Excellent news!!

No, not Obama's victory. I already told you I didn't care about that. I heard from my sister a few days ago that my mom's full-body CAT scans (to check for cancer in the rest of her body) came back, finally... and they are clean! So no other cancer, which means no terminal cancer. They still have to do an MRI of her spine to check for any others there besides the two they found already, but this already seems to narrow it down to a manageable amount. Yeah, she's still on a ton of morphine and other painkillers... but I think she's going to be okay. I'm so relieved. Thank God!!

Loose Change

English is a fascinating language. Actually, all languages are fascinating, but I'm fluent in English, so that's the one I'm going to talk about now.

No, that's not a lead-in to a discussion of politician rhetoric or speeches or anything of the sort. I hate politics. I am pretty much apathetic about this whole election thing. Yes, I voted. No, I don't really care who wins either way. Is that terrible? Maybe. I have bigger fish to fry right now.

Many, many words in the English language have multiple different meanings that depend on the context they're placed in. Take "love." It seems simple on the outset: an expression of deep affection and/or devotion for something. But do you "love" your family the same way you "love" your significant other? What about ice cream? Or hiking? Or your favorite band? Or celebrities in magazines, movies, television? Your dog? Each of these things does something a little different for you, but you describe them all as "love." I've heard the argument that this cheapens the idea of love. To add yet another perspective to it, the Bible says that "God is love." In rejoinder to that, I've heard it explained that when you do things you "love"--visiting your friends, enjoying nature, playing music--you are experiencing God. So this one simple term splits into many different contextual meanings, but in the end it boils down again to just one thing.

Let's take a slightly different example: change. That stuff you get when you pay with cash, the handful of pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters that you throw in your purse or pocket and haphazardly throw on top of the washer before you put your jeans in a few days later. Annoying, right? Why do candy bars have to be 99 cents? Wouldn't it make more sense to round up that one cent so you wouldn't have to deal with all those practically worthless little coins?
Then there's the broader sense, and probably the first one you thought of when you read the word. Change: a shift from the old to the new, nothing you can pin down but what is experienced in the difference between past and present. An effect. Something that some people embrace and others fear. Change is good when you're stuck, but bad when you're comfortable. Good when you're itching for escape, bad when you've got everything planned out and life throws a wrench in the works. Good when you're discovering who you are, bad when you're already established and people are counting on your old identity.

How are they connected? One's tangible, one's abstract. This is a tenuous link at best, you're thinking. You get change (monetary) from an exchange of goods. Hand over a dollar bill, get a candy bar plus a penny. Same monetary value as the dollar bill, but it's changed. (See what I did there? .....sorry. Hang on) Different. What do you do with the change? Put it in your pocket, probably, and forget about it. Eventually it makes itself into a jar or a can or whatever and you save it for a rainy day, forget about how you got it. "I blew a whole dollar on that candy," you think. "I could have saved that and used it on [insert common office/school supply here] right now." But you didn't spend a whole dollar, only 99 cents. And that penny will wait, patiently, with all the other coins until you count them and put them in your bank account to be spent again, exchanged again. There's an immediate change when you first submit your dollar to the grocery store cashier, but it doesn't stop there. Eventually the penny will be changed again in another exchange, maybe for a car or a house or a leash for your dog.

Essentially, however, you can't let it weigh you down. The penny's not going to do much good in your pocket, and it's not going to buy much until you combine it with all your other spare change. By itself, it's just a germ-ridden piece of copper with a dead president's face on it. It's how you use it that makes a difference.

Maybe you're one of those people, like me, who values having at least one constant in your life. You aren't one of those people who thrives on chaos and has to do something different every day. Sure, I like to get out and do new things, meet new people, go places I've never been; but if I don't have a constant to organize everything around, some certain thing that makes me feel comfortable and is always, reliably there, then I'm suddenly floundering and panicking and have nothing to hold onto. But change, inevitably, happens regardless of your constant. It doesn't care what you hold dearest, and it definitely doesn't care about letting you stay in your comfort zone. So what do you do with it--that unexpected, 'bad' change? Sweep it under the (mental) rug and pretend it never happened? Pretend that your current circumstance is exactly like your prior circumstance (denial) or that your prior circumstance was exactly like your current, changed circumstance (also denial, I suppose, though of a different variety)? Or do you embrace it, however hard that is?

