Friday, March 25

One Sheep Two Sheep Red Sheep Blue Sheep

Last night I went to bed at midnight and woke up at 4:15 in the morning. The night before I kept waking up over and over and over and over because I kept thinking my entire body was asleep (like cut-off-circulation pins-and-needles asleep, not like sleeping asleep, because that would ACCOMPLISH THE GOAL FOR THE EVENING wouldn't it). The five or six previous nights all contained stretches of time of around two to three hours where I was sooo tired but just not... quite... tired enough.

What the hell is going on here? Is this fatal? My mother has always said that her side of the family is cursed with insomnia, but 1) as I recall it's not supposed to kick in until forty and 2) she also brews pots of coffee at 11:30 pm. And I'm fairly certain I hardly did that at all this week, though I can't remember for sure because everything starts to run together, temporally speaking, when you're living in Magical Non-Sleep Land.

Fuck, what time is it, eight already? Ugh.

Good thing my parents are in from Nebraska today, so I can meet them while I'm in such a Downy-fresh mood. Tra-la, tra-la, here we go gathering nuts and may!

9:24 am:

Speaking of nuts: why does Chock Full o' Nuts brand coffee smell like nuts if, as it says on their package, there aren't any nuts in it? Also, why does it look like poo mixed with gravel, and why am I still drinking it even though I have made this association?

     

Thursday, March 24

I'd Draw You Emoticons But Then Even I'd Have To Stop Reading

Traumatized: by the large group of music students that chose to park themselves right outside my lab tonight and sing every last one of the showtunes, jazz standards, 60's hits, and Disney songs they've ever heard.

You just never realize how much of your brain space is devoted to music you hate until there you are, listening to a bunch of pianists stumble over the lyrics to "Part of That World" from The Little Mermaid and you catch yourself muttering irritably, "It's 'YOU WANT THINGAMABOBS', not 'I GOT THINGAMABOBS'. Jesus H. Christ."

Then you have a brief horrible glimpse of your future life as Stage Mom From Hell and vow, yet again, never to have children. If you're me, anyway.

     

Wednesday, March 23

This is Your Brain on Orchestra

For that brief moment of despair you experience while onstage preparing to play to a packed house at the Kimmel Center:

1) when you realize that your mouth and throat have strangely gone almost completely numb from beta-blockers, which when combined with your barely-functional clarinet reeds is almost definitely going to make you sound like a chicken having sex with a cow on top of a pickup truck, tone-quality-wise;

2) and you have a sudden sneaking suspicion that you have just been fatally poisoned and are about to have a massive stroke right here on your little wooden riser such that they will have to stop the Mendelssohn Psalm 42 and haul you bodily backstage, terrible reeds and all;

3) and as they are doing so the safety pin on your only pair of black pants will come off and then the whole audience will see that you aren’t wearing underwear, which sounded like a good idea at the time but will turn out to be a really unfortunate experience for all parties involved, and will more or less kill the moment, musically speaking;

4) and that once you then expire messily among the violin cases the stage crew will gather your things and discover that they smell like the Szechwan tofu and the wet moldy sock you completely inexplicably found at the bottom of your bag just before you went onstage, and realize that you are a person with very few basic life skills;

5) and the bass trombonist who gave you the poisoned beta-blockers in the first place doesn’t seem to care that this is all about to happen, and that crack you just made about ‘everything getting dark’ is becoming literally true as they dim the lights to start the concert, or at least you hope that’s what’s happening:

Take a few deep breaths and relax. You’re probably overreacting. If not, it will all be over soon anyway.

     

Sunday, March 20

I TOLD YOU NOT TO CLOSE YOUR MOUTH

Flaunting my ignorance yet again:

How the fuck do you accidentally drop a tongue ring into someone's food? Did you really not notice the big piece of metal falling out of your mouth into the food? Or is it more efficient to lick the salad greens clean instead of just rinsing them?

Maybe we could start creating kitchen-supply attachments for tongue piercings. I feel this could be an important next step in both human evolution and food preparation, and would eliminate the stigma against facial piercings in the restaurant industry. Worn your teeth down opening beer cans? No more! Wasting valuable cooking time bringing the stirring spoon up to your mouth? Never again! Williams-Sonoma's new "Swiss Army Tongue" has can-opener, potato-peeler, hand-blender, corkscrew, kitchen-scissor, apple-corer, and pizza-wheel attachments, and if you act now we'll throw in the dough hook and the meat tenderizing hammer at no charge. Dishwasher safe! No assembly required! Just snap 'em on and go!

Damn you, MSNBC, for making me waste twenty minutes of my precious life working out the logistics of operating a dough hook with my tongue. At least hopefully I've finally run out of things to say about body piercing.