Well, the donkeys were good. October 3, 2004 ~ 4:06 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedI went last night to see the Youngest sing with the Metropolitan Opera’s Children’s Choir in Carmen. The Youngest was great, she always is. I’m always very proud of her for getting on stage in front of thousands of people. And yet, the opera leaves me cold.
Rick says that there is such a thing as good opera, but that you have to sit through a lot of it to find the good ones. I don’t have that much patience. I have never liked opera. It bores me. It’s dated. And few things annoy the living shit out of me like the sound of a soprano singing an endless aria. The sound is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Think of Mariah Carey. Think of how annoying those endless little fucking trills of hers are. That’s how opera is to me.
And yet I go to see the Youngest perform, because I love the kid and she deserves to know that she is doing a spectacular job. But while we’re standing there (we always do standing room so we can escape as soon as she’s done singing), I start crticially examining the set (why go to all the trouble of having a 3D scene in the front if you’re going to do a boring flat background?), I pick apart the music (playing that age old game of “What instrument is playing now?”), I let my mind wander. And last night I watched the donkeys. Because there were two of them on the stage at various points. I started to wonder what would happen if they took a crap on stage. And that (aside from the Youngest being on stage for a short while) was the only thing that kept me sane.
I hate the freaking opera.
Something’s missing… October 3, 2004 ~ 3:53 pm
Posted by Julie in : Daily Grind , comments closedOh, yeah, the last post. I took it down because it still made me feel petty. But thank you everyone who responded, because you made me feel less petty. 
After holding it in pretty well for 36 hours, I let Rick have it. Over the phone, because the Youngest was around, and I didn’t want to be psycho in front of her. I told him how much birthdays mean to me, and how I thought I had communicated that to him in the past. I told him I didn’t want anything special, I just wanted a day with him outside of the city. I asked him why he got me what I had told him several times that Lori was getting me. I asked why if he didn’t want to be in Barnes & Noble, he stayed. I totally unloaded. And this is what he told me:
That he should have paid more attention to me, and he knew it. That he knew he was being a dick at Barnes & Noble. That he hadn’t heard me say Lori was getting me a tiara and wand, all he heard was that I wanted one for my birthday, and that in his head, he had until October 19 (when Mom is coming up for the Sting/Annie Lennox concert) to get me a present, because he figured we were celebrating my birthday then. But above all, he apologized profusely. And he feels miserable about it. He still does. I could see it in his face last night when he told me again he knew he had fucked up big time and told me he was sorry for it. I said “As well you should be, but we’re moving on here.”
It comes down to a series of miscommunications. He’s a typical guy, he doesn’t always listen. I guess on the plus side, he did listen to half of what I was saying about the wand and the tiara (he heard that I wanted one, after all, just not that Lori was getting it for me). I also told him that my mom gets to celebrate my birthday on the 19th, because that’s when she sees me. On the other hand, he was here for my actual birthday and thus gets no special dispensation. He now understands this.
He’s still down about this today, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t like it when he beats himself up over things. But maybe this will stick with him, and we won’t have to go through this again. I hope so.