I've opted to 'bank' my change for later. By itself, it doesn't do me any good. Some things have changed, I've been hurt, but holding onto it and dwelling on it is only going to hold me back. I've chosen to let it go and learn from it, and to let it store up with those other changes that will (of course) unfold in my life.

Someday, I might even invest them in something good.

Rain, Radiation and a Return to Normalcy (ish)

And by 'normalcy' I really mean the craziness that was last year, times ten.

My old habits are starting to fall back into place now that I've got classes sorted out and a routine more or less established. I got back from my old roommate Hannah's house around 10:30 tonight (I was there celebrating her birthday with her) and promptly made myself a cup of coffee and gathered up a few music books to head up to the PAC for some late-night practice. It was, predictably, deserted except for Dr. Jovanovic (practicing) and her husband and baby daughter (waiting around for her to finish practicing). I only lasted a couple of hours before deciding to call it a night, but the coffee I drank was enough to keep me still pretty alert, so I'm writing this while waiting for the post-caffeine crash.

It seems like every quarter here presents me with another set of challenges. It's refreshing, in a way--I'm always on my toes and kept humble by the fact that as confident as I am about a piece, I always manage to screw it up in some aspect while playing it in front of other people (friends, professors, etc). But this quarter is a particularly large step forward for me: I'm starting Accompanying class. So far I'm working with three people for sure, possibly a fourth who is still unknown. I'm also tackling the Concerto Competition and playing the first movement of Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2 in g minor (due next quarter, but I'm getting a start on it now). Add to that a pile of music to sort through and decide what's going to be worked on when over the course of this year (I need two new pieces for this quarter's jury) and remedial work on my scales and arpeggios (miserably failed at last spring's jury) and you have... a crapload of piano to fit into a few hours of practice a day. The only reason I haven't already collapsed from stress is that the sheer amount of work hasn't really sunk in yet. I give it two, three weeks before I start randomly collapsing onto the ground between classes, curling up, and shaking uncontrollably.

And that's just the first quarter of sophomore year.

In addition to the usual piano, music theory and ear training classes, I'm also taking a pretty heavy English 'critical and cultural theory' class. Not a ton of writing due for it, but there's a lot of dense reading that I have to stay caught up on so that I can at least give the impression of alert keeping-up-with-the-discussion-ness in class (despite the fact that we're all way more recalcitrant about discussing things than the prof would prefer). There are actually some interesting things I've read so far, but for the most part I'm just anxious to get back to the writing part of my major.

It also struck me today that majoring in English along with music is actually not entirely comparable to just majoring in music and taking your GUR classes, like most sane people do. That's what I always tell people, because up until now, the course load worked out like that: I take all the required music classes and one or two English classes (which, credit-wise, would otherwise coincide with taking GURs with the music stuff). Again, credit-wise, it's all the same. The laughably light Creative Writing major is only half as many credits as my music major and roughly as many credits (maybe a bit less) as the total GUR count. It's just enough to balance out my quarterly load so that I can mostly concentrate on music but still be a full-time student (13 credits this quarter).

However, this approach ignores the fact that GURs are (as I understand) 1- and 200 level classes (previously taken care of in community college when I earned my AA). Major classes, typically, are 3- and 400 level classes. The intensity of major classes is quite a bit more than lower level classes. I remember basically coasting through community college (this is neither bragging on my part, at least not intentionally, nor an insult of my community college. I really learned a lot there and value my AA education very highly. It's just that, for the most part, it wasn't THAT hard). Were I taking those classes alongside the music ones, I'd probably have about half as much stress as I do now.

But in reality, I'm taking major classes, and this one in particular is not something I can just BS my way through while devoting the better part of my attention to tackling music. I guess all I'm trying to say is that, for the first time, it's really starting to actually feel like a double major.

Fancy that. Now I kind of understand why people are impressed.

