getting back to "normal"

Someone I worked with on the show emailed me yesterday: God, last week was so great and I didn't even know it! Luckily, school (complete with a host of end-of-term tests & assignments) is keeping me from feeling the post-show blues too badly but I know what she means. The hardest jobs/relationships/life experiences can be hell as you're going through them but you miss the adrenaline when life settles back down again.
I'm fighting a cough so nasty that I sound as if I should be wasting away in a remote sanitorium somewhere, a cough that keeps me awake all night as I lie on the living room couch, a cough that followed me to my 2 music classes today as I struggled through 2 tests I was inadequately prepared for. Hard to believe that there are no rehearsals to go to this week- both a sad and a happy thing. There's this invitation to Istanbul though...
Crazy tho' it is, it's actually true. Something About Reptiles has been invited to Turkey to play a music festival there...on November 25th! All expenses paid. Where's the catch? Doesn't appear to be one. I cannot even wrap my brain around the possibility that I'll be flying (blech) to a place as wonderful and foreign as Istanbul in a week, so I concentrate on the mundane: will I be able to get a passport on time (unlikely, but not impossible), what to pack, who from the band is going? More on this as things develop...
I hung out with my 2-year-old buddy Sebastien yesterday, a day which probably didn't help my cough but which was tons of fun. I'm starting to get to know him as a person just as he starts to become one: a little boy with an endless capacity for humour, mischief, and love. We spent the day in various parks, me marveling at his ability to climb things, hovering close by to grab him if he fell but also cheering him on: hold on tight, watch where you're going, wow, I can't believe you made it! He echoes my phrases carefully, grasping for meaning in unfamiliar words: ...tight, oopsie! and my favorite: fa' down, which he uses all the time. Happy to risk life and limb, to fall down, and to pick himself up and try again, which is very inspiring energy to be around.