Grief

I still can't talk about this in detail, but I know I need to eventually.  My little gray cat Zelda died on November 2.  She'd been sick for a while, but that Friday was when we found out there was nothing else we could do for her and it was time to let her go.  It was devastating.  Still is. 

Two and a half weeks later, I look for her on the back of the living room couch, or behind the door, or under the rocking chair, or in my dad's office, or on one of the bar stools.  I'm disappointed and sad when she isn't there, even though I know she's gone. 

I start sobbing at the least expected times.

September and October were really, REALLY hard. 

I know it will take time and eventually I won't cry as much, but there is a lot I would give to have her nudge me with her wet cold nose, asking to crawl under the covers and curl up right next to my leg.

Nightmares (Part 2: Sleep Deprivation)

On to the Year From Hell.

First, I’ll talk about sleep deprivation.  In January of 2002 I was living in my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Springville in kind of an extended house-sitting arrangement.  My housemate and I shared the main floor, and the basement was rented to two college guys; Zach would continue to be the landlord while he and Kathleen were in Ohio, and I had planned to live there for at least the next 5 years.  In the meantime, I was paying half the rent and the Basement Boys, as I called them, paid the other half.  Unfortunately, soon after my brother and sister-in-law left and I moved in, the Basement Boys decided it would be cool to invite other roommates in violation of their contract.  I think there were ultimately 5 men living in a one-bedroom basement apartment, but I can’t remember.  What I CAN remember are the loud LAN parties they’d have nearly every night that kept me awake until 3 or 4 in the morning.  At the time, I was in school and working at least 30 hours a week as the assistant manager of a specialty gift store.  I would come home late from work or being out with friends and not be able to sleep because of the noise from the basement.  There were nights I only got three hours of sleep.  This went on for weeks until I was so exhausted I couldn’t do much more than pray and cry until I finally fell asleep.  It was both a shock and a relief when the Basement Boys told me they were moving late that February, but it was a little late for my body and mind to adjust back to normal sleeping habits.

I’d stay up late, struggle to sleep, and then have to get up and start all over again.  I don’t even know how I was functional except that I was suddenly liable for the entire rent and was working more hours than my housemate--I had no choice BUT to function.  My sleeping was pretty messed up before my trigger event, and the exhaustion of depression hit harder than it probably would have normally.  I remember being so tired I could hardly move or think, but so afraid to sleep because of the nightmares that I forced myself to stay awake until I absolutely couldn’t anymore.  When I finally slept, I had horrific dreams that woke me up with my throat tight from crying or screaming (I don’t think I ever screamed aloud, but I sure did in my dreams) and so scared that I couldn’t easily get back to sleep.  Not a good cycle, I know, but the thought of seeing a therapist hadn’t crossed my mind yet, so I lived (sort of) with the constant tiredness.

I don’t remember when, exactly, after my trigger the nightmares started.  I don’t even remember the first one I had, and I’m glad.  As they continued for close to two years, I learned to be grateful I didn’t remember some of them, because the ones I remember were horrific enough.  A lot of them involved houses--my house, my grandfather’s house, a big house that doesn’t exist in real life but that I’ve visited frequently in my dreams--or, infrequently, other buildings, like the museum/saloon that was haunted or my old junior high.  A lot of them involved people or things trying to get into the houses, or trying to sell the houses, or trying to burn down the houses.  Later on, as I was studying psychology, we learned a little bit about the theory of dream symbolism.  I don’t buy into all of it, but when I learned that a dream house symbolizes your psyche, it made a lot of sense.  My psyche was being attacked and the things I couldn’t deal with during the day were things that came out in my subconscious at night.