Not to make this whole thing a misery sobfest, but as if the new workload and brain-stretching wasn't enough, things aren't looking good for my family back home. My mom has been re-diagnosed with cancer, this time in her bones. She's in a lot of pain due to two tumors in her hip and lower back and on pretty high doses of morphine--which, though it keeps the pain mostly under control, also knocks her out most of the time, makes her dizzy and disoriented, gives her double vision, and essentially makes her hallucinate things that aren't there. She's started a ten-day daily treatment of radiation therapy to shrink the two tumors to get the pain under control, then they're going to do some full body scans to find out the scary truth: how far the cancer has spread to the rest of her body.

Right now it's all up the air, and scary as hell. If it's spread far--and there's no telling at this point--it could be terminal. Terminal. As in, terminally ill, as in, dealing with this for the rest of her life, having it affect everything she does, knowing that her days are numbered.

This is the mom who has been there for our family, despite battling breast cancer six or seven years ago... home schooling us, driving us 45 minutes or more to piano lessons, grocery shopping, library, horseback riding lessons, 4-H, fairs.... taking care of the animals when we were sick or gone or whatever, helping to take care of the property, turning our yard into an orchard (and before that, the untamed wilderness behind the house into a yard and garden), cooking, baking, ceaselessly working through everything to give us the kind of life that a ton of kids aren't lucky enough to have.

When I first heard that she had been re-diagnosed with cancer (just a bit after I'd gotten moved back in at school) I was... well, numb. Scared, but numb. There wasn't a lot of information to work with and I had no idea whether to be hopeful or what. Bone cancer? Well, what does that do? Can you live with it?

Then I talked to my sister last week and she dropped the t-word, and suddenly I'm terrified out of my mind. This is literally one of my biggest fears--things I can't control happening to my family, the ones I hold closest to my heart--and here I am, for all intents and purposes a million miles away. What's going to happen if it IS terminal? I can't just drop out of school. If I miss a quarter I basically have to miss a whole year because everything's sequential. But then, I'm up here for two more years after this one--and how much time does she have?

I always envisioned her being around to see her grandchildren, to bake them cookies and be the amazing grandma that every kid should have. To have her meet and approve of her future son-in-law, to be happy for me and to be there as I go through that huge part of my life. Never mind the fact that my brother just turned ten... will she see him graduate, know what he goes after in life, know what he finds as his passion and decides to pursue?

There are so many what-if's that it just... terrifies me to think there's even a possibility they could be true. I just don't even know how to deal with this.

When she had breast cancer, I was too young to really understand the seriousness of it all. My dad talked to us, at the beginning, how she had it and there wasn't really a reason for it, that the doctors thought they'd caught it early enough that they could get rid of it. I don't think it ever really entered my mind that it could come back or that it could threaten her life.

In the few days since I heard the news from my sister, my mindset has returned a bit more to normal. I'm relaxing a bit more, letting myself smile, letting myself go back to focusing on schoolwork, on me. But the thought is always there in the back of my mind.

I will admit that I almost don't want to know the results of the full-body scans. How can I let myself pursue the things that I want--skill with piano, with writing, getting a boyfriend, building friendships--with the knowledge always hanging over me that she is dying?

All's Well That Ends...

Summer's been good to me.

It's interesting to look back over all those weeks, now that I am literally on the cusp of fall. I exceeded expectations in many things, overcame problems, survived traumas and clashes, and... didn't accomplish some things (namely, perfecting--or even working on--scales and arpeggios. Oh well).

Would I be the same person I am now if I hadn't worked at camp? I don't know. I'm going into the new school year with a very different perspective than the one I had a year ago. I know what to expect, who to look for, who I'm thrilled to be seeing again. I know that I will be stretched in this coming year and I'm pumped to see how I can grow even more as a pianist, given the phenomenal amount I learned last year.

But camp taught me a lot about the person I am away from school--a teacher, leader, mentor.... things I just don't do that much during the school year. I learned that I can do them, though, and that has given me just enough courage to maybe try them this coming year. At some point I need to start teaching piano, and now seems as good a time as any.

Can I do it?

Yes.

If I hadn't worked at camp this summer, I don't think I would be able to say that.

Looking ahead, letting go of everything here isn't quite so traumatic as it was last fall. I've barely been here all summer anyway, so the last twenty days have given me just enough time to settle in a bit and get used to the routine before going back to the grindstone. I'm just going from one familiar place to another, so I'm not really having any "oh my God, I'm leaving them all behind" kind of panicky moments. I am realizing just how much crap I have, though.

