find myself heading back into the labyrinth.

This time Chocolate accompanies me. His way is different from Sugar's. He stops in the middle of the mother pathway and waits for me to reach down and pet him. This time through my mind is quieter and my headache has eased. The crone form feels easy and quiet. I rest for a bit at the center and head back out. Again I think, "I don't want to walk this a third time." And again, I give myself permission to choose that. As I'm in the maiden form, I notice that Sugar is crouched in the hole that Cinders (the dog) dug a few days ago, peeing. It seems an odd place to pee. By the time I cycle all the way out, she's been replaced by Chocolate who is peeing in the same spot. I stop and look around, thinking about how I'm not going to walk the spirals a third time, when all of a sudden, I realize that I'm back in. Walking. I'm walking faster this time. The pace feels right, I feel a little dizzy as I move inward and then back outward on the spirals.

Then I notice that Isabelle, the oldest and most feral of our cats has come to join me. She is a beautiful, long-haired black cat with white ruff and boots. Aloof and stunningly beautiful. She watches from a distance, sitting in the branches of the tree that has partially fallen.

As I am in the middle of the mother spiral I realize that I don't know if I'm coming or going. Have I gone all the way through and am heading out? This feels very disorienting not to know, but I like the dizzy feeling. Then, I'm shot out onto the crone spiral, and clearly I'm headed into it.

I laugh to myself, thinking that was very silly that I couldn't remember which way I was headed. And then it happens again. I can't figure out if I'm coming or going. This time it lasts longer, almost two whole revolutions on that third spiral before I see Bez's stone and realize that I'm headed into the "unknown."

I reach the "unknown" and spin around, heading back out. I have always stopped there before, but it's as if the spiral is calling me back out into the swirling, spiraling energy. I notice as I'm unwinding that the disorientation doesn't happen on the way out.

Triple Spiral Labyrinth

2011-03-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

I birthed a triple spiral labyrinth last month. I didn't mean to. I had no idea that I was even pregnant with this labyrinth.

On Feburary 2nd, I walked Patria Brown's lovely triple spiral labyrinth. As I was walking, I thought to myself that I wanted to walk this everyday. By the time I'd come back out of the labyrinth (swirled back out into real life - it feels like that to me sometimes) I knew where it was supposed to be. That was a Wednesday. The next few days were spent with research and thinking and confusion on my part as to how it actually worked, and then on Sunday, after our Sunlit Lane Meditation, Mark and I went back to the back of the property and laid out the bones of the labyrinth with pine cones and old wine barrel staves.

I've been walking it daily ever since. The pine cones and staves have now been replaced with river rock.

I have no idea why I was compelled to build this labyrinth, but I was. It feels like it's of benefit to others, not just to me. Right now I'm in the process of figuring out what wants to happen next. I get images of young girls walking the labyrinth, some sort of adolescent threshold ritual taking place. I'm not sure how to go about this, but I'm not worried about that. Things are unfolding as they should.

I also see a meditation hut built back here, partly for meditation, but also for meeting with people one on one. I see those people choosing to come early so that they can walk the labyrinth. Walking in with a question and sometimes coming back out with an answer. Sometimes walking back out with more questions.

It's a walking meditation. And it's not for everyone. Of course, in the first flush of excitement at building it, I thought it would appeal to everyone, which, of course, is funny, because the reason that we have so many different things in this world is because we all have different "paths up the mountain."

This feels like my path to my center.

It's all about the love, baby!

2010-10-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have been on a roller coaster of a ride this weekend. I imagine that many of you would like to hear about Into The Woods, and maybe I'll get back to that (since I left you all hanging all summer and half way into fall) - in a nut shell: fabulous experience, great cast onstage and off, great stage crew, I got awarded the Gypsy Robe (which I had to have explained to me, but it's a cool thing to be awarded. . .), and now on to this past weekend.

So, most of you know that I've been doing/living this body of work created by Gay and Katie Hendricks as taught to me by Diana Chapman and Grace Caitlyn (with spice thrown in by Corinna Bloom, who is the third in the Trinity that is Diana, Grace and Corinna).

I dove head first into this work in October of 2003, with Grace and Diana's first Tools workshop in Santa Cruz and have never looked back (at least not for long).

So now, here I am, seven years later, steeped in this work and Diana and Grace kicked me in the butt this past weekend. There was lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth (by me), lots of space holding and boundary setting by Diana and Grace.

I don't really want to go into what triggered the dual butt kicking, because I'm far more interested in the result.

I was going to try to go back and explain the basics of this work/play that I'm now steeped in, but I'd rather let you buy one of Gay's books for that. The Big Leap is a great place to start. It's a quick, yet thoughtful read.

So onto my latest ah ha!

I know that I can choose any story that I want about myself. Well, I know that today. But I didn't know that on Thursday. (Thursday is only special in that it was the day that Diana gave me a kick in the butt). I thought that I could choose almost any story. I still believed that the one in me who felt unworthy was just that, actually unworthy. I didn't understand that I could choose to feel worthy.

Now I understand that. Did you know that? That you could choose to feel worthy? That worth comes from the inside? As long as you believe that you're unworthy in some capacity, you're going to feel unworthy.

I also thought that it would take forrevvvverrrrrrr to fix that problem in me, that I might never "get" that I was worthy.

That's funny to me now, as well. It's simply a choice. Everything is a choice. Everything!

I now choose to see everything that happens in and around me as a series of choices, decisions that I can change at any given moment.

Will I go back to thinking that I'm unworthy? Of course, that's a long standing pattern with me, and with everyone. What I realize now is that I can choose, just as quickly, not to believe in that any more.

So, my goal is to notice when I've slipped back into that pattern as quickly as I can, and give myself another shot at that choice. Do I still want to choose feeling unworthy? Or would I rather believe that I am worthy of love? Worthy of connection?

The coolest thing about all of this, is that when I believe that I am worthy of love and connection then I have access to an infinite amount of love and connection.

It's that easy. (That's another thing I learned from the fabulous Diana and Grace. It's only as hard as you choose to make it.)

So, the next time you notice that you're having some thought about feeling unworthy, stop for a moment and see if you'd like to choose to believe that you're worthy. Just try it on, see what it feels like.

I double dog dare you!

Lots of love rippling from this corner of the world, how about your corner?

Into The Woods

2010-06-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

I followed an impulse a while ago to audition for the Scotts Valley production of Into the Woods. I went because I saw the music director, Drew Lewis's facebook status saying that he was headed off to the auditions. I have no idea what compelled me to do that. It was one of those moments where everything just felt right. I found music, found a monologe to memorize, called the director to ask about a few issues I had with timing of things and then just went.

I auditioned (and if I were writing this then, I'd be writing all about that process and what it felt like, but I'm not, so I won't.)

I got called back. I went back for call backs. Two days later I got offered two parts (they're small, so they go together).

I got offered the part of Cinderella's mother. Not her stepmother - her mother, the dead one. So in Act One, I play an angel in a tree, dispensing advice and singing about wishes.

In Act Two, I am the voice of the female giant. You know, the one who's pissed because Jack has killed her husband?

This is Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods, it's a mash-up of fairy tales. The kid version of this musical is to stop after Act One. Everyone has gotten their wish and most things are lovely. In Act Two, all hell breaks loose. I would be the hell that breaks loose. The giantess who's extremely angry and stomping around killing people. All off stage of course.

I'm excited about the contrast I get to play. I'm actually excited that I got two small parts. This feels like a great way to make my way back into actual musical theater. I've been loving singing with Symphony Silicon Valley's Broadway in Concert series (Last year we did Kiss Me Kate, Music Man and Most Happy Fella.) This feels like the next step. Here's where I get to decide if I like the acting part as well as the singing. I already know that I love the music part.

Birds of a feather

2010-04-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

The past two days have been filled with unusual bird sightings for me. The humming bird, blue heron and a hawk of some sort aren't actually unusual, but how I saw them was.

First the blue heron. I'm coming back from knitting club, I've gone to New Leaf to do shopping and now I need to figure out when I'm going to pick up my CSA box from Two Small Farms. The schedule says that the boxes will be ready for pick up after 12:30. Now, I've been getting this CSA box for several years now and I know that I can pick it up as early as 11:30, but at the moment that I was driving up Western Drive, it was 10:30. And yet, I decide to just try to see if the veggies are there, because it will just make my life a whole lot easier to pick it up in the morning.

I'm driving, thinking about the best way to get there, and I decide at the last minute to turn right on Meder Street. Not my normal route at all, but I turn. As I'm driving past Meder Street park, I notice that there is a very large bird standing in the middle of the grass. I slow down, turning to look, and decide to pull over and get out my camera (actually it's my Droid, but there's a camera function on it.) I stop. I park. I walk quietly towards the bird. Quite near the bird is the basketball court. There's a couple of people playing HORSE, so I can hear the ball bouncing off the ground, off the backboard. That unique pinging sound a properly inflated basketball has on asphalt and wood. If I can hear it, the bird certainly can hear it, and yet it's paying them no mind.

The bird - I'm pretty sure it's a blue heron - is standing there. The wind is ruffling the black feathers on the top of its head. It turns to look at me and then turns back facing away from me. I don't what it was looking at, or moving towards, but it was walking, slowly, away from where I was. I moved up quietly, trying not to startle it. We stood about 15 feet apart for several minutes. I had put my phone back in my pocket. Trying to take a picture was futile, and besides I wanted to be with the bird. Eventually the bird turned and flew off, so I got to see it in flight as well. The people playing basketball never did appear to notice the bird.

I get back in my van and drive off to see if I can get my veggies. They are, in fact, there and ready to be picked up, so I park and gather them up and head back to the van when I hear the distinctive chit-chit sound that a hummingbird makes when it's just sitting on a branch. Normally, at least with the hummers who live near me, I can either hear them, or I can see them, but never both. But I look up and in the branches of a tree in from of my vehicle is this Rufus Hummingbird, sitting and chitting. So I stop again, and take in the sight of this beautiful bird. Smiling broadly, as I love hummingbirds.

And then today, as I was driving home from Martial Arts, I head up into the wooded area on my way home when, darting directly in front of my van, is some sort of large bird of prey. Beautiful russet chest with white splotches and white stripes running sideways on the wings (kind of like a stripe around one's biceps). It flew directly across my path, barely six feet in front of me. Startling me completely. (Well, not completely completely. I didn't lose control over the car, but you know what I mean.)

So I come home and I open my Medicine Cards book. To see what the animals have to say to me.

The Blue Heron is about self-reflection. "Heron medicine is the power of knowing the self by discovering its gifts and facing its challenges." This seems particularly pertinent given my Martial Arts testing. Not in the realm of the actual test, but rather in the psychological test that went with my starting with Martial Arts in the first place. I have been learning a lot about myself through this process. I've been learning about how I learn. I'm getting better at ignoring the one in my head who berates. Sometimes those thoughts come out as little ticks (a snort of derision, a flap of my hand, etc), but those are happening less and less. And frankly, when I started, there were whole sentences that came with the snort or the flap, so the fact that I'm down to short sounds or movements feels like real improvement to me.

The Hummingbird is about Joy. "Hummingbird can give us the medicine to solve the riddle of the contradiction of duality." This feels appropriate because I feel like I've been living in the midst of duality, staring it in the face daily. The duality or paradox of being feminine and masculine at the same time, the duality of life and death, the paradox of feeling of this world and not of this world simultaneously. The duality of having profound thoughts in my head and being completely unable to express them in any meaningful way. . . (Laughing at myself here.)

Hawk is the Messenger. "You are only as powerful as your capacity to perceive, receive, and use your abilities." Again, feels very pertinent to today and this journey that I'm on. "Observe the obvious in everything that you do. Life is sending you signals. Life is the initiation."

So, know myself, experience the joy of duality and observe the obvious.

Birds of a feather. . . huh?

A Blue Heron

2010-04-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

I got my Orange Belt last night. Of course, I was always going to get my Orange Belt. You only get asked to test if the Head Dude thinks you're ready. (As an aside, I had the name of the discipline slightly wrong. It's Limalama. And as a further aside, that fellow in the picture on this website was one of my judges. So, I was approved by Rudy, the Senior Master of Limalama. I didn't know quite what a big deal he is.)

Anyway, an hour before the test is supposed to start, my heart starts to race. And I mean RACE! It speeds up and then slows down and then speeds up again. I keep trying to self-soothe, and to remember to breathe.

I change into my uniform (the Dojo T-shirt, loose black pants, my white belt, my Xena plates (boob protectors), gather up my mouth guard and my wrist wraps in preparation for the punching I'll be doing, attempted to eat something for dinner. Give up on that idea because I'm so nervous that my stomach is doing flip-flops and the thought of eating anything is just not an option.

I drive down, arriving 15 minutes early. There's an aerobics class that's winding up inside. One of the other white belts who's testing comes up to my car to see if it's me.

I get out. There's a breeze coming in the from the ocean, bringing with it the tang of brine.

We head in; I meet the other two who are testing. It's me and three guys. They're all younger than I am, not that that matters. I just find it interesting.

We're chatting aimlessly, trying not to think about what's coming up.

Are you ready for me to start talking about the test yet? Well, then you'll need to wait longer, because I had to wait longer. We didn't get started until 30 minutes past when it was supposed to start.

I don't wait well.

Mark slips in right on time. I'm happy to see his smiling face.

I'm still nervous, he tries to tell me to use my meditation techniques to calm down. I'm having none of that.

The Head Dude arrives. He's a little nervous. Actually, my instructor pointed out that the instructors are nervous, too, because we are their reflection. If you want to know about an instructor, watch their students.

He finally has us line up, he introduces the board to us and us to the board and starts the warm ups. We do the usual neck rolls, shoulder rolls, hips, knees, ankels, etc. And then we head to the side of the dojo to line up again. (There's a lot of lining up in martial arts testing, apparently.) We're to do the moving warm ups in a line, so that we will each move in front of the camera.

Oh, did I forget to tell you that we were being videotaped? We'll get a CD of our test that we can watch and learn from. I'll have to stop cringing long enough to actually face my fears and watch it, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. No use worrying about that now.

I end up going last. Normally not my favorite. In music, if I'm auditioning (and that's sort of what this all feels like), I prefer to go first. I want to get it out of the way so that I don't get nervous as I watch other people perform. But that's not what happens here. I find that interesting. Clearly I have an unconscious commitment to going last tonight. So, once I notice that, then I start actively choosing when I want to do things, and I notice that I do in fact want to go last. I want to rest, to slow down my breathing and my heartrate, because we're moving fast.

After the warm ups, we start with the punching and kicking exercises. They pull out the things we punch and kick. Okay, that's embarrassing. There must be a proper name for those things, but if I've heard the name, I certainly don't remember it.

Anyhoo, (and no that's not a typo, that's a saying that my mother-in-law liked to use and it makes me smile and think of Betty when I use it), So, anyhoo again, I choose to hold the whatchamacallit for the first round, because I want to catch my breath from the warm ups. Steve is up and he's punching for all he's worth. I'm trying to hold the thingy and keep it from moving and I'm struggling to do so.

Then I'm up to punch. I can feel that my form is off, so I adjust and then readjust and then readjust again.

What? You want me to cut to the chase? You don't want to hear a blow-by-blow of my test? Oh alright.

We punched, we kicked, we did what's called "application." That's where we practice each of the forms in the series against an opponent. It allows us to see why we're doing the things we're doing. It's actually a pretty cool practice.

A "form" is a collection of moves. The first form in Series 1B goes as follows. Left orbital (that means, move your left arm in a horizontal, circular motion, to block a punch coming at you), left hook (to clock the opponent in the jaw), right rolling punch, now repeat on the other side (right orbital, right hook, left rolling punch).

In application, your opponent (in last night's case, 6 people of varying heights, weights and abilities) walk up to you and throw you a right punch (aiming past your head, of course, because even though we all have our mouth guards in, we don't really want to hit or be hit) and you "defend" against it with the first half of the first form. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We worked through each of the "forms" in the series, each of the four white belts "taking on" the other six people.

I froze and got confused at the beginning of each of my forms. Got my rights and lefts mixed up. I didn't berate myself mentally, but I could see what what was happening. It was all rather surreal. This is all, also videotaped, so I'll be curious to see what I actually did. Whether it took me longer or shorter than I thought to figure things out.

This lasted quite awhile, as we rotated through everyone. I think this was one of the points where Mark was wondering how much longer this would go on.

Oops. I told you that I wasn't going to give you a blow-by-blow. Oh well.

After we do the application it's time for us to actually do the series. The four of us line up. I choose to be to the left of the board, thinking that they'll have us work from left to right and then I'll get to go first.

But first, we all have to perform the series together. Being careful to follow each other. To wait for each other as we switch from one form to another. At the finish of each form we move to face a different direction so that we face each of the four directions and end up facing front again.

We're an interesting bunch. We've not done this together ever. I've mostly done the series with black belts, so I've followed and they've led. But Steve and I were asked by my instructor to work together to lead, so we're the leaders. Sort of.

Anyway, we make it through the first time around and then we're asked to do it again. (This is normal. They have us run these things twice, maybe to let us get the jitters out the first time around?)

And then, they have us do the series by ourselves. The Head Dude starts on the right. So I end up being last.

I watch as the other three go through the series. I'm surprised that I'm not getting nervous, but I'm not.

It's my turn. I step up, center myself in front of the seated board and begin. I drop into that place on lighthouse field from the morning. I'm calm, cool and collected. I flow through the series. Ending up pretty much where I started on the mats, which is one of the goals). I'm asked to do it again, and again, I move smoothly through the series.

Sticks is last. They're loud and we're to work with a black belt. It feels like it's faster than I've ever practiced, but I don't actually know that to be true. We make it through the sticks and then are asked to sit on the floor in a line while the board goes into the mens dressing room to discuss our test.

They talk for quite awhile. We sit and wait.

They come out and line up in front of us (we stood back up when they came out). We're facing each other and the Head Dude talks about how well we've done. Then he asks if anyone else on the board wants to say anything. Rudy, the Senior Master of Limalama looks at me and starts talking about how if you want to know how good an instructor is, you look at his or her students. That the student is a reflection of their instructor and then proceeds to talk about my instructor and what a great job she did.

I did well, folks!

Then, the Head Dude has us take off our white belts and walks over to put our new Orange belts on us. When Rudy comes over to congratulate all of us, he leans in (now I am first, I get the first Orange belt), hugs me and says, "You're good!" Each of the board hugs us, congratulates us and tugs on the square knot that the Head Dude has tied. Dude has previously explained that the knot tug is a symbol that the black belt has approved of your promotion.

Rudy didn't tug my belt. It made me a little nervous, but then I noticed that he didn't tug anyone's belts. I'm going to assume that he did approve our promotions even though he didn't tug on our belts.

Afterwards we ate yummy cake that another of the black belts made, drank juice and chatted for a bit. The woman who was filming the whole thing came by to tell me that she thought my series had a very good balance of grace and energy and flow.

As I was trying to eat the cake I noticed that my teeth felt incredibly sore and that there was a spot on my tongue that my mouth guard had rubbed almost raw. I'm guessing that I clenched that mouth guard tightly between my teeth for the whole time. My jaws are still a little sore. Actually, everything is a little sore. Okay, a LOT sore. I am sore all over. I feel like I used muscles that I didn't know I had!

Uh. There was a point to my calling this post A Blue Heron. But, now I've rambled on so long that I don't feel like writing tonight about the Blue Heron I saw this afternoon. I'll write about that tomorrow. . .

Orange Belt!

2010-04-21T11:13:00.001-07:00

I started learning Martial Arts, Lima Lama to be specific, a Samoan discipline of Martial Arts, this past January. That, in itself, is a funny little story.

A woman who sings with me in the Santa Cruz Chorale had recruited me to copyedit the programs for a while now, and several times she commented that although she had given the program what she thought was a thorough reading, I would always manage to find more. So she proposed a trade. She's a novelist in need of a copy editor, and she's a black-belt instructor in Lima Lama.

So, in January, I started going to Westside Aerobics and Martial Arts to learn from her. The first two months were funny, because when I was there, actually in the DoJo learning things, I was happy as a clam. But the moment I stepped out of the Dojo, my brain started coming up with all sorts of reasons for why I shouldn't be doing it at all. I would come up with reason after reason for why I shouldn't go to the next session. I had scheduled with my fabulous instructor to go twice a week. And I'd go once and then come up with a reason for why I had to miss the next one, and then I'd see her in choir and she'd cheerfully brow beat me into coming back the next day and then I'd flake again. Or rather, I just didn't make it a priority, so "things" got scheduled.

And yet, I continued to learn. I would schedule things while I was there in the Dojo, because I knew that the minute I left the Dojo, I would start to "regress." And I deliberately didn't carry her cellphone number with me, so that I couldn't call her on the way to class to "bail." I had to physically go to the Dojo to tell her if I wanted to get out of going to class.

And then she went out of town and scheduled things so that I would be taught by the Head Dude, as he likes to be called.

For some reason, this made the whole deal more real for me some how. Or something. I'm not quite sure what happened, but the complaints in my head started to quiet down. Then there was the day when it was me and my choir buddy/instructor and the Head Dude and another instructor. Just me and three instructors and they worked and worked with me, and at one point everyone told me how well I was doing. I liked that: hearing that I was doing well.

And all of a sudden it started to feel real and good and I wanted to go each week.

They started talking about testing for my orange belt. They gave me a white belt to wear. You don't have to earn your white belt. Well, I suppose you do, in that you have to show up, but that's all you have to do - express an interest in learning.

So, here I am, with my white belt and now I'm testing for my orange belt.