If the dreams weren’t just frightening, they were very violent.  I remember fires and blood and guns and death.  In one, my sons had been killed--their little bodies were behind the couch we'd used to try to barricade the window against attackers--and I remember seeing them, dead, while reloading my rifle and praying I would have good enough aim.  In another one, I accidentally shot a friend right through his forehead, and no one seemed to care.  In another, the trees in my yard were on fire and people had kidnapped my youngest sister, and I couldn't move fast enough to chase them and save her.  In one of the worst ones, I watched T get stabbed in the stomach from outside a locked door.  I screamed and screamed but no one helped and when I finally somehow got through the door, he was almost dead and all I could do was cradle his head in my lap and sob.  I woke up before the ambulances got there and was so shaken that I had to make sure he was ok and not dying in some storeroom somewhere.

Night after night after night, people died, houses burned, my loved ones were attacked...and I couldn't stop it.

Disclaimer – The views expressed here are the opinions of me and do not necessarily reflect the views of or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Oh hey.

I'm still here.  Still drafting more posts about the Year From Hell.

Here is my excuse for not blogging more regularly:  I have a new job.  We are discouraged from blogging at work unless it's directly relevant to our work, which this blog isn't.  Also, I work for the church and need to find out what the policy is about blogging.  There's some statement or other I need to put at the bottom of every blog that lets people know I'm not speaking for the church, but I can't remember where it is and I need a VPN to check our policy manual when I'm not at the office.

At my previous job, I had enough down time that I could blog and no one really cared.  This job is different, and when I get home I don't always want to sit in front of a computer for another few hours, or I don't have time to write anything.  I throw some drafts in Google Docs and consider them works in progress, but they aren't progressing very well right now.  Rest assured they're THERE, and I have an outline for how this is all going to go, but the posts won't be regular or frequent.  I'm working out how to fix that, though, because I still really feel like I need to write about the Year From Hell.

There you go, then.  I hope to get some things written in the next few days and scheduled to post automatically.  Thanks for sticking with me. :)

Bringing the newcomers up to speed

So, maybe some of you jumped into this blog from my last link on Facebook, and maybe some of you are confused as to what's going on here.  About 10 years ago, I experienced a trigger event that began a major depressive episode that lasted for at least two years.  It changed me in some fundamental ways, and the recovery process was slow and difficult.  I've decided to blog about it--my experience might help someone else, and I think writing about it will help me--even though the blogging process is also slow and difficult.  There you go.

Out of the infinite kindness of my heart, here are the previous posts (in order) that will get you caught up:

Brave or Stupid?
Sick or Hungry? (Part 1)
Sick or Hungry? (Part 2) (warning: vomit!)
Sick or Hungry? (Part 3) (WARNING: may contain eating disorder triggers)
Trying to write about the nightmares
Nightmares (part 1) (background)

It's been hard to relive some of these things, and that's one of the reasons I don't post regularly.  10 years later, I'm fine.  I have some lingering issues (mostly with food and phobias) but overall, I'm great.  My life is incredibly blessed and I'm very happy.  I know who I am and I sometimes get glimpses of why I'm here--I don't know if I could ask for much more than that.

Nightmares (Part 1: Background)

As I've been writing, I've realized that I need to break this subject up or it will be too long and difficult for me, so the nightmare posts will be published in several parts.  

I thought the food issues were difficult to talk about.  This one might be worse.  I’ve put it off for months, but here goes.   

Two weeks ago I had a really bad dream about a worm that got into you if someone who already had it bit you.  We were on a spaceship, and two women had the worms.  I had to help in the medical bay, but while I was watching, one woman started flailing around because the worms were multiplying and moving under her skin.  Suddenly, while the doctor was trying to help the second woman, the first woman’s skin stopped moving and she grew very still and opened her eyes.  Her eyes became reddish black and I knew that the worms had eaten her brain but couldn’t move in time to prevent her attacking the doctor.  Then I woke up.  It was bad.  It was bad enough that I couldn’t go back to sleep without turning on my lamp, the bathroom light, and the light over the kitchen sink to make sure there weren’t zombie-like people in my house, waiting to infect me with a brain-eating worm.  I know I'm not the only person to ever have vivid dreams, but MAN.  Right after waking up, I knew that if I didn't turn on the lights, I'd be next.

