It Got Worse

My recital has been postponed. KILL ME.

Tomorrow is Another Day

Well then. This week has already kind of kicked me in the face a little bit. I left my laptop in Scotsville at Greg's apartment. Got a hospital bill, because it did not go properly on the insurance. (It's a BIG hospital bill, too. Can't even pretend to pay for it minus insurance.) My paycheck from the school was not quite as large as I had hoped, so when I paid the school my final (final!) balance, that pretty much took half of that. My voice lesson (one week before my recital) sucked ass. I spent forty-five minutes on my three song French set, which was nightmarish. I was at Secret Garden rehearsal until 1:30 am Monday, and when I got home, there was smoke/steam wafting out from under the hood.

Yeah. That's right. I popped the hood and there was more smoke. Had Sam (Terry's brother and our technical director at MBC Theatre) look under the hood on Tuesday and we discovered that the radiator is busted. That's about three-hundred dollars right there. (He looked up how much the part costs, then considered the average cost of labor in this area.) So, I can't drive any further than twenty miles at a stretch. (Which means I can't go to Scotsville to get my laptop, or to take care of Greg's plants while he's gone, which I had planned on doing to surprise him.) I also need to pay my accompanist at the end of the week, so now I have managed to talk to my parents about needing a total sum of $600 this week alone.

Oh. Yeah. The one week where I absolutely need help and Greg is in South Carolina for work. Bah. And now his mom is in the hospital with heart problems.

I keep reminding myself that it could get feasibly get worse. At least my country is not in a massive civil war and my way of life is not completely torn apart. I would like to thank the kind influence of Scarlett O'Hara for showing me that my life could suck a whole lot worse now.

Of Illness

Mrr. I turn into a big baby when I have the flu and there's someone taking care of me. I went to Greg's on Saturday because we had an altercation and it needed resolved. I drove to his place at exactly the time he was driving to my place - we more than likely passed each other on the road, actually. He arrived back after eleven and by that point I was worried sick. I had done the calculations, allowing for travel and questioning Phipps about why I wasn't where I said I would be, and he was LATE. Anyway, I don't have cell reception in Scotsville, so I had no way of calling him to see where he was. (He had been frantically calling me, as had Phipps, because they didn't know where I was.)

He arrived, I was still frantic, he was frantic, and we essentially kissed and made up right there. (I hope every fight happens this way, minus the travel-time.) Anyway, I was well into flu-land by that point, so Greg bundled me up in blankets and hauled out his pharmacy of flu/cough/cold medicine while cooking me a nourishing omelette (it was nearly 1 am by this point). I slept fitfully all night, because I refused Nyquil. (That was a miscalculation.)

I spent all of Sunday in bed, because I was too dizzy to stand up without falling over (I tried) and did not go to church or rehearsal. Greg made me chicken noodle soup (with rice noodles, the way I like) and we spent all day watching "Weeds" and sleeping intermittently. (I slept a lot.) That night, I turned into the biggest whiniest baby in the world while Greg insisted on cough medicine and Nyquil. He persisted. They tasted icky. But I did sleep.

This week, I will be moving out of my apartment and into a different one. Thank God. That is all I shall say about that.

Darlin' Eileen

Life kind of sucks. See, there's this thing where I tried my very best to be not at all involved in the musical. I did. I did my very best. And then they needed dressers for the (multiple!) quick-changes. So I said, "Okay. I'll help. But only if you don't have enough people by tech week." And they didn't. That was cool. I can be a dresser. That's nice and low-maintenance and I don't have to be there every single night because I'm doing it out of the goodness of my heart.

And then everybody started getting sick. The plague began to spread through the theatre and everyone fell to it - everyone IN the show, that is. Techies are fine. One of the girls is so ill that she went to the ER last night with a temperature of 103.0. She has a speaking/named role. One that sings, too. And then I, in a brief moment of insanity, said, "What can I do to help you, Dr. Fran." And she said, "If you could give me a new lease on life, a strong mezzo-soprano, the remedy to the common cold, and more techs than the show currently possesses, you would make my life that much easier."

And then I said, "I have a mezzo for you, ma'am." She said, "Who?" I said, "Me, ma'am."

It was at that very moment that I realized I had finally lost my mind.