The test is tonight and I'm alternating between calmness and total panic. Well, not total panic, just this low level rumbling of "what the f*ck are you doing?" I'm a middle-aged, plump, grey-haired (under my fabulous dye job) woman. I feel like I look like Professor McGonagall (You know, the one described in the Harry Potter books, not Maggie Smith in the movies) only without the magical abilities of transformation. Hmmm, that's interesting, because in fact, I do have magical abilities of transformation. Not of other things, like mice to teacups, but of myself, to other versions of myself. I feel like I'm rewriting "me" every day in some small way.

But I digress, as usual. What was I talking about?

Oh right, the Orange Belt. I'm to demonstrate my knowledge of drop punches, rolling punches, hooks, upper cuts, round house kicks, straight kicks, angled kicks, side kicks, some stick work (Heaven Six and High/Low and the first five moves in our 14- move series for sticks) and Level 1B series.

It's astonishing to me that I've learned all these things in the last four months.

Okay, so I just went to my calendar and counted how many times I actually made it to the Dojo and now it doesn't seem so astonishing. I went 23 times. That's a lot of "practice" hours. Of course I can do this.

Oh, the mind is so funny. All the different stories it makes up.

I performed the series for one of my walking buddies this morning in front of the Lighthouse on Westcliff. There were other folks around. I don't know how many of them stopped to watch, but I do know that there was one man, with a small dog who stopped to watch me. I noticed him when I started, but then when I was actually doing the series, I wasn't looking out. I was looking where my "opponent" would be, so my focus was about two feet out from my body. I do know that he was still there, smiling quietly to himself as I was walking back to my car.

Anyway, it just flowed. I didn't do everything perfectly, but I also didn't stop to try to fix things, or even berate myself for the things I missed. I simply noticed them and moved on.

I have no idea what will happen tonight, but I now have, in my body, an experience of quiet confidence doing this series - outside in the clear, crisp air after a rain, with the sound of the surf pounding in the background.

So, I'm going to use that to center myself tonight when I start to wig out. When my heart starts to race, I'll whisper to myself, "breathe" and "remember" and "slow down." Everything will be as it should be. Whatever that looks like.

Alright, already . . .

2010-04-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's been waaaay too long since I last updated this silly thing.

First off, I got the part of Maud Dunlop, one of the pick-a-little ladies and had a fabulous time with my Grecian urns. And the woman who played Eulalie (Mel, fabulous woman, generous spirit and incredible voice), went out of her way, several times, to tell me what a beautiful speaking voice I had. Always lovely to hear.

I had a blast!

That was January.

February was filled with deep learnings and internal work. I got a Soul-Level Astrology Reading from Mark Borax and then followed that with a sacred guided journey, and then spent the rest of the month just integrating all of those learnings into my body. Oh yeah, and I turned 48.

March was insane musically speaking, insanely fun that is. Here's a (not-so)short recap.

It started with Most Happy Fella.

But let me back up a tiny bit first. Most Happy Fella was the third in the Symphony's Broadway in Concert series. I was in all three this year.

For the first two shows that the Chorale did with the Symphony, they came to our rehearsals, and anyone who wanted to audition was accepted into the production. Kiss Me Kate, our first production, had 12 women and 6 men in the chorus. Not the perfect balance, but we did fine.

For Music Man, many more people showed up. A few of us were offered small roles, and that was fun.

For Most Happy Fella, they upped the ante. Instead of them coming to our rehearsal and auditioning anyone who had the courage to walk to the smaller room, they decided that they'd have us, the Chorale folk, do what they were having everyone else do. Come to the California Arts Theater, with a prepared piece, and actually audition in the room with the music director and the two head honchos from the Symphony.

Oh yes, and there's a piece of tape on the floor waaaaaaay over on the other side of the room. We'd like to have you sing from there, to see what kind of volume you've got.

Oh, and it's a high score. How high can you sing, you alto II, you? (That's the lowest female part in a chorus, the part I sing). Uh. Well, I can hit F pretty easily. I can warm up to a B flat, but that's a warm-up exercise. I've never "performed" that in my life.

So, I walk in with my song. I've chosen "My Funny Valentine" because it's February and I'm a goofball. I love this song. Oh, and they say, "we only want to hear 16 measures of the song." Okay, so I'll sing the first 16 measures. You know, the bit that doesn't go so high. I'll do that bit. So that's the bit I memorize.

Uh, you want to transpose this up so you can hear my range? Okay, just don't tell me how high you raise it. Oh, and you want me to sing more of the song? Including the part that goes up high, several times, once with tenderness and quietness? Okay, I can do that. What the heck. Just help me out with the words, because I didn't focus on that part AT ALL.

Actually, I knocked the song out of the park. My high F (I'm pretty sure that's what he transposed it up to) floated out of me. It sounded glorious. I'm guessing I looked a little shocked.

I know that the three men looking at me looked surprised and pleased. One of them leaned in to the other and said, "Wow, she sounded good up there."

And now, my five minutes is up. As I'm leaving, I say, "So, when will we hear?" Because the last time this happened, we waited for a very long time (what seemed like a painfully long time), and Andrew quips, "oh, it will be quick." I said, "What's quick?"

He said, "I suppose you'd like to hear by this evening." And I said, "Of course!"

What felt like forever, but what was only a week later, I got a call saying that I was being offered a role in the chorus, but that I was the only woman from the Chorale to be offered a role. And there was one guy from the Chorale who was offered a role in the chorus. We each thought that maybe we were just concessions to the Chorale, as we were surrounded by Music Theater people. (And with us being "Classical" people, it felt like a whole different world!) And we were each assured (unprompted) that we were there because we'd given strong auditions, and congratulations for making the cut.

There were only three on a part, so six women and six men (plus an additional three tenors, because there were two different sets of trios for tenors in the show).

Several changes to the schedule this time around. The first two shows, the chorus had several separate rehearsals so that we could learn the music. This time around, it was just the week of rehearsals and then performances. Rehearsing Monday through Thursday and then opening on Friday night, with performances on Saturday and Sunday.

The leads rehearsed in the afternoons from 2-5 and then came back from 7-10. Those of us in the chorus rehearsed from 7-10 each night.

Monday night, I get to the first full rehearsal and Lisa Vroman (the lead from Music Man) comes up and gives me a huge hug and says, "I'm so excited to see you!" And then the fellow who's playing one of the secondary male leads says to me, "Are you Nancy?" It turns out that we have a mutual friend, but in the moment, it just felt like I was being "seen" by the leads. And that is always fun! (Of course, it probably didn't hurt that I was excited to see Lisa as well - excitement is infectious.)

I am listening carefully to everything, because I'm playing with the big kids now. Three of the leads have sung leads on Broadway. I'm on stage with them. I get to watch them work, stalk them (in a non-stalkery way, of course). I have the opportunity to watch people working in their genius zones. There isn't much better than that. And to be in my own genius zone with others in theirs is extraordinary.

And oh those glorious voices! This was my favorite production of the three we did this year. And I'm really hoping that I'll make the cut for the ones for next year.

But we don't know what those will be yet.

I'm sure some folk know, but I'm not one of them.

Oh right, back to March's insanity. So, second weekend in March. Most Happy Fella., ending with a matinee performance on Sunday.

That Sunday evening, I have a dress rehearsal for the Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale performance. I am toast. I am so toast that it is visible to the conductor from very far away. There are 180 people on stage, singing, behind a jazz combo and a bunch of extra horns, because we're doing Mass in Blue, which is hot! (The reason I know that it was visible to the conductor is because she sent me an email thanking me for giving it my all, even though she could see how tired I was. I wasn't the only one who was tired. Ron, the only guy from the Chorale to be offered a role in the chorus, had also been singing every night for a week. We looked - and felt - like limp celery.)

So, rehearsals continued for the next week, because not only was there a performance with the Symphony Chorale, but my Santa Cruz Chorale was also giving a performance. Luckily for me, we were only singing one song as we were hosting Eileen Chang's New Choir that night. But still. For 2 1/2 weeks I sang or performed every night. I was delighted with all that singing.

AND, when that ended, I slowed to a halt and slept for several days.

I would like to spread these things out a tiny bit. I don't want to do less singing, but I'd love to have more space between performances.

So, that was March (first singing, then sleeping).

And now April.

The first weekend in April, you know just a few days ago (if you're reading this in "real time"), I was at a workshop called EnneaMotion. It was led by Andrea Isaacs and filled with incredible students. We had one profound experience after another this past weekend as we dove deep into learning about the Enneagram through movement and dance. If you're interested in learning about the Enneagram or in deepening your understanding of it, and you have an opportunity to take this workshop, then jump on that chance!

It's hard to put into words the changes that occurred for me, but I came to understand aspects of my husband and my children that I hadn't fully "grokked" before.

Hmmm, it occurs to me that I actually had lots that I could have been blogging about. Not sure why I didn't. I love to write.

Well, anyway. Here's the update. I can't guarantee when the next one will be. But I'm not thinking that I'll be doing the Think System, this time, so that might work better.

The Think System

2009-11-19T13:38:00.001-08:00

The scene is Choir on Tuesday night. That's my "over-the-hill" chorale. No, they're not all old. Although, I suppose that's arguable. It's certainly not a "youth" chorus, although there are young punks there. (Then again, anyone younger than my 47 years feels like a young punk to me and that is starting to include more and more people.)

Anyway. . . we're at choir, working hard on some double chorus music, when I notice that the president of the symphony board is sitting in the back of the room listening to us. He has a smile on his face - that's always good.

There are some gyrations but it's determined that he will speak to us after the break. So, I gather up my courage and go over to talk with him.

"So, I was wondering if you could, for those of us who auditioned for Music Man, put us out of our misery."

"What? You don't know what's happening? We know what's happening, why don't you?" He joked.

Then he leans in and says, conspiratorially, "We're using the Think System!"

Very clever. I like this guy. He's very quick witted.

So he tells me that he'll announce something to the whole choir.

I can wait. I'm patient that way, NOT!

But I wait.

Break ends. He's up in front talking to us about our Membership Campaign and then teasing us about how much work we still need to do.

He likes to tease, and he's clear about his teasing. It's friendly and real. Entertaining.

Then he mentions that one of the choral members mentioned to him at break that nobody knows what's happened with Music Man and then he quips that he'll get back to us on that one and turns, as if to leave.

"Hey!" I blurt from the back row, much louder than I had intended, and with more force.

He turns a little red, then comes back and, continuing to play, starts talking about the Think System to the whole choir. He gets good laughs, as he should because the man is funny!

Then gets around to telling us that everyone who auditioned is in the chorus. He doesn't want to tell people about specific role assignments because he doesn't want to make a mistake and that we'll hear before the end of the week.

I'm very happy to know that I'm in the chorus. And I'm much less anxious to hear about whether I have a role or not, now that I've been waiting for almost three weeks.

I'm actually glad, in an odd sort of way, that I haven't known. The waiting has taken the sting out of not knowing.

I'll be excited when I find out, but for the meantime I'm content to wait. Mostly because I know now how long I have to wait.

It was the uncertainty about when we would know that was killing me.

I'm so glad that this man is president of the symphony board. He's quick, smart, funny and compassionate. Yes, he was yanking our chains, but he also seemed genuinely concerned when he realized that we'd been waiting and that many people thought that they had just not be cast because no one had told them otherwise. (I was too vain to think that I hadn't been cast. I figured I just needed to wait longer to find out, but it never even occurred to me to think that I hadn't gotten in at least in the chorus.)

It's a new program, this Musical in Concert series that the symphony has started, and they're still working out the wrinkles.

In the meantime: I'm going with the story that I'm using the Think System with my readers. Surely you all know what's happening to me when you don't hear from me, right?

Just Think my blog and you'll hear it in your heads. Dah de dah de dah de dah, dah de da, da de dah . . .

When rituals go awry. . .

2009-11-12T14:32:00.000-08:00

I like to have homes for things so that I always know where to find them. My car keys, when not in use, are on the console table, just as you walk in the front door. My facial routine is supported by my having all of the supplies for taking care of my face (cleanser, toner, moisturizer) conveniently tucked away in a small basket that I keep under my side of the vanity. All of the cloth bags that I use to carry groceries, along with the mesh bags for veggies, etc, all are neatly rolled and placed in a basket that lives in my van, so that when I stop at the grocery store I can gather up the basket and have everything I need (if I've got clean glass bottles that the milk came in, they're placed in the basket so that I don't forget them), etc.

Well, my mailbox key has a home. It lives in the change slot of my van. I always put the keys back where they belong. But about a week ago, I didn't. Put them back, that is. Where they belong, because the next day, when I went to retrieve the mail, the mailbox key wasn't there, in its little home.

Where could it have gone? I searched the house. I cleared off and dealt with all of the mail that had been accruing, in case it had gotten mixed up in the mail. I cleaned out the van, including vacuuming (something I've been meaning to do for weeks now, but had just not been getting to it), and clearing out the two boxes where I store things like kleenex, pens and pencils, a pair of scissors, dental floss, sunscreen, lotion, an emery file, my pair of sunglasses that don't fit in the sunglasses spot because they're too big, the CD cases for the CDs in the machine in the car, etc.

Still no mailbox key. I've recruited my family in helping me look. I even went so far as to send out an email to our local road association to see if maybe I had left the key in my box and someone had taken it for safe-keeping but then forgot to get them to me. Nope. No response. No one can find the mailbox keys.

So, I call the post office to see if there is some easy way to get a new mailbox key. There is! I wasn't quite sure if they were going to rekey the lock or have someone come out and figure out how to make a new key to fit the existing lock, but someone from the post office was, for $35, going to get me a new key. But, Wednesday was Veteran's day, so I would have to wait until Thursday or Friday.

Okay. I can wait. It's interesting driving past the mailbox, knowing that I've got mail that I can't get to. Knowing that I know I've got a check in the mailbox from my Star Wars singing gig.

I finally, this morning, started thinking about what it would be like to just get the mail once a week, when, as I was waiting for some women to show up at the local coffee place and was killing time, cleaning out my purse, I pulled my red sunglasses (the ones that do fit in my special sunglasses spot in the van) out of the purse and started to put them where they belong. Only that spot is jingling. With my MAILBOX KEYS!

I must have, in a hurry, handed the mail to Megan (who would ordinarily have gotten the mail, but wasn't because of her sprained shoulder), and then put the keys up where the sunglasses go.

Totally out of my routine, and obviously not in the moment. If I'd been fully present, I would have noticed that I wasn't putting the keys where they belong.

Interesting.

I did manage to find them, and then call the post office. I called the guy just in time, so he didn't come up to do whatever magic he was going to do. I didn't have to pay $35 to get a copy of a key that I had found. (By the way, the reason I keep calling them the mailbox keys, as if there were more than one on that ring has to do with the fact that there is more than one key on that ring. There is the mailbox key and then there is a gold-colored skeleton key. The Skeleton key is the charm on the keychain, except that because it's a key, it doesn't seem like the charm, though it has charm.)

I'm happy about that.

This also gave me an opportunity to see just how much junk mail I get in a week. I'm going to be calling and canceling a number of catalogs this afternoon. I had done a purge awhile ago, but seem to have gotten on a few more lists again.

So, what did I learn? To slow down and smell the roses (and put away the mailbox key). And to notice that nothing happened when I didn't get to pick up the mail every day. It was much easier to process all the mail that I picked up today, all at once.

Hmmm, maybe I'll just pick up the mail once a week. Nah. But I will process it each day. That way I won't have piles and piles of mail on every surface.

Whaddya think? Will it work?

Rituals

2009-11-11T13:13:00.000-08:00

I realized that I put this blog on hold while I waited to hear back about the Music Man auditions. To be truthful, I put just about everything on hold.

I still haven't heard, but I realized that I don't like living in the future like this (way out in front of myself trying to see what my life will be like if I get a role in Music Man). It's uncomfortable, and ultimately, unsatisfying.

So here I am. Bread rising, ingredients collected for the Chicken Paprika Strogonoff thingy I'll be making for dinner and thinking about being in the present moment.

It's funny how sometimes it feels like work to stay in the present moment. My monkey mind wants me to try to figure out the future. What will it look like, how can I plan for it?

It's all very silly, because at any given moment the entire picture can change. Big, unplanned for events happen. In a novel it would be called a plot twist. In "real" life, it's things like earthquakes or hearing from someone from your past out of the blue, or car accidents, or a windfall of money from an aunt you didn't even know you had, or the flu. Plot twists come in many forms, both "good" and "bad." And often, what looks like good turns out to be bad, and what looks like bad turns out to be good, so it's all arguable.

What's true for me in this moment is that I'm enjoying thinking about these things and noticing, as well, that I can hear the bread machine chunking away at the dough for the second time, because I didn't check on it when it was kneading the first time. Turns out I didn't have enough liquid in the batter, so it didn't really stick together and it obviously didn't rise, so my "perfectly timed" bread event is now not so perfectly timed. Or is it? Who knows? Who's to decide what's "perfect" timing.

I'm also enjoying the play of my fingers across the keyboard as I watch the words emerge on the screen. I love that I learned to touch type. Now I can pretend that I'm creating that scene in the movies where you can see the typewriter keys flying up, with that special sound that an actual typewriter makes.

Of course, I have to replace the keyboarding sound with the typewriter sound in my head, but that's alright. I'm imaginative. I can do this.

I can also jump up and down making funny noises to express how frustrated I am that we haven't heard anything about Music Man!

Oops. Scared the dog. She wasn't expecting me to leap off the chair, flail my arms around and growl.

I do that often enough that you'd think she'd be used to it, but she still jumps everything I do.

I make a lot of strange noises. I'm in the house, all by myself, a lot. So I talk to myself. I sing. I growl. I cry. I yell. I laugh. Mostly I laugh. Out loud.

It's a good thing - laughing.

Ooh, now the bread machine is beeping. This is my notice to run downstairs and make sure that the dough is actually a dough this time instead of a lumpy mess.

Back. The dough is fine. I took out the compost while I was down there. I opened the door and the dog came racing down the stairs to go out with me. She loves to out in to the backyard when I take out the compost.

I don't stay nearly as long as she would like.

Present moment. Breathe. Breathe again. Feel. Breathe. Express. Breathe some more.

It's a practice. A ritual.

1.5 degree Sprain?

2009-11-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

So, no news on the Music Man front. Just to get that out of the way. I'm still waiting, a little less impatiently, because frankly I was starting to annoy myself.

Anyway, the other, probably more interesting, news about yesterday had to deal with having spent the better part of the morning at Urgent Care with my daughter.

Megan was doing wheel rolls in her Martial Arts class on Tuesday and it appears she sprained her shoulder. Her dad picked her up from Martial Arts, because I was headed off to the auditions.

He suggested Urgent Care that night, but Meg decided that she would wait to see how it felt in the morning. Well, in the morning it felt like sh*t! She was not a happy camper. So, we dropped Kyle off at school and headed over to see what was what.

Urgent Care this time of year seems like a big ol' petrie dish. There were adults and children hacking and hewing everywhere. In fact, I was happy that we got shifted into one of the rooms, just because I didn't want us to get any more exposed than we already were.

We got Meg's favorite on-call doctor (we tried to see if we could get on her regular patient's list, but she's been booked and not taking new patients for years). Anyway, she moved Megan's arm through a whole series of things, determining what she could and couldn't do and then sent her off for x-rays.

Turns out there are degrees for sprains, the way there are degrees for burns. I had no idea. And that's interesting because I've sprained my ankle numerous times. Although I've only gone into to the doc just the once after the sprain caused me to faint (in the middle of the street, draped over Mark - people thought I was drunk). And at that point I was more concerned about figuring out what caused the fainting (it was a vaso-vagal faint, for those who are interested), completely missed any (if there were any) references to the degree of the sprain.

Anyway. . . Meg's sprain was in between a first and second degree sprain, so in between mild (first) and second (moderate to severe). She was sent home to ice it and rest for the rest of the day, which we did.

Megan curled up in front of the fire, and I came and put the ice pack on and took the ice pack off, multiple times yesterday. With the help of the kitchen timer, which will not shut up until you get physical with it, I managed to keep her on track for about 5-6 hours (straight through her 2 1/2 hour nap).

We were joking, on the way to the Urgent Care, that we really need to just schedule time to go do things together, rather than waiting for her to injure herself!

Today is much quieter. I ought to go light a fire, but will probably just put on a sweater, since I don't really care and it's just me and the dog here right now.

Not One More Poop Out of You, Madame!

2009-11-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

I auditioned for Music Man last night. I thought I was simply going to audition for the chorus, but they had anybody who wanted to, read lines. And I, by the purest chance, got to read for Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn. I say the purest chance because the coordinator of the auditions told us to line up in four equal rows. I started a row, partly because I like to go first in auditions to get it out of the way (and to not let my nerves start to get more and more anxious as the auditions go on) and partly because I abhor a vacuum and people were fussing around in the back not wanting to be at the front of the line. Anyway, I started the fourth row. Stewart handed out the scripts, identifying which row was to read which part, and when they got to my row he said "And you'll read Alma." Okay, whatever.

Then the musical director of the show says to the first row "Make sure that everyone in this row is a mezzo; Eulalie's a mezzo." Well, everyone in that row was a soprano. And I'm not quite sure how it happened, but people from behind me started saying something about our row and so the roles got swapped and my row was asked to read Eulalie and the soprano row was asked to read Alma. (What's funny to me about this is that all three other lines of women were mostly mezzos. . . so why it got moved to my row is anybody's guess.)

Eulalie, on the other hand, has many lines. We read the scene about her having a bunion on her foot (after Harold asks her to lift her foot again). Anyway, as I was reading, I noticed that people were laughing, so I was pausing for the laughs and then moving on. The artistic director was reading the lines for Harold Hill, and doing a find job of it. So it was fun playing off of his reading.

Those of us who had been brave enough to line up first got two chances at reading through, so I got to actually say Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn's name correctly the second time!

It was an interesting audition for me in that I normally rock the vocal part, but in the past haven't done as well in the acting division. Then again, I haven't auditioned for a part in a play since college.