Useful background points:  

Sometimes things really get to me, and sometimes they don’t.  I can spook easily, depending on the nature of the spooking--a documentary about Charles Manson can spook me more than a ghost story before bed, for instance, unless the ghost story is about demons or possession, but I like some scary movies and am usually ok and rarely have nightmares after watching one.  I’ve watched some pretty scary (and really well-made) foreign horror films and, while I may get a little nervous in elevators (thanks to the original “The Eye”, not to mention “The Silence of the Lambs”), I’m usually just fine once I get home.

I remember, vividly, the very first nightmare I ever had.  I was three, and mean people were my parents and made me sleep in a closet, and I had to find my real parents, but got lost in a big warehouse full of strange people.  A very fat man with a red and white polka-dot tie helped me find my real parents.  His “house” inside the warehouse was a sink and he sat in the sink and told me not to worry.  

I had another one around the same age (I think) in the back of my dad’s sleeper cab semi.  My little brother and parents and I were all sleeping there during a drive my dad took (my middle sister might have been born, but I don’t remember her being there).  I woke up because there was someone else, with a blue face, in the bed.  The person turned around, and instead of the back of her head, there was a red face just like the blue one.  When I had chicken pox for the second time (again, around 3), I had bad dreams that there were spiders crawling all over me--oddly enough, I remember being completely unafraid of spiders before that dream, and since then I’ve been terrified of them.  I had a dream while spending the weekend at my grandparents' house that my grandpa's big black and silver angel fish got out of the fish tank, swam through the air, and touched me (more on this when I talk about the weird phobias in a different post).  When I was in junior high, I dreamed about a wild man who came down from the mountains, took people from their beds, ripped them apart, and then felt bad about what he had done.  He would put the people back together wrong and leave them on their front porches in the night.  I’ve had some pretty bad dreams that have stuck with me for a long time, and sometimes I remember them just as I'm falling asleep.

I dream in full color.  Almost Technicolor.  The non-color dreams I’ve had have always been sepia-toned or turned into color eventually.  So blood, for instance, is REALLY red, and fire is REALLY fiery, and if I shoot a gun, I can almost feel the bruise on my shoulder the next day.

I’m afraid of the dark and have been since I was a child.  I can’t sleep without a light on unless there is someone else in the room.  Sometimes a tiny nightlight is enough, and sometimes I have to have my bedside lamp AND the hall light on.  It’s just one of those things I deal with.

I have a pretty vivid imagination and things that don’t frighten me in the daytime come out at night, so, as interesting as they can be, I avoid TV shows about ghosts and hauntings.  I have a healthy respect for the power of darkness and I don’t mess around with it--it’s one of the lines I draw with scary movies and the main reason I will never see “The Exorcist”.

So, you know, take a woman who has all of these factors already stacked against her, and add a major depressive episode and sleep deprivation (coming in Part 2) to the mix, and it's really no wonder that, at some point, she'll develop a phobia of sleeping.

Trying to write about the nightmares

I've started a draft about the nightmares stemming from the Year From Hell, but it is proving to be incredibly difficult.  Much more difficult than I thought.  Remembering some of them has me almost in tears, and the old fear of sleep threatens to come back.  It never really does, but the threats are, well, unpleasant enough.  Now, as I'm typing this, I've remembered that I need to talk about the sleep deprivation I experienced for a long time, and how the nightmares and the sleep phobia exacerbated it.  Looks like I'll have to do the nightmare posts as a series.  Maybe that'll help me write them, because, MAN, it's hard.  It's really, really hard.

Sick or Hungry? (Part 3) (WARNING: This blog may contain triggers if you are struggling with an eating disorder.)

Wow.  It's been hard to write about my stomach issues.  I've had to remember some very difficult things, but it's actually been good for me to talk about it.  It's been good to remember the hard things--it makes me so grateful for where I am now! 

This post is going to be hard, too.  I'm going to talk about someone very dear to me, and it will probably embarrass him, so I'll just refer to him by his first initial and those of you who know who I'm talking about can silently appreciate his friendship and concern.  He is a good man and our friendship has survived through some pretty rough times.

