Yawn...snrk...snore...huh?

Sometimes I feel like a bad wife. I used to read letters to Ann Landers or Dear Abby where a wife would complain about her husband’s loud snoring, only to be rebutted by other letters from widows who said they would have that snoring back for the world, just to have their husbands again.

When Hubby was away, first on the job interview, then visiting his folks, I missed him. I missed having someone warm to spoon with in bed and I was at loose ends. Of course, none of this was enticement enough to get me to go to Florida with him. However, these past few nights since he’s back I’ve been waking up with hot flashes (as I tend to do these days) and having difficulty getting back to sleep because of the respiratory-tract noises coming from the guy in bed next to me. Sometimes he snores very loudly; then I just kick him and he rolls over. But when he’s making small noises, I can’t seem to do anything effective at stopping them. A couple of nights ago I actually put earplugs in. That seems a little extreme. Don’t tell me separate rooms are the answer. Then I’d still have no one warm to put my cold feet on at night.

I gave Ed a lesson on Der D0ppelgänger yesterday. I have been wanting to get my hands on him vocally for a while now, and since my Kenyan student with the unpronounceable last name hasn’t been showing up, I felt no qualms about teaching him for free, since I’m already being paid for the aforementioned truant. His former instructor, a woman I respect as a pianist and whose piano students tell me is a very good teacher, has a very strange pedagogical method when it comes to singing. I am constantly amazed at what her students do not know. Ed, after studying with her for six years, still didn’t really know the fundamentals of support beyond a vague “you take a deep breath”. This teacher tells them to take that deep breath through their nose. I asked Ed, “How big are your nares? How big is your mouth? Through which opening are you going to get a bigger and faster breath?”

He transposed the song down a full tone from the low key in the book, and I told him it was too low for him. He begged to differ, but that was only because he found the highest notes to be too high. As a singing teacher, when this happens, I find a solution for my student so he can sing those high notes. His teacher would merely say, “Transpose it.” That really doesn’t equip a student with any cantorial skills.

Anyway, I gave him many good things in the hour we worked together. I got him to open his throat for the very low notes, raise his soft palate and invoke head resonance for the high notes, to use legato and breath control to elongate his phrases. I tried to get him to support the sound more efficiently, but that takes more time. However, one thing I noticed was that when he did what I told him to, re the above instructions, the annoying bleating quality he tends to have was minimized. I always wondered where that came from. His former teacher has the same trait when she sings. I attributed it to improper breath support and now I know I was right.

Hubby’s jazz trio played at the student pub last night as part of the art students’ end-of-year show, so Little Princess and I moseyed (I looked it up, it’s spelled correctly) on over there, had a beer (I had a beer, she had several beers) and I sang a few numbers with the boys. It was fun. But it went kind of late and I got to bed kind of late (Hubby got to bed later), so I didn’t appreciate not being able to get back to sleep after waking up early with that hot flash. - sigh-

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