Dec-QOTD

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December Question of the Day

A few years ago, when ElectricTangerine.com was more than an empty husk of a website, several of us wrote essays/blog entries/responses to questions selected from A Christmas Conversation Piece.

You are hereby invited to join me on a similar adventure this year. From December 6th (St. Nicholas Day) through December 24th (Christmas Eve), I’ll be answering prompts from the book. I plan to use them for Holidailies entries, but you aren’t obligated to do the same.

Questions will be posted here and in my LiveJournal between 9PM and 2AM the night before. (For purposes of this exercise, the “day” will begin around 7:00 AM Central time, and end at whatever time you go to bed that night.) I’m asking participants to commit to at least nine of the eighteen days. (No, they don’t have to be consecutive). If you don’t come from a tradition that celebrates Christmas (even in its secular form), never fear, I try to choose questions that are wintry, not just Christmassy, and you can interpret them as you will.

If interested, please post a comment.

Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come*

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Holidailies 2006

They say that if you want something to happen, even if it’s the merest wisp of a dream, you have to own the idea. They say that you should begin each day with affirmations of your best qualities, and declarations of what you will achieve.

I write. I write. I write.
I will publish.
I will publish a successful novel.

I’ve been working on a series of short stories. I put them aside for NaNoWriMo, but they were what was speaking to me. I do that a lot. Make bad choices. Shoot myself in the proverbial foot.
But the stories are still whispering. I wanted them finished for Christmas. There’s still time.

I want a child.
Just one.
A girl.

This is a newer dream. For years I swore I would never get married, swore I’d never have a child. I like my life, I’d tell people. I’m too selfish to share that way.

Except I’m not, really. Selfish, I mean. And I enjoy our nieces so much, and even our nephews, even if we never get to see them for very long, and even if they terrify me a little. It tool me a long time to admit it, but I do, now. I do. I want a child.

Here’s the dream. It’s 2013. Fuzzy and I are in San Francisco, at one of our favorite bookstores, and our five-year-old daughter is wearing a red shirt and a plaid skirt, tights, mary janes and a hat. Fuzzy’s got a suede jacket. Chocolate brown. A red shirt beneath it. Me? I’m in green, rich stonewashed silk in forest green, black slacks, heels with subtle silver trim, a green fedora. We’re not shopping, I’m there to read.

Everyone I love is there with me. Friends include the ethereal counselor who designed my perfume –all natural and brewed to enhance my best qualities, the successful writer/actor/powerhouse who is currently running an avant-garde sketch show broadcast from San Francisco, the other friends who run a home-based arts and crafts business in the Midwest, and led the movement that knit together gay rights once and for all, the friends who live in Colorado with their dogs – their children are bilingual, of course, my parents, though my stepfather is nearing 80 at that point.

We toast the night with coffee served in red ceramic mugs, laced lightly with amoretto or kahlua. There is hugging and the sparkle of digital camera flashes. The local NPR station has sent a representative – the next morning, I will operate the digital optical aquaphone as author-in-residence on the 2013 edition of West Coast Weekend (other guests include Jason Robert Brown, Kathleen Norris, and a former improv troupemate who is one of the country’s hottest comedians).

But that’s tomorrow, tonight, I’m sitting in a red leather wingback chair, brought from my house as a tribute to my grandfather, who held me in his lap and read me stories. I’m not reading from the new book just yet, I tell the crowd. First I want to share a piece from my first collection…it’s about a woman who buys a café, and ends up fostering a group of street gypsies in their various personal and artistic endeavors.

I want a child.
Just one.
A girl.

I will publish a successful novel.
I write. I write.
I WRITE.

*This entry inspired by Sky, who lets me babble, and proofreads some of my worst drafts.

Musically, MissMeliss

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Holidailies 2006

Last night, perched in bed with my laptop, I couldn’t get the song “The Man with the Bag” out of my head. I’ve always loved it, but I’d never really sung it. So I downloaded it, and then I downloaded the lyrics, and THEN I found the karaoke track. By the time we left for choir practice this morning, I knew the song, but it was still stuck in my head.

