Where I Wasn't, Where I Was, Where I'm Not and Where I Won't Be

Where I wasn't last night: Central Park. People from the New York Times were, though. Wow - That review makes me sad I couldn't go...

Where I was last night: At home, celebrating Husband's successful PhD defense!! I am now married to a Doctor. Doctor Husband. We had balloons, drank champagne and I gave him a picture of the gift that's arriving in the mail:



along with something to put in it. The bottle came in a gift box with two brandy snifters. Did I mention that his PhD is in Geography? Isn't that the perfect gift? I'm very proud of him!!

Where I'm not as of today: I had a voice lesson today. I'm still having trouble with consistency, of keeping my voice on top of the airstream. I can do it much better during vocal exercises than I can during the songs. I think I'll make up my own exercises using the phrases from the songs that are giving me trouble.

Where I won't be: Next Opera Project recital is in about 2 weeks. I'm not fully comfortable with either of the songs so I probably won't sing. It's a bit farther from home than the usual recital location, so I may not go if I'm not singing. Instead I might go to see Don Giovanni at the local opera company. That's a "where I might be" but it's so vague that I'm not including it in the title.

My Final Glass of Whine (I Promise!)

First, more on the weather. Here's a photo of the weather conditions on my iPhone yesterday.



Which leads me to a new whine. The home button on my iPhone stopped working. Whaaaa!! Whine!!! The home button is the only way to get out of an application and back into the main screen where you can enter apps. It's also the only way to take a screen shot... so this is a photo of the page. And now in order to switch apps I have to shut the dang thing off and then back on again. Apparently this is a covered problem under the warranty, and the warranty lasts until September, so I have a few weeks to haul myself to the nearest Apple retailer (about 45 min away, WHINE!) for a diagnosis and hopefully a replacement phone.

The next is a smaller whine.

No matter what the weather next week, I won't be going to see Nathan Gunn and Michael Fabiano sing in Central Park. That happens to be the very same day that Husband is defending his PhD thesis. He's been working towards this degree and indeed this day for a long long time. Plus Alex's summer music lessons start that day. So in spite of what some people may think, without question Husband and Child do come before Nathan Gunn and any opera, even free opera. Can you just see it, "Hi Husband, congrats on your defense, ok, I'm off to NYC, see ya..." Not in a million years.

Final whinish thing.

Had one of those voice lessons today where I just couldn't get my air up. I get mad at myself which of course makes it worse. I know what I need to do - get the air up and have the voice be on top. I know I can do it. I just want to do it consistently. It can be so frustrating sometimes.

7th Inning Stretch - Take Me Out to the Opera

When I was a teenager my mother told me that if I hung out with people who did drugs, no matter what my original intentions, eventually I'd start doing drugs with them.

That said, Husband is slowly coming around. He is actually excited to be going to the Met. Excited! He said he'd be willing to listen to Carmen beforehand, to familiarize himself with some of the music. And then yesterday when La Cenerentola was on PBS I pointed out to him that Elina Garanca, who is so adorably cute as Cenerentola, would also be singing the title role in Carmen... Well, that settled it. He has hung around with me long enough, he's finally dipping in and sampling the drug on his own. Ok ok I wouldn't go that far. He's not listening to opera with I'm not around, as far as I know. But while before he went along with me to the local performances, now he's looking forward to going. No doubt some of the prestige surrounding a performance at the Met rather than our local opera company is fueling some of his enthusiasm. I wonder if I'd feel the same about going to see the Yankees in Yankee Stadium after having been to so many games of our local Yankees AA team in the stadium down the road. Thinking about that now... nope. I get bored right around the 4th inning. Hm does this mean he'll get bored by intermission?

Ah so much to think about. Opera. Baseball. Which tickets are more expensive. Are the food and drinks more expensive and/or higher quality in the opera house or at the stadium? If you don't factor fashion into it, I think it's a toss-up.

It's Not the Zic. It's the Myu. And Blue.

In rereading my last post I see I wrote that the triplet was on the "zic" of "music." Nope. It's on the "myu" part. Either way, I'm still doing a bit of that aspiration thing that makes it sound "myu-hu-hu" instead of "myu-u-u" legato.

Funny that I referred to this post yesterday. Remember the giant purple words,

Husband is not allowed to go away for a week ever again.

Well Husband is away again. And the Littlest Opera Singer is, of course, sick. As in, he had a bad night, but seemed ok to go to school... And then this OperaMommy had to pick him up from school, where she found him lying on the floor under a table. Ok too much Facebook - I'm writing about myself in the 3rd person.