Now I'm just rambling aimlessly. Time for bed.

Nnnggghhh...

I've had this cold for more than a week now, and the typical cold part is starting to go away--only occasionally having to blow my nose, and my throat is fine (not scratchy like at the beginning). Except now I've got a new symptom, which is a sinus headache that hit me out of the blue last night... a stabbing pain right on the left side of my forehead. Unfortunately we didn't have any Sudafed, so I had to suffer through it until my dad brought some home and I took a dose to get rid of the remaining pain. The odd thing was that the pain sort of migrated down to the left side of my upper jaw and back again.

I was fine then until about half an hour ago this morning, when the headache came back... this time more in the region of my left cheekbone. I took some more Sudafed, but it still hasn't had an effect, and now the pain has (if anything) intensified in the region of my upper and lower jaw on the left side... definitely NOT the sinuses. So what is it?

Oh, no... the thought just hit me.... is it my wisdom teeth, overdue to be pulled?

AAAAUUUUGGGHHHH.

One Man's Trash...

Treasures (and more) re-discovered while cleaning out my bedroom:

• One small silk-lined velvet bag full of old seashells and a few polished rocks. The opening was almost too small for my hand to fit through, but perfect for a kid's hand. I put the shells in a little cubical gift box that used to hold a candle and put it on my shelf. It looks very artsy now.


• Old handouts, homework papers, and tests from my Hiking, Physics 114, and Children's Lit classes at community college. It was crazy to look at all my math scribblings and remember how I was actually pretty good at that stuff, despite the occasional stressed times and all-nighters spent for that class. Physics was the most fun I ever had while doing math, I think. Fact: while surveying colleges (in particular U of I) I briefly entertained the notion of being a physics minor in addition to a music and English double major.


• A beaded necklace (plastic pony beads on plastic lanyard string) given to me by an odd man on a tourist steam train ride in Mossyrock, WA.


• Old 4-H record books and a plaque for one of them that never got hung up on my wall (I think because there wasn't enough room). Fact: The Kiwanis club that gave out record book awards since before I started 4-H decided, the year after I left 4-H, to stop giving out the awards because there weren't enough clubs participating. Our club was basically the only one that did record books anymore in our county.


• Flashcards from my German class at community college.


• Two prints of a sort of book cover I designed for a story I am still writing. The prints are from a couple of years ago.


• A 3-ring binder full of Beanie Baby collector's cards, c. 1999 (ages ago, right?). I actually still have a basket full of Beanie Babies. I never collected them because of the monetary value, though--just collected them because I was a kid and thought they were cute.


• Letters from past cabin-mates at summer camp when I was a camper 5 or 6 years ago.


• Half-finished scripts (written by me) of a Star Wars movie that me, my sister, and a few friends were going to make two or three years ago. We still have the costumes somewhere.


• Target "College 07" catalog. I remember looking through it and thinking I had to have at least half of the things in it in order to be fully prepared for school. I actually had a conversation with my dad along these lines, before I'd had a good look at my new room-to-be:

“What do you mean, ‘dorm shopping’?”

I stared at my dad, not having expected this question. “Well,” I started, “You know. To get stuff for my dorm.”

He gave me a funny look in return. “All you really need to get is a fridge.” By the tone of his voice, this should have been obvious, like a barren living space with a fridge was all anyone needed to create their own personal home away from home.

The mental image of the lists I’d created after a perusal of the Target catalog disintegrated as I grasped for an explanation as to why I needed so much stuff just to go to college. “Dad, they don’t give you anything except for a bed, a desk, and a closet. I need…storage. You know, bins and things. And a shoe rack and towels.”

“Don’t they give you drawers, though?”

“No.”

“I thought…”

“No, Dad. There’s no bureau or dresser drawers or anything. Just a closet. That’s why I need the bins to put my things in.” I was getting horrific ideas of mounds of clothing, jewelry, books, shoes, and makeup all accumulating in a mass of disorganization not unlike the disaster scene that was the floor of my little sister’s room.

“Maybe you’re right,” he allowed reluctantly. “I guess we could get you some storage boxes.”

