Vedder Love

I fell in love all over again...it seems that my life long love of Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam will never die. I spent some of the best hours of my life listening to him sing from his solo tour that was postponed from April to thurdsay and it was worth the wait. I have been to quite a lot of Pearl Jam concerts. Huge venues, stadiums, outdoor pavillions, I have had amazing seats just rows from them. I got within an arms length of sharing the wine passed around from Crazy Mary. I just cannot get enough of them. Their songs...Eddie's voice is in my soul.

This concert was different. It was a close venue. Maybe only 1000 people there at the most. I got seats in the front row in the middle of the balcony, It was very intimate and personal the entire night. Glen Hansard from The Swell Season opened up and his voice is incredible. He was witty and really drew in the crowd to make the night feel special. Eddie came out and sang some of the most intimate songs from all of his albums. One of the most memorable parts of the night was when Eddie and Glen stood in front of the stage with only their voices and a ukelele and sang with just the acoustics of the music hall. It was incredible to just hear their voices...no microphones, no speakers. Simply their voices. I have never had the chance to do that and I probably will never get that opportunity again. I was in awe all over again at that moment. The decorations were awesome. Backdrops that looked like backstreet alleys, a backlit canvas tent with a campfire next to Eddie that was "lit" and blowing flames and smoke out of it. There was a backdrop of twinkling stars that he sang under like it we were all sitting around the campfire with him and his guitar. He had a beer box with a bass pedal for some percussion and a stomp box that he used as well. With every song he played a different instrument. Ukelele, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and a mandolin that he referred to as an "aristrocratic bitch" compared to the ukelele. He messed up the words to Elderly Woman and Just Breathe. He talked about what an honor it was for Willie Nelson to make a cover of Just Breathe and he said that he listened to it so many times that afterwards he couldnt sing it the same. He sang a little how Wille sang it with a twang in his voice and had everyone laughing. He told stories about friends, he made fun of a drunk lady in the crowd, he talked about erections, elections, and marijuana. He politely asked a woman that was annoyingly screaming to please, for her safety, stop because the people behind her were going to murder her. The last song that was played was "Hard Sun". I took the picture on this post during that song. He was interactive with the crowd and so funny. He was just really engaging and I could tell that he wanted to be there and was having a great time and still loved getting to sing for all of us.

The setlist for the night:

1. Walking the Cow (Daniel Johnston cover)
2. Brain Damage (Pink Floyd cover)
3. Sometimes
4. Can't Keep
5. Sleeping By Myself
6. Without You
7. The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young cover)
8. Don't Be Shy (Cat Stevens cover)
9. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
10. Far Behind
11. No Ceiling
12. Setting Forth
13. Guaranteed
14. Rise
15. Long Nights (with Glen Hansard)
16. Driftin'
17. Better ManP
18. Immortality
19. Lukin
20. Porch
21. Encore:
21. I Believe In Miracles (Ramones cover)
22. I Am a Patriot (Little Steven cover)
23. Just Breathe
24. Unthought Known
25. Tonight You Belong To Me (Lawrence Welk cover)
26. Society (Jerry Hannan cover)(with Glen Hansard)
27. Sleepless Nights (The Everly Brothers cover)(with Glen Hansard)
28. Falling Slowly (The Swell Season cover)(with Glen Hansard)
29. Crazy Mary (Victoria Williams cover)
30. The End
31. Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young cover)
32. Encore 2:
32. Hard Sun (Indio cover)

 

Letter for Low Spirits

As this past week saw me back in the hospital for 2 days for an unseen, and very scary occurrence, I remembered this letter that I found the other day that spoke to my heart in this time I have been adjusting to. It speaks volumes to what makes life better and every time I read it and think on the advice, it helps me.
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A letter from Sydney Smith to Lady Georgiana Morpeth, Feb. 16, 1820:

Dear Lady Georgiana,– Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done — so I feel for you.
1st. Live as well as you dare.
2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.
3rd. Amusing books.
4th. Short views of human life — not further than dinner or tea.
5th. Be as busy as you can.
6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely — they are always worse for dignified concealment.
9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
11th. Don’t expect too much from human life — a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.
16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
18th. Keep good blazing fires.
19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,

