The Cure for all Ills

So the whole cast of "Medea" is in various stages of cold-and-flu hell. The dark side of theatrical bonding: get your periods all at the same time, get sick together. At least most of us seem to only have colds, unlike one poor girl who obviously had something worse because she actually barfed onstage yesterday during our first run-thru. Talk about the Actor's Nightmare.

I'm battling my own symptoms (nothing worse than achy bones, sore throat and a stuffy nose, thank the gods) with a drink so potent it could singlehandedly be the cure for the common cold- and so easy to make:

• cut up some ginger and throw it in a pan of boiling water
• after the water has absorbed the gingery goodness, ladle a cup of it into a glass or mug.
  
• Add the juice and pulp of 1 lemon, and spoon in a generous dollop of honey.
  
• If you need extra kick, add a sprinkling of cayenne pepper and a clove of garlic, smashed or sliced. Make sure you eat the garlic as you take sips of the Potion.
  
• If it's night-time, feel free to also add whiskey, rum or brandy if you want a deep and lovely slumber.
  

The Lemon-and-Honey is a potion from my childhood, and indeed we were seldom given anything stronger, as my mother doesn't really believe in drugs. (Having the constitution of an ox, she doesn't need them.) The cayenne and garlic I first tried last year at my friend Steve's , and I was so impressed I straightaway started making all my potions this way.

I'd take a picture of the Potion, in all its golden splendor but- whoops- I just finished it!

and now for something completely different...

Can I just tell you all how much I love the smoked oyster? I can (and do) eat a whole can as a tasty snack. It was only recently that I realized I could buy these little, cheap cans all the time! Not just at Christmas! I could eat them any time I liked!!!

And then I looked at one. Close-up. Biiiiig mistake. Note to self: shellfish are best eaten blindfolded.

Breathless.

I think that my body is holding a lot of grief and tension inside it right now and it's actually making it kind of hard to breathe, which always sounds so melodramatic, but hey, this is my blog so I'm going to come out and say it: I'm having trouble breathing. I've had this problem ever since I was a kid and it comes and goes with seemingly no common cause. When I was little my mom would sometimes ask me why I sighing and I would say but I'm not. I was just breathing. I breathe through my mouth a lot (I know, such a bad habit for a singer) and when this... problem happens I end up having to take big gasping shoulder-heaving breaths just to feel as if I'm getting enough air. And of course the more I think about it the more freaked-out I get and the more it happens, which is why I think it's tension-related. I mean, I had my lungs tested a few years ago, just in case, and the specialist said that my lungs would probably outlast my pension plan. Puffers don't help. Breathing through my nose usually makes me feel panicky. Even writing about it is making me feel tense and like I might cry.

Which is why I totally think it's tension; I think that my body knows (even if my brain doesn't) that I haven't finished grieving about my stepmom yet. Not to mention the incredible tension of standing on stage every night and absorbing all the passion and grief of this powerful Greek tragedy I'm rehearsing. Ninety minutes, no exits, no leaving the stage, no relaxing for a moment because if one of us loses focus, the energy plunges.

Our director warned us that this play would be a workout and we'd have to get in shape. I just never thought it would suffocate me, you know?

Seems I'm not alone in being alone...

Excerpt from week 12, the final week of my online film course:

The following is an interesting paradox:

We dream of such things happening to us—of rising to the occasion, scoring our first film, and doing a splendid job. Then, when some opportunity actually comes along, self-doubt finds a way to slowly creep in and erode some of the confidence we have in ourselves.

I refer to this as SCAD, short for Situational Creative Anxiety Disorder. This is very typical and happens even to established film composers. We must find a way to downplay these doubts and press onward.

So very true!

Turning over new leaves.

The new year settles in, and so much is the same, and some things are different.

We're trying, we really are. We've tightened our belts so this is week 2 of doing a weekly shop for groceries and not eating out. Last week we spent- well, I'm not going to tell you, 'cause it's embarrassing. But we lived on that food for a week and didn't cheat, no eating out except for my forays to Shoppers for Liquorice Allsorts. This week we almost cut that grocery bill in half. The secret? Make a weekly meal plan, take the ingredients from that plan and make it into a shopping list. Most importantly, take a calculator to the supermarket with you!!! We're eating smaller, healthier meals, losing some weight and saving money. We're making to-do lists every week and trying to follow through. I'm playing my clarinet every day. J's doing his video work. The bathroom floor got thoroughly scrubbed for the first time in, um, a long time. We're slowly learning that a little planning ahead can pay off in a big way. Right now our schedules are pretty free, so we'll see how we do when things get busier...

I am frustrated and red-faced that I'm 34 and just learning this stuff. I wish my parents had showed me this way earlier, like maybe when I was in the womb. Or that I'd clued in when I was in my twenties. Even more embarrassed to realize, just now, that I did know some of this stuff but was too lazy to change. But I figure I can either wallow in that frustration or say well, I was late to the game. But not too late to learn a few new tricks.

No new photographs for ages. It's hard to get excited about pictures when your world is grey, rain, melting snow, dirt, more rain. Our winter wonderland has turned back into Vancouver's usual winter wet. I need, need, to get out and exercise, but have so little inclination to do so in this damp that clings like a monkey. We stay as warm as we can, curl up under blankets, nestle.

I learn again and again how love keeps changing. With the new year comes, for me, a new strength of love and resolve to keep working so that this person will keep loving me back. If it takes a few to-do lists to make life run more smoothly; well, they're worth it.