T moved out of the state in August 2002, but moved back in April (I think) 2003.  During the months he was gone, we chatted and talked on the phone quite a bit, but it was good to have him back in the state.  Sometime in the first half of 2003, a local theater (The Grove in Pleasant Grove) started doing karaoke nights every Friday for a $5 cover.  I think the first karaoke night was in April or May of that year, and many of my theatre friends participated.  We always had a good time--there were contests and theme nights and lots of great music.  I think it was in the fall of that year that T noticed I would say I wasn't hungry, which was usually true, whenever anyone offered me food (at friends' houses, restaurants, or popcorn The Grove).  Sometimes I didn't feel like eating, sometimes my stomach hurt, sometimes the thought of chewing and swallowing was enough to over-activate my gag reflex.  One night during karaoke, T took me outside to talk; I figured it would be about his girl trouble, but it wasn't.  He said "if a friendship isn't worth risking because you're worried about your friend, it's not much of a friendship," then he looked me right in the eyes and said he'd noticed I never ate and confronted me with his concern that I might be anorexic.  I was shocked.  I was angry.  I don't really remember what I told him, but it must have been something along the lines of, "how dare you accuse me of that!"  T reiterated what he said previously--that he was worried enough about me to risk losing my friendship by expressing his concern--and we parted ways. 

I didn't talk to him for two weeks because I was so livid.  When we finally did talk again after I'd calmed down, I told him I appreciated his concern, I wanted to still be friends, and I would work on trying to eat more.  It wasn't until I was sitting in my abnormal psychology class in 2005, listening to the lecture about eating disorders, that I realized T had good reason to be concerned.  I almost started crying in class (that happened a lot in that class--there was some very intense and difficult subject matter) because the realization was so sudden and harsh; the professor was going over the indicators of an eating disorder and I knew I manifested more of them than I wanted to think about.  I wasn't anorexic, but I was definitely experiencing a form of disordered eating and it was too close for comfort.  I talked to T later that week (maybe that same evening) and apologized for being so angry with him months earlier.  I told him he was right to be concerned and thanked him for being willing to risk losing me in order to get me to see what I was doing to myself.

It was after that I remember looking at my thighs and being grateful they weren't skin and bones, being grateful that my body had substance to it.  Some other good friends later told me that they had noticed a physical change (they said my face had started to hollow out) but didn't know how to talk to me about it.  It was enough to know, even years later, that people who loved me were concerned.

My sweet mother also helped; she used to ask me, when she noticed I was cranky or tired, if I'd eaten.  She seemed to understand that sometimes I just wasn't hungry, but she noticed the drop in blood sugar and its effect on me long before I made the connection.  Between my family and my friends, I became more aware of my disordered eating and began to recognize the differences between illness and hunger.  It wasn't that my stomach felt different--it was other things that clued me in.  I sometimes, even now, go through a mental checklist to figure out if it's hunger pain or just pain:  Is it morning?  When was the last time I ate?  Am I cranky?  Did I just do something stressful?  Has it been a bad day at work? 

As I've said earlier, it's not NEARLY as bad as it used to be, but I still have days I just can't tell the difference.  I usually err on the side of hunger, figuring that if I'm actually sick instead, at least I'll have something in my stomach to throw up, which is much more comfortable than the dry heaves.

This is why I won't ever go on a diet unless it's for legitimate medical reasons (allergy, disease, etc).  I don't want to come NEAR anything that could trigger disordered eating behavior, so don't try to convert me to your cabbage soup cleanses or juice fasts. :)

Sick or Hungry? (part 2) (warning: vomit!)

I can't remember when I started really eating normally again, but I do know I was still having issues in 2004 and occasionally since then.  I have frustrating days when I'm just not hungry, or can't tell if I'm sick instead of hungry.  I had a bad week in May--my stomach just hurt and I didn't know if I had a stomach bug or was just stressed and tired and not eating enough.  I get so angry when that happens because I feel like I can't control it.  I tried eating, I tried not eating, I tried antacids, but nothing worked.  I finally gave up and just let my stomach chew on itself for a night and felt better in the morning.  I call it a "grabby" stomach:  sometimes (not nearly as much now) when I eat it's as though my stomach clenches onto the food, which also hurts.  Sometimes I just have to err on the side of hunger.  I figure if I'm going to throw up, at least I'll have something to throw up. 


