Thanksgiving is coming and that is more and more becoming a hard time for me. My partner is dying (I have this on the authority of the hospice nurse; her albumin levels are dropping and her arm circumference is getting smaller). Thanksgiving was our anniversary, although I always celebrate it on November 25 because that was the date. This year the two days are far enough apart that we can have two celebrations. "Celebrating" will consist of figuring out something she is willing to eat and eating it in bed in front of the tv. Probably feeding her as well. She can use her right hand to hold a fork, but she likes being fed. Unless she is eating something sweet, hunger does not motivate her. Thanksgiving is about food and family. For my entire life I had a conflicted relationship with the former, and for good or ill, I do not have the latter. I can't remember the last time I sat at a Thanksgiving table where the people were related by blood. In high school? In my early 20s? When my grandparents were alive and my mother and her sister were still speaking to each other, we all had a meal together. I dreaded these because beginning at the age of 12, I was always on a diet. I had been overweight as a child (actually, certainly by the time I was 12, I was overweight because I was a child; if I had been an adult my BMI at that age would have put me at the top end of "normal") and yearned to be thin. I hated being confronted with mountains of food.
At church last Sunday a friend of mine said that her mother had a "gift for hospitality" and that she had inherited it. (Like so many New Yorkers, she has too small - and perhaps too messy - an apartment to "do" hospitality in, so she cooks for people in the church kitchen.) My mother, too, had a gift for hospitality. Our house was always full of people and she was always serving food. There was a nonstop feast. If I was overweight, my mother was obese. I swore that I would never be like that. My house would not be full of food. Art, yes, pets, yes, books, yes (I did inherit my mother's love of art and books). Food, no. As a young adult things were easier for me. I had learned how to say "no" to food even when it was around. I spent my 20s at Lesbian AA Thanksgivings. None of the women there were on good terms with their parents so we created our own world. I could ignore the food and dance. Or flirt. Finally, I made a modicum of peace with my mother and for years my partner and I would have Thanksgiving dinner at her house. She would invite one or two guests. By then I was a vegetarian and so my mother did not make a traditional Thanksgiving feast. That was not her style of cooking anyhow (I think when she was alive my grandmother had cooked the meal for us.) I am a firm believer that people get the punishments they deserve. Mine, for valuing cultural norms of thinness over family and good fellowship, is spending most holidays with nothing but scraps. Although I cling to how grateful I am that my partner is still alive. When she goes maybe I will leave the country that week, go to a place where no one celebrates Thanksgiving.
This may sound like a non sequitur, but I just found out that my friend Abbie's granddaughter is a Lesbian. She is still in high school. The thrill of her life, according to her mother (Abbie's daughter) is being part of an LGBTQ youth chorus. How wonderful! But here's what I wonder. I got a letter from Abbie's daughter (it was a group email sent to a large number of people, most of whom probably live in the same city where Abbie's daughter and her family live) about the chorus's holiday concert. She and her husband are "patrons". She stressed in the email that her daughter is lucky to have the "blessing" of her parents, that so many of the youth in this chorus have been rejected by their parents and that many are poor and can't get a hot meal, so the chorus serves a hot meal before rehearsal, free of charge. I wonder. When I came out and immersed myself in the Lesbian community, one of the biggest attractions was that it was a world of parent-less peers. Many of those women, too, had been rejected by their parents. Oh, how I envied them! Being a part of that group gave me the courage to push my overbearing Jewish mother out of my life and be myself. When you're a teenager, is something as much fun if your parents approve of it? I don't know, maybe times have changed. I also remember part of the fun being that we didn't have much money (this was in the 70s, when you could still live cheaply in New York) and certainly my partner and I never ate much. Probably only getting one hot meal a week (and living otherwise on nuts and containers of yogurt) at 26 I weighed 20 pounds less than I had at 12.
Was I always looking at everything the wrong way round, I wonder?
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Friday, November 15, 2019
Friday, November 27, 2015
On Thanksgiving, and a Requiem for a Nightingale
I had thought of making this two posts, but there's no reason why they can't be one.
Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving. There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again. As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely". Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days. I was smitten, and the rest is history. I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell. Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance. And so she has kept me. Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!" Priceless.
As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms. After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be). In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant. And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.
I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus). I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family. Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving. Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday. They should ask for volunteers. I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.
It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards. Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.
When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts. In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.
Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity. Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.
When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook. My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney. I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time. She was five years younger than me. She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience. When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach). A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by. She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila. And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page. My heart is heavy. All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident. How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.
I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp. I just sing.
My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual. So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me. (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)
And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now. If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.
Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving. There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again. As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely". Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days. I was smitten, and the rest is history. I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell. Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance. And so she has kept me. Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!" Priceless.