This time, my vocals didn't do as well. I actually sang out of key on the last thing she had me sing by myself, and that is so totally unlike me that I can't quite fathom that it happened. Now, I do know that my sense of pitch is much more refined than many and not everyone agreed that I sang out of tune, so who knows. What I do know is that I rocked that reading. I had a blast doing it and was funny. I'm still a little shocked about that, frankly, and here's part of the reason why.

In my sophomore yearbook, I have a signature from a senior (who I had a pretty big crush on at the time) that says a bunch of typical yearbook drivel and then this: P.S. Don't do any more plays, you are a lousy actress!!!! (Yes, there were four exclamation points. I just went back and found it and counted.) Anyway, it would appear that I took that to heart. Not enough to not do any more plays (I did three more school plays and some community theater as well), but enough to hold that in my psyche.

Funny that I should hold that in my head, and yet also have enough sense to not take it completely to heart, because I love theater. I held on to that thought just enough to hold myself back from shining.

Interesting.

So, now I wait, impatiently, to hear what the next step is. We all left the auditions not knowing when or how we would be told what would happen next. I'm assuming that we'll all get an email at some point. The question is when. And will there be callbacks or did they get enough information about what they wanted to know from that. I know know that they didn't necessarily want people to be reading for specific roles (or they would have told us who was to be reading what and therefore what line to stand in). I got to read Eulalie twice because I was brave and stood first in line. And then I was asked to read Alma later on as they asked to hear people read again. (And I was the first name to be called in that final reading.) I know that I was asked to sing a solo line three times. And that I rocked the first two bits and fumbled on the third.

And I know that I'm nervous and excited now. I know that I want a role with spoken lines. All of the women who have speaking roles also sing, and I'd be happy with any of them, although I'd like to play Mrs. Paroo or Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn. I'm not sure I could consistently carry off the Irish accent of Mrs. Parook, but of all the accents that I might have to do, that one is probably the one that I could do the best.

Wish me luck! I'll let you know what happens. I promise!

The "but first" disease

2009-11-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

This morning has been a series of "but first. . ." events. It started off with my hearing our alarm in my dream. This is actually a good thing. We've got this goofy alarm that sets itself off of some satellite that's racing around the earth. This ought to be a good thing, and in general it is, but Daylight Savings Time and Daylight Standard Time confuse it.

There is an "auto day light" button on it. And I keep that toggled on so that, theoretically, I shouldn't have to deal with it. However, it seems to have gotten a few leap days through into its cycle and so it is two days off. And there is enough time elapsed between DST alarm setting events that I don't quite remember the drill.

So, here's the drill, in case I think to look back at this post when Daylight Savings Time comes around again next April: The clock is two days behind.

I reset the time zone so that the clock would tell me the right time. Sometime in the middle of the night (I'm assuming at 2:00 AM, because that's when DST is supposed to happen) of the second night after DST is supposed to take place, my clock with "fix" itself. Now, if I've already jury-rigged it so that it will tell me the "correct" time (whatever the heck that is), then on this night, if I don't remember (or my little personal dream alarm doesn't go off), then we'll be getting up either an hour or late or an hour early, depending on whether it's April or October.

But I digress.

But first. See, that's exactly what's been happening today. I started to write about the "but first. . ." events, but first I had to tell you about the alarm clock debacle.

This was not intentional. It was just yet another example of how this day is going.

I started out wanting to get my Santa Cruz Chorale music folder in order. I've got around here somewhere, the Christmas Carols book that all good chorale singers have. It's orange and white, says something about 100 carols on it's cover and it has, wait for it, 100 carols in it.

We're singing a number of these songs for the upcoming Christmas concert. I've got the music, but it was copied from the German version of this book, so the german lyrics are first, and then the Latin lyrics and then the English ones. We're singing in English this time around (at least for these carols), so I'd rather have the lyrics right up underneath the notes so my brain doesn't have to work too hard. So, I was going to find my copy of this, copy out the music and replace my German-heavy ones.

But first, I have to find the bloody book. It's nowhere to be found. I have searched high and low to find this thing. If I've given it away, I'll kick myself or eat my hat or something silly. But, it would appear that that is exactly what I have done. It's gone on walkabout.

So, I give up on that choir folder and move on to the two folders that I'll need for tonight. I attempt to put those in order, but first I need to punch holes in a bunch of the music and then I'll put tabs on the music and put it in alphabetical order so I'll be able to find things during rehearsal tonight. But the tabs are downstairs and I don't feel like going downstairs, so I'll go ahead and work on paying this last bill and entering the checks into Quicken, but first, I have to dig through the stack of statements that are waiting to be reconciled so I can find the checking statement so that I can reconcile that one so that Quicken will be up-to-date so I can see how many of these checks I can write and then actually send out. (Now this is a "but first" that I should have done, but did not. Much to my chagrin.)

Anyway, it's been like that since 5:15 (oh wait, that was actually 6:15) this morning.

So, here's my post, which I probably should have waited on, so that I could write something more interesting, but but first I wanted to . . .

Oh wait! I've got to go get some pork out of the freezer so that I can make Pozole. But first, I need to check to see if we've got hominy. . .

Damn.

So now I've scared myself

2009-11-02T11:52:00.001-08:00

Making the pronouncement that I was going to try to post every day for a month is problematic at best and terrifying at worst.

So many different voices in my head, all screaming for attention. But who to let in control of the keyboard. Good question.

No real good answer though. Do any of those voices have anything of interest to say? Depends on who's listening.

Who is listening? And why?

Who am I writing for? Am I writing because I want to be writing and this is as good a way as any?

Am I posting because I'm not willing to simply journal? Is it easier to type than to write something out long hand where I can't or won't go back and edit things?

Do I really want answers to all or any of these questions?

Again, good question. And yet again, no real clear answer.

Are you out there? It looks, from the sitemeter, like I've got three dedicated folks who check every day to see if I've written anything. So for the three of you, whoever you are, I do apologize for the long wait through September and October.

Who are you anyway? Are you people who are in my life tangentially and this is as good a way as any to keep track of what I'm up to?

Did you find me through someone else's blog and thought, at least for a time, that what I had to say was interesting?

I do know that I'm a good story teller. And I've got lots of stories to tell. But then everyone has good stories, some better than others.

Hmmm. It would appear that I have all questions and no answers today.

Maybe I'll have some answers tomorrow. Maybe not.

NaNoWriMo

2009-11-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

No, the cat didn't vomit on the keyboard. That stands for National Novel Writing Month, or some such thing. Now, I'm not planning on writing a novel; I'm far too flighty for that, but I am planning on writing more often.

I see, with chagrin, that I haven't posted since the middle of August.

Much has gone on in the house of the Songbird. (Huh. I see that I really need to change my blog name as well. That's a whole other story in itself, but the name will be changing soon.)

September was mostly back-to-school, how-does-this-routine-work-again drivel, but October? October was pure singing fun!

I started the month off with a bang, by going, with my beloved husband, to an Enneagram Workshop with Tom Condon. The man is a genius. He has the same sort of demeanor as Columbo. That whole bumbling, asking odd questions, tell odd stories thing until you get to the end of the conversation and realized that he has uncovered something that you didn't even know you had hidden.

Okay, so none of that first weekend was about singing, at least not directly, but it leads up to singing.

Weekend number 2 in October was STAR WARS IN CONCERT! I was hired to be one of the 60 voice choir to sing for Star Wars in Concert. This particular choir was hired to sing for the two Sacramento concerts (in the ARCO Arena) and the two San Jose concerts (in the HP Pavilion, or the Shark Tank as the locals like to call it, since the San Jose Sharks Hockey team plays there).

Yes, there is choral music in Star Wars. I know, I know, everyone keeps trying to remember if there was anyone singing in the bar scene. No. There wasn't.

We performed two songs. Duel of the Fates from Revenge of the Sith and Battle of the Heros from The Phantom Menace.

What was particularly cool about the whole deal was being behind the two full rows of percussion! They had three marimbas, a set of COW BELLS!, 4 timpani, two snare drums, a big bass drum (a piccolo, a piccolo, too. -- oops, that's from Music Man and that's not until later, sorry), a GONG! cymbals, etc. It was incredible. Not to mention the rest of the orchestra.

We felt particularly cool when we went in to work on the pieces with the orchestra. The maestro ran both pieces through once and then released us. We were later told by "our" stage manager that that was the shortest time he had ever worked with the local "pick up" choir. We ROCKED!

Anyway, fun, fun, fun! And Anthony Daniels, too! (For those of you who aren't Star Wars fanatics, he's the guy who played C3Pio, or how ever that's spelled.)

Weekend number 3 was Kiss Me, Kate! A small chorus of 18 sang with some folks from Broadway fame along with the Symphony Silicon Valley. We had four performances in four days. Lilli/Kate was played by Christine Andreas, and Fred/Petruchio was played by Richard White.

Weekend number 4 was Copland. The Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale sang with Symphony Silicon Valley (say that three times fast) Copland's Old American Songs.

There is just nothing quite like singing with a full orchestra.

Weekend number 5 (yes, there were five weekends in October) was Halloween. But I spent the last week in October with a turned ankle and then a rather brutal head cold. I think it was my body's way of saying: "Stop and rest! All this singing is fabulous, but pacing yourself might be a good thing!"

And now we're up to November 1st.

I may, or may not, go back and fill in more details about some of the more eventful events of October.

Oh yes, I also dyed my hair. You wouldn't necessarily know it, because it's not a drastic change, but it is gorgeous, if I do say so myself. Okay, I didn't dye it. I had Tuan dye it. He did a fabulous job. I have tried my hand at dyeing hair and I'm not likely to attempt that again anytime soon.

With that, I bid you ado, until whenever I get back here again. My intention is to get back here tomorrow. It's on the schedule, so that makes it far more likely to happen.

Where there is smoke . . .

2009-08-19T10:47:00.001-07:00

Those of you who know me personally know that I live in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The Lockheed Fire started Wednesday evening. Thursday morning at 6:12 am, there was a call informing us about a voluntary evacuation.

We were in Ashland, Oregon on our annual trek to see college buddies of mine and fabulous plays. We go every year at this time. My first trip to Ashland for the plays was in 1987. I have gone every year since then, with the exception of 1992. That's the year that Megan was born. I was largely pregnant, and while I desperately wanted to go, my obgyn suggested that it wouldn't be prudent. She was, of course, right. By the time the dates rolled around I was so uncomfortable that I knew that an 8 hour car ride and long plays were not anything that I wanted to try to do.

But I digress.

Thursday morning (August 13th), Mark and I got up, leaving the boys (Kyle and a friend of his) sleeping in our room and headed out to Brother's for breakfast (Mark's favorite breakfast spot anywhere). When we got back, Kyle was up and on his laptop.

"Mom! Do you know about the fire?"

"Uh. What fire?"

"The one that's right near our house!"

Well, crap.

The mandatory evacuation notification came at 11:00ish that morning. We, of course, were already gone, but the dog and cats were still there. The dog was with a neighbor down the street. She evacuated with our dog. I'm so grateful that she simply scooped Cinders up with her two dogs and left. Not that she would have left Cinders, but just knowing that I didn't have to worry about the dog was a good thing.

The neighbor watching the cats decided not to evacuate. They hadn't evacuated last time, partly because fire camp is set up right behind our house.

The neighbor kindly agreed to catch and corral the cats - not an easy feat!

So, we sat, from afar, watching the news like a hawk.

My biggest surprise was that I found myself getting the best information from Facebook. Dooners who chose to stay in the fire zone kept a regular stream of posts about what was happening, and links to the best sites. It was great, because I was using the hotel computer (not having a laptop myself) that was out in the middle of the lobby. I didn't want to take up too much time, but I did want to know what was going on!

We stayed out our vacation as planned, because there wasn't anything we could do if we headed home early, except check into a hotel. And we were already checked into a hotel, with wonderful plays to occupy our brains. Pondering a distant fire for long periods of time is simply crazy making.

We drove homeward on Saturday as planned. Knowing that we were not going to be able to go home that night other than to pick up important documents, that sort of thing. I'd made arrangements to pick up the cats and bring them down into town. That way I didn't have to worry about having my neighbor get them quickly. Also, wanted to pick up our wedding and family photos and the "important documents" folder.

When we arrived at the road blockade we were told that it was now a hard closure because people had been using the "vacation" excuse to get back in and then stay there. They weren't coming back out, even though who were escorted in.

Needless to say, we were not happy. I was screaming and yelling (and then stopping to apologize to the sheriff, because I knew it wasn't his fault) and then hollering again. It felt good to move all that anger and fear through.

As it happens, we were allowed back in on Sunday afternoon. But if the house had burned and I hadn't been able to get back up because other people broke the rules and I wasn't willing to push hard enough to get in to get my stuff, I would have been extremely pissed.

Yes, I could have pushed harder. Showed them our suitcases and the receipt proving that we had been gone. The tears didn't do the trick (not that I was faking any of that, I was angry and scared).

And, I'm angry that other folks couldn't follow the rules and therefore messed it up for the rest of us. I understand those neighbors who chose to not leave. But the rule was, if you stay, you have to stay put. No coming and going. So, if you leave because you want to go to the store to get milk, well, then plan on staying off the mountain.

Personally, with the smoke and the helicopters, I didn't want to stay here through a mandatory evacuation. It's not like I could do anything helpful if I stayed and my house was threatened. Getting out of the way is the best way I can help.

Yes, it's stressful to be away and not know what's happening. Yes, it's uncomfortable asking for help from friends. But, for me, it's not worth it to try to stay home.

But, we're home now. The smoke has subsided, though not completely. I'm still in evacuation mode, in that, I'm still thinking carefully about where things (including my animals and children) are and what I need to do about that.

I'm grateful for those folks who fight the fires and help keep the peace and those volunteers who support all those folks. Many, many people help with this. The fire is still burning. And the people in Swanton are still out of their houses and hoping for the best. The official report is that they hope to have the fire contained by Thursday.

Rules

2009-08-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

It would appear that I need clear and concise rules in order to eat properly.

I figured (incorrectly, it turns out) that after eating well for 21 days that this would just be a habit. I lost 10 pounds, so I definitely had motive for keeping it up.

But old habits die hard it seems. Now, I haven't completely fallen off the wagon yet. I haven't had a dessert. But those breads will get me. Garlic bread made with a lovely francese loaf appears to be my down fall.

I made spaghetti last night. Lots of lovely veggies. If I'd been perfect, I would have steamed some broccoli and used that instead of the pasta, but I didn't. And because I didn't, I think I just slid right on down. I had planned to only have one piece of garlic bread. I'd done this earlier in the week and it worked just fine, but this time the buttery, garlicy bread just smelled and tasted too good! I didn't stop at one. I didn't stop at two. I ate until I was full. Something I hadn't done in a month.

When one eats until they feel full in the moment, but haven't slowed the meal down, one doesn't get that feedback until it is way too late.

Sigh.

So, my rules. Only one piece of bread each day. Period. I'm setting a rule. Not just hoping that I'll pay attention. I don't pay attention when I'm eating. Or rather, I pay attention, but only to the messages that my tongue is sending me.

So, One piece of bread per day. Also, one dessert per week. If I start this now, before I've plunged headlong back into the glory that is dessert, I might stand a chance.

I like the fact that I'm losing weight. I want to keep that up. I'm going to add exercise. Something that I should have done from the beginning, but didn't. Oh well. Now's as good a time as any.

One trick I do now have up my sleeve is the smoothies. Today I'll be having a smoothie for lunch. That's one meal that's nutritious and not too calorie-laden. Especially if I add spinach to my nectarine, banana smoothie. Something I've been doing for awhile. I like the taste, but I LOVE the beautiful spring green color it turns. It's beautiful.

What a goofball I am.

Detox - 21 one days

2009-07-30T07:26:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was my last day on the "Standard Process" 21-day detox plan. It involved drinking smoothies three times a day (with the Standard Process nutritional powder, whey protein powder, and supplements from them). And then I could have just about any fruit and many veggies (none of the starchy ones) and a small amount of lean, easily digestible protein (chicken or fish, with heavy emphasis on fish).

The first three days weren't very fun. Although, I have to admit, it helped to have all those goofy pills and shakes to keep track of. It gave me something to do. I did have a headache and was grumpy on days two and three.

The first day wasn't hard in terms of actual detoxing because my body hadn't figured out yet that it wasn't going to be getting flour, grains (other than a half a cup of brown rice each day), sugars in their less natural state, dairy, or CHOCOLATE!

That first day, my body was blissfully unaware of the impending doom. . .

Day two on the other hand, was less comfortable. General malaise, headache and GRUMPINESS! Megan started the detox with me, so she went through that with me as well. We were both pretty unpleasant, so we kept each other company to relieve the rest of the family.

That actually turned out to be pretty fun, in a weird sort of way. Have I told you that we have a cussing car (the way that Mark Twain had a cussing closet - apparently his wife couldn't abide with cussing, so he would go into his cussing closet, cuss up a storm and come out refreshed). My husband can't abide cussing from the children, who aren't really children anymore as Megan is almost 17 and Kyle is 14 1/2. But, the kids LOVE to cuss. So, I declared the van, my van, the vehicle that the children are in most of the time, to be the cussing zone.

So, Megan and I drove around to different things those first days and cussed up a storm. We called each other names, repeatedly, and then laughed our fool asses off. (Megan just came up behind me to read this and scoffed at that last line. She thinks "laughed our fool assess off" sounds weird.)

By the end of the third day, I was feeling fine and wasn't missing all those things that I "couldn't" have. Those silly shakes were keeping me plenty full, so hunger really wasn't an issue. The meals were big salads with lovely, crunchy things like cucumbers, red bell peppers and halved grapes. It was perfect because the weather was HOT, HOT, HOT, and cooking anything really wasn't what I wanted to do.

Now that I'm done, I'm realizing that part of what I really liked about the detox was that Mark fed himself and Kyle and Megan (who made it a week and decided that it wasn't for her). Not that I mind feeding them, it's just that I go through phases where I don't want to figure out what to cook for the whole family. So, it was lovely to only have to think about what I wanted to feed myself and to be pretty restricted in what I could eat. Fewer choices = easier decisions.

While I was on the detox/cleanse, I didn't really think about all those things that I wasn't eating, but as I came to the end of it, I started thinking about the things that I could have.

This morning I had eggs with roasted cauliflower and scallions, all scrambled up. I didn't finish it. It would seem that two eggs and veggies are more than I want to eat this morning. And it's not feeling as light in my body as the smoothies have been.

Food choices will be interesting as I slowly incorporate things back into my diet.

How about you? What are you eating these days?

I did find myself reading a cooking magazine last night. . .

Whoops!

2009-07-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that I've been out of town or out of the country or off the planet all together. I have no excuse for not writing. I've just been doing other things.

So, to wrap up the events of June 11th. The cat got through surgery just fine. She's been living in Megan's room, much to Meg's dismay. The cat keeps very different hours from the hours that Megan likes to keep. She doesn't really like to get up at 4:00 each morning. Megan will be very happy tomorrow, when Sugar should get a clean bill of health from the vet and the approval to go outside again. I fully expect the cat to disappear for a day or two once we let her out. She's always been a mostly outdoor cat; so to be trapped in a 12x12 room for 6 weeks has been hard on her. If she'd known that the other two cats caught and ate a bunny, she'd be pissed! She would have hated to miss out on that delight. We've got lots of cottontails around here, and this was a pretty big bunny, so I'm guessing it was just it's time. Our cats are not that big.

Before some of you get your knickers in a knot. Yes, we feed our cats, and quite well. (canned food) And, they're basically wild creatures, so it's not out of their nature to kill and eat. It doesn't happen often, but I'm actually glad when it does, because it means that the cats are getting nutrients that are completely suited to their bodies, not just ones that we humans have decided they need.

The dog is fine. She had to be quarantined for 10 days. We paid a fine and the licensing fee. Apparently there is also a $150 penalty fee for not getting the dog licensed, but I'm guessing that the animal control officer waived that fee after seeing the cat and hearing the story that went with the dog bite.

The man who got bit did go to the doctors and got a tentanus shot. I'm glad of that. Yes, that's why Cinders got turned in, that's the law, but I'd rather us be in convenienced a little bit and have him healthy.

The septic system is also all fine now.

Much money was spent.

I've never had a day like yesterday's before. . .

2009-06-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, my local septic pumper-outers showed up. I'd called them the day before because the front yard smelled awful, and there was some effluent around one of the septic manholes.

They're working on the system. They've already met the dog, she's back in the house, then my daughter comes out looking panicked and says, "Mom! Come quick! Sugar's leg is broken!" I come rushing back from talking with the Septic guys to see Sugar, Megan's 6 year old Tortie with what looks to be a dislocated back haunch. It's twisted horribly out of shape. So, I head in the house, call the vet. The vet tech who answers the phone says that the vet is at a graduation event and won't be back until 3:30, but that if we can wait, we could go then. She thinks Sugar ought to be alright until then but that we should confine her so she doesn't injure the leg anymore. Okay, that's better than an emergency vet adventure, and I think she'll handle it, so we hunt around for the cat carrier, finally finding it hidden in the garage because we're overdue on taking any of our cats in for their annual exams.

Okay, that done, I head back out to the septic guys, inadvertently forgetting to shut the door behind me. We are casually chatting when Cinders (my 8 year old golden retriever/border collie mix) heads out, quietly. One of the guys jokes that he hopes that she doesn't fall into the open man hole, when she suddenly realizes that they're still there and rushes over barking her fool head off.

Can you see where this is headed? She falls IN the FULL septic tank. One of the guys, who's a real dog lover and who happens to be kneeling there next to the manhole, tries to help her back out. Actually, he does manage to pull her out, but not before she bites his hand. One canine bite to the soft part between the top between hand and finger and a smaller bite on the bottom side of his hand. She's freaking out, barking and spinning, he's bleeding.