Snow & smoked salmon

I was reading the CBC news website tonight and chuckling to myself at the weather report at the top left of the page: Light rainfall. Meanwhile, a veritable blizzard was raging outside my window as I read. Snow, wind- it was the perfect night for the ladies of Zeellia to meet and have a Doctor Zhivago party at my place... unfortunately the lady with the DVD couldn't find a bus or a cab to get her here. Snow in Vancouver: the way we handle it (and by "we" I mean our transit system and things like, um, snow plows) is what makes all the other cites in Canada despise us. So Amelia, Carmen and I sat around my table, drank Vodka, ate incredible home-smoked salmon that Carmen's husband catches and makes, and caught up on the holiday news. Clinging to the last days of parties and eating Christmas leftovers before "real life" begins again. Probably much more fun than trying to sit through a very dated movie!

I guess it depends what day Christmas and New Year's Day falls on, but the the last few days of the holidays are pretty limbo-ish. Case in point: this year Christmas and New Year's were on a Thursday, so there were 3 post-Holiday days to get through before things get back to normal tomorrow. I went back to work yesterday, and UBC was a ghost town, with no one on campus and holiday window displays still up. Tonight's storm caught everyone by surprise, as it was supposed to rain. But the temperatures are rising, and I think the snow may finally be on its way out. Carmen says we've had 22 days of snow; I don't remember anything near as much as that in the 20 years I've lived on the 'wet' coast. I know it inconvenienced a lot of people but I'll always remember this as the year we had a storybook white Christmas. Sad to think we may be back to grey and rain until about May...

Resolutions & Reviews

So everyone's all like 2008 can suck it, so I thought I'd review my year to see if that was so with me as well. Let's go back in time to...
January '08: I finally shook my persistent bronchitis, got strep throat, and after some searching on Craigslist, also got a fairly shitty retail job, which I took in desperation because I was B-R-O-K-E.
February '08: I celebrated 10 wonderful years with my sweetie, slowly recovered from laryngitis, drudged at the kite store, had 2 weeks alone as Jon worked in Whistler. I sound sad but hopeful in most of my posts this month.
March '08: I was still sick all the time, I made it through midterms, got a job MD-ing a musical revue in Kamloops (money! money! money!) and had a party to celebrate J's and my first decade together.
April '08: I got to the airport in the middle of the night with various other family members to fly to Mexico for my brother's wedding! We came from Ontario, England, Kelowna and Vancouver and somehow, it was just the perfect combination of people. Even my parents got along famously. Other, less successful travels included a 1-week Zeellia tour in BC's interior, where I spent pretty much all 7 days in a serious funk.
May '08: I spent 3 wonderful weeks in isolated Wells and Barkerville, working on a show about the BC gold rush. Running every morning, smoking every afternoon; living with 20 year-olds in a ramshackle wooden house, seeing grizzly bears along the side of the highway... life in the country.
June '08: I rehearsed Back Kitchen again, procrastinated a lot while working on music for the next show, had the usual ups and downs...
July '08: I continued procrastinating as I got ready to do "Letters from Lithuania", saw the fabulous Lyle Lovett in concert, enjoyed my solo evenings as Jon performed in "Back Kitchen" all month.
August '08: One of the best casts I've ever worked with. One of the most, um, trying productions. 30% of the shows were rained out. Let's leave it at that, shall we? Rushed to Kelowna to spend 2 days of family time, as my stepmom decided to cut out her radiation treatment and wanted to see us all while she was still in good shape. I would only see her one more time after this, but I didn't know it then.
September '08: I flew to Edmonton for a wedding, bought a whole buncha shoes, went kayaking, ground my teeth in boredom at the kite store...
October '08: Pumpkin Patch, for the 5th time! Still fun, still hard, still great money. Went on the Atkins Diet and you could practically see me lose weight. Started writing music for "Medea". Started writing music for "Merchant of Venice" as well. Squeezed in "Merchant" rehearsals at night after doing the Pumpkin Patch all day.
November '08: I was super-nervous about "Medea", especially because I got behind on my composing, so I buckled down for some hard work. I also played hard and got to visit some great friends out of town. My stepmom's condition got worse, and we all knew things were past the point of getting better. Oh, and the world economy tanked.
December '08: I started rehearsals for Medea- what a relief to finally be doing it instead of worrying about it! And how great to actually be on stage again. Christmas holidays came really fast, and with them, the shopping craze. My mom returned from the icy prairies, where she's been touring for the last 3 months. And my stepmom died after fighting cancer tooth and nail for 2 years.

Re-reading my posts over the last 12 months, I realize how sick I was a lot of the time last winter, and how up-and-down my mood was. Reading other blogs, it seems that 2008 was a pretty intense year for a lot of people. Jon and I had a serious brainstorming session yesterday and we have a lot of ideas and hopes for this year. It's always hard to keep going with those plans after the first flush wears off, but I feel confident that we're going to make some big changes, and I'm going to do my best to keep on the right path. If there's one thing a funeral can teach you, it's that you never know how much time you have left. I know that's a total cliche, but it's so true. By the time we scatter June's ashes this spring, I want to be able to measure some real changes. Here's what I'd like be able to say by then:
Hi June,
Sometimes you drove me nuts, but I really admired your organization and your enthusiasm. You've inspired me to get my life in better order, and I've finally been saving some money for when I'm older. You were always eager to hear about my career, even though you probably didn't understand why I had to be so poor; well I realized that being an artist is no excuse for being clueless about money. I've also learned to market myself better and not just drift from job to job. And although I will never get up as early as you liked to, I'm not snoozing 'til 10am every day! Someone described you at your funeral as a domestic genius, and while that's certainly not something I'll ever be, I've finally learned to keep my little apartment tidy and, more importantly, clean. I even laundered the quilt you made for us, before it got up off the bed and walked itself over to the laundromat!

Let's see if I can make all this (and lots more) come true in 2009.