About two years ago, I was awakened in the middle of the night with the familiar stomach pain.  I drank a glass of milk and pulled out the heating pad, which usually worked.  Not that night.  Not an hour later, the cramps started again and I thought I might be sick, so I headed to the bathroom when things took a turn for the worse.  The cramps became so bad I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.  My chest hurt, I couldn't breathe, and I very literally prayed that I wasn't going to die.  After several agonizing minutes, I was finally able to make myself vomit (HIGHLY unpleasant), which relieved some of the pressure and pain, and cried my way back to bed.  I called my doctor the next day and he diagnosed me with a hiatal hernia--which basically means there is a weak spot in my diaphragm and my stomach likes to try crawling up my esophagus into my chest cavity--and put me on a heavy-duty antacid.  I have some really effective therapies for when it acts up, but I blame the Year From Hell for it.  I didn't have issues until then, and it's been recurrent since.

My stomach issues from the Year From Hell have made me almost paranoid about not eating enough.  This is why I will never go on a restrictive diet unless I become diabetic or something.  The thought of restricting my calorie intake in such a way makes me anxious that I'll go through that kind of near-daily pain again, and I refuse to do it.

Change

I do NOT do well with change, even when it's ultimately positive.

The last 10 days have held record amounts of change in my life, and it's been really really hard to deal with.  At least once a day since June 2, I've forced myself not to cry, and I'm pretty sure the dam will burst and I'll dissolve into tears at some unsuspecting cashier or new coworker or cat or neighborhood child.

My beautiful, amazing, and life-affirming show closed.
I quit my job at UVU, where I've spent nearly 20 years as a student or an employee.
I had to let go of a job I was PRETTY DARN GOOD AT, with coworkers I really liked.
I started a new job where I know pretty much nothing.
My lovely friend Rachel moved to New York (which, incidentally, brought back the anger and confusion I felt when NYU rejected me.  Not Rachel's fault at all!).
My lovely and dear friend Julie got married and is moving to California.
My other lovely and dear friend Julie is dating someone pretty awesome.
I had to take an open-ended leave of absence from my calling as a temple worker and have no idea when or if I'll be able to go back.

All of these things have happened in just over a week, and I'm a bit of a mess.  Don't be surprised if I get all weepy next time I see you.  I'll try not to get mascara (and/or snot) all over your clothes.

Maybe carry a Tide pen just in case you run into me.  And some Kleenex.

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled program of confessional blogging...

Yes, it's been nearly a month since my last post here, but rest assured that I have several percolating!  It's been hard to talk about all of this, but I really do think it's good for me and I hope it can help someone else who may be struggling.

Since I last posted, I've almost completed a lovely run of "The Secret Garden" at Hale Center Theater Orem (we close Saturday!), I have gotten a new job (I start June 11), and I've continued the fight against the Neverending Virus/allergies/sinus infection.

I'm also tired, sometimes grumpy, and overall happy.  When my schedule settles a little bit, I will continue this Year From Hell saga.

Sick or Hungry? (part 1)

I don't remember when I stopped eating during 2002, the Year From Hell.  I remember my body and brain going into "fight or flight" mode at one point soon after it all started but I can't say exactly when or how long after the trigger event.  I may have gradually lost my appetite, or it may have happened suddenly.  In any case, there came a time where I didn't eat very much, if anything, at all.  I just didn't want to, or didn't remember to, or felt too sick to.  I've talked to people about it, and I'm always surprised when some of them say, "Oh, I'd love to have that problem!"  No, you wouldn't.  The problem with the "problem" is that I eventually could no longer tell if I was sick or hungry, because they felt exactly the same.  My stomach would cramp and I'd become nauseated, but because I couldn't tell the difference between illness and hunger, it turned into a vicious cycle:  if I ate, I ran the risk of vomiting.  If I didn't eat, I ran the risk of painful stomach cramps that sometimes doubled me over.  It felt as though someone had reached into my abdomen and was squeezing my stomach or that it was trying to burst through my skin. 