I get up, take her into the sunroom and fumble mightily, trying to put the small panel that goes into the dog door so that she can't get out of the sunroom. Yes, the back half of her is covered in shit. I figure I'll just clean up the room when we're done. I take a few moments to quietly talk to her, telling her she's a good girl, in a vain attempt to get her to calm down, then I head back out to Jesse to see what I can do to help.

They've found the hose and are washing out the wound. It bled a lot in the beginning, which is a good thing, because the blood will flush out anything that went in with Cinder's tooth. Then we put neosporin (A LOT of it) on the wounds and gauze and tape. In the meantime, Megan has called the gal who lives down the street who was a long-time volunteer on the local Volunteer Fire Team. She brings her medical kit and takes a look at it, reassuring everyone that the swelling at the puncture site is normal and that we've done all the right things.

The poor bitten fellow has said repeatedly, "It's not the dog's fault; she was scared."

He said that he wasn't going to go to the doctor's and that he was especially not going to get a tetanus shot, even though he couldn't remember if he'd *ever* gotten one. I repeatedly encouraged him to do so, even though I know that it might mean something bad for Cinders.

They finish up the job (I've headed down the hill to take Megan to her planned activities and to pick up my CSA box that's loaded with lovely veggies! Although not before taking Cinders out back to give her a thorough bath because I know that the minute she calms down and stops barking she'll try to clean herself and that's just too gross and scary to contemplate.)

Okay, one issue sort of dealt with, now on to the second. The vet calls at 2:30 to ask if we can come in at 3:00 instead of 3:30. YES! She's already in the cat carrier, so I pick her up and we head down to the vets.

We get in there, and she doesn't want to come out of the carrier, which is not surprising, they never want to get out onto the steel table in the vet's office.

We do get her out and the vet starts moving her leg around. I start to feel nauseous. He asks if they should take her into the back to do this, but I manage to pull it together (breathing deeply and looking away for the worst of it). The cat is purring and laying quietly, which both the tech and the vet comment on. She's a tortie. Tortie's are notorious for being particularly unpredictable, so calm was not what they expected.

They need to take x-rays to know what's actually going on in the twisted-looking foot, so they'll need to keep her there.

Long story, slightly shorter, they x-ray her, determine that the foot is both broken and dislocated and that to repair that it will require surgery. She'll need pins in the broken bone side because she'd broken the fibular (that's the smaller of the two bones leading to the foot and it's truly tiny) and probably torn the ligament on the other side, which is why the joint is dislocated.

They send her home with us with a splint, a catheter (for tomorrow's surgery because they're less expensive and it will save us a little bit of money on this expensive surgery) and a cone of shame. (A cat sized Elizabeth collar). With instructions to keep her confined, probably in the bathroom, and to give her an oral narcotic at midnight and then have her at the surgeon's by 8:00.

She's there now. Surgery is scheduled for 2:00 this afternoon.

I did get a call from the septic guys letting me know that he did go to the doctor's and they did give him his tetanus shot. They also filed a report about Cinders (it's legally required). So I think Cinders will have to be quarantined for 10 days, as soon as Animal Control shows to enforce that. In the meantime, we're keeping her on the property. We know she doesn't have Rabies. Her vaccine is current and the bite was completely situational, so I'm not worried. I'm not sure what the quarantine looks like, although the vet did say that usually they let you keep the dog at home.

Heavy sigh. It's been an interesting two days. Not cheap either. Because, in addition to the cat's surgery, it looks like we're going to have to have the pump control panel rebuilt, because that's part of why the septic backed up. The pump guy came out this morning and did some work, fixing floats and other things.

This is the sort of day that I might read about in a novel and think "How implausible that all of that would happen in one day!"

Now I know better.

Grand thoughts in "silly" literature

2009-04-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

I've never been one to read non-fiction. Those self-help books have never held an appeal for me. I know many for whom their self-help selection of books is sacrosanct. They find it hard to contemplate releasing those books back into the world through used book stores.

For me, it's my fiction. I used to think that I was some how lacking in curiosity because I didn't read non-fiction. That those "True Stories" somehow held less "truth" for me than stories in fiction did.

That being said, I completely got sucked into the foreword in Amy Tan's "Saving Fish From Drowning". In her foreword she talks about the main character in the book as if she knew her. Leading the unsuspecting reader to think that the story was based in truth. Later I heard her say on a talk show, "I'm a fiction writer. Why would you assume that anything I wrote in my work of fiction was anything other than fiction." And indeed, why would we? Yes, there are certain "rules" about forewords and their veracity, but those "rules" aren't written down anywhere. They are just societal "assumptions."

What I find interesting about all of this is that lately, I have come to the belief that pretty much every theory I have about anything is all just story. And that there is no "truth" that can actually be talked about in any meaningful way.

I have had experiences of what felt to me like being the the center of pure love. There is no good way to talk about this, no way to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it what it was like. And, my experience of love or the now or whatever you want to call it, may be completely different from someone else's experience because of all of the experiences that lead up to it.

Ooh, I've gotten philosophical. That's interesting to me, because here is what got this post started. I was reading "Maisie Dobbs," by Jacqueline Winspear. It's a lovely book about a private investigator. And here is the quote that got me thinking about the learnings I get from fiction.

""Truth walks toward us on the paths of our questions." Maurice's voice once again echoed in her mind. "As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing.""

This quote was referring to Maisie's path of learning as she solves mysteries.

But it could also be applied to learning about the mysteries of life. I especially like the last line.

"Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable the unknowing."

It's that uncomfortable unknowing that I avoid so well. I rush to the conclusion so that I can avoid that uncomfortable, unstable feeling of unknowing.

I've been sitting just on the edge of unknowing for bit now, as I explore what my life purpose is now that my children are old enough to not need my constant attention.

For awhile, I was simply resting while they were at school, because I felt like I had poured my life's energy into them, and then into their schools. And then I started learning about the work of Gay and Katie Hendricks, through the tutelage of Diana Chapman and Grace Caitlyn. My whole world expanded exponentially through their workshops and advanced works.

And yet, the books they've recommended to me have put me to sleep. The books that they adore, and consider to be life-changing for them, have not had that effect on me. The work within the books has been life-altering, but only because I've learned it from Diana and Grace.

I do, however, find echoes of those teachings in just about every piece of literature that I pick up. No matter how silly. I was just listening to a Jasper Fforde book (The First Among Sequels). Totally silly time-travel fantasy book, and yet, things that I have been learning are in that book.

Or this quote that I just spoke about. It's in a detective novel. Why should I be finding philosophical thought-provoking passages in a detective novel? Because I can. Because I look for it, and because I am finally coming to fully realize that I learn through story.

The same way that my son learns through humor. I learn best through fiction and anecdote. So, if those self-help books have lots of anecdotes, then I'm fine, but if they're busy talking about what I should be learning, without showing me "real life examples" (which is funny all by itself, if I'm thinking that everything is story), then my attention will not be held. And if my attention is not held, then I won't be learning.

Hmmmm, I think my book is calling me.

SongMom

Third Time's a Charm?

2009-04-13T14:26:00.001-07:00

It's Easter Sunday. I'm over at the neighbor's house eating the salad potluck. Mark's home with a cold; Kyle's being Kyle (although, to give him credit where credit is due, he did show up and say hello when I asked him to); and Megan is home recovering from having her wisdom teeth being pulled on Thursday.

The egg hunt is fun. It's always fun to see little kids scampering about, getting all excited when they find an egg or some other colorful thing hidden in the trees, or the grass, or in the tailpipe of a car.

We head back into to the house so the kids can dump their loot and start sorting when Mark comes through the door.

He's not come to join the party, he's only there to tell me that Megan's kidneys are hurting again.

I mention this to my EMT friends who are sitting on the couch next to me and they say, "Head in now. It's been less than six months since the last kidney infections. Don't wait."

I head home, change into more comfortable shoes (my outfit was cute, but I don't care about cute at the ER). Megan, meanwhile, grabs her computer, a drawing pad, a change of clothes and a giant 2 liter bottle of peppermint tea with honey that she's been drinking.

Off we go, on another adventure to ER. We're becoming old hands at this, our third trip to the ER in less than six months.

We fill out the little form at 5:40 pm and settle down in the waiting room, tv blaring above our heads, but no visible way to change the channel or turn the sound down even though nobody is watching.

I get out my book. I'm reading "The 19th Wife" by David Ebershoff. Megan just leans her head back and closes her eyes. She took a vicodin at 3:30, but she's still feeling pain. Actually, that's why we're here, because she's feeling "flank pain." (Meaning pain in the flank, flank steak is never going to be the same for me again. . .)

The triage nurse takes her vitals and hands her the cup to pee in. Megan knew this was coming, so had been waiting, even though that peppermint tea was ready to leave.

An hour later, we get called into the next triage area.

This is new. They've changed the procedure and now, after seeing the triage nurse, who just gets things started, you see a triage doctor who can get tests started rather than making you wait for three hours. That's the theory anyway. It didn't get us out of there any faster than the other two trips. But maybe it was much busier and we just didn't know that. I do know that I heard several nurses talk about how busy it was.

Anyway, the Doc comes in, asks the same series of questions that the triage nurse asked, we answer them in the same way, he orders pain and nausea meds and blood draws and tells us that we'll be moving to the "more permanent" room and seeing a different doc. He does tell us that the preliminary results of the urine sample are: protein and blood and no white cells. From this it doesn't look like a kidney infection. So there will need to be more tests, or at the very least, we'll need to wait for the blood draw results to come back. And that should take about an hour.

Okay. In comes Nurse Greg. He's the nurse who gave Meg the IV the last time we were here. She likes him. That's good, because we all know how much she likes needles and getting IVs. Of course, we had talked about the probability of that on the way down, so she was emotionally prepped. That helped a lot.

Plus, this time she gets the IV put in her hand, rather than the inside of her elbow. She'd already figured out that she wanted the IV in her left arm, if possible, so that she could still draw. She was remembering having trouble drawing with the IV on the last trip.

Greg suggests that he put the IV in her hand since she's got a good vein there as well, so that's what he does.

I reach into my pocket (not sure why) and find a button that I'd picked up off the redwood cap in our house earlier in the day in a fit of cleaning. I pull it out and ask Meg if she'd like to hold on to it or my hand while he's sticking her with the needle.

"Both!" she says. So I hand her the button and my hand and she squeezes. It's over quickly and easily. Yes, it still hurts, but she's not nearly as freaked out by it.

He then gives her the drugs. She was prescribed Zofran (not sure of the spelling, but that's a phonetic spelling) for the nausea and phentanol (again, phonetic spelling - I'm too lazy go open another tab and see if I can figure out the correct spelling although I think that one's close). Phentanol is what I was given when I was giving birth to Kyle. Put me right to sleep for an hour. Not what they wanted in a laboring mother, so they cut my dose back quite a bit.

Okay, I couldn't stand not knowing the correct spelling. It's Fentanyl. I wasn't even remotely close. Now I have to go look up the other one, just because I do. I'll be right back. You'll never even know I was gone. Sit back, have a cup of tea, play some goofy game like Snoodslide for a minute. I will be back; I promise.

Hey! I got one right. It is Zophran. Oh wait, I spelled it with an F. Huh. When I headed over to "google" it, I spelled it correctly, but not here. Ah well.

Oh yeah, back to ER.

She gets the drugs and starts to get loopy. Not silly loopy, just really sleepy loopy.

Greg wheels her over to Room 17, where we'll be for the next several hours. And we settle in to wait. Eventually a nurse shows up. One of the four that we saw, although technically, she was "our" nurse. Elizabeth had an English accent, which thrilled Megan. She asked the same set of questions that we'd been asked three times before.

We were in a room that was actually a double, with a curtain between us and the person in the next little bit of a room. Our side opened straight out onto the hallway.

We had two different neighbors over the course of our visit. The first was a guy who had a broken bone in his foot. He and his visitor were speaking Spanish for the most part. I don't speak Spanish. It's fun to listen to a language that I don't understand. But only under circumstances where it doesn't matter if I don't understand what's going on.

After he was discharge a woman was brought in by some sort of candy striper (not a nurse, just a woman with a badge and a wheelchair, whom I saw several other times wheeling people about and depositing them in rooms).

Shortly after that a nurse came in saying, "You've been here three hours and you haven't even seen a nurse yet?"

Megan got another shot of Fentanyl at about 9:30 because the last one had worn off and she was still in pain. The triage doc had okayed two doses and we took him up on it.

And then our "real" doc came in. Dr. same-last-name-as-an-online-friend-of-Megan's.

He had red hair and was funny. He said the same thing that the triage doc had said, that there was protein and blood, but no white blood cells in the urine and that we needed to wait for the rest of the blood draw tests to come back.

Okay, long story, not so long, because now I'm getting bored and I was there. Anyway, the upshot is that they sent her home with antibiotics for a kidney infection. The thinking was that she had been drinking enough fluids to have diluted the white blood cells. She had plenty of infection-fighting white blood cells in her blood. It could have been from the wisdom teeth or the kidney infection. White blood cells in the urine would have proven that earlier.

So, we're home. And this time she'll be taking CranActin regularly even after the symptoms have vanished. I'm thinking this might need to be something she takes regularly. Kidney Infections hurt, and ERs are boring when you are there for a kidney infection.

She'd brought her computer this time, thinking she could play World of Warcraft, but of course, she didn't have access to an internet connection. So she was really bored.

She's home now, soon to be back to her perky, cheerful self. She's pretty cheerful even through all this pain. And she's funny. Of course, she doesn't like it when I make her laugh, because her cheeks still hurt from the surgery.

On to the next adventure. Maybe something boring this time?

I feel like Cinderella after the ball

2009-04-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm back to my "regular" life. I have a great life, don't get me wrong. It's just that after the glory of singing in the pit with the orchestra; hearing and feeling all of that music swirling around, life just isn't the same.

It feels surreal, somehow, to be grocery shopping and hanging clothes to dry on the line in the crisp air. I've got Mendelssohn tripping through my head.

It's funny. We, the fairy chorus, only sang about 8 minutes worth of music. Each act is an hour long. We sang about 3/4s of the way through the first act, and the very last piece in the second act. So we were there, in the pit for the whole time. I suppose we could have tried to squeeze by the cellos so that we didn't have to sit there the whole time, but none of us did. We sat there, in the dark, listening, shifting in our seats, smiling at each other when the dancers above us made a particularly loud clumping sound.

Watching the conductor seemingly make music come out of the tips of his fingers. Trying to figure out the reasoning behind when he would switch from using the baton in his right hand to simply beating time with his left, without the baton. He did it in the same places every night. Did his arm just get tired, or was there some other reason? I'll never know.

Back by us were two of the four cellos. One of them was a woman, who in the rehearsal room looked pleasant and cheerful, but in the pit, looked like an angel playing. Her concentration was sublime. She looked transported as she played. I have no idea what was going on in her head, but the light from the stand lit her face in such a way as to make her incredibly beautiful.

I've got new music to work on. Hayden and Mozart and Bach. None of them are Mendelssohn. I had no idea how attached I'd gotten to the sounds of Mendelssohn. He was not on my bucket list. I didn't have a particular Mendelssohn piece that I had to sing before I died, or at least I didn't think I did. But now, I'm glad I was able to do that. I was transported by his music in a way that hasn't happened to me before. I'm not sure if it was a result of being awash in sound because of being in the tiny space of the pit and literally having the vibrations running amok through the pit before heading up and out, or if it was the music itself. I won't know until I do another show in a pit with an orchestra, but in the meantime, I'm still blissed out from the experience.

I wish everyone could experience something like that. It's a little like lying down underneath a piano while some one really good plays beautiful music on the instrument above you.

la la la la, la la la!

A Midsummer Night's Dream

2009-04-02T11:11:00.001-07:00

I was asked to be part of a solo quartet of women fairies for the Ballet San Jose production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is the solo quartet and then a mezzo and a soprano soloist, so there are six of us women with voices soaring.

What a sublime feeling to be the "bass" in all of this. I'm singing the bottom line, letting my rich alto voice ring out to support the upper voices.

Last night was dress rehearsal. We're in the pit. I've not ever sing from the pit before. And I've never sung for a ballet before. Unless you're one of the musicians whose seat is up against the far wall of the pit, or you are the conductor, you do not get to see the dancers. You can only hear them.

Dancers, when seen from the audience, look graceful and light as if they're flying about the stage. From beneath the stage, they're like hordes of hoofed beasts clomping and throwing things about.

The singer's seats are directly beneath the stage. I kept jumping in my seat each time a dancer would jump. (I'm one of those folks who jumps and yells at scary movies when things pop out of nowhere, so this was particularly embarrassing as I kept startling and the rest of the fairies were just quietly laughing at me.) At least I'm assuming that's what the dancers are doing, since they can't be doing what I think they're doing. From underneath it sounds like they're throwing large tree trunks and nobody's catch them.

I'm thinking it's the toe shoes that make the clattering sound. Bottom's Ass's head doesn't hit the ground at any point as far as I remember from the play.

Being in the pit has some lovely advantages though. Have you ever wanted to be right down with the orchestra, in the middle of that sound? Watching, up close as the melody gets tossed from oboe to flute to violin to cello? It's beautiful to watch.

It's also interesting to watch those folks who can see the dancers. They turn and look or sometimes even stand up to see, mouthing the count of the measures so that they come back in at the proper time, but with eyes wide open, watching eagerly.

Last night listening to the music was sublime, but also nerve wracking as we, the fairies, determined that we didn't have the same score as the orchestra, so had no idea when we were supposed to sing. The ballet is about two hours long, and we sing two short pieces. One before the intermission and one at the end of the play.

And Mendlessohn, like any good composer, uses the same melodic themes over and over again with slight variations, so I (in particular), kept looking about in worry as I would hear something that sounded close to what our beginning measures sounded like. Twice we headed up to stand at our stands long before we were actually needed. We would get up there and when it was clearly not time for us, we would stand awhile, trying to look as if we actually knew what we were doing and then we would drift back to our seats.

I didn't exactly drift though. My stand is beyond a plexiglas corner that I have to squeeze by. The first time I did it, the buttons on the back of my super-cute Calvin Klein jeans caught the corner of a music stand at a particularly quiet spot and banged back to the floor as the button released it. Several people chuckled quietly.

I'm grateful for dress rehearsals; not that I would be wearing pants with buttons on the back, but now I know not to wear them to rehearsals either. Please, help me remember that the next time I head off to rehearsal for the ballet. Because it's not just about getting the music solid; it's about getting the specifics handled. Silly things like that. Figuring out how and where to stand, etc.

Music Heaven

2009-03-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

I'm in the part of a choir set that I love. I mostly know the music and can now get down to truly making music.

This set with the Santa Cruz Chorale felt a little more difficult to learn than others because for so much of it, my part is written in tenor clef. I'm a decent sight reader, but tenor clef just really messes with my brain! Because it's simply an octave lower than the treble clef that I normally sing in, it seems like it ought to be easy. But it's not. My brain just has trouble computing where those notes should be in my voice. And when the notes start getting down in to the bottom range of where I can comfortably sing, I start to lose track of the pitch. I know it's low, but I don't always know exactly where it is. Very disconcerting.

I am again noticing a trend regarding really good sight-readers. Many of those readers appear to still be reading.

My story is that because I have to work harder to learn the part in the first place, I spend more time getting the music all the way into my body so that I can make it music instead of just a series of notes.

There are some things that I automatically do to notes. I don't even think about these, they just happen. And it's a pleasure when I then hear Christian ask us to do that thing that I have just been doing. I'm not automatically doing everything he asks for, so I always try to listen carefully to his requests in order to learn something new, but it pleases me to know that some of the things I understand without having to be told.

An example of this came when Christian was working with the brass last night. We are performing a piece that I performed in October with the Funks (same guys we're working with now), only they're playing the parts that we vocalists sang, and we, the choir, are singing what they played. I'm loving this because I'm listening much more carefully to the whole piece. I often just find where my part goes and work to lay it in to the exact spot that it's supposed to be (pitch-wise, tempo-wise, volume, musically, everything), but the rest of the parts don't quite sink in. So this time I'm singing that other part and getting to know it.

Hmmm, back to what I wanted to tell you. Christian was giving direction to the brass about how to make the line more musical and as I heard him describe it, I realized that he was asking for what Jas and I had done with those lines. I don't remember us necessarily talking about what we wanted to do there, we just did it.

So, I just went back and listened to the recording of the Shutz Da Pacem that I have been talking about. It was interesting to hear it again after having learned the alto line in the other choir. I was hearing even more things in the music to improve. I felt very good about that performance, and I still think we did a credible job, but I can now hear many other things. Of course, in listening critically I can also hear where I made mistakes. Sigh. That's the trouble with listening carefully; I sometimes get caught in the trap of "damn, I could have done so many things better." It's one thing to listen carefully to learn and improve and it's another thing to listen to criticize. I'm working on that distinction these days.

I'm going to give it another listen to see what things worked well and what things could be improved and how I can improve my vocal technique and musicality for the betterment of any group I sing with.

Off to listen and learn!

SongMom

Got Love?

2009-03-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've been back for over a week from my experience at The Seminar. (The 21st Century Transformational Seminar at The Center in San Francisco).

I don't think I mentioned it on this blog, so some of you may be completely surprised. Anyway, most of my current readers are people who already know me (either online or in "real life") at least as far as I know. Are you reading this and you've never met me? I'd be curious to know, so post a comment if you're willing.

Anyway. . .

I had an amazing experience. When I first got back, I wanted to write all about each little detail of the seminar, but waited, because the details aren't what's rocking my world.

It's the aftermath. In this case, the aftermath is good! Here are some of the changes that I have been experiencing since my 6 days of experience at the Seminar:

First off, these changes look small, but are having a profound effect on my life.