It’s had me thinking, also, about how much our relationships, and I don’t mean just the romantic ones, inform our choices, not just of politics, but of everything. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the songs we love.

I grew up in a house filled with protest music – folk tunes and seventies rock. Peter, Paul & Mary, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, John Denver: these were the voices of my childhood.

At my grandmother’s house, I found a love of musicals, and a treasure trove of soundtracks – My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music (I remember that there were two copies of that record, because the original one had been scratched and skipped on the word “naive” in “Sixteen going on Seventeen.”), Pippin, Camelot and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, month others. I loved those records, because they were filled with singable songs that had real stories. (Always with me,there had to be a story.)

Modern musicals – Chess, Phantom, Les Mis – entered my personal vocabulary in high school. After all, it was a performing arts school. This was natural. (Two years before I started there, I’d wanted to be Puerto Rican, after seeing West Side Story for the first time. Ironically, my Caucasian-ness is what got me into my school, as much as my audition.)

My first really serious relationship – and I don’t mean my first sexual one – but my first grown up affair, was with a jazz musician. That he ended up being slime is secondary to the fact that he increased my mucial lexicon, introducing me to jazz and standards. Tony Bennet, Frank Sinatra Dean Martin, all the singers we mostly heard at Christmas – Perry, Bing, Nat, Rosemary and Judy – were suddenly surrounding me with decidedly non-holidayish sounds. And it wasn’t just the standards. Coletrain, Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald…their music was wrapped around me as well.

Those introductions continue to inform my choices. My collection now includes the Indigo Girls and Antigone Rising, and, leftover from college in San Francisco, Voice of the Beehive – but it also includes Madeleine Peyroux, Vienna Teng, Celtic Woman, Harry Connick, Jr, and quite a lot of stuff by Jason Robert Brown (who I maintain is the best storyteller who ever sat at a piano), as well as the requisite Erasure, Barenaked Ladies, Loreena McKennit and Billy Joel cd’s.

And of course, as a cellist, there are the classical pieces – YoYo Ma and Jaqueline DuPre, yes, but also Apocalyptica and Von Cello, the latter two who use the instrument for metal and rock.

Why am I thinking about this?

Because today at rehearsal, I realized that I’ve grown to really love liturgical music, as well. I mean, I’m never going to CHOOSE to listen to the Christian rock praise music that Fuzzy loves, though I’m complaining about it less, but the hymns we sing each Sunday morning, and especially the traditional pieces we get to do during advent, are insinuating themselves into my brain. Example: I realized today that I love the song “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming,” after years of thinking it was dull, and our new Lessons and Carols anthem “A Stable Lamp is Lighted” has this haunting Celtic-y/MiddleEastern influence that is just really amazing, and the imagery in the text is gripping:

A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
And stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbour heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

(That the alto part is wonderfully complex and interesting, is a mere enhancement to my attraction. Witness: I actually asked Clyde if we could do it for “regular” choir instead of just Lessons and Carols. He said it’s already on the roster for Advent IV.)

So, this is what my brain is centered on today. Not that this is unusual. After all, I’ve often explained that I think in music. And it’s true. I have a song in my head for every mood, every experience. I can’t name them all, but music is how I relate to the universe.

December

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Holidailies 2006



Rainy Street (night shot)

Originally uploaded by Ms.Snarky.


With a single sweep of the clock hands, a single flip of the calendar page, November is over, and December is here.

In my neighborhood, November ended with meteorological drama: 70+ degrees in the afternoon descending to a rainy 35 before midnight on the morning of the 30th, with snow – SNOW! – during the morning and early afternoon.

I usually wait til the first weekend in December to decorate my house, but I wanted to take advantage of Wednesday’s warm temperatures, and I also wanted the lights up so I could watch them shimmer in the mist. Lights seem to twinkle more when there’s rain or snow.