Very truly yours,
Sydney Smith

Sleepy-time and Pumpkins

I'm so tired...all I want to do is sleep right now. I can't wait for normal days to catch up with me and make me feel more alive again. I push myself to do things each day, but most of the time my motivation and concentration is so lacking that I can't push through that invisible barrier that holds me back. In my noggin I plan on all of these things I want, or should be doing, but less than half of them pan out. I go for the easy route lately, and think to myself that I will worry about the big things soon enough.
Doctor says that we will check to see how my thyroid levels are in a week or two when enough thyroid meds are in my body at optimum capacity. Until then, I know that they are not near enough, and that I definitely will need to up the dosage that I was getting before surgery. My speech pathologist says that I have one vocal cord that is paralyzed, and we will see if it livens up within a year of surgery. If not then it will probably not at all. I seem to remember her saying that it was working just a little after my surgery at some point when she checked it, but now it's not. I wake myself up making funny noises at night. It's as if my vocal cords rub together and make vocal noises. Kind of silly, and it makes me laugh, although I still can't do that well either.
On a different note...I have come to embrace the fall season and anything pumpkin. Yes, I said it, pumpkin. I found pumpkin pie pop tarts, pumpkin butter at Trader Joes, pumpkin pie yogurt, pumpkin flavored coffee, pumpkin bagels with pumpkin cream cheese spread, pumpkin butterscotch cake. Really anything pumpkiny and spicy is yummy to my tastebuds right now, since most all foods taste weaker and not as sweet or salty to my senses because of all this medical stuff. Most foods have a slimy consistency, and they taste buttery to me. It is very odd. I mostly eat bland foods...except for pumpkiny goodness. I wish it was fall and pumpkin season all year long!

Gone

I remember walking those halls, hand in hand, looking over all of the beautiful work. Those were happy days. We silently seperated and went through the room, only to converge in front of a couple works to look at them, hand in hand again, listening to the curator as she explained small tidbits about certain ones or changed the lighting so that we could see what was brought out with the lights changing facets. He found his first, it was beautiful and graceful. I could see it in the forefront of a church, its beautiful blues sweeping over the floor. I found mine after.
It caught me up in the way that it was stark. The lines were nothing that I had seen before in that kind of art, sharp angles, almost geometric. The colors were more neutral and did not stand out as the others did, yet the angles and how it was displayed stood out to me. It struck me how simple it was, because that was all that I wanted in who was in the picture.
We took them home after they were framed in gorgeous antique gold frames and black matting. Over the years they changed places on the walls a few times. We would turn on the art lights over them when company came over so that they could stand out a little more. I would often stand and look at them, at mine, for minutes on end, catching new details and pulling in their immensity in the dynamic smallness.
Quite a few years later we parted, along with possessions seperated. It was a sad time, a scary time. Many things I layed down and just let him have, I did not want to bother with the diatribes, the fights over who paid for it, who used it more, who deserved it more. I felt guilt over what I had done, my life had been turned upside down and I wanted to run. I was mortified that I had let my profession slide out of my hands, I saw pity in their eyes and I did not want to see that. I held so strong to a belief for so long that was really never there after hearing his words that we never truly loved each other. I know that I did...in a way I always will. I think he is just lying to himself to see those words and make the world believe it. Or maybe he truly felt that way and I was misled. Either way it was the saddest part of my life and one that changed my heart and took something away from me that I will never get back.
I took that stark piece of art when I moved out. I hung it on the wall at my mothers house. It looked so nice in those sunlit rooms. I made a big move and did not want to take the art and have it destroyed on the long trip. I would come back for it after I was settled in. I thought about it often, wondered how I would bring it with me when I was visiting next and where I would put it when I returned to my new home. I found a perfect spot, I moved things so that I could hang it as soon as I returned back from getting it. To my suprise it was not there any more when I returned to my mothers to get it. She said that he came, one day out of the blue, months after things were final and took it. Acted like I knew what was going on and took it out of her home. She was too nice to know.
I got there and wondered where it was. I couldn't wait to lay my eyes on it again. The first question I asked when I got in the house. "Where is my painting?"...it was gone. Six months later gone. It changed something in me towards him that day that I had never seen in him. I had never seen him lie or steal so blatantly. I am inconsolable, to this day. I want that  art back more than anything, because it was something that symbolized something to me. It was stark life and geometric simplicity in my Savior in that art. It was happiness together and warm memories of a time we had for awhile. I am at a loss for how to get it back from a man that took it from me without any regard. Gone.