I have nice fingernails now for the first time ever. It would appear that I
no longer tear at my nails. Something that I must have done regularly,
because I always had short, ratty looking nails. And now they're long. I
had to file them yesterday because I noticed that they were getting long. It's not the nails that are of importance here, but rather the reason for them looking the way they did, versus the way they look now. I would always catch myself tearing at my nails (I never bit them, can't stand the taste of dead nail in my mouth) as I was worrying about something or trying to "figure something out." That just stopped happening.

I notice that my children no longer feel compelled to fight with each other
to get my attention. I imagine it's because they're getting my full
attention in short bursts through out the day. I'm not spending any more
time, necessarily, with them, but when I am with them, I am fully present. It's not that they don't ever fight now, but there doesn't seem to be this constant buzzing running underneath everything they say to each other anymore.

Same thing with my relationship with my husband. Actually, we're spending
more time with each other, talking, making love, just being together. My
relationship with him feels brand new and precious. I feel cherished and I
feel like I am cherishing. We loved each other before, it's not that. It's the quality of love that now exists between us. It feels open and clear and just there because it's there. Rather than that the love is there because we "making it be there." Does that make sense to you?

My kitchen is always clean now. I am probably spending a little more time in there, cleaning, but it doesn't feel like a burden; it feels like what should
happen. When I'm finished with a dish, I deal with it. In the past, I would have put it down to be dealt with later. I don't seem to be putting things down to be dealt with later any more. Now, I just deal with them in the moment and move on. That feels easier and simpler for me. And it's not just dishes, it's everything.

As I slowly move through my house, decluttering, and creating what they call "precision consciousness" at the seminar, I notice that I have more energy for other things. More energy for people, and projects and just plain life!

This is something that I wrote to some friends of mine on an email list:

"The best part of the seminar is how I feel now, back in the "real world." It's an insular feeling when sequestered away with 19 other participants, fully taken care of for 6 days as we delved deeper and deeper into our stories of the trauma in our lives. When we came out of the room and into the lobby, there was always food, water, anything we needed (I often needed an ice pack for my knee), quiet time for journaling.

I've never spent 6 days not in contact with my family. It felt odd, and yet I'm glad they requested that. Now, I'm back in the arms of my family and am able to feel all the love that's always been there for me, in away that I could not feel it before because I was carrying around all these stories about why it could not be, why I was not lovable.

I came out feeling and knowing the love in the world. I do know how sappy this all sounds, and yet, it's true for me."

I feel access to Love in every moment now. Even in my moments of frustration, anger, sorrow, etc. I can feel the Love there behind those emotions. Just waiting for me to come back. Not that feeling those other emotions is bad. It's not. They're not. They're just emotions, but they're emotions that need to be allowed to run through my body and out. I don't want to store those little bits of energy any more. I want to use them as fuel for learning and fuel for giving.

It's all fuel. Every bit of uncomfortable feeling is fuel for me to learn something new. When I notice that I'm feeling uncomfortable in my body, or that my breath is shallow or almost non-existent, I stop and take note. What's happening for me? What wants to show up? Do I need to move my body in some way? Do I need to take a deep breath? Or do I need to clap my hand over my mouth and scream for a moment?

I find that the more I follow the wisdom of my body, the more access I have to Love.

How about you? What are your experiences in life? Where are you finding love and joy in your lives?

If you want to experience what I did, check out this website: http://www.theseminarsf.org/theseminar.html

Dorian Mode

2009-01-19T10:31:00.000-08:00

It feels very odd for me to be going to choir and feeling completely lost. I'm used to feeling completely comfortable in choir. Now, I know that the first month or so of rehearsals for any set is tough for me, because learning music stretches me.

I'm surrounded by folks who know their music theory cold. It's an interesting thing. I have an incredible gift for making music out of a musical line, but I need to hear that line, in context to learn it. I've talked about this before.

The conductor of my smaller choir wants us to learn music theory. This makes a lot of sense. And I used to know music theory, but not in the context of singing, which I know makes no sense, but is so. I knew, theoretically, about key signatures and modes and rhythms, but there seems to be no connection with that knowledge and hearing those differences.

On Sunday we had a six-hour choir retreat. I normally love these, partly because they're usually further along in the rehearsal process, so I know the music well and can now work on my favorite part, the actual music making that happens after the notes are learned.

But we started with a music theory test. The conductor played 12 minor and major thirds, in fairly quick succession. We were to identify whether they were minor or major. He played them at the same time (the tonic and the third), not sequentially. I don't know if I would have done better if he'd played them sequentially or not. But I tanked. I think I got three of the 12 right, and those were only guesses.

It would seem that I haven't trained myself to hear these things. I can learn a piece, and fairly quickly, if someone else is singing the right notes next to me. I know, instinctually, how to sing things musically, and change that up if requested. The music seems to speak to me that way.

But I end up feeling so inadequate when I can't do these other things. The thirds seemed out of context, because of course they were. There was no context for the series of thirds played. If it had been a song, I could have learned it and sung it beautifully.

What I'm wondering about now is why I balk so at learning this. I've got a story running through my head that says that I can't hear those differences. Is that true? Probably not. But I also have a story that if I learn to step up my music theory knowledge then I might somehow lose some of my innate musical ability. This, of course, is poppy cock. But it feels real in the moment.

I'm probably scared of where I could go, musically, if I learned the theory so that I could sight read on a much better level. If I didn't have to lean on anyone else to learn the music, I could take on solos that I've not even attempted. I want to do this. And yet, I'm afraid to do this.

Hmmmmm.

SongMom

Emergency Room AGAIN!

2009-01-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

On Sunday evening we had visitors. A good friend of mine, whose children are in the girls scouts, so they were over to sell us cookies. During the chatting/selling process I noticed that Megan was looking at me as if she were quite angry. I told her that I was going to drive the neighbors home (it was dark, and the girls were little and I couldn't find my flashlight to lend them) and that she could yell at me when I got back.

I was gone about 10 minutes. When I got back I heard crying from upstairs. Sprawled on her back and tears streaming down her face, Megan said, "Mommy! I hurt, all over!"

She had been given a prescription for Vicodin after her adventure with the ruptured ovarian cyst, but hadn't used any (even though she'd been in pain off and on for those three weeks in between that ER visit and this). I got out the meds and announced that now would be a good time to use one. I have her one, saying that if the pain wasn't better in half a hour, she could take the other one of the 1 - 2 prescribed on the bottle. Shortly after than I thought to ask her more specifically about the location of the pain.

She spread her hands wide across her back, right over her kidneys. Hmmmmm, she'd been complaining that it hurt to pee earlier in the week and I'd had Mark (my adorable hubby, her loving dad) pick up some Cranactin, which works great for handling bladder infections. And in fact, it had helped some, right before the pain hit.

Anyhoo, after she showed me where it hurt, I told her to go get stuff to keep her occupied, because we were going to Urgent Care.

Now, granted, my track-record for telling her what was wrong was way off. I'd thought that the ruptured cyst was a yeast infection (don't ask, I know it doesn't make any sense in retrospect, but I wasn't familiar with ovarian cyst symptoms, having never had one). But I was pretty sure that that was what this was.

So she grabs her computer, a blanket, her DS (a little hand-held computer game thing, which most of you know about, but I've only been introduced to in the last four months), sheet music and a drawing pad. I grab my book and we head off.

We sign in at 7:15 and are seen by the triage nurse about 20 minutes later. She asks for symptoms and takes vitals. Megan's heartrate is at about 140. That's high. High enough that the triage nurse is worried. She sends us to sit and wait, which we do. At one point, Meg turns to me and says, "Mom, I don't hurt, I feel silly being here."

"Uh. I gave you a vicodin an hour ago, of course you don't hurt any more, silly girl. And no we're not going home before you're seen by a doctor."

So we sit and we joke and we wait and we joke some more and she leans her head on my shoulder and we wait some more. Eventually the triage nurse comes over and brings us to a small room off the waiting room. It's got a gurney, and a chair, but that's it. She brings blood vials and the set up for an iv drip.

We've not seen a doc, just the triage nurse. This is completely backwards from how things are normally supposed to go. But then, this isn't out of the norm for Meg either. She came into the world, not breech, but sunnyside up (facing up, which is not the normal pathway in to the world, it's more painful for the mother and the child. . .).

The blood draw and iv set up is not nearly so traumatic as the last time. We're all happy for that.

We eventually get taken to a proper room, where the tech who brought us in has to clean it up after we get there. So we're standing, waiting (Megan's holding her iv bag up in the air above her head as we wait).

Then he leaves, without another word. So we wait. Eventually an efficient, very funny fellow named Bob comes in.

"Huh, first time the patient has *shown up* with an iv. You're special."

They hand her a cup to pee in. We'd already gotten one from the very first woman we saw, but Meg didn't have to pee yet, so we were still holding on to the tiny pink tray with the two "wipeys" and the labelled cup.

Jokes about her having two pee cups ensue. They weren't very funny, or at least not funny enough for me to remember, but we laughed.

She pees in the cup and comes back and we wait some more. Bob comes back to check on a few things, leaves and comes back again saying, "Haven't you seen the doc yet?"

Doc? We thought he was the Doc. He had been wearing green scrubs, with blue booties on. An incorrect assumption on my part.

So, now it's 10:15, the doc finally shows up, says that it's a kidney infection, that he's going to give Meg a big dose of antibiotics and send her home.

IV antibiotics take 20 minutes to deliver. Who knew? Well, medical folk probably know, but we didn't. Megan's trying to draw, because she's bored, but it's hurting where the iv was inserted. Then she gets her Chamber music out and starts to sing.

After the adventure in December, this trip is much more relaxed and boring, which was just fine with me. I'd rather be bored than worried.

So, she's home with pretty green pills to take. I've also got her on Probiotics, to help counteract the messing with the GI tract that comes with broad spectrum antibiotics. And pumping her full of peppermint tea, because she doesn't really like to drink water.

And that's the rest of the story.

SongMom

Emergency Rooms are Exhausting

2008-12-28T19:23:00.000-08:00

First, is ER really short for Emergency Room? Now I don't know. I thought I did, but looking at it written up there in the title, it doesn't look right.

So, Panda is fine. She's a bit sore and definitely tired, but she's fine. And a content warning: if blood, CT scans and enemas make you queasy, don't bother reading any further.

If you're interested, then read on to hear the comedy of errors that was our day.

A little tidbit before I get started: Keno and I spent an hour at the Urgent Care last Friday where they removed a piece of glass from his knee.

Now, it's a little over a week later, and we're headed back. This time to the Emergency Room proper and it's Panda.

Here's how it starts. It's noon and Mark is quietly asking me to come downstairs. He won't say why, just says that he needs me. So, I quit a round of Word Twist (did I mention that I'm addicted to Word Twist on Facebook?) and head down. Turns out Panda is throwing up in the downstairs bathroom and saying that her uterus hurts. No fever, but extreme pain and weakness. But she doesn't want to go to ER until her boyfriend gets here, so we wait about 15 minutes. While we're waiting I head upstairs to do a little research on the internet to find out whether I'm being an over-anxious mother or if this is the right thing to be doing on a lovely, sunny Sunday afternoon.

She'd been quite perky when she woke up at 10:30, so this seemed completely out of the ordinary. Well, the vomiting by itself was out of the ordinary.

Anyway, her boyfriend's mother drops him off. I let her know where we were heading and we hop in the car. Panda's doing better than she was, hasn't thrown up since 12:30 and feeling a little bit better, but we forge on, because this is all very odd.

We end up waiting about an hour to be seen by a doctor, which in this area really isn't bad. Panda's already announced that if they have to do a pelvic exam that I am to leave the room, so when we get to that portion, I leave and a few minutes later the doc comes out of the room and I hear screaming and then whimpering from the room. Turns out they haven't been able to do anything. The doc tried to palpate, but Panda was too sensitive so they told her they'd have to hook up an IV and take some blood.

She freaked. She's always hated needles and really didn't think that she'd have to deal with them on this trip, figuring that the pelvic exam (something she's not had the pleasure of experiencing before) was the worse thing, so she freaked, and the nurse freaked at her freaking. She snapped at Panda, "Pull yourself together!" I stepped in with my usual brand of humor and got Panda laughing, which turns out to have not necessarily been a good thing, because laughing makes her abdomen hurt more.

But, she did calm down enough for the nurse to get the needle in for the blood draw. Apparently we had unnerved the nurse enough that she forgot to have the collection unit at the ready, so with the needle in, but no little bottle, there was blood spurting and then running down Panda's arm. Panda was still concentrating on reading the Spanish sign on the wall, so she missed all this.

The nurse gets the blood collected and the IV set up and then gives her a shot of morphine. Telling us this as she does it. Now, I have no idea why they're giving her an IV or morphine, because it was explained to Panda while I was out of the room.

Panda feels the morphine almost immediately and starts to talk about some of the physical sensations. It hit the back of her head first, kind of swirled around and then headed up to the tip of her nose.

It's a little disconcerting to see your daughter get high almost instantaneously.

About this time she asks if her boyfriend can join us in the room and we get approval, so I go retrieve him from the lobby.

As we get back to the room, they're wheeling her out to get an ultrasound. It seems they think she might be having an appendicitis attack.

Oh, I've forgotten that we figure out that the Doc who's working on her case is the son of her 8th grade English teacher. That is surreal and serendipitous, but happily so because Panda really liked this teacher and so has complete trust in this doctor now (something she doesn't ordinarily extend to people quite so quickly and certainly not to doctors, because she doesn't like hospitals in the least).

Okay, back to the exam room. Panda's headed off for the ultrasound and her boyfriend and I have half an hour to entertain ourselves in the room. It's a room that's mainly set up for gynecological emergencies, so there are drawers that say: miscarriage tray (which we both find very sad), gynecological instruments (which as a musician, I had trouble reading properly), etc. We laughed a fair bit.

Panda is wheeled back and we wait some more. This time the nurse comes and sets up the automatic blood pressure cuff and then leaves the room. The cuff fills with air, Panda winces and then it takes her blood pressure. It should stop at this point, but it doesn't. It waits about 15 seconds and then starts again. After the fourth cycle through, I press the call button. The nurse answers over the intercom, I explain what's going on and she says: "That sounds uncomfortable." And then comes in to turn off the machine. This is a procedure, that while not as traumatic as a needle stick, is definitely high on Panda's "Please don't do this to me" list. Now she's had 5 in a row, because of a machine malfunction.

The doc comes back in to explain that while they found a cyst on her right ovary, they couldn't find the appendix and so they'll need to do a CT scan, oh, and would she please go pee in this cup. "Three wipes with the wipey in the room, start to pee into the toilet and then put the cup in the stream. This is what we call a clean catch."

Uh, there's no "wipey" in the bathroom. Panda locks herself in and then the nurse comes to have me sign a waiver (that I think is for the CT scan, so I don't read it - don't ask - I won't be doing that again soon), I mention that there's no "wipey", she says yes there is, I say no there's not and she tries to open the bathroom door. Gets mad that it's locked and says to me: "What if she faints in there? It will take me much longer to get the key to get in there. . ."

I explain this to Panda when she unlocks the door; the nurse discovers that I really do know what a "wipey" looks like and there aren't any in that bathroom. . .

Anyway, Panda gets a "clean catch" and we head back to the room. Then the CT scan tech comes with the paper I've signed and says, "So, you know that you're getting a CT scan and an enema, right?"

Huh? Nobody said anything about an enema.

"You know that you signed a release for a contrasting injection CAT scan right? Didn't anyone explain what that was?"

Nope. So I take the waiver and start to read it (something I should have done before, but we were standing in the hallway waiting for Panda to pee in a cup and I wasn't thinking clearly and it seems like the nurse ought to have said a little something about it).

Panda, understandably, wants to know what's going on, grabs the paper from me and tries to read. The morphine has made her vision blurry and she can't read, so I end up reading it out loud while the tech sits quietly next to me muttering about how someone should have explained this to us already.

Oh yeah, that brings up another little anomaly. When Panda got into the room for the ultrasound, a new nurse came into draw blood. "But I already had a blood draw."

"Oh, well, it's lost; we'll have to draw blood again and set up an IV."

"But, I've already got an IV set up, see?"

"Oh, well, we still need to draw blood again."

This time the blood draw goes much more smoothly, thank goodness. But, they LOST the blood?

Meanwhile, back in the exam room, the three of us are now bored and singing the Oscar Meyer Weiner song for no apparent reason.

Eventually the tech guy comes back and tells us that the CAT scan will take half and hour to an hour.

It's late afternoon, now; nobody has eaten and we're all hungry. So, Panda heads off on a gurney to her adventure and the boyfriend and I head off to Erik's Deli for sandwiches and sodas.

We stop in the car to call Panda's dad and the boyfriend's mom for an update and then head to the sandwich place.

When we get back, we're standing outside the "Personnel Only" "Card Access Only" signs on the doors that we need to go through waiting and speculating that we'll be waiting 10 minutes and that then the next person to come to those doors will be Panda. At this point, I hear a soft giggle. It's Panda, just rounding the corner on her gurney. She'd heard her boyfriend's accurate prediction and started laughing.

Okay, it's after 5:30 now, we've been there since 2:00. But we head back to the exam room, asking the nurse if Panda can eat the Marrakesh Express that we've brought her.

"No! If the CT scan comes back with a positive on the appendicitis, she'll be heading into surgery and she can't eat for that, so NO!"

Okay, no food. We wait. This time the wait is short. And I'm glad. It's only about 10 minutes.

The doc comes in and says, the CT scan is clear. We just need to do a quick pelvic exam to see what we can see with the ovarian cyst from the inside and then we'll be able to send her home.

This is her first pelvic exam. Not exactly how that first experience is supposed to go. We women know it's not a pleasant experience, but it doesn't have to happen under circumstances like this.

He's fast, really fast, and again, I'm grateful for this.

The doc brings the boyfriend and me in to the room, but we're snugged up by the door inside the curtain that's separating us from Panda and the nurse, because Panda's not dressed yet.

"So, we've done two days worth of procedures in three hours and we've figured out a lot of things: She doesn't have appendicitis, she's not pregnant, she doesn't have a public disease (what exactly is this? I was too stunned to even think to ask for clarification), she's got a cyst on her right ovary that ruptured and we're sending off a mumble-mumble to verify that she doesn't have any STDs. So, a lot of tests, but we had to rule out a lot of things. I'm sending her home with a prescription for Ibuprofen (600 mg), Vicodin if the pain gets too great and a suppository if she gets nauseated again."

I'm surprised that I remembered any of that speech. I think I got most of it, and Panda will chime in to correct what I've gotten wrong, I'm sure.

And so, we headed out to the car. All in all, a very surreal day.

It ended well enough, but certainly not the kind of day that Panda and her boyfriend had expected to spend. They figured they'd be cuddled up watching movies all afternoon.

I figured I'd be upstairs playing Word Twist and taking breaks to go through the old stuff in the Christmas boxes, so that I don't keep repacking things and putting them up in the rafters when they haven't been used in over 15 years.

Hmmm, I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

SongMom

Anything to keep from journaling about my desires

2008-12-18T16:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm going to a seminar in February and I'm really excited about, but the woman who's coaching me until I get there has suggested that I journal about my desires. She has suggested this every time we've talked and we've spoken over half a dozen times since this whole thing started.

This Seminar is going to be mindblowing and because I know that I keep finding reasons not to go. I was going to go in August, but it came up too fast and I think I just got scared, well, I know I got scared, but I came up with what seemed like reasonable excuses. Then I was set up to go in November. The seminar ran from November 4th through the 9th. I didn't want to miss election night along with other reasons, again all seemingly reasonable, so I didn't go. All along this journey, this woman has been calling me (at my request) and we've been having lovely conversations about life, the universe and everything. Including the Seminar. In each phone call she has suggested that I journal about my desires. I would say, "of course, that's a great idea." And then promptly forget that I'd said that I would.

In our last conversation it suddenly occurred to me that I was deliberately forgetting, because when she asked me if I had this time, I started laughing because I knew in that moment that I had completely forgotten to.

So, in that moment I wrote on a blue post-it note: "journal about my desires!" and posted it on my computer. It's the only post-it note there, so it's not like I can't see it. And I spend a LOT of time on my computer. So now, I look at the note and think, "nah, not today." The note has been up there for over a week.

What is it about the idea of thinking about what I might desire that is so off-putting?

What do I desire? When I type that sentence and then read it, I go completely blank. I look at those words as if they were not English, but rather some foreign language that I do not speak.

If I pay even closer attention, I'm realizing that what actually happens in my body is that I freeze. I stopped breathing, holding fast as if hiding from something or someone dangerous.

What is it that I think will happen if I ask for what I desire? Am I afraid that I won't get what I desire, or am I afraid that I will get what I desire?

Could I handle being that happy? If happiness is what I desire. Could I handle being that sexy? If being sexy is what I desire. Could I handle being that loved? If being loved is what I desire.

Damn. I want to be loved. And I don't believe that I'll ever be unconditionally loved. What's sad about that sentence is that I already am unconditionally loved, but it would appear that it's not enough somehow.

I am choosing to block most of that luscious love that I know is being directed my way. I know how much love is out there because I know how much love I put out. And yet, I don't seem to turn that love around and direct it at myself and I block it when others send it my way.

This is an old game of mine. And before I was just mad at myself for playing that game, because my intellect could see how silly and stupid that game is. But right now, what I'm feeling is sadness. Sadness for all that I've missed out on, not because it wasn't there, but because I couldn't or wouldn't accept it.

So I started this blog by posting one of those fun, silly little games that I found here. It was my intention to simply post that and have you all play. And then I started writing. I'm glad I did. And you can still go play that game by heading over and checking it out for yourself. It is fun, but it isn't what I needed to post.

writing in my sleep

2008-12-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

I keep waking up at night, writing the next blog in my head, and then going back to sleep, only to wake up in the morning with no memory of the actual blog, only that I wrote it in my head.