As the day progressed, the sky almost cleared, then grew blacker, though when I took the dogs out into the icy yard just a few moments ago, the moon was shining brightly, and the running lights from planes high above the trees were sparkling in the frosty air.

And now it’s December, and Christmas is coming bringing family with it, and somehow, somehow, after dreary November, everything seems bright and full of hope again.

Hey, Lights!

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Today I had stew for breakfast.

I use the term breakfast loosely. I was up until six, slept til noon, and have just finished a bowl of stew, but even though it’s after four, it’s the first thing I’ve eaten today.

Stew, like lasagna, is better the next day.

I also did the outside lights, which includes wrapping the trunks of the front yard trees and adorning the bushes with white lights, but I’m confused because I thought we had six sections of shrubbery nets and I only found four. However, we had two strands of those BIG old fashioned colored bulbs, so I used them on the front sections of the hedge.

Tomorrow, in honor of the end of NaNoWriMo I will begin the decorating of the INSIDE of the house.

Askew

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I’m all askew when it comes to sleeping this week. Not sure if it’s the weird weather or just weird restlessness. I have a fanfic piece burning in my brain and I’m afraid to write it, just like I’m afraid to write another piece I’ve been playing with in my head because I’m afraid of where it will lead.

It’s 4:25. I was up until 1:30 yesterday, slept an hour, then surfed the net in bed while Fuzzy slept til 3:30, and got up for his plane. After he left, I had cereal – he’d bought Lucky Charms, and I decided to try them – they are disgusting, and I shall stick to my nice, grown-up, painted-styrofoam-marshmallow-free Grape Nuts Flakes in future. I had one bowl, and some juice, then went to bed. Still restless, took an antihistamine. Slept til 11. Got up, made crockpot stew, showered, wrote a lot, ate stew, wrote more, ate more stew, changed back into bedclothes around 1:00 this morning, and now am still awake, but not coherent enough to do serious writing.

I hate when I’m too awake to sleep, and yet can’t get my brain to engage.

I’m ready for the cold weather the news seems so panicked about.
I’m craving mince pie.

Updatey Goodness

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The sky was grey today, and damp, but not cold, and tonight when I took the dogs out for their last call, I saw geckos on the wall. We’re supposed to have another cold front tomorrow or the day after (according to Weather.com it will be 77 tomorrow, 74 Wednesday, drop 40 degrees over night, and warm up to 47 on Thursday), and since I know the house is heated and our dogs sleep with us, I find myself worrying about my small reptilian housemates.

The rain today was a soft rain, sometimes barely more than a mist, and sometimes fat drops that plunked onto the ground like wet marbles. But the air was warmish and there was no chill in the water. When I went out just now, it felt so refreshing on my face and arms and feet.

It feels like I haven’t blogged in forever – I’ve been writey, just not bloggey. Here are some updates.

Thanksgiving was spent with my aunt and her family in Louisiana, near Shreveport. Dinner was catered, but tasty, and my cousin J and his sons made an oreo pie, which was disgustingly unhealthy and horribly sweet, but worth experiencing once. We met my aunt’s horse (she does dressage) and fed him carrots, and I’ve been whuffled and wickered and whinned at, and used as an equine napkin, or rather, my pink shirt was. And I thought Rottie drool was bad. So beyond glad I don’t have jowly dogs. But I still want a burro.

Also, I never posted a list of things I’m thankful for, and while there are many I could list – a life filled with love and laughter, good friends, great books, a warm and cozy house to live in, time to write, etc, the thing that is foremost in my mind right now (and partly a reaction to certain relatives) is that I feel truly blessed that I was raised in an ethnically diverse place, among creative, talented people from many walks of life, religious, spiritual, and lifestyle traditions, that I grew up surrounded by people who made their own choices, and that my mother always encouraged me to be independent and a free thinker. Sappy? Yeah, but still true.