Preparing for the next step

I always seem to be preparing for something. This past week, as well as the next  couple weeks, will be spent on a special no iodine diet and all medications dropped and out of my system. It hasn't been difficult at all yet. I pretty much have to make everything from scratch to eat, and the fact that I cannot eat any cheese makes me frown is only a minor thing. I never realized that practically everything has salt in it. Cereals, packaged meats, canned anything, some frozen veggies, marshmallows...everything. I love the fact that I live so close to some amazing farmers markets and healthier alternative grocery stores (Trader Joes and Central Market are less than 10 minutes from me). So getting fresh, whole foods hasn't been difficult. My kitchen is stocked up with food, I just have to make it. My energy has dramatically dropped in the 4 days of this diet already, so I am concerned how it will be in a couple weeks when I will be void of all medication or iodine in my body. I work in the evenings 4-5 days a week and I think the rest of the time will be spent resting and saving up energy for that. The Winery I work at is having their 3 year anniversary on Tuesday and I will be there most of the day to help prepare and then work the crazy celebration. In a couple weeks I will be confined to my apartment in isolation from anyone for 7 days to drain the radiation from my body and not make anyone else radioactive. I am looking forward to it in a way. Soaking in the bath a couple times a day to draw toxins out of me. Resting and catching up on reading and writing letters to people that deserve more of my attention than I give them, among other things. After that, the next step.

No Voice, No Answer

Today has been odd. And not in a good way. I have just felt that no one wants to answer any of my questions. It's almost as if no one wants to talk to me. Well, in my mind, that they basically don't want to deal with me. I have been on the phone most of the morning dealing with medical stuff. If you know me, I'm not great with phone calls anyways, especially business related things. The worst part is I am just getting the run around. I cannot get a straight answer. I have left messages for days with people, I have given my phone number, and email address, and information to so many people, I have asked to speak with the person who can give me answers, and all I get is more waiting. I am at their mercy, and I am waiting. I still hardly have a voice to speak with, and I sound like a little girl on the line. I wonder if they think that I am just making fun of the whole process sometimes because of my voice. In my head I sound ridiculous, others say it sounds sweet, and they don't even think anything of it. But I am getting frustrated in how much I have to repeat myself, and I wonder if I am even getting respect. I think I am only getting sympathy at this point. I don't want that. I just want answers!
If I could scream, I just might. It just sounds like a whisper at this point. I have no forcefulness behind my voice, I cannot project my voice. Heck, I went through a drive-thru the other day, and they couldn't hear me, so I had to go up to the window and place my order. I talk to people coming into the winery I work at everyday, I talk to them about the wines, I conduct wine tastings, I answer any detail that they have questions about. I get breathless, I feel like I have to scream to get out words loud enough to hear. At the end of the night my voice is so high pitch that I feel like my head is going to pop and my incision on my neck just throbs.

It's almost been a month since my surgery. I feel great, I have energy. I thought that these things would be the hardest to deal with, but they aren't. The biggest thing that gets to me is my voice. I can whistle like a bird, but I cannot sing, I cannot laugh, I cannot yell, I cannot talk like the ladies man, or talk like an old person. I have been told that I sound like Miss Piggy or Consuelo from family guy. They were trying to make me laugh about it and feel better. I hope and pray that it will come back one day. It could be months, it could be different forever. I wish I had an answer.