“And a laundry hamper,” I put in.

“We used garbage bags for everything. Throw your dirty clothes in, and when it gets full, use it to take them down to the washer.”

“Then they’ll get smelly!” I protested.

“That’s why you close them.”

“Dad!”

*****[/end flashback sequence]

• Scribbled sci-fi story idea/fragment written.... who knows when. It eventually morphed into a story submitted in my Intro to Fiction class last winter.


• Music from Vivaldi's Cum Sancto Spiritu from U-Choir last year... not one of my favorite songs, but a catchy one. I remember that the A2's were a bit of a train wreck on learning our parts for that piece, but you couldn't even tell because of how loudly everyone else was singing.


• A huge chunk of papers from my Intro to Fiction class... mostly printouts of the stories I submitted and had peer-reviewed. I am sorry to say that Intro to Fiction was one of the least enjoyable classes I have taken yet... not because I can't take criticism (peer reviewing was actually really cool and fairly helpful), but because I was genuinely unhappy with everything I wrote for that class. Short stories are just not the medium I work best in. Poetry and novels, on the other hand...


• Lots of letters and notes to me from when I was a SALT (like a counselor/wrangler-in-training) at camp. I never realized or appreciated it then, but I was so loved and noticed by people. I just felt invisible all the time because I was quiet.


• Driving Test Score Sheet from the DOL when I went in to get my license. I scored 96 on my first (and only) try. The examiner was pretty surly, though.


• Shellfish/seaweed license from when I went geoducking last summer. It was a lot of fun, but I never got to eat any of the geoducks we found because my mom thought they were too gross to touch, let alone prepare to eat.

You decide:

On Some of My More Unsavory Tendancies

I am a slob.

There, it's official: the first step to recovery is acknowledging your problem. Right?

The funny thing is that I don't actually like living in a super messy environment. I'm just too lazy to do anything about it, most of the time, until it gets so absolutely terrible that I can't even function anymore. My computer desk at school last year was a good example of that. My roommate was very tidy and usually had a good couple of square feet of cleared space on her desk, even with her laptop on it. Mine, in contrast, looked clean if it had more than four inches of cleared space. It was that cluttered. Once in a while I'd clear off the excess papers, textbooks, notebooks, et cetera and revel in all the open space... and it would get cluttered up again no more than a week later.

My bedroom at home is the same way now that I've sort of moved back into it. Part of the problem is that I have my college storage things (plastic drawers, tubs) and other unusual things taking up extra space in my already somewhat cramped room. So, since we've got an uncle coming to visit in a few days and my old roommate coming to visit right after that, I'm making a concerted effort to clean things up.

That's an undertaking in itself. Since I didn't have any room to put anything anywhere (part of the reason why things get cluttered in the first place), I started going through my piles (yes, plural) to see what I could throw out. There was a remarkable number of old papers that had no use anymore that I had kept for purely sentimental reasons, or had been thrown into the pile with this mindset: "Well, it's got some importance, so I shouldn't just throw it away now. I'll hang onto it." These end up being lots of old receipts, forms, and the ten-pound file folder (really) of promotional flyers, course catalogs, scholarship forms, and more from when I was doing my extensive college search/decision making process.

I have to say that I feel better now that I've thrown that out (technically, recycled it). I remember the college search being an arduous process wrought with worry, anticipation, and (a few times) tears. Now I'm settled and completely happy where I'm at, with all of those thoughts behind me. I haven't even really stopped to wonder what life would be like if I'd gone to PLU or University of Idaho (two serious contenders) instead.

But why did I hang onto those things for so long? In addition to being a slob, I'm also a bit of a packrat. It's very difficult for me to throw away or get rid of things that I've had for a while. I think I just get too emotionally attached, as silly as that sounds. For example, take the pile of T-shirts I had next to my bureau for the longest time because I didn't have room for them. I never really wore them, yet they sat there gathering dust because in the back of my mind, I thought "Oh, I'll wear those sometime..."

My sister finally went through my room and gave them all to Goodwill. She is a rock of... something in my life. I love her to pieces.

The funny thing is that her room used to be the disaster zone that mine now is, yet when you walk into it now, it's always very picked up and clean looking. What gives?