Not only that, I get to learn how to swing dance. In three days. With my ex, who is in the show and is not yet over me, because of the simple fact that I am with someone else and no longer at all interested in him.

Yeah. This is going to go GREAT.

I Had No Choice

I really sort of like this whole two-real-classes per day thing, with no classes on Fridays. Long weekends are fairly excellent inventions. I will be able to go home an entire day early for spring break this year! (Leaving Thursday night after Mads, get home around (9:30 or 10 in the evening, for a good night's sleep and a whole extra day of break! Everybody else's break starts at 2pm on Friday.)

In other news, my minor medical concern will be resolved on Friday for good, which I am a bit relieved about. It interferes with my days too much and it's a bit aggravating occasionally. I'll just be glad to get my appetite back. Until that point, it's yoghurt and dry Life cereal for me! (Mainly because that's what I'm eating now.)

My gentleman caller treats me extremely well. We spent this past weekend together and we went to the most excellent pizza joint ever (called "The Mellow Mushroom", it really just doesn't get much better than that), then on to a wine bar on the downtown mall in Charlottesville, which was so worth it. The ambience was nice, the music was nice and quiet, and the wine was excellent. The next day we went iceskating (and stayed for only twenty minutes because the rink was just SO crowded we could barely move - next time, we're going in the evening). Because we were only there twenty minutes, we gave a couple of very surprised people our skating passes and headed out on our way. There's a restaurant nearby there that sounds dreadful (Beer Run), but is really quite excellent. Their selection of beers was extensive and widely varied, which was lovely to behold, and their food quite decent. It's very common around this area for restaurants to use organic and higher quality produce and the quality really makes a difference.

Since neither of us was feeling particularly well and since we'd ended up staying out far later than we had expected to (long and rather unpleasant story that involves me wanting to kick my gentleman caller's landlord in the teeth), we made the unanimous decision to go and take a nap. We did, and that gave me enough energy that evening to make supper, since it was my turn - he had cooked the last couple of times we ate in. I made groundnut stew and he's still raving about it. I felt very accomplished and proud of myself.

Sunday morning, I drove back to Staunton for church. Since we had a guest choir visiting, that meant that I didn't have to do anything that morning, so I just got to sit and enjoy the service. That certainly made for a nice change.

The weekend was very nice. I'm a bit tired now, but soon all will be well!

Oh the Perfection of Gentry

He can't fit me in to one of his class sections. But he's running a directed inquiry course just for me that will be the equivalent of the math course I need. I need to figure out things this guy likes because I OWE him.

In other news, that makes my life about ten TIMES simpler.

Insanity? Thy Name is Education.

Dude. I hate finding out at the beginning of my last semester that I'm still missing a requirement. It is the least fun feeling IN THE WORLD. However, I have managed to find a course that I won't want to kill myself over too badly, so I think I'll be okay. The real struggle is convincing Dr. Gentry to let me into one of his College Algebra sections. I knew my math problems would bite me in the ass someday. Curses on algebra! And I hope Dr. Gentry pays heed to my pleas.

In other news, life is a little crazy elsewhere, too. I'm in "The Secret Garden", a musical based on that very book by Francis Hogden Burnett and I get to play a ghost. Lily the ghost, actually, and a wife and mother. Never played a wife and mother before, so it should be interesting. Our first rehearsal was lovely and nice and the other cast members seem very pleasant. I think I'm going to have a good time with this one. March will be very stressful, though, because my recital is on one of the Saturday performance days. I'll be running straight from my recital to the show, with my parents and probably my Gentleman Caller in tow.

Ah yes. I have a Gentleman Caller. John dear, you might remember him. He went to high school at Warrior Run and was in Sierra's year. In any case, he lives in Scotsville now and by some wild coincidence we became reacquainted while we were both home for Christmas. We have had several lovely dates and his gentlemanly behavior has never once wavered. It's quite refreshing, actually. We get along very well - and also, he loves to cook. That is always a plus.

Otherwise, things are going well. Some of my lovely ladies who needed to be gone last semester have come back to Mary Baldwin this semester, so I am surrounded by friends and as happy as I can be while worrying about graduation requirements. I'm having a slight medical problem at the moment that I won't go into detail over, but it will be resolved by the end of this month and I will be back in the pink of health.