As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms. After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be). In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant. And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.
I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus). I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family. Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving. Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday. They should ask for volunteers. I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.
It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards. Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.
When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts. In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.
Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity. Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.
When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook. My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney. I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time. She was five years younger than me. She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience. When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach). A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by. She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila. And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page. My heart is heavy. All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident. How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.
I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp. I just sing.
My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen. The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual. So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me. (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)
And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now. If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.
RIP Lani Misenas 1955-2015
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
R.I.P. L.M., and a Thought about Holidays that Wither Away
I had been planning to post something anyhow, to let readers know that my friend L died peacefully a few days ago. It was all very quick. So this is another friend gone.
I have been inspired to write something by a heart-wrenching Facebook post from a friend - a young man whose mother died recently. She was younger than I am. He was writing about how painful the holidays will be, and how hard it will be to try to recreate the old traditions.
What has happened to me is very different. There was no one big loss that changed everything. I suppose there was for my mother, in that my father died suddenly in 1964, when I was 14. In addition to grief, she was dealing with the shock of now being thrown on her own resources with an unruly teenage daughter, when she had not had a "job" other than homemaking and parenting, for 15 years. He died near Christmas, so that was the last year we had a Christmas tree. I'm sure if I had wanted one, we would have continued, but I did not want one (and I think this shows how different 1964 was from, say, 1984 and subsequently) because I thought holidays were for "children" and spending time with family was "icky". Also whether or not to celebrate Christmas had become a hot button issue because, as someone whose mother was Jewish (albeit secular) my Jewish classmates told me I should not (which my mother thought was ridiculous - she told me that Christmas trees, rather than being "Christian", were, in one view, pagan, and in another, simply part of "Western Civ", along with Bach, Handel, and paintings of the Madonna and Child).
I have had a lot of rich, deeply meaningful holidays since then with friends, or with my mother and my partner (after my mother's parents died I did not have any sort of blood family, other than distant cousins who apparently have no interest in me - I have tried to connect with them at various times over the decades to no avail).
What has left me bereft now isn't the loss of one person, but the falling away of many people, either through death, "relocation", travel, or, simply, lack of energy and lack of interest. And, so, by extension, holiday celebrations (and birthdays) have just withered away.
I never had homemaking skills and that's just the way things are. It is not likely to change. I live in a rent regulated studio apartment in a prime neighborhood, and I am not likely to move somewhere now where I can host holidays. And no one I know does these things either. For years my mother would have Thanksgiving and Christmas in her apartment, the latter with a bowl of ornaments, some branches, a red tablecloth, and some candles. And presents, even if they were chosen beforehand by the recipient (her idea of the best way to use money wisely and avoid disappointments) were always elegantly wrapped. And (I had been discussing this with a friend recently), unpleasant or mundane topics were forbidden at the dinner table.
Once my partner was unable to climb the stairs to my mother's Brooklyn apartment, we had these holidays in a restaurant, taking turns paying, or splitting the check.
Since my mother died, my partner and I eat in a Spanish restaurant in Chelsea on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. We used to bring leftovers home for her neighbor, a dear friend, but that woman, although she seemed healthier, more fit, and more mobile than my partner, died a few years ago.
I try to decorate (a little) for Christmas. I have some Christmassy things that I can put around the apartment and I always buy a little tree. Always the theological mongrel, I no longer feel conflicted about Christmas. I am Christian enough to celebrate Christmas, but too Jewish to want to be Baptised, no matter how much I love the Lutheran church where I sing almost every Sunday.
And I make sure that my partner has a little tree. There are some ornaments that I used to display around the apartment, but now that she has the cat, they might get damaged.
I don't buy or receive presents at Christmas. I can't afford it and it is not necessary. I can be happy singing, having a meal out, and photographing all the beauty around the city.
Of course I wish things were different. Through a combination of choices I made (not to have children) and chance (I no longer work in an office where a certain amount of socializing - certainly birthday lunches with a large group, and an annual holiday party in an upscale venue - is provided in situ) I am left with very little.
I don't want to be someone whose life ends with a whimper, becoming quieter and quieter until there's nothing there. I'm not that kind of person. I'm a BIG DIVA who loves dressing up, and who always likes to flirt with "too much". If I want MORE I don't even know where to start.
After that gut wrenching birthday that wasn't, I told myself that I was going to do things differently. I was always going to say "yes" to anyplace I could go where there would be people, instead of "no". So I am now working at the church after school program. I will go to more of the Moon Circles. I engage in conversations with people I meet in stores.
How did I end up having such a tiny footprint?