Lovely prose, good story telling, all those thoughts remain about the blogs, but none of the actual content. Hmmmm, I wonder if I should get a pen with a little light on it so that I could actually write these things down.

But right now it's snowing! And I'm going to go out and stand in the snow and catch snowflakes on my tongue, because I can. I'm in California. It doesn't snow much here, so I take advantage of it. In Alaska, where I grew up, there was a lot of snow and before the end of winter each year I wanted the snow to GO AWAY!

I like the little bits of snow I get. It makes me happy.

SongMom

Thoughts

2008-12-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

A very astute friend of mine (hi, Diana!) mentioned that she'd noticed that I was putting up lots of pictures of myself at a very different weight than I am now. I was posting high school photos on Facebook. I was very slender in high school. I had no idea what a hot bod I had. I thought I was fat.

Anyway, back to my friend's observation. Well, question really. She said, "I got to wondering what it must have been like for you to be in that body then and what it must be like to be in your body now. There must be things you like about being this size."

And she's right. I just never really thought about it. But there are things I like about being this weight. There are many things I don't like about it and I think about those a lot, but I rarely think about what I like and that seemed like a good place for me to put my attention, so I can get really clear about why I am currently the size I am. Because I'll be this size until I put my attention on being slender again.

In the meantime. I like that I give good, soft, squishy, maternal hugs. I know this because people tell me often how much they like my hugs. And they say this far more often than when I was smallish. I also know that I enjoy hugging my larger women friends, for that same pillowy feeling. There's a sense of safety in being enveloped in warm, soft bosom. As a 2 on the Enneagram, I like being nurturing.

Now, it's completely arguable that I won't be a good hugger when I lose this weight. I'll still be good hugger; it will just be different.

Hmmmm, I thought there were more things that I liked about my weight. There are more things I like about my body. I'm strong; I was gifted with a beautiful voice and am learning more each day about how to use it to its best affect; I like my cute, button nose, and my silvery grey hair; I like my broad, bright smile.

Maybe I don't need to hold on to this extra padding any more. I don't feel like I need to be protected from the world anymore. The world is not out to get me. In fact, the world is a very peaceful, pleasant place to be. Yes, there are horrible things going on in the economy and wars in other places in the world. I'm speaking, right now, about my little corner of the world. My isolated little corner, where I am loved by my husband and two children, my mother and all my dads, my friends, my neighbors. I feel so loved these days.

Even in my snot-filled days, which this past week has had plenty of, I feel love.

You can just start calling me Pollyanna.

More book games

2008-12-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

Instructions:

# Look at the list and bold those you have read.
# Underline those you intend to read.
# Italicize the books you LOVE.
# put a frowny face next to the ones you hated

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - I started this on several occasions and just didn't manage to finish it. It's embarrassing, but true.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - When you go to a Lutheran college, biblical studies is required, so yes, I've read this book.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - I have seen more than half of them performed. All of the comedies, few of the histories, all of the tragedies and those inbetween ones like Twelfth Night and the Tempest. My husband has seen all but three of Shakespeare's plays (the man actually has a life list. I'd start one but then I'd decide that I have to sit through the histories.)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - I can't completely explain why I find this book so compelling, but I do. Although for time travel, one ought to also check out "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis.
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - I quote from this one regularly.
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Senior year high school Honor's English class. . . sigh.
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - I had to read this one for Biology 101 in college. Don't ask. I have no idea why.
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (See 33.)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - I started this a long time ago. I still own the book. We'll see if this prompts me to go back and read it.
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - Okay. I only made it through half the book, but then I had to return it to the library because I had renewed it too many times.
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - I don't love this book, but I did find it haunting and thought provoking.
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (I have actually started at least three times. And failed. I even tried getting a running start by re-reading “Portrait of the Artist...” and where is that on the list?) So that was the note from Girlyshoes author, but I went through the exact same process, with the same result. . .
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No, but I love the Laurie King story's about Mary Holmes, Sherlock's young assistant/wife.
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - Honor's English, 11th grade with Mr. Knight.
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - My mother used to read this aloud to us every year around Christmas, right before she read us Miracle on 34th Street.
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Didn’t we already do the entire works back up there on line 14?)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No, not in french. Another high school requirement.

I found it interesting that the ones that I loved were mostly childrens books. Not sure what this says about me. And there are so many books that are not on this list! Where are all the Joanne Harris books? Chocolate and Five Quarters of an Orange are my two favorite of hers. No Amy Tan, Isabelle Allende. . .

Who would you want to see on the list? Is your favorite author on there? Your favorite book? Do you have a favorite book? I'd be hard pressed to pick one.

Okay, I forgot to mention two things. One, I got this from GirlyShoes (she's on the list of blogs over there that I read regularly) and two, I can't figure out how to underline things in this or how to put frowny faces, so those two attributes are not in my list.

SongMom

Learning Music

2008-11-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

So, I've been resting on my laurels in one of my choirs, and I got busted for it. Not by anybody but me. Nobody said anything to me, but I felt the discomfort of not being prepared for a long rehearsal.

I've lovely excuses, I was in New Hampshire for one rehearsal, I missed the first rehearsal and the second half of the second rehearsal because of my retinal tear and subsequent surgery. But I don't like the feeling I had, of not knowing my part. I love making music, but this was painful. I know that I rely heavily on the other people knowing their parts. I learn by being "in" the music, where I can hear all the other bits that are going on. It helps me to tune and learn and to make sense of the music.

I can try to plunk out my parts (on the piano that is being tuned as I type!), but for whatever reason, the line doesn't make sense to my head (or rather to my body) until I can hear it and sing it with the rest of the folks, but they have to know their parts.

It's not exactly fair, but I also don't know how to change it. I can pound a line over and over again at home, and frankly, sing it just fine, but then I can get into rehearsal and that line that I could sing by heart no longer makes sense, because I haven't placed it where it belongs in the harmony.

It would help me immensely if I could play the piano, but I cannot, not multiple lines, just my own. Occasionally, if I'm going really slowly, I can play the soprano line and sing my line against that, but I can't play both those notes at the same time in the proper rhythm. Sigh.

So, I went to a rehearsal and didn't do near as well as I thought I would.

At one point, the conductor was having the altos sing their line all by themselves and I completely lost the tonality of the piece, so I was singing sharps when I should be singing flats and vice versus. It was embarrassing! But it did point out to me again, that I learn my pitches based on what else is going on in the chord, so the line all by itself doesn't make sense to me. It truly didn't make sense to me.

Not that I have any intellectual grasp of what's going on in the chord, mind you. I know the difference between a major and a minor chord, and I can, if I think carefully about it, sometimes tell you what note I'm singing in the chord (meaning the tonic, or the third or whatever), but it's more a matter of feel for me.

I must drive "proper music people" crazy. I've learned some theory, a very long time ago, but it's mostly instinctual by now. I've been singing in choirs for so long that it feels like I know just about all of the Western forms of music enough so that they familiar.

What was funny about that whole "losing the tonality" thing is that once the whole choir, with all the parts, started singing again, I was rock solid on the line. It had to do with trying to sing the line all by itself, out of context.

It would appear that context is everything for me, at least in singing!

Well, the piano tuner's getting up into the high notes and I'm going to have to leave my perch to get away from the sound. I had wondered whether becoming a piano tuner was something that I could do, and clearly it's not. The sound is driving me insane, and the whole point is to listen to the sound (along with the cool gadget that identifies when the string is vibrating at the proper pitch).

So, how do you learn things? Can you learn something by itself and then add it in with other things and have it make sense, or do you need to work from the outside in?

SongMom

Rain!

2008-11-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

This is me in November of 1964. I'm almost three here. We were in Fairbanks, Alaska, (according to the notes that my mother, the genealogist put on the back of the photo - Thanks, Mom!). That's my Grandma Helen behind me. Isn't she beautiful?

It's appropo of nothing. I just like the photo. And I wanted a picture here. What I really want to talk about is the rain! I love rain. Within reason, obviously. This is not scary rain. This is good rain.

My whole family went out and played in the rain with me yesterday. Mark, being the smart husband that he is, donned snowboots (guess he couldn't find his rainboots) and an actual rain jacket. The rest of us went out to get sopping wet. That was the whole goal. In fact, when I got cold and decided to head in, Panda, who was wearing a tank top and shorts, said, "No fair! We're supposed to get soaked! You can't go in now!" And then stayed out to help her father clean out the plugged ditches. So she wins the prize. She got the most wet. That being said, my shirt was still not dry this morning when I tossed it on the laundry pile. It had been hanging up in the vain hope of drying a bit and not molding any clothes it might come into contact with.

This morning, on his morning walk, Mark saw a neighbor who said that we got FIVE INCHES last night. Most of that five inches happened in a two hour period of time, with it pelting down an inch an hour. Okay, that's what he told me, but the math doesn't hold up. That would be 2 1/2 inches per hour. And I KNOW he didn't say that. I was just mesmerized by his blue eyes and didn't notice the math discrepancy.

What is most amazing to me about all of this is that our power didn't go out but for about 30 seconds. I'm guessing that a tree limb simply bowed down and created some sort of arc but then popped back up and let the line recover. No, I don't really know anything about electricity. It's possible that this explanation is complete bullhockey. But here's my thinking. The wind blows the trees about something fierce. The tree bows down, stretching the power line. Something must happen, right?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. . .

Anyway, I loved the storm last night. I even went out in it. I went to Halloween Bunco! For the last three years, the same one of our members has hosted Bunco for this month (yeah, we jumped a day, I figure it's along the same lines as Daylight Savings Time. . .) ANYWAY. . . We had a marvelous time. We laughed and joked and ate good food. We enjoy each others company. It's a good thing; twelve women getting together on a monthly basis with no agenda other than to roll dice and holler at each other.

Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books in 2000-2007

2008-10-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

I was poking around on different websites and landed on Runs with Scissors, checking out her list of top 100 banned books from 1990-2000 and was intrigued by the list. So I went hunting and found the 200-2007 list and like Jean (from Runs with Scissors), I'm bolding the books that I've read. What I found interesting about this list is how many of these books are the ones chosen for my children to read in English Lit classes. I'm glad of it; these are, for the most part, really well written books dealing with issues that we all ought to think about at some point.

Now, all the books that I haven't read yet are on my to-read list. How about you? What are you reading?

1 Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling
2 Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3 The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4 Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
5 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
6 Scary Stories, by Alvin Schwartz
7 Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
8 It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
9 And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
10 Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
11 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
12 The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
13 Forever, by Judy Blume
14 The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
15 The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
16 Killing Mr. Griffin, by Lois Duncan
17 Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
18 King and King, by Linda de Haan
19 Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20 Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
21 The Giver, by Lois Lowry
22 We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
23 To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee`
24 Beloved, by Toni Morrison
25 The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline Cooney
26 Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
27 My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28 In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
29 His Dark Materials series, by Philip Pullman
30 Gossip Girl series, by Cecily von Ziegesar
31 What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32 Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
33 It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
34 Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
35 Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
36 Blubber, by Judy Blume
37 Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
38 Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
39 Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
40 Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41 Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
42 Crazy Lady Jane, by Leslie Conly
43 The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
44 You Hear Me, by Betsy Franco
45 Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
46 Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
47 The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by Dav Pilkey
48 The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
49 The Terrorist, by Caroline Cooney
50 Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
51 Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
52 The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
53 When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
54 Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
55 The Fighting Ground, by Avi
56 The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
57 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
58 Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59 The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
60 A Time To Kill, by John Grisham
61 Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
62 Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
63 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
64 A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
65 Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
66 Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
67 Black Boy, by Richard Wright
68 Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
69 Deal With It, by Esther Drill
70 Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
71 Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
72 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
73 Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
74 Junie B. Jones series, by Barbara Park
75 So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
76 Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
77 Staying Fat, by for Sarah Byrnes Chris Crutcher
78 What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
79 The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
80 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
81 Anastasia Again! Lois Lowry
82 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
83 Bumps In the Night, by Harry Allard
84 Goosebumps series, by R.L. Stine
85 Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
86 Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87 Grendel, by John Gardner
88 The House of Spirits, by Isabel Allende
89 I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
90 Ironman, by Chris Crutcher
91 The Stupids series, by Harry Allard
92 Taming the Star Runner, by S.E. Hinton
93 Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, by Judy Blume
94 Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
95 Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
96 Nathan’s Run, by John Gilstrap
97 Pinkerton, Behave! by Steven Kellog
98 Freaky Friday, by Mary Rodgers
99 Halloween ABC, by Eve Merriam
100 Heather Has Two Mommies, by Leslea Newman

A lesson in perspective

2008-10-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

No, this is not an art lesson. Here's what happened. I was on my way to breakfast with a friend this morning. I'd dressed casually, black cords, brightish green striped top, no makeup, bag across my chest (the way I wore my purse in New York), striding down Pacific avenue towards Hoffman's Cafe.

A man, walking down the street towards me smiled and said, "I'm surprised your husband lets you out of the house."

I was confused by the statement because of his smile. And because of my reaction. In years past, I would have automatically assumed that he meant that I was too fat, too ugly, whatever, to be let out of the house. Just typing that now makes me feel a little nauseous (or nauseated, I can never remember how those two words work. . . I'm sure someone will know and help me out with the correct word.). But today, my first thought was, "Wow, I must be looking pretty good!"

Now, I'm still technically obese (just over that line according to the AMA), my hair is mostly grey, and I'm clearly middle-aged. However, these days I feel like I radiate so much light that those "facts" become assets. I like how this feels.

My hope is to get to a point where I always assume that people are saying good things about me.

Mostly, I'm thinking about where I was four or five years ago, in terms of how I saw myself, or rather how I thought others saw me. It makes me sad to think about how hard I've been on myself for so many years. The person who has been the most critical of me has been me. In fact, I imagine that many of the statements that I perceived as being critical, may not have been meant that way at all, but it was how I took them.

So, perspective. Perspective is everything. How I look at the world determines how the world looks to me. This week the weather is gorgeous. Sunny, clear, slight crisp feeling in the air. My favorite time of year. Would that I always looked at the world through crisp fall air.

*smiling* I think that's my new year's resolution: to look at my world through crisp, fall air with the clarity that comes with the changing of the angle of the sun, so that the light actually looks different.

How do you see the world?

SongMom

Political Discourse

2008-10-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

I have stayed out of this business for a long time, partly because there were so many others who I thought were saying things more eloquently than I could and partly because I was afraid to stick my neck out. I'm still a little bit afraid, and I know that there are many eloquent writers, but I'm jumping off the cliff into the rapids of politics.

I watched a Sarah Palin rally from the sidelines. Now I'm a longtime democrat, but this opportunity fell into my lap. I was on the East Coast, visiting my mother and father and sister (who's also from California and had also flown out). My folks own a beach house on Weirs Beach in Laconia. Sarah Palin got scheduled to speak there on Lakeside Drive just a day or two before the event happened. So, we headed over to the beach house with large Obama signs in hand, to add to the red, white and blue bunting and other Obama signs that were already on the lawn. The house was festooned with political paraphenalia. All the bunting, the 4 foot by 8 foot Obama/Biden sign that got hung below the tower and the series of Obama/Biden signs (I've been saying Obama/Obiden for days now and it would appear that my fingers want to type that as well. . .guess I think they're both Irish.) There was also a rainbow flag with a peace sign on it.

That was the extent of the signage. No negative anything, mostly because we all felt pretty strongly that while we have no problem enjoying the anti-Palin things we've seen on youtube, actual anti-Palin signs would be disrespectful and rude, and not appropriate at a Palin rally.

After decorating the house, we headed back in to the living room to chat for awhile, as the rally wasn't scheduled to start for another few hours.

We're chatting away when a large fellow in dark pants and jacket, wearing sunglasses knocks on the door. My sister heads to answer it. Thinking (just as the rest of us were) "hey, it's private property, you can't make us take it down." The man says, "I noticed your Obama sign . . ." and then flashes the Obama/Biden tee-shirt that is hidden underneath his Steelworks Union jacket and flashes a grin to match.

"Come on in!" we all hollered. There was a little bit of chatter and then he asked if some of his fellow Steelworkers could stand in the parking area where people would walk by, with Obama signs. Well, of course you can! So, about half a dozen men and women came to join him. Then, a fellow wearing an Alaskans for Obama tee-shirt asks if he could park his van in our parking area. It's got all sorts of pro-Obama signs on it and a few anti-Palin bumper stickers (but those are on the side of the van that he directed towards the house so that passersby couldn't see them).

We sat on the porch above the parking spot, and they stayed down on the ground, smiling and saying good morning. Not blocking the way, or initiating anything. They would politely answer questions if asked, but weren't hollering anything, or blocking traffic.

After several hours and most of the people had headed past us, they headed off to another Obama event. They were simply there to represent the Obama side of things and to answer questions if necessary.

As we sat and watched people walk by, it was clear how people felt about our signs. Some muttered and looked away, some actually crossed the street so as to not have to get too close to us and some would circumspectly flash us a thumbs up sign.

Four hours after some of the first people started to head past us, others started heading back to their cars. Sarah hadn't arrived yet. My mother asked one McCain supporter why she was heading back and she said "I can't stand for four hours in the heat. I'm too thirsty." Well, we had already brought down a case of water for the Obama/Biden supports and I knew that some of the case was probably still there, so directed her to get some water. She said, "Are you sure?" and showed her McCain/Palin sign. We said, "of course!" And she smiled as she got her water.

Another fellow was struggling with a cane, so we flagged down the McCain guy with the cart to come help him. He turned and said, "I'm not going to change my vote just because you did that."

We knew that. That's not why we acted to help him.

Some of the signs we saw were pretty cute. "My name is Joe, I have a six-pack and I'm voting for Obama!" This was on a hockey jersey wearing college student who probably really did have a proper six-pack (I thought about asking him to show us, but decided not to.)

Sarah finally shows up (almost three hours late) and Holly (my sister) heads over to the rally. I decide that since it's that close, I may as well head over to hear what she has to say. I got close to the security gate where they were wanding people and searching bags, and thinking that I needed a ticket, don't go any further, but rather just stood there and listened.

Sarah started talking about how proud she is to be an American and that we have the right to vote and how dare anyone try to take that away from us.

I bristled at this comment, because a number of the folks walking past us to the rally had said things about the whole ACORN debacle, saying that Obama had better be ready to answer some questions about that thing.

If you're interested in what ACORN has to say about all of this, go here.

The short version is this: ACORN was turning voter registration workers over to the authorities for filling out bogus registration forms. The republicans decided that this was scandalous and meant that ACORN was trying to somehow generate fraudulent voter records. The twists and turns that were put on this simple act is what I find scandalous. The smear tactics would be funny if they weren't actually working. I don't understand how they could, but that seems to be the case.

I headed back to the house to read my book on the porch. It was a beautiful day and I was also curious to see the reactions of people as they returned from the rally.

I wish I hadn't stayed out there. The hate that was spewed towards us and our signs was palpable. One man shouted "Shame on You, you Socialists." It doesn't look so bad here in writing, but the venom in his voice hit me viscerally.

A young woman pantomimed kicking and tearing the Obama sign along the walkway. I said, "Hey, that's private property." She turned around and snarled that she only wanted to kick and punch Obama. I said, "we aren't dissing your candidate."

She at least had the grace to look embarrassed and walked away muttering to her pals.

I was shocked at the violent things people said to us as they walked by, and the hateful looks they gave us. Not everyone; there were McCain supporters who simply brandished their signs. There was one woman who was looking up and started to wave her sign, I smiled and said, "It's upside-down." She turned it around and shook it at us with a grin, and we grinned back.

But the difference in the behavior of the McCain/Palin supporters on the way to the rally and coming back from the rally was palpable.

Were they all bad? Of course not. There were only a handful of people who yelled things or tried to damage our Obama signs. But nobody from their ranks tried to stop them.

Were all of the Obama folks well-behaved? I wasn't in the actual rally, so I don't know, but I'm not going to assume that. There are people at opposite ends of the spectrum no matter what. I do know that John, the Alaskan for Obama came back from the rally to hang with us because there were some younger Obama supporters who were getting "kind of rowdy." He said he came back to "his people." We were, as I said before, all very polite.

Here's what I do know. I want people to educate themselves. If you don't know what's up with ACORN, go read about it, don't take what you hear on the television or radio as fact. And especially don't get your information from political ads. There's a plan fraught with peril. Ads are meant to sway you, not to give you actual information. The Rachel Maddow Show, while leaning more to the left (which I love), seems to give a fairly balanced report of things, taking the time to track down facts. Read the Huffington Post. There's a particularly interesting article on there right now, written by Gay and Katie Hendricks (of the Hendricks Institute).

I just keep reminding myself to breathe. Slow down, stop worrying, but take action.

So, educate yourself. Get out there and research things if they seem odd or even if they don't.

Okay, getting off my soapbox now.

Songmom

This must be Camelot

2008-10-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

The rain must never fall til after sundown.
By 9:00 pm the moonlight must appear. . .

Okay, so the moon wasn't out Friday night, but it was pelting down rain. Our neighbor Jan, the one who keeps the entire neighborhood running smoothly, reported that we got an inch and a half of rain that night! Not a bad way to start the season. Of course, we started off with a bang last season as well, and then the rain just petered out. We ended up getting a little more than half our annual rainfall last year.

I don't much like droughts.

We slept with the door slightly ajar, so as to let the sound in. Keno is sleeping out in the sunroom these days, which is more like a greenhouse than anything else, with glass above and along both sides of his bed. He loves it out there, mostly because when it rains, the sound is thunderous!