I remember one time in the summer of 2003 when I was visiting my friend Tony for a game night; my stomach hurt so badly that I had to leave his basement apartment to see if the fresh air would help me feel less ill.  My friends were concerned, and as I sat on the cement wall of Tony's stairs, one of them brought me a piece of bread and stayed with me until I ate it.  It was hard to chew and swallow because the nausea was so bad, but I did it and eventually felt better.  The thing is, until I DID feel better, I didn't know if I would.  I didn't know if that stupid piece of bread would make me throw up or not because my stomach felt exactly the same either way.. 

Later that summer, I visited my friend Matthew on Pioneer Day.  I was assisting with some training for work and we'd gotten done later than expected, so Matthew's Pioneer Day celebration was over by the time I got to his apartment.  We talked for a little while, but I was tired and didn't stay very long.  As I stood up to leave, I almost passed out and he had to hold me up until I was steady on my feet.  I don't pass out.  I've never fainted.  I blacked out once, when I was 10 and sprained my foot, and that was only for a few seconds.  I got very faint last year after giving blood and trying to help someone who fainted in the recovery area.  Pioneer Day 2003, though, I came very close to passing out.  Matthew was worried, but I reassured him I was fine and was able to drive home without anything else happening.

It was during this time I started getting bad tension headaches.  I'd become dizzy and get tunnel vision and nausea and barely be able to drive home.  The only thing that helped was sleeping for a couple of hours.  Now I know that my occasional headaches can largely be prevented by eating or drinking, but at the time it didn't occur to me.

When I began to recover, I sometimes had to remind myself to eat.  I had to remember that sometimes, quantity counted more than quality.  If, for instance, nothing but cookies was appetizing, I ate cookies.  Sometimes it was my "whitey white" sandwich of turkey, white bread, and mayonnaise that I ate at least once a day for two or three weeks straight.  Sometimes it was toast or celery or jelly beans or pancakes.  I learned to eat what I was hungry for WHEN I was hungry and not freak out about it, because at least I was eating.

I don't know if this is brave or stupid.

Ten years ago in June I began a journey through a major depressive episode.  This is not something I really talk about very much, partly because it was such a dark period of my life and partly because it's one of those things no one really talks about.  However, over the last few years, I've become an advocate for diminishing the stigma of mental illness, and over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about what I went through.  A part of me is still trying to make sense of it, I think.  Most of me is really happy that I'm here.

I'm usually reluctant to talk about that two or three years because it's awkward, uncomfortable, and sad, none of which I like being.  There were some really horrific things I dealt with.  There were times I don't want to remember.  There were also miracles.

I don't think of myself as some kind of hero for getting through all of that.  I am stronger for having done it, I know, but I'm not anything that special.  Maybe, though, talking about this can help someone else.  Maybe it will be good for me to confront some of it from my current perspective.  I don't know.  I do know, though, that I'm going to write about it...whether you like it or not.  Ha.

Bluh

Apparently I have that Cold From the Dark Side that's been making it's evil way around.  I can hear out of both ears for the first time in a week, and that's pretty awesome, but I'm SO TIRED.  I just don't have a lot of energy--I tried to walk my  normal speed at work last week (for the three days I was actually well enough to be there) and wore myself out walking down the hall and back.  I hit the Nap Wall every day around 1:30 and 5:30 PM.  My voice is probably a third lower than it normally is.  It's kind of like having the flu without the body aches and fever.  Fun!  I guess I just have to accept that I'm not going to be 100% for a while, and work with the 50-75% I have right now.

I think I'll go to bed at 8.