The other day I asked myself: is someone who gets four birthday cards, a spoiled lunch, and a dress bought under coercion for a milestone birthday worth less than someone whose large extended family throws them a party with 50 people, a huge meal, and a slide show complete with funny stories? I have certainly been to those. I suppose not in the eyes of God. But I do feel that.
Well, on a more upbeat note, it looks like I will have my birthday concert!! I am now in real communication with the woman at the Home. She said it sounds like a lovely idea, So now I just have to settle on a date, and ask her if I can invite guests. I said there wouldn't be more than 10. Fat chance that there will even be that many. Well, I will post it on Facebook and say it is my birthday. All I want is a few people to come with a cell phone camera and maybe someone to bring flowers. Or someone can send them to my house. I don't even know anyone who can be bothered doing that any more.
I have been inspired to write something by a heart-wrenching Facebook post from a friend - a young man whose mother died recently. She was younger than I am. He was writing about how painful the holidays will be, and how hard it will be to try to recreate the old traditions.
What has happened to me is very different. There was no one big loss that changed everything. I suppose there was for my mother, in that my father died suddenly in 1964, when I was 14. In addition to grief, she was dealing with the shock of now being thrown on her own resources with an unruly teenage daughter, when she had not had a "job" other than homemaking and parenting, for 15 years. He died near Christmas, so that was the last year we had a Christmas tree. I'm sure if I had wanted one, we would have continued, but I did not want one (and I think this shows how different 1964 was from, say, 1984 and subsequently) because I thought holidays were for "children" and spending time with family was "icky". Also whether or not to celebrate Christmas had become a hot button issue because, as someone whose mother was Jewish (albeit secular) my Jewish classmates told me I should not (which my mother thought was ridiculous - she told me that Christmas trees, rather than being "Christian", were, in one view, pagan, and in another, simply part of "Western Civ", along with Bach, Handel, and paintings of the Madonna and Child).
I have had a lot of rich, deeply meaningful holidays since then with friends, or with my mother and my partner (after my mother's parents died I did not have any sort of blood family, other than distant cousins who apparently have no interest in me - I have tried to connect with them at various times over the decades to no avail).
What has left me bereft now isn't the loss of one person, but the falling away of many people, either through death, "relocation", travel, or, simply, lack of energy and lack of interest. And, so, by extension, holiday celebrations (and birthdays) have just withered away.
I never had homemaking skills and that's just the way things are. It is not likely to change. I live in a rent regulated studio apartment in a prime neighborhood, and I am not likely to move somewhere now where I can host holidays. And no one I know does these things either. For years my mother would have Thanksgiving and Christmas in her apartment, the latter with a bowl of ornaments, some branches, a red tablecloth, and some candles. And presents, even if they were chosen beforehand by the recipient (her idea of the best way to use money wisely and avoid disappointments) were always elegantly wrapped. And (I had been discussing this with a friend recently), unpleasant or mundane topics were forbidden at the dinner table.
Once my partner was unable to climb the stairs to my mother's Brooklyn apartment, we had these holidays in a restaurant, taking turns paying, or splitting the check.
Since my mother died, my partner and I eat in a Spanish restaurant in Chelsea on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. We used to bring leftovers home for her neighbor, a dear friend, but that woman, although she seemed healthier, more fit, and more mobile than my partner, died a few years ago.
I try to decorate (a little) for Christmas. I have some Christmassy things that I can put around the apartment and I always buy a little tree. Always the theological mongrel, I no longer feel conflicted about Christmas. I am Christian enough to celebrate Christmas, but too Jewish to want to be Baptised, no matter how much I love the Lutheran church where I sing almost every Sunday.
And I make sure that my partner has a little tree. There are some ornaments that I used to display around the apartment, but now that she has the cat, they might get damaged.
I don't buy or receive presents at Christmas. I can't afford it and it is not necessary. I can be happy singing, having a meal out, and photographing all the beauty around the city.
Of course I wish things were different. Through a combination of choices I made (not to have children) and chance (I no longer work in an office where a certain amount of socializing - certainly birthday lunches with a large group, and an annual holiday party in an upscale venue - is provided in situ) I am left with very little.
I don't want to be someone whose life ends with a whimper, becoming quieter and quieter until there's nothing there. I'm not that kind of person. I'm a BIG DIVA who loves dressing up, and who always likes to flirt with "too much". If I want MORE I don't even know where to start.
After that gut wrenching birthday that wasn't, I told myself that I was going to do things differently. I was always going to say "yes" to anyplace I could go where there would be people, instead of "no". So I am now working at the church after school program. I will go to more of the Moon Circles. I engage in conversations with people I meet in stores.
How did I end up having such a tiny footprint?