I love the sound of rain on the roof. Although the squirrels, or blue jays (haven't gotten up out of bed to see who's doing this) have been entertaining me in the mornings for the past week. Some critter (and those are the two most obvious suspects) is dropping acorns on the roof and watching them roll down the side of our steep roof. I'm not sure if they're just collecting in the gutters, or if said critter is gathering them up and then storing them somewhere for the winter, but the critter seems to like his or her acorns distressed some how. I'm guessing that the rolling cracks the acorn some how, but I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that each morning for about 15 minutes, I can listen to the sound of acorns rolling down the roof. It's a lively little sound, and delightful for its brevity. If the acorns were rolling all day long, I 'd probably go batty. And, no, the acorns are not just falling from the tree on to the roof, because we've got no oak trees, or any other tree for that matter, close enough to drop things on our roof.

The neighbors have aspen trees, but they only spread shade on our solar panels, and on the other side we've got one red maple tree, whose initial purpose was to shade the house to help keep it cool. Luckily for us, it's never done the growing it was supposed to do. Now we've got solar panels up there on that roof it was planted to shade, so we'd either be hacking down the tree, or just bemoaning the fact that we weren't getting as much use out of our panels. As it is, it's staying small, though incredibly beautiful. In a week or two the tree will look like it's on fire for about three days and then drop all its leaves.

I plan to enjoy that sight as much as I can, while it is here.

In the meantime, I'm loving the crisp, clear air of autumn.

Go out and breathe some of that fragrance in. It's lovely!

I'm outta here, gotta go breathe in my trees.

SongMom

look into my eyes . . .

2008-10-03T13:36:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I'm not an expert with Photo Booth, and I can hardly see because my eyes are so largely dilated, but here's a picture of what it looks like.

You have to look closely to see, but the pupils in my eyes are ginormous!

So, I'm back from the eye doctor's office. And this time he said I could return to all my normal activities. Including yoga! I'm so excited. I had heard of other retinal tear patients who were told (or maybe they just chose) to avoid any sort of inversion (so no Downward Facing Dog, no Wheel, etc). Now, do I *want* to work on a handstand? No, actually I don't. I don't really like going upsidedown. Am I going to tell my yoga instructor that I'm not allowed to do those intense inversions? No. Because that would be lying, but I'm going to lay off some of the more intense ones for awhile, just because that's what feels right to me right now, BUT! I'm going back to yoga on Monday.

One of the things that's happened through all of this is discovering that I truly love my yoga class. I had no idea how much I was going to miss it until I thought I *couldn't* go. I can go, and I want to go.

I've been struggling with going to yoga, there were many parts of me that just didn't want to go. It's exercise, not my favorite thing in the work. I often sweat, also not my favorite thing to do. Mom, it's haaaaaard. . . a voice inside my head would often say as I was heading to yoga.

It will be interesting to see if that voice pipes up Monday morning as I head off to yoga after dropping Keno at the door of the school.

I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the cooler weather. It's gonna rain this weekend! Yes! I love the rain. Not hurricane rain, and I'm grateful that we don't have hurricanes out here. We get good rain storms, that are sometimes pretty scary, but not like what some of you around the world get.

I'm going to walk out in the rain without my rainjacket on, head tilted back, feeling the rain pelting my face, with my tongue hanging out, ready to catch the falling water.

SongMom

Last Friday's Eye Appointment

2008-10-02T08:23:00.001-07:00

I feel like I'm running about a week behind, which of course, I am.

Last Friday Mark (still working from home), drove me to the eye doctor's to have my "repair" checked out. They dilated just the left eye and then the doctor came in. Not the surgeon who had done the surgery, he wasn't available, but one of his colleagues.

I had been creating a list of questions in my head. Yeah, I know, I should have written them down, or rather had someone writing them down for me, but I didn't. As it turned out, it didn't matter. This doctor was unwilling to answer most of my questions, saying that Dr. Ward was much more conservative than he was, so he wasn't willing to tell me what things I could start doing again.

He did say, no driving or reading until Monday. And to come back next Tuesday or Wednesday to see Dr. Ward, so he could answer all those questions of mine (can I do yoga? How much modification do I need to do? When can we start having sex again? You know, the important questions.)

But Dr. Ward isn't available this week (that Tuesday and Wednesday would have been the last two days). So, we're going back in tomorrow, but will be seeing the same doc we saw last Friday. And while I'll have fun with the Bill the Cat imitation (that one eye dilated is just plain freaky looking - I'll see if I can get Mark to take a picture of it to show you all), I don't know how otherwise useful this appointment will be. Well, he will be looking at my eye again and telling me how much stronger it is now than it was last Friday, but I know that already. I can feel it.

My eye still tires if I read for too long. This is more of an issue with the computer than books, but I can feel it getting stronger every day. The floaters are still there, and there is some haze left from the blood that pooled behind the retina, but that will get absorbed soon enough and I just play with the floaters when they get too distracting.

Soon-to-be-Bill-the-Cat, signing off

I can read! I can drive!

2008-10-01T09:56:00.001-07:00

As an adult, these are skills and abilities that I take for granted. Not really thinking about how often I do both of these everyday.

After surgery, while I'm standing with a patch over my eye waiting for instructions on when to get the eye checked, the doc casually says, "You'll need to lay back for three days."

"So, just take it easy?" I said.

"No, literally lay back. You need to be on your back for the next three days."

"Uh, okay."

Matt helps me to the car (carefully calling out the steps as we head back to the car, for which I'm grateful, I would likely have fallen down the steep, concrete steps). I lean the seat back and doze on the way to the transfer spot where Matt and Mark have decided they will "transfer the package." The package, obviously, being me; they're so clever, these boys, they've turned this drama into a spy adventure, either that or a drug transaction. Not sure which of those two scenarios I prefer.

Mark lets his work know that he'll be working from home for the rest of the week and settles in to fixing meals and transporting kids and taking care of me, AND trying to work full days.

Turns out, the hardest part of all of this is keeping me down, on my back, preferably not complaining (not that he said this, but I'm sure he thought it).

Have you ever had to spend three days FLAT on your back? My back started to ache by the end of the first day, but I wasn't really paying much attention to it at that point, because the patch over my eye was wrinkled and irritating. I took it off early that next morning (12 hours before I was supposed to remove it), to see if I could figure out why it was bothering me so much. My eye must have watered the night before because the gauze was not soft and smooth, but rather the opposite. Clever girl that I am, I turned the outside patch inside out so that the inner, and consequently smoother side (having not been vexed by the secretions of my eye all night) is touching my eye. Ahhhh, much better. A little less tightly attached to my head now, so it's slipping around some, but since I'm supposed to be flat on my back, this should, theoretically not be an issue.

I am a hard girl to keep down. I drank a lot of water, partially so I'd have an excuse to get up and walk to the bathroom.

By the end of the third day I was much more plagued by my back than my eye. At that point, my eye, other than the floaters and blurriness, really wasn't an issue. My back, on the other hand, was killing me! And I wasn't quiet about it. Poor husband.

Well, he survived.

I, on the other hand, complained bitterly about not reading. Have you ever tried to NOT read? You know, things like the calendar to see what's happening that day, or the cookbook, or the writing on the shirt of the person in front of you. It's maddening! I had no idea that I read all day. I didn't really miss the driving all that much, but that's only because I had a chauffeur for the things I needed to get to. If I'd been stranded at home with no driver and no ability to drive, that would not have been pretty.

Eye surgery. It's not for sissies.

SongMom

Baroque Obama

2008-09-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Before (or rather in the midst of) all of my eye excitement was the Baroque Obama concert.

I had a lovely time. The floaters receded during the times that I was performing on Saturday and Sunday, so I wasn't bothered by them.

Through the help of one of my baseballswap friends, you can go here to download the mp3 file for our concert. It's 39 minutes long. If you want to skip to the part where you'll hear me, you can scooch the tracker bar over to -10:22 and you should hear a quartet singing. I'm the alto part. The soprano starts and then I come in two beats later. On the second piece that we sing, the soprano and I sing that first line in unison. A feat I find amazing. In general, trying to get two people to blend while singing in unison is much more difficult than three or more.

On the last piece, which starts out with 20 measures of sackbut and cornett and organ, when the singing starts, the tenor starts first and I answer him. You ought to be able to pick my voice out from there. The pieces with violin, bass viol (which is a six stringed cello looking thing that's tuned like a guitar) and organ are glorious!

If you want to listen from front to back, here's a list of songs that were performed

Sonata 2, Stefano Bernardi
Cornetto with alto, tenor and bass sackbuts

Fuga 5, Gottfried Reiche
Fuga 4, Gottfried Reiche
Cornetto with alto, tenor and bass sackbuts

Sonata, Giovanni Legrenzi
Violin, bass viol, organ

Paduan 3, Johan Rosenmuller
Alto, tenor and bass sackbuts

Benedicta sit, Giovanni Arrigoni
Soprano voice, violin, cornetto, bass viol, organ

Canzon 25, Giovanni Gabrieli
Cornetto with alto, tenor and bass sackbuts

Sonata 1-4, Dario Castello
Violin, bass viol, organ

Lieber Herre Gott, Johan Rosenmuller
Soprano voice, tenor and bass sackbuts, organ

Da Pacem Domine, Melchoir Frank
Verleih uns Frieden, Balthasar Resinarius
Soprano, alto, tenor and bass voice

Credo from Missa de Batalia, Mateo Romero
cornetto with alto, tenor and bass sackbuts

Da Pacem, Heinrich Shutz
cornetto; alto, tenor and bass sackbuts; singers, organ, bass viol

Enjoy!

I'll write more about my eye surgery and recovery tomorrow. I am going to be limiting my time on the computer today. I spent too much time yesterday writing that long-winded post and I suffered for it. I intend to listen to my body much more closely today so that I continue to heal.

SongMom

Two New Floaters = Retinal Tear

2008-09-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a long week. The Baroque Obama concert went swimmingly, even though I was looking out at the audience through those new, largish floaters in my left eye. We raised over $1400 to send to the national Obama Campaign and sang to almost 300 people.

I still haven't figured out how to post an mp3 file, so while I have a recording (it's 39 minutes long and includes all of the pieces, including the three that I sang on), I can only email it to folks who ask. So, ask if you want it.
( nanvoogd@mac.com )

Back to the floaters. They were bothersome, but not worrisome enough to do anything about on the weekend (or so I thought). They would come and go.

On Monday morning, I headed to yoga. At about 11:45, right before we were to head into a practice version of handstand, a LARGE black, snaky floater showed up in my left eye and a smear on the lens. I felt like I was looking through a camera lens that had vaseline smeared on it (a technique I learned while in photography in the 8th grade in the mid-seventies). I finished yoga class and headed out to the local Urgent Care, which happened to be less than a mile away. On the way there I make a quick call to Mark and Megan (Mark's at work, and Meg's home sick) to let them know what's happened and that I'm going to go get it checked out.

Urgent Care seemed to panic about my eye, got me in quickly (ahead of others who were sitting there). The doc checked out my eye and said, "I need to send you up to Opthalmology so they can check your retina." As he was rushing me out the door he said "You don't need to worry too much about this."

"Too much?" I laughed, nervously.

Up the stairs I go to find Opthalmology. . . I check in, the assistant at the front desk says "I'll get you in as soon as I can, the doctor just headed in to see someone, but will see you as soon as she gets out."

I starting to get pretty nervous now. People are sounding concerned but also confused by my symptoms.

Now I sit in the office waiting area, looking at a picture of the desert, with that lovely black snaky floater waving hypnotically back and forth, through the smeary film. It's quiet in the waiting room, I'm getting hungry, because it's almost 1:00 now and I ate scrambled eggs at 7:00 this morning.

The assistant at the window calls me over and tells me that I've got an appointment at 1:45, but not to leave because I might get called in early. Huh? I thought this was urgent, but now I have almost an hour to wait. Reading doesn't seem like a good idea, so I stare at that picture.

I do get called in early, by a woman who doesn't seem to understand that this isn't just a regular, routine visit. When she tells me that they'll need to dilate both eyes, I panic and say something like "but I live a half an hour from home and I'll be stranded." Which of course, makes no sense to anyone, including the woman who had been treating me like a grade schooler and now starts treating me like a young toddler. She says that they dilate people all the time and they drive right afterwards. Uh, okay. That's not what I've heard from the eye doctor, but I want to find out what's going on, so I'm certainly not going to refuse.

Another long wait as my eyes dilate, then the eye doc comes in. She's a breath of fresh air. Confident, treating me like a reasonable adult (of course it helps that I'm now acting like a reasonable adult rather than a panicked small child).

She pokes around, looks at my eye with a very bright light and then puts numbing drops in the left eye saying, "You'll feel some pressure now." She doesn't mention that she's now got a needle in her hand and she's approaching my eye.

She's right. There's pressure. There's also beautiful fireworks. Lots of those gold dots, mixed with many other colors of dots, and pressure as she moves that implement around, looking at the back side of my eye.

"Are you a diabetic?" she asks.

"No, why?"

She chuckles, says something about my getting suspicious and goes back to moving that implement around and inducing more fireworks in my eye. It's trippy and beautiful at the same time. And I've got nothing better to do, so I enjoy the view.

"The reason that I asked about your being diabetic is because there are some blood spots. That's what's causing the blurry effect, and you have a horseshoe tear in your retina. I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that you'll need laser surgery today. I'll have my assistant set up an appointment for you. The office is only two miles away, but you should have someone drive you."

Okay. It's real now. I call Mark to let him know what's up and ask if he can pick up Kyle from school (because it's almost 3:00 now and Kyle gets out in 50 minutes, there's no way I can get him). And now it's scramble time. I need to get to the office two miles away. Oh wait, that office is closed, so is their Watsonville office. The only other retinal surgery office is in Campbell.

Now I'm crying. I'm feeling helpless and stuck. Through a number of gyrations (that don't actually take that long, but feel like forever), our buddy Matt comes to the rescue. Picks me up, gathers up the information on where we're headed and starts driving.

I'm on the phone with Grace (my fabulous yoga instructor) who's talking me through something called "intentional resting." This is a godsend. It's a way of putting your attention on what's currently going on in your life, and consciously choosing to "intentionally rest." So, I use that meditation practice on the ride to the retinal specialist.

Matt finds the place with no trouble, and helps me up the stairs and down the long hall. I've got sunglasses on because my eyes are still dilated and bright lights are painful. More boring details with filling out forms (Matt writing, me answering questions). And then more waiting. I get brought back to the exam room where they test my vision again and give me more drops to keep my eyes dilated and send me back out to the waiting room saying "We'll try to fit you in." It's now close to 4:00. It becomes apparent that I'll not be fit in, but rather added to the end of the day, which is at 5:00 (for which I'm grateful, they could have been a late working office and I could have been waiting several more hours).

5:00 I get called in by the tech again. Left in the darkened room once more, but this time rather quickly a doc comes in. Asks me a few questions:

"What do you do? "
"I'm a stay-at-home mom."
"A hockey mom?"
"God, no. But I am from Alaska."
"Can you dress a moose?"
"Sure."
"Can you undress a moose? Why would people want to dress a moose in the first place?"

By now I'm belly laughing. It's a good release for all the tension I'm carrying in my body at this point.

He leans the chair back and says: "Let's let this settle down, I'll be back in a bit."

Settle down? There are no new drops. Not sure what he expects to settle down. Me? Maybe.

He heads out, I can hear him consult about some other situation for a bit and then comes back in.

He brings out the same small bright light/magnifying glass sort of thing and starts to look around at my eye. No needle this time.

"Well, Dr. Nguyen made a good call. You do need surgery and now. There aren't many nerves back there, so we don't need to give you an injection, you're lucky about that."

We head to the room with the proper equipment (after a quick potty break before which Dr. Ward says "make sure you don't tear that retina all the way off going to the bathroom."

He's not really joking. . .

Now he's got on this bizarre headgear with goggly eyes and he turns off the lights.

"This is green laser. It's the most gentle form of eye surgery there is. I'll give you a few test flashes so you can get used to it. As we work around the eye, repairing the tear, the intensity of the laser will increase."

He's not kidding. Yeah, there aren't very many nerves back there, but there are some. This is one of the most intense experiences I've ever had, and I've given birth to two children. At one point, near the end, I felt like I would have passed out if I had been able to close my eye. It was a funny thought, because of course passing out doesn't require closing one's eyelid, but I definitely felt like I didn't want to be in my body any more.

About three quarters of the way through the "welding" he said "I don't know how you sing [I'd told him about teaching the singing workshops], but you're an excellent laser surgery patient. You're the best!" And then he kept going with those bright flashes. They started out green, but quickly moved to white. I think the actual laser flash was probably still green, but my brain had turned it to white. I got to see the "relief" view of the veins in my eye in many different colors. It was quite beautiful, when I could get beyond the intensity of the experience.

Two-hundred and sixty-three laser "welds" later, he put a patch over my eye, told me to stay flat on my back for the next three days and to see his colleague on Friday.

More tomorrow. My eye is starting to ache and I really don't want to do damage to the repairs. He did say that it should take about 6 weeks for the "welds" to be completely healed and that in the meantime, while my eyes are getting progressively better, they're not healed. Also, I get to keep the blur and the floaters. The surgery can't fix that, but it does keep me from losing the sight in that eye. Seems like a fair trade to me. . .

SongMom

Second time, it's a habit

2008-09-19T16:53:00.001-07:00

The whole quote is this: “First mistake is just a mistake, second mistake is a habit, third mistake – a tradition. Let’s not make any traditions here!” Robert Shaw

But I'm sticking with Ragmop, my new version of this is Second time it's "oh, hell." It ends up having the same effect (maybe not as funny to those not in the know. . .).

And it's come to my attention that I've left you all hanging about the Carnegie Hall bit of all of this. I didn't mean to leave you with the conclusion that we weren't singing there at all, but that's how that post reads. Anyway. . .

We are singing in Carnegie Hall. We're performing April 16th, 2009. That's a Thursday. Should any of you be in the area, come hear Rachmoninoff's Vespers. It's a glorious piece of music.

In the meantime, anybody know about eye floaters? I've had little floaters for most of my life. As a kid, I use to play with them while lying on my back looking up at the blue Alaskan sky. There one would be, just a tiny little blackish blob, floating around in my vision, swirling about as a leaf on the wind or one skittering across a pond, uncatchable. They didn't bother me. I liked them. They were my friends.

Hey. I was lonely. How many friends did you have growing up who were always there when you needed them?

Now, I've suddenly got two new friends. Both in my left eye. They seem to be attached to each other, as they look like they're holding hands and dancing about in a whirling dervish sort of way. They're mildly disconcerting because they're much more distracting than my previous friends who seemed to only come out to play when I wanted them to. These are like big bully kids who initially act like they just want to play, but then start to push you around asking for milk money.

I'm going to the eye doc on Tuesday to introduce him to my friends to make sure that they're not dealing drugs, or doing some peer-pressure thing with the other floaters. Because if they band together who knows what havoc they could wreck.

Well, I'm off to Baroque Obama rehearsal. I did tell you all about that, didn't I? Hmmm, I'll bet I didn't.

I'm performing with the Antiquarian Funks and three other vocalists. We're performing baroque music from the 17th century, all centered around Peace. It's a fundraiser for Obama.

For those of you lucky enough to be local, here are the vital statistics:

When:

Saturday, Sept. 20th (tomorrow!) at 8:00
Sunday, Sept. 21st at 4:00

Where:
First Congregational Church
900 High Street
Fellowship Hall

Come hear amazing music, see amazing instruments (actual antique sackbutts and krumhorns, etc) and support Barak Obama!

SongMom, signing off

this is what happens when I don't have all the information. . .

2008-09-17T14:01:00.001-07:00

The Chorale is not performing the Rachmoninoff in New York in November. When I asked the conductor about the dates for the Rachmoninoff, I didn't know that she'd spent an hour at the first Chorale rehearsal talking about having been asked to conduct in Carnegie Hall, asking if she could bring her Chorale and if they (we) could perform Rachmoninoff's All-Night Vigils, and deciding that she wanted a local performance here in the area to make sure we were up to the challenge of a New York performance.

So, when I asked when the performance was and she said November 1st or 2nd, I flipped! Started shifting all my plans around, trying to make that work, panicking that I wasn't going to be ready with the music. Yes, I've sung the Rach, but that was over twenty years ago. I don't have my old score (because I decided a few years back that I was done with classical music forever and gave all my scores away - silly me) so I didn't have anything to look at to calm me down (or wig me out, which it might have done if I'd looked before we sang two of the movements last night and I was reminded of the beauty and majesty of the music and that fact that the Church Slavonic really wasn't that hard to bring back to my tongue).

I'm calmer now. I don't know what the conductor will do about the Contralto Solo. I have registered my interest in audition for it. (By sending her an email saying precisely that: that I was registering my interest, blah, blah, blah.)

I do know that the choir performed the Rach in the Spring of last year with a paid tenor soloist and three women from the choir singing the Contralto solo together in order to be heard over the 100-voice choir. I'm interested in either joining the trio (one of the women didn't return to the chorale this year), or exploring the possibility of singing it as a solo. I don't know yet if I've got the power and focus of voice to do it, but I'd sure love to try. Of course, this is all just me dreaming, as I have no idea what the director wants to do in terms of that solo.

Last night's rehearsal was, as has been the case so far, exhilarating. Singing in the small group, we worked fast and furious at blending and shaping the music. It felt wonderful to not have to pound notes (although I'm going to need to do that before next week, since I was sightreading last night and there were a few sections that I didn't get quite right) on a first rehearsal. Our sound is good and has the potential to be great.

In the big choir, each year there has apparently been a "theme." The theme this year is "one mistake." Meaning, you get to make a mistake once and then you fix it. It's a great thing to work towards. One of the tenors said that he had a choir director once who said: The first time it's a mistake, the second time it's *oh hell, I can't remember what the second time noun is*, the third time it's a tradition. Has anybody else heard this? I'll have to check with the tenor who said that and get back to you on that second noun, but I got the important one (tradition).

Well, that's all for now, folks.

SongMom

So Many Things!

2008-09-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

There are many things going on in my life right now.

Do I write about my sister's visit last night?