There's a reason we call it Hell Week

It's formally called Tech Week, but everyone calls it Hell Week.  Getting onto the actual stage, in costumes, with set pieces, and lighting, and mics, and sound, is an entirely different animal than rehearsing in a taped-off or demarcated space elsewhere.  As we do our dress rehearsals, things change, sometimes at the last minute, because they don't look right or don't work logistically.  For instance, we've discovered that women in beautiful bustle dresses look ridiculous pushing a carriage set piece around the stage, so those four weeks of practice now mean nothing to me except that I have to get the carriage piece onstage so the men in uniform can take over.  For another instance, we've discovered that it's hard for one of our beautiful leading ladies to make a brief entrance, run (literally) around the theater to make another entrance, and sing an emotional song without panting.

Because we're using a trap door and a lift for some of the scenes (Mary magically appears in the middle of a nightmare scene!), the people using the trap had to practice getting on and off it on Monday and Tuesday nights.  We had to reposition a few people to let the trap work properly and safely.  That took several minutes each night.  People have been repositioned because of lighting, which takes time.  People are dealing with wigs and hair pieces that sometimes don't quite match their natural hair, so that takes time to resolve.  Props get changed, we find out how fast the quick changes are (I'll be changing in the lobby in front of everyone, which is awesome!  No shame!), we find out that some crosses work and some don't.

It's an exhausting process.  I haven't been home before midnight since Sunday, and I don't envy those who are driving from longer distances.

However, as we do these things and tweak the show to be even better, you come to a moment where it all finally clicks and you have A Show instead of just a series of rehearsed scenes and transitions.  The story comes alive and almost makes you cry because it's a real story now.  Last night, I posted on Facebook, "Holy cow, we have a show", because we do.  And it's beautiful to hear and see.  I can't quite express how grateful and humbled I am to be involved.

Notes

Rehearsal went pretty well last night, but there were some glitches, most of which can be blamed on the boom-box we're using for the track.  Once we get up on the stage with the monitors and speakers there and can hear the track better, it won't be such a big deal.  As it is, we screwed up a few times.  Now we know and can watch for those things.

Part of the rehearsal process is getting notes from the costumers, producers, director, music director, and dialect coach (if there is one for the show).  "Notes" is not always a fun process, but you can always learn something--it's better to be told you've messed up and fix it before opening than to wonder and consistently mess up during the run.  We all want to make sure we do things right, and we almost always try to take notes with gratitude and good grace.

My character in this show needs a Scottish accent.  I have less than 10 lines, but I still want to make sure I'm doing what they want me to do, so I was pretty worried.  A friend kindly recorded a Scot neighbor of hers saying my lines so I could get a better idea of what I was doing, and a dialect coach was hired.  After our 45-minute session with him, I felt good about what I'd learned and highly relieved I wasn't required to use a Yorkshire dialect like three of my fellow cast members.  Scottish is hard enough to do, but Yorkshire is very tricky!

I've tried to practice the sounds (sometimes I'll read aloud to myself in the dialect) but I haven't had a lot of time to do it, so I was a little worried about rehearsal last night because I knew the dialect coach would be there.  After we were done, I anxiously approached him and he said, "I only have one note here for you."  He turned his notebook so I could see it, and showed me this:  :).  That was my only note!  He said he appreciated the subtlety of my accent and it was exactly what he was looking for.  It's good to know that my efforts have paid off and I don't sound like an idiot up there.  Most of the time.

Real site is down.

So my regular blog seems to be down for the count.  I don't know why, but I DO know that my work computer magically got a massive trojan virus on it and I had to change my passwords on EVERYTHING I'd accessed for the month before my system had to be wiped.  I think my dear HeidiAphrodite was a victim.  My brother's working on things and we should be up and running soon, but he's starting a new job and juggling cars (literally--you should see it) so I'm going to be posting here for a bit.

Unfortunately for you, it's 4:54, I'm wiped the heck out, I have to go home and do some laundry and eat and then go to rehearsal, so you won't be getting anything but an update and possibly a new theme. 

Enjoy ha ha.