The other day I asked myself: is someone who gets four birthday cards, a spoiled lunch, and a dress bought under coercion for a milestone birthday worth less than someone whose large extended family throws them a party with 50 people, a huge meal, and a slide show complete with funny stories? I have certainly been to those. I suppose not in the eyes of God. But I do feel that.
Well, on a more upbeat note, it looks like I will have my birthday concert!! I am now in real communication with the woman at the Home. She said it sounds like a lovely idea, So now I just have to settle on a date, and ask her if I can invite guests. I said there wouldn't be more than 10. Fat chance that there will even be that many. Well, I will post it on Facebook and say it is my birthday. All I want is a few people to come with a cell phone camera and maybe someone to bring flowers. Or someone can send them to my house. I don't even know anyone who can be bothered doing that any more.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Some Nice Things (Musical and Otherwise)
I am going to be singing "Nun Wandre Maria" in the 9 am and the 11 am services on December 8, and "Cant deis Aucells" either on January 5 or the 12th.
The Spanish song coach is having three get up and sing get-togethers in December. I emailed her back and said I was available for two of them. The problem is if there are not enough people she will cancel, so it remains to be seen whether they will actually take place. If they do, I will sing both of the church pieces at the first one, and "Cant deis Aucells" and possibly the "Chanson Boheme" from Carmen at the second. There is no point in singing the Sequidilla. If I need help getting more secure with the B it is better to confine singing it to my lessons with my teacher (and my practice time at home).
The tenor from my Requiem wrote me a nice note saying he was not available to sing in the Carmen concert but that he might try to come. He is very nice, in addition to being a magnificent singer. So I wrote to the other tenor from the Met chorus, the one who was initially scheduled to be in the Requiem. If I don't hear back from him by Monday I will write again.
The Youtube Habanera now has 8 likes and 4 dislikes. Someone took down one of the dislikes (although did not change it to a like). The person who took it down must have been the initial "disliker" because I assume you can't change a vote on Youtube unless it's your own. My friend figured out how to use the like and dislike buttons and she told me she loved it.
As for nonmusical nice things, Thanksgiving is my and my partner's 37th anniversary, give or take some time apart. We are going to eat out tomorrow although I also made a dish of sweet potatoes and apples that we have every year. She made it for me (and the other guests) that first Thanksgiving and taught me how to make it (and how to cook, full stop). We also got an invitation for Christmas Day to someone's house. Since my mother died we have not been to anyone's house on Christmas Day, only to a restaurant. I told the hostess that we could not afford to buy presents for anyone and that in fact we had not bought presents for anyone (including each other) since I left my last full time job. This is perfectly ok with me. (And she said it was fine with her because she never knew what to get people.) Unless you have children, I think this is a wasteful way to spend money, especially if people buy expensive "surprises" for people that the recipients don't like and don't want, which happens more often than not, hence all the tacky jokes.
The Spanish song coach is having three get up and sing get-togethers in December. I emailed her back and said I was available for two of them. The problem is if there are not enough people she will cancel, so it remains to be seen whether they will actually take place. If they do, I will sing both of the church pieces at the first one, and "Cant deis Aucells" and possibly the "Chanson Boheme" from Carmen at the second. There is no point in singing the Sequidilla. If I need help getting more secure with the B it is better to confine singing it to my lessons with my teacher (and my practice time at home).
The tenor from my Requiem wrote me a nice note saying he was not available to sing in the Carmen concert but that he might try to come. He is very nice, in addition to being a magnificent singer. So I wrote to the other tenor from the Met chorus, the one who was initially scheduled to be in the Requiem. If I don't hear back from him by Monday I will write again.
The Youtube Habanera now has 8 likes and 4 dislikes. Someone took down one of the dislikes (although did not change it to a like). The person who took it down must have been the initial "disliker" because I assume you can't change a vote on Youtube unless it's your own. My friend figured out how to use the like and dislike buttons and she told me she loved it.
As for nonmusical nice things, Thanksgiving is my and my partner's 37th anniversary, give or take some time apart. We are going to eat out tomorrow although I also made a dish of sweet potatoes and apples that we have every year. She made it for me (and the other guests) that first Thanksgiving and taught me how to make it (and how to cook, full stop). We also got an invitation for Christmas Day to someone's house. Since my mother died we have not been to anyone's house on Christmas Day, only to a restaurant. I told the hostess that we could not afford to buy presents for anyone and that in fact we had not bought presents for anyone (including each other) since I left my last full time job. This is perfectly ok with me. (And she said it was fine with her because she never knew what to get people.) Unless you have children, I think this is a wasteful way to spend money, especially if people buy expensive "surprises" for people that the recipients don't like and don't want, which happens more often than not, hence all the tacky jokes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)