Saturday was spent at ComedySportz, where I helped greet ‘n’ seat during the early show, and participated in the late “blue” show which involved many phallic jokes about New Hampshire. (You had to be there). We hadn’t advertised, really, so there was no audience to speak of, so we turned it into a sort of open workshop, and had fun, then went out to dinner.

Sunday involved much churchiness, as it was the 60th anniversary of St. Andrew’s as well as just being St. Andrew’s Day (which was actually during the week, but apparently you can move feast days to the nearest Sunday if necessary). As the bishop was in attendance, there were confirmations and a baptism as well as the normal St. Andrew’s Day festivities, and the doubly altered service meant twice as much music (my favorite part) as well as a kilted bagpiper (an adorable man who reminds me of my grandfather who never, to my knowledge, wore a kilt or played the bagpipes) leading our procession. Later in the service he played Amazing Grace, and I got teary partly because I’m enough of a Trekkie that Amazing Grace on the bagpipe is significant that way, and partly because the song was included in my favorite aunt’s wedding, and both my grandparents’ funerals – I sang it, actually, in my grandmother’s funeral. In spite of being moved – the baptismal and confirmation ceremonies are really beautiful – I had to laugh, because there’s no way to really fade out on a bagpipe – it’s ruined by the sort of abrupt burp at the end. I was exhausted, having not gone to bed til two AM, but still, beginning a week with laughter (we are always so snarky in choir rehearsal) and song is pretty cool.

NaNoWriMo is nearly over. Our TGIO is Saturday at one in Arlington. I haven’t updated my wordcount in two weeks….I’m not quite at 50k yet, but I plan to spend Weds and Thurs finishing it (have another project to finish tomorrow).

Holidailies begins on Friday. (If you’ve never played before, it’s a committment to update your blog or journal every day from 12/01/06 – 01/01/07. Monitors read the portal entries and select the best of them each day to highlight. It’s fun, and a great holiday activity that doesn’t cost a cent. Think of it as a sort of advent calendar for bloggers.

Lessons and Carols Rehearsals begin Tuesday with the performance on Sunday evening, December 17th. It’s a traditional Anglican Christmas service (not a Mass), and it’s beautiful and amazing, and really fun.

And I’m still playing with my original short stories, a possible entry for the Dead of Winter contest at Toasted Cheese, and will be posting more fanfic 100 entries in my TNG fic after the month changes.

And um…Fuzzy is leaving for a business trip in three hours so I’m gonna go cuddle with him while I can.

G’night.

Attn: DFW Folk – Got Laughs?

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* * * * * ANNOUNCEMENT! * * * * *

Do you have relatives visiting for the holidays that you just can’t stand talking to? Are you looking for a way to give your family a positive holiday experience, by spending time with them without having to engage in conversation? If so, come to ComedySportz: the interactive improv experience in Dallas’s West End Marketplace. We play every Friday and Saturday from now til the New Year, with two shows on New Year’s Eve, as well.

ComedySportz shows begin at 8:00 PM (doors open at 7:30), and are family-friendly. They’re child-safe without being childish, and more fun than eating leftover turkey in front of the open refrigerator at midnight. The ComedySportz Arena sells salty and sweet snacks (“sugar in solid and liquid forms”) but alcohol is BYOB.

Tickets for regular shows are $12 in advance (order by web or by phone), $15 at the door, and reservations are strongly suggested. To make reservations, visit the CSz website at www.comedysportzdfw.com or call (214)-521-LAFF ((214) 521-5233).

This Saturday, November 25th, we’re also having a 10:30 PM “blue show,” which features your favorite ComedySportz playerz uncensored. (The blue show is NOT a ComedySportz show and you must be 18 or older to attend). Come laugh off that third slice of pumpkin pie.

* * * * *

I’d love for all of you to come to see the show on any weekend, but I’d prefer that you come when I’m actually playing. My scheduled performance dates for the 2006 Holiday Season are December 8th, 15th, 16th, 22nd and 30th.