Another time Husband went away, the Littlest Opera Singer woke up one night with a tummy bug. Husband was supposed to have come home that evening but his flight was canceled. He spent an "uncomfortable" night in a hotel near the airport. I spent the night on the couch with a sick child, several towels, many changes of clothes and a bucket. Husband came home the next morning tired. Uh huh. Not even. Go do laundry, we're out of clean t-shirts and towels.

So...

Husband is not allowed to go away for a week ever again.

I have engaged a babysitter for tomorrow evening so I can go to my voice lesson. Of course if the Littlest Opera Singer is still sick, there will be no voice lesson for me and I will go even more insane than I already am. Trust me there's not much room to go much farther.

Next week - Florida! Nozze!! Wheee!! I really am excited! And trying, once again, to remind myself of all these adventures to cheer me up. You'd think that seeing JDF and NG on consecutive days would have charged me up with cheer for the rest of the year. I think I have post-adventure, post-JDF, post-NG blues. PAPJDFPNGB - that's the official designation. Maybe without the extra Ps. PAJDFNGB. That's better.

Christmas Eve Traditions

Last year on Christmas Eve Alex asked to hear Just Before Sunrise. My brother-in-law broke out the scotch and we had a tasting. Who knew that JBS was perfect background music for scotch?

This year we're not seeing my BIL until tomorrow, so we had to do our own Nathan Gunn tasting at home. Wait that didn't come out right... ahem... what I meant was, well, you know what I mean. Instead of scotch this year, we had bourbon. It seems so hard core! Bourbon! Like my voice should suddenly go all scratchy or something.



So we started with select scenes from Camelot:



And moved on to Romeo:

Nathan Gunn as Mercutio in Romeo et Juliette: Mab


and then Pearl Fishers:
(and what's with the the Lyric taking the video down and just leaving us with the slide show???)



And finally Magic Flute:



I think I like Christmas Eve. And I just want to add that I have the best husband in the world! He sits and watches all these NG videos with me. I mean, come on. How many husbands would do that? He's a Good Man.

Now *This* Was a Surprise

It's not everyday that Husband sends me an email with the subject line, Nathan Gunn Topless.

Turns out someone on Metafilter's "Ask Mefi" section wanted to know what a fit 40ish male looked like with his shirt off, and they wanted pictures. Strange that no one asked why... But anyway for some reason Husband thought I would have something to contribute. His reply to the query:

Well, a particular opera singer my wife finds to be compelling looks like this, this, and this. He's not quite 40, but will be in two years. I'm not feeling quite intimidated, yet, but I've got a couple of years until 40 as well.

That's right, I robbed the cradle. Just call me Mrs. Robinson.

I almost forgot!!! CAT PIC FRIDAY!

Cat Pic Friday!

Here's husband in his first appearance in the blog (See! He really does exist!). As usual, he's always ready to serve. In this case, it's as a table for Diego.



Viola and I often take cat-naps. She takes more than I do, lucky dog. I mean, cat.

Diagonally Speaking

I'm sure that the question in everyone's minds since my last post (for which I apologize as it upset one of the writers, and that wasn't my intent), do I sleep diagonally in the bed when Husband is away?

Nope. I don't.

I do, however, pile a king sized down comforter over on his side of the bed so I have something warm to cuddle up to.

Ok stop laughing now!

Some women watch chick flicks to while their husbands are away. I take advantage of his absence to rewatch operas that I have saved on the DVR without feeling embarrassed ("You're watching that AGAIN?") and on YouTube without worrying that Husband will glance over ("You're watching that AGAIN???"). Hey, I'm like a kid - I'll watch or listen to the same thing over and over if I really like it. I also often reread books I like. You notice different things each time. Of course with videos you do also start to notice every quirk and movement.

So anyway, Husband has returned from the UK with various bars of candy as well as some packets of disgusting flavored crisps: prawn, chicken and others. And some strange bacon things... and, of course, Jelly Babies. Yum.

A Few Random Answers

...to a few random questions that I've heard a few thousand times about the Husband.

1. No, my Husband doesn't read the blog.
2. Yes, he knows what the general content is.
3. No, he doesn't mind.
4. No, I'd never hook up or run off with any of the crushes if the opportunity arose.
5. My Husband is cuter than Nathan Gunn, but he can't carry a tune to save his life.
6. Yes, he knows about this. All of it.
7. He also knows about this, this and this. Well, maybe not this one.
8. No, it doesn't bother me that he doesn't read my blog.
9. No, it doesn't bother him that I went alone to Chicago to "chase after opera singers." *snort*
10. There is no number 10 but how could I end the list at 9?