Sooo.....

I had my picture taken tonight of a guy I barely know feeling up my boobs.  That is all.

Hoping for the best!

So I just got my list of possible repertoire for voice lessons this semester, and I'm really excited.  Regardless of the fact that I don't want to spend my life in the world of classical music, I feel that it's good to still try to excel in it.  It's helped so much with other aspects of singing and music in general.  I bought a book of mezzo-soprano arias when the cool people from American Music came and set up shop in OP and there's some great stuff in it.  I decided to do one from an opera called "The Saint of Bleecker Street."  Not 100% sure what the show is about, but I like the song and Dr. C said she did too, so I figure it can't be a bad choice.  It's definitely gonna be challenging (it ends on a high G# that's held out for 8 counts...which is slightly reaching for me as a mezzo) but I'm looking forward to it and I really wanna put a lot of work into it.  I'm gonna be doing a Rachmaninoff too (not sure which song yet), which I'm uber-psyched about.  I LOVE his piano works, so I'm hoping his vocal works are just as good.  I'm still debating on my musical theatre choices.  I'd really like to do "A Change In Me" from Beauty & the Beast, but that might be a tad cliche.  We'll see.  I feel like I should do a really good, challenging Disney song before I leave here.  Haven't decided on a second MT song, but I'd like to do one from a serious musical (something like "Ragtime" or "Parade") because I feel like some (okay, maybe most, I don't really know) people in the music department look at musical theatre as the "fluff" music, it's always the "oh-i-wanna-do-something-fun-but-not-serious" music.  Basically, if you pick a musical theatre song, it gets pushed to the back burner in lessons.  I understand that the goal of the department is to improve the student's ability in classical music, but if the student wants to pursue a career in non-classical music I think the teachers should still take it seriously.  So that's my goal for this semester, to balance the two out better.   Anyway, I'll stop my musical musings now.

We just had our second rehearsal for Rocky Horror and I'm excited/anxious about the following weeks.  I'm not really gonna say anything about it here just because, well, we wouldn't wanna spoil anything :)  lol.  Although I will say that this is only my second speaking role in a musical, and the other one was Louise in "Gypsy," in which Louise turns into a stripper.  In this show, Janet turns into a slut.  I'm beginning to sense a frightening pattern.

Too much change

Have you ever felt like your whole world is changing too fast for you to keep up with?  That's the way mine feels at the moment.  My mom keeps deciding to do things that I don't think she realizes have an affect on me.  I'll explain.

First of all, although this isn't a part of the recent happenings it has been brought up in my mind time and again when thinking about the present, we moved out of our old house back when I was 14.  We all agreed to it at the time, since we figured that change wouldn't be so bad.  I think that, looking back, we all feel like it was a mistake.  That old house was an icon in our neighborhood, the Homesteads, which was a very close-knit community.  It was my true childhood home, the place where all my memories were made.  When we sold it, the people who bought it decided to completely renovate the place.  I was pissed.  I can't drive by the house anymore without crying, thinking that everything I had then is now changed.  I always thought I'd be able to drive by that house and remember my days as a kid, but I can't now.  It's too different.  So that's the first thing.

The second thing is that last summer my aunt and uncle moved down to the Ozarks in Missouri.  They've moved around a lot, so it wasn't a surprise (although I think they'll be staying there for a while now).  However, this gave my mom the idea that she should move down there too.   I fully understand my mom's need for change in her life, as she's a single mom with her youngest soon going off to college.  For me, though, it changes the dynamics of my life.  I have ALWAYS been Iowa-proud, and Granger-proud, and small-town proud, and 4-H-proud.  Just ask anyone who knows me.  I LOVE Granger, and I could not have asked for a better place to grow up.  But now my mom's moving, which means I won't have Granger to go "home" to anymore.  I won't even be able to go back "home" to Iowa.  Which I hate.  It makes me wanna cry every time I think about it.  No more small-town reminiscing with my family, no more seeing old 4-H buddies.  Everything's gone.  

Well, it will be in the fall anyway.  My mom has now moved out of the house in Granger, as of this weekend, and is now living in an apartment in Waukee.  We'll be living there until the end of the summer when my brother goes off to college, then my mom's gonna move down to the Ozarks.  Which means this is my last summer in Iowa, and I've gotta make the most of it.  I'm going to try out for the summer show at the Des Moines Playhouse (since doing HSM there last year was a BLAST!) and I'm gonna try to go on the Idaho Wilderness Trek which I did a few years ago and have been meaning to do again, and I'm gonna do EVERYTHING I possibly can at the Iowa State Fair!  I'm pulling out all the stops this summer.  I'm leaving Iowa with a bang.

Just tonight I called my mom to talk about stuff and she was in the car.  I asked where she was going and she said she was taking Ma to an animal shelter.  Ma is the cat we've had for 13 years, and she's as much a part of our family as any human member.  My brother and I grew up with that cat.  It really is like losing a family member, something that's been there for you for so long you're used to their presence and can't imagine what it would be like without them.  We even always joked about "What are we gonna do when Ma's not around anymore?"  Well now she's not, and it's so sad I jut have no idea how to handle it. I know it sounds kind of dumb, but anyone's who had to lose a special pet will be able to relate to that loss.  I just can't believe that my mom is giving her away.  I guess I can't expect her to ask how I feel about it, since I don't really live at home anymore, but I loved that cat.  It would have been different if she'd passed away, but the fact that my mom's giving her up kind of makes me angry at my mom.  She ALSO sold one of our other cats, Toby, who wasn't as close to us as Ma but still a definite part of the family as well.  He was always amusing.  I feel like my mom has no sense of the sentimentality I have for these kinds of things.  But, it's too late now.

So, that's pretty much the summation of everything that's changed for me.  Most of it is extremely recent, which makes me feel like everything's just being swept out from under me.  My old house is gone, my beloved pets are gone (this also makes me miss my horses, which I had to sell when I went off to college, and that was extremely hard), my hometown will soon be gone, my home state will soon be gone...and on top of all of that, not to sound like a super-downer or like I'm looking for pity, but this also makes me reflect a lot on my Dad's passing 8 years ago, which brings back an even bigger flood of memories when we all lived together in the Homesteads in Granger.  Pretty soon I'm not going to have anything left of my childhood, it feels like.  It just sucks.  And I hate that it's happening.  I hope I don't have go through anything like this again soon, and I would never wish it on anybody else.  It's just really hard to cope with all this change at once.