Scary Word

I'm sitting here at 5am, in the dark, with only the glow of my computer to light things. The house is still and cool. I had surgery yesterday...I got my thyroid taken out...and the basically the first words I hear when I wake up is cancer. I think I was too groggy to think about it yesterday as I came out of anesthesia. Now, as I sit here, with a stiff neck and not breathing so good because of the swelling, it becomes more real to me. Doctors say it like it is nothing, everyone skirts the issue when talking about it. I have cancer though. The Dr says that he should have gotten it all out when he took my thyroid out, but whos to say how long I have had it and if it was just contained in my thyroid? I will find out in a week, in the meantime I'll just work on recovery from surgery and take a day at a time.

Random Thoughts

I really don't have much to talk about. Seems that life throws curves from every side as we go along. I used to tihink that as I got older I would be able to cut out all those extra projects and things to do. I find that I always have more to do. For me it isn't just simple to drop things, to leave things behind without finishing them. I say yes to too much, I go farther than I should, and then I find that I didn't really get as much satisfaction out of it as I wanted. Although it is good to know that someone else was helped.
Recent events have shown me that I cannot always even trust those that I used to be close to. I've learned that those that I am not yet that close to carry more love and respect towards me than I could have ever asked for. I've found that even when I am hurting and down, there is always someone out there thinking of me and loving me.
I don't talk much, I don't tell people whats going on much. Honestly, I don't know what is going on in my head most of the time either. It is so hard to make sense of this mess in my head, that I just don't often try. One day all the mess will make sense to me.

New Words

My friend at work has a word that he uses for people or things that basically suck. Life situations, mean people, really anything. That word is...wait for it....Baduga. Used like, "that guy is such a baduga". Or "I feel like a baduga". Maybe this little ditty..."I really baduga'd". It always sounds funny. And it works to say it and not have a person know what you are talking about if it is directed at them.

Anyways, the reason that I write that is because life has been pretty "baduga" as of the past couple months. And I don't want people to worry about me or feel sorry. I know barely anyone even ever reads this blog anymore, but it is nice to write on whats on my mind as I go through life. Whether good or bad. As I was saying I noticed my health was kind of sinking a little, I just was more tired, not able to concentrate as much, and I had a huge catch in my throat at all times. I figured it was working so much and that it was just catching up with me. But this was worse than just being tired, I know that tiredness, and what this was and it was way different. I also noticed that I was choking on alot of foods that never gave me any problem. I also had a little trouble breathing with simple things like going up my stairs. It started to concern me that my thyroid was acting up. So I made an appointment with my doctor. Turns out my thyroid is growing. It has moved my trachea over and pushed my vocal cords on the one side to the point of paralysis so that they are stretched as tight as they can against my trachea. Basically, I cannot put off my thyroid removal any more and I need to have surgery soon to remove it. Pretty baduga, right? Haha, I can't wait.

Updates

I found myself sick a couple weeks ago and unfortunately it has been sticking with me a couple weeks ago. It started with a chest cold that turned to bronchitis and an ear infection and now is working it's way out of my system, slowly but surely. I haven't been breathing real well with it and it has zapped all of my energy to the point where I am just super tired. I was having trouble climbing the 2 sets of stairs to my second floor apartment there for awhile. Each day I have felt a little better though. I just did not want to take any antibiotics and then get sick all over again because my immune system was weakened by the drugs. Oh well, day 15 of this stupid sickness is here and I can't wait to be done with it.

In the midst of all of that I went job hunting again...I had 3 calls in 2 days time from the 8 applications that I put in online. Two from bakeries and one in need of a server at a country club. I accepted a almost full time job at a fun Bakery/Restaurant called the Swiss Pastry Shoppe. They remind me of a smaller scale Das Dutch Haus where I worked for 12+ years and enjoyed so much. I had my first day yesterday and they all seem really nice there, many of them have been there over 10 years and the hours fit perfect for me. I'm looking forward to being there and becoming a part of a fun mom and pop shop again.