The fact that I fell down some stairs, turned my ankle and then went into your classic vasovagal syncope (also known as fainting or swooning)?

Or the fact that I'll be singing in Carnegie Hall in November?

I'll start with my sister's visit. It was short, but sweet. She lives in Paradise, which is about a 5 hours drive from here. She doesn't make it down this way very often, so it's always good to see her.

It was short because she is participating in a workshop in San Rafael, which is about 2 hours from here. So she was here and awake with us for two hours. Keno decided that he wanted to bake cookies for his Auntie; ordinarily he would have just asked me to make the cookies. And, ordinarily, I would have simply made them. Luckily for both of us, I fell at about 5:00 yesterday afternoon. Three hours before my sis showed up. So he was on his own in the cookie-making adventure.

We discussed the fact that there were no chocolate chips in the house (they get eaten by the handful by everyone but me) and came up with the idea of using hot cocoa powder instead. I've done this before and it works quite well.

So Keno heads off to the internet to get a recipe for TollHouse cookies to modify. Heads into the kitchen with the help of his father and gets started. Dad leaves him to his own devices, not realizing that Keno's never baked before in his life.

Keno makes a very logical decision about this line item:

2 1/4 cups flour

He does the math, and puts a 1/2 a cup of flour in the batter.

Keno has Auntie and me taste the batter. It tastes great and I don't pay any attention to the fact that it is much more like a cake batter than cookie dough and say "yum!". My sis tastes it, saying quietly to me "there's no flour in this." It just doesn't register with me that this is a problem, so I send Keno off to bake the cookies.

Well, with that much butter and sugar, and that little flour, the cookies spread right off the pan. They taste great, but we have to scrap them off the cookie sheet with the back of a spatula.

(Why is it that the utensil you use to scrap down the sides of a bowl with and the utensil that you use to flip pancakes, which are very different instruments, have the same name?)

As Auntie is heading to bed her phone/alarm clock turns itself off, so she asks Keno (who's the only one still in the living room) for an alarm clock. In the process of that exchange, my sis tells my son about her first adventure making cookies. She was at home alone, and not allowed to turn on the oven, so she makes the batter and waits for Mom to come home. Mom tastes the batter and says "How much flour did you put in here?" Auntie says "Two and a quarter cups, why?" Mom says "What cup did you use?" Auntie pulls out the pyrex two-cup measure and says "This one." So, Keno had too little flour, and Auntie had too much. The end result was the same, semi-edible cookies and learning experience.

I'm hoping to get Keno to make another batch of cookies today with a small amount of guidance (or maybe just overseeing, biting my tongue as much as possible as I tend to over-help), so he can have positive results.

Auntie and Keno have reminded me that baking and cooking has its own language and assumptions, just like anything else. If you don't know the rules, it's easy to make mistakes. My recipe cards are simply a list of ingredients with a few sparse instructions to fill in those gaps that are different from how I would normally make something.

Regarding the ankle. I'm fine. It's a little tender. It was not a bad turn. The whole vasovagal faint thing is just embarrassing. It's your typical "swoon." A reaction to the falling. I was just reading about it on the internet. It's a little disconcerting to read that it's an "exaggerated or inappropriate reaction" to the "severe pain." At least that's the item I'm choosing from the long list of things that usually cause that reaction. I picked it from these:

* Emotional distress, including panic attacks, anxiety attacks or fear (uh. My life is pretty calm, or at least I thought it was until this morning)

* Standing in a hot, crowded area (definitely not, it was chilly yesterday)

* Having a bowel movement (especially if straining) (Okay, I thought about just leaving this one off of my blog, but in the interest of integrity, I left it in. I fell; there was no pooping involved, strained or otherwise.)

* Coughing strenuously (no pooping, no coughing)

* Unpleasant situations, such as the sight of blood (unless you count the pile of laundry I was carrying as an unpleasant situation. . .)

* Urinating (okay, some small amount of this happened, but that was after I hit the concrete floor of the garage.)

* Standing in one place too long (duh. I rarely stand too long in one place, now if it had said sitting. . .)

* Breathing too fast (hyperventilation) (nope. slow deep breathing for me.)

* Severe dehydration (I drink water all day long.)

* Severe pain (calling the fall severe pain is arguable, but it's the closest thing in this list!)

* Heat exposure (nope, it was lovely and chilly yesterday.)

As for the Carnegie Hall thing. I'll wait to write about that until I know for certain when it's happening and if I'm going to participate.

Songmom

Rehearsal Notes

2008-09-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I never came back and told you about last Tuesday's full rehearsal.

Here are some small tidbits. The conductor does an incredible job of creating pictures for us to sing from. She'll describe something, have us think about that and then sing from that place, or to that place, depending on the "picture."

We were working on a beautiful baritone solo (that everyone eventually gets to sing) in the Faure Requiem. Faure wrote a stunningly beautiful line. The lyrics start out "Libera Me, Domine." It's about being freed from life. With the hopes that you're heading to heaven. Well, this line is heaven. Anyway, we had sung it once, she told us a story about what to picture (and here's where it gets fuzzy for me because I was busy trying to get a hold of a copy of the music, so I don't know what she said). I found my spot in the music just as we were singing again. The difference between the first and second rendition was incredible. I wish I knew what thing she told people to picture in their minds. Whatever it was; it worked. All of a sudden the line, which had been sufficiently beautiful the first time through, was now stunningly gorgeous. There was a longing in the line that wasn't there before.

Then we moved on to some carribean christmas songs we're going to sing. Very simple, but FUN! I was moving and bopping to the music by the time rehearsal was over. I didn't want it to be over, even though I'd been there since 6:00. Four hours of singing and I still wanted more.

However, once I got in the car and headed home in the dark I realized just how tired I was.

Auditions are nerve-wracking. Especially when you're not prepared. Although, I suppose then you don't have to deal with the dreading beforehand.

But I had such fun.

That was a week and a half ago. Now for the call back auditions.

She had said that she was going to be calling back more people than she wanted, so that she could see about blend.

The list comes out and there are 25 names on it. Mine's the only one that has a first and last name. I'm assuming that's because everyone knows everyone else.

Anyway, I'm rushing because the woman I carpool with was running a tiny bit late. I'm one of those goofy "if you can't be on time, be early" kinds of people. The carpooling will be fine. She was only a few minutes late, but I was nervous about the call backs.

So, we're in and singing through the piece one time. This time she's calling 8 people up at a time. Two on a part. Two on a part is tough. It's the hardest thing to blend. Two on a part. Ack! One is easy, three is easy. Two is TOUGH! Oh, sorry.

Well, if she's looking to see what people can do with blend, that's certainly the way to do it. So she has one set of 8 up. She takes out all but two and adds six more. Then another set of 8. I'm still sitting and I'm sweating. My breath is shallow. I can feel my entire body tensing. I don't like waiting. I prefer to just sing and get it out of the way.

Finally, she calls me up. I'm up with nobody I know. Of course, that's not hard to do, since I know all of three people auditioning at this point.

We sing. We hit the tough spot at the top of page two and she stops us. She spends sometime talking about how the alto's pitch goes sharp in this one spot, see, here it's the tonic, but then the chord changes and it's the fifth. I'm listening intently. It sounds like she's asking me to keep the pitch low. Hmmm, that's odd, because the dynamic tune would have it go sharper, but she's the conductor so okay.

We sing again, the other alto and I both hold that pitch low and the conductor stops us again. "You went FLAT!" Uh, that's what we thought you wanted us to do.

NO! She heads over to the piano to explain again. It's at that point that the other alto and I look at each other and say "didn't she want us to stay low?" I realize what she's trying to tell us and apologize for misunderstanding.

The next time through we sing it perfectly.

She sends everyone back except me. I'm standing up there. She calls up a tenor and a bass and then finally another soprano. Then she starts us up at that tricky spot again. The tenor bombs. He can't find the tonality to save his life, poor dear. He's pulling out his pitch pipe, trying to play his note, but we're in dynamic tuning now, not tempered so he's toast.

Okay, let me back up a little bit. I'm not sure what the real term for my dynamic tuning is. I know what tempered is. Tempered tuning is what the piano is tuned to. That way you can play in any key you want and the tuning isn't all funny. But if you're playing a stringed instrument, notes are tuned higher or lower depending on the key you're in, the place in the chord that the note is in, etc. Anyway, most singers don't often sing a ccapella. They sing with a piano, they learn music from a piano, they're not familiar with this thing that I call dynamic tuning. (I really wish I knew the proper phrase for that.) Anyway, tuning is tricky.

So, we're back to the tenor. She has him sing the line by himself. She sings with him. He matches her pitches fairly closely, but he's still sticking closer to tempered tuning. She adds a bass. The tenor completely loses his tonality. It's tight harmony, this Ave Verum Corpus that Mozart wrote. Beautiful. But tight harmonies, and clearly not what he's familiar with. She says "how about if we add Nancy to that, so you can see where you fit." I sing. The bass and I nail our pitches. The tenor is still struggling. We spent almost 20 minutes on this. I'm completely relaxed by now, because it's clear that I'm blending well, I'm singing the pitches the way she wants them sung. I'm truly excited that she wants dynamic tuning (or whatever the hell it's called, please if you know, you HAVE to put me out of my miser). I struggle with tuning when everyone else is singing tempered tuning. It just doesn't ring. You won't get overtones with tempered tuning. I get pissy when people holler at me if they're singing tempered and I'm singing dynamic tuning.

So, Panda is waiting impatiently for me to finish this post. She just logged on and read the back posts to get caught up and then wailed "I'm Done! Finish that post, Mom!" And then proceeded to ask me question after question til I finally hollered "Stop that!" Stop asking me questions, evil child. I'll never finish if you don't stop asking me questions." "oh" says she, sheepishly, "okay."

Not 15 seconds later: "So Mom, there's this pair of white skinny jeans . . ."

ARGH!

Now we're laughing uproariously, but I'm still not finished with the darn post.

Oh, now it's quiet. I've asked Keno to turn off the sound of the game he's playing and Panda to turn off the music she's playing and the STOP the questions!

And it's quiet. Except for the crickets. They're getting noisy.

All's quiet on the woodland front.

Nighty night.

SongMom

I'm in!

2008-09-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

I made the small choir. We're called the Symphony Silicon Valley Singers at this point. They might change the name in the future, but that's the name for now. There are ten men and 12 women.

Callbacks were nerve wracking because there were only three extra people. To be one of the three would not feel good.

I was worried about that. In fact, I wrote a whole post about it, but then decided that the post was too self-denigrating, nit-picky, just plain whiny. Seems like I write a lot of whiny posts and then come to my senses and leave them in the Drafts section where they belong.

The problem with that is that then you, dear reader, are left waiting, wondering what is happening with me. Because it's crucial that you know, right? snicker. I'm laughing at myself here. I know that there are four or five of you who check daily, and I feel badly when I know that I haven't posted. Clearly not badly enough to remedy the situation, just badly enough to waste my own time and energy thinking about it.

I need to write those whiny posts; it's good to get them off my chest, but I certainly don't need to post them.

What I do need to do is figure out a more consistent posting schedule. Writing daily isn't hard, it's the writing of something that is post-worthy that I find difficult.

I have so many different things running through my head each and every day. Some days I don't get to the computer. Yesterday was one of those.

I had a lovely day in town. I walked along West Cliff with a new dear friend. I went to Healing Waves Network Chiropractic center for an alignment. If you don't know about Network Chiropractics, check it out. It feels (and looks) like voodoo, but what I know about it is that my posture is completely different from when I started. I now walk erect. The effect of that on the rest of my body is dramatic. My back and neck no longer chronically hurt. My breathing is deeper and more delicious.

I took my daughter to the Orthopedic Surgeon to have her osteocondroma checked out. That's a calcification of the bone. This happens to be a growth off the side of her femur. It's painful, but not worrisome.

Now we get to think about possible surgery. Oh joy.

In the meantime, she's got three months of physical therapy to go to, to strengthen her knee muscles. She's got what the doctor called "hyper-mobile" knee joints. Turns out it's hereditary and I'm the parent with the hyper-mobile joints as well. Of course, none of this is a surprise. But it was a little shocking to hear a doctor say it. Sigh.

Today is a quiet day. I'm home doing laundry and thinking about next week's food menu and getting ready to go shopping for the week. There is the tiniest breeze rippling the aspen leaves on the trees outside our tall, tall windows. The sunlight through them is mesmerizing.

I'm going to go bond with my trees before heading off the hill.

SongMom

New Choir Possibilities

2008-09-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

New choir possibilities opened up last night. Actually last week. A college buddy of mine, with whom I've sung in many different choirs, both in college and after, wrote to exclaim about the choir she'd just joined. She'd gone to one rehearsal, but came back raving about the choir, the director, the whole ball of wax.

I had been toying with the idea of dropping my smaller choir for a number of reasons, and the thought of getting to sing with Susan again was appealing. Plus, her standards for directors is as high as mine, so the fact that she was so excited was contagious.

So, on a whim, I asked about auditions, secured a time-slot and headed off to see if I could put together a song to sing.

I hate auditions. I'm not exactly sure why, because I usually end up hearing that I have a lovely voice and would I please come join their group. . .

Anyway, I spent some time last week putting together a small lullaby that I had sung my freshman year in college. I happened to have kept the sheet music for it and it was hiding in the piano bench along with a bunch of piano books and recorder books and several books of songs that I didn't recognize. It's a simple lullaby by Franz. The words are sacchrine, so I chose to attempt the German instead.

In my excitement, I've forgotten that Tuesdays are already big driving days. I drive down to the ranch to pick up the milk from my cow share. The ranch is in Watsonville, so it's a good hour to get there.

And it was hot yesterday. I don't do hot well.

So, I've been in the car for hours; I'm nervous about this song that I don't feel particularly comfortable singing. I don't like the sight-reading part, although I usually do fairly well.

Did I mention that it was hot?

It was 95 degrees at the church.

My audition is scheduled for 5:45. I get there on time. But there's a line of cars parked along a red painted fire lane outside a gated parking area.

I pull in behind the last one and wait. Not patiently, because I'm nervous. But I wait because I can't do anything else.

It's only a few minutes, but it feels like a life time.

Finally someone arrives to unlock the gate. The cars start up and our little procession heads in to the parking lot. And into the building.

Oh dear, I've dropped into "blow by blow" mode. I'll stop now. Of course, I'm now past the boring bit, because the director shows up, sleeping son in the car, rushing about with music and other things to take into the building.

I fill out the necessary paperwork. Here's the long list of choirs I've sung in over the years, no I don't play an instrument, no I've never had any proper singing lessons. Other than a few months here and there over the years, as people try to figure out what part I actually sing. You're a soprano. No, you're an alto. No, you're a mezzo. No. So I've sung everything from soprano 2 to Tenor 1 in choirs because they can't figure out what I am, and will use me as necessary. My only complaint about singing Tenor 1 is having to read the treble clef with the funny little 8 at the bottom signifying that I need to read it an octave down. My brain doesn't like that very much.

Okay, back to the audition. I tried to set the tempo for my song fairly slow, but my whole body is in speed-mode, so I plow through the song, much faster than I wanted.

The director has me sight-singing. I start, she stops me. "You'll want to go much more slowly than that. There are sixteenth notes coming up." She gives me a new tempo. I sing at that tempo. Stopping to fix intervals as I notice the mistakes. That's not always a good thing. Some directors want you to just plow through, others want to know that you know that you've made a mistake.

Anyway, the whole audition takes about 5 minutes. After my song, the director turns to her 5-year-old son, who's been sitting there and asks if he likes the song. He shakes his head no. I laugh. My kids would have done the same thing.

The director is handing me a new piece of music saying "I'm having auditions for a small group just now. Please stay and audition. The rest of the folks got this music two days ago."

What? Small group? I've heard rumors about the starting up of a small group. I knew that auditions were today after my audition, but I certainly didn't expect to be auditioning.

The audition piece is a lovely madrigal. There are the typical tonalities of a madrigal, which if you've sung them are familiar, and if you've not sung them can be quite tricky. Luckily for me, I've sung a lot of madrigals over the years.

It's in french. She's got it with English words as well, but we're warming up first on "da" and then after one run through, we're singing in French.

Again, it's a darn good thing I've been doing this as long as I have, and in as many languages as I have and that I'm a damn good mimic and vocal leach.

She first asks for volunteers. There are none. So she picks the first quartet.

There are 13 altos here to audition, by far the largest number of people for a part. So we've got to listen to 13 versions of this. With a variety of different people, because there are only a handful of basses and tenors.

For the next three rounds, she picks a tenor and then tells him to pick the rest of the quartet. This is an interesting experiment I think, because it tells her a number of things about the tenor. Will they pick friends or people who sing really well, someone to bolster them or show their voice off. Are they even thinking that clearly? Who knows.

Anyway, for round number five, she picks a tenor, a soprano, she's looking around at the altos, catches my eye and says "do you want to sing?"

Yes, please. Let me get this over with.

"In French?"

"Sure." I say, shrugging.

As I stand up there, she says "This is Nancy. She just auditioned and passed with flying colors. I asked her to stay to audition, so she's only just now seen this piece of music."

I can feel the tenor beside me stiffen a little.

We sing. We all do well. The director has put me up there with good strong singers. I'm grateful. It's a whole lot easier to hold one's part when everyone else is singing the right part.

She has us sing the first section, thanks us and we sit down.

As the auditions go on I notice several people have memorized the music! I'm so glad I hadn't noticed that before I got up to sing.

I had been thinking that I was going to be able to go out and get supper during the hour break between my audition and rehearsal. Ah well.

The rehearsal went well. I found a spot in amongst the Alto 2s and settled in to see how the choir worked.

This conductor is amazing. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow. Remind me, okay?

SongMom

too much blathering

2008-08-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

I have started six different blogs in the past three days. All of them, some version of whining about myself.

Frankly I'm getting sick of myself. My ego yammering on about how important my learnings are.

Then, when I try to write about them, I end up sounding pompous and arrogant.

*snort*

I'm pretty funny sometimes. So, I'm not going to post those. Reading them is a little like reading my 7th grade diary. Hmmmm. Maybe I'm regressing.

Oh well, at least I was funny in the 7th grade. Maybe I should post some of my teenaged angst. That is sure to make people laugh.

In the meantime, who were you in junior high and high school? Did people know who the real you was? Do people know who the real you is now?

Songmom

Influence . . . what does it look like?

2008-08-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of friends who will do pretty much anything I suggest, simply because I've suggested it.

I got a Microsoft big whig to try reflexology. (She loved it.) I've gotten people to try soaking their oatmeal in water and whey the night before. (They loved the yummy, creamy result.) I've been influencing people to buy Shift Decks because I completely believe in this product. (Check it out. Go to http://dianachapman.com and click on the STORE button. I get no monetary kick-back. What I do get is the knowledge that people who choose to buy and use this product are shifting their energies from negative to positive. And having fun while doing it. This is an important thing. If you do choose to buy a shift deck, could you please come back here and post a comment saying that you did, so I can see the ripples I'm making in the world? Thanks!)

I have influence. We all do. The more integrity we have; the more influence we have. Actually, that's probably not true, but it should be, because influence is powerful. Use it wisely.

We influence people every day: positively, negatively; it's our choice.

We influence our children; we influence the drivers around us on the road; the people in line in front of and behind us.

This is all said for me. If it happens to be of use to you, then I'm lucky, but mostly I'm just reminding myself. I tend to forget these things.

I often think I'm invisible and that what I do or say doesn't really affect anyone. This is so patently untrue! And yet, I still believe it much of the time.

Sigh.

I have influence.
I have influence.
I have confidence in sunshine. I have confidence in rain.

Uh, where was I? Sorry, got lost in the Sound of Music again. Why do the lyrics of that movie crop up so bloody often in my life?

I have no idea where I was. Does it matter? Probably not. I'm invisible and what I say doesn't really affect anyone. . .

damn, there's that loop again.

Okay, repeat after me:

I have influence.

Now I've got to go lie down.

Songmom

News Flash: Hot Flashes are discombobulating

2008-08-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

I'm only 46. And I'm currently on my period. (Sorry if that's TMI, but it's germane to the topic.)

Yesterday, while rehearsing for the Baroque Obama concert, I noticed that I felt flushed and was sweating. Only moments before, the bass in the quartet had opened the screen door to let cool air in from the yard, so I figured the cool air just hadn't reached me yet.

Then I began dripping sweat. I start to panic. Do I have a fever? I'd come into the rehearsal fatigued, for no apparent reason. No other symptoms, plenty of rest the night before, just dog tired. Was I starting to come down with some sort of monster flu? I don't get fevers very often, and when I do, they're in the low 100 range, because my normal temp runs around 96.8, rather than the standard 98.6. So I don't sweat when I get a fever either. But here I am sweating, heart racing, panicked.

Turns out, the heart-racing, panicky feeling is part and parcel with a hot flash. Who knew? Women who've had them, I suppose, and women who've decided to be prepared for menopause and so know in advance that hot flashes often start two to three years before the cessation of menarche. I had NO idea.

I was completely flummoxed. How could I be bleeding AND experiencing a hot flash simultaneously?

Lucky for me the soprano in the quartet recognized it at once as a hot flash. At the end of rehearsal, I hung back to ask "one more question." The tenor and bass bolted.

"I'm on my period! Can it still have been a hot flash?" I asked, feeling like when I'd first gotten my period. Scared and confused.

When I first got my period, I was 11. I thought I was dying. Possibly cancer. I was sure that I was being punished for something I'd done. I waited almost two full days before telling my mom that I was dying and could we please go to the hospital.

She laughed and said "Oh honey, you're not dying. This is normal."

First time experiences for anything hold so much learning in them.

I'm holding on to the feeling of newness in this. Not sure I'm ready to move on to the next phase of my life, but clearly my body is heading in that direction. When do you suppose my head will catch up to it?

SongMom