The heavens are telling the story of Maud.
8:32 a.m.
Yesterday was a long and tiring day. I have been feeling as though I were on the verge of getting sick, my throat tight with that ache that sometimes precedes a full-blown sore throat, my sinuses easily irritated by air-borne particles, as though I�m always just about to sneeze. I made it to the studio class at 12:30 (both my students performed reasonably well, even though they too are recovering from whatever has laid half the student body low again, in fact, G.�s Erlk�nig sent shivers down my back), which ran a little later than hoped or dreamed, I got approximately 15 minutes� worth of napping done before Buddy Boy arrived, and then the two of us spent two and-a-half hours getting the things he needed for the media project he�s doing this weekend, which included picking up the drum kit from his high school, looking for finger paint, blue hair dye, gel, a bathing cap and hair extensions, a trip that took us from the dollar store in town to the mall where we wandered all over the place. We were mostly successful, except for the hair extensions, which we discovered were $135 for a package at the salon, so we decided to substitute yarn instead. [Insert rolling of the eyes here.]
Anyway, we got home exactly at the stroke of 6:00 p.m. I had to get dressed, made up, fed, and back to the school at 6:45 or earlier, considering Little Princess needed me to bring her her concert clothes. Hubby was playing guitar in the living room, nothing prepared, no effort made to get supper made or anything. It�s not as though this is unusual, I should be used to this already, in fact I am, but yesterday I was so tired, so frazzled, so not-looking-forward to last night�s choir concert, that I was extremely upset and angry. I ended up boiling water and making myself a P.C. instant black bean soup while I cut the nanaimo bars out of the baking tin, emptied the clothes from the dryer, then gobbled down my soup, brushed my teeth, applied makeup and my concert blacks, and blew out the door, slamming it in the process as Hubby continued to play guitar, not having paused the whole time I was getting ready to go.
Once back at the department I had the box office put aside two tickets for Buddy Boy and his friend (with a promise to pay on Sunday, since I was completely cleaned out by Buddy Boy during our shopping trip), got Little Princess her bag of goodies, warmed up with the choir, and lined up for the concert. I was still seething inside.
The concert was [here I pause, fingers poised above the keyboard, as I try to be diplomatic] all right. Haydn�s Creation is a great piece when performed with full orchestra, professional soloists and a really good choir. We had a pianist who did not play all the right notes, one tympanist with instruments which would not always hold their tuning, a choir made up of both music and non-music students alike, many of whom do not read music, soloists drawn from that body with varying degrees of ability, and a conductor who got baton happy (without the baton) and kept accelerating (except for the one chorus �The heavens are telling�, which was too slow). I somehow ended up in the third row of the choir and could barely see around whomever was standing in front of me, there wasn�t enough room to hold my binder out in front of me where I could see it, and all in all it wasn�t a great musical experience. The audience, on the other hand, loved it.
The second half went a little better, but even then the spirituals were too fast, the one where I sing the high D at the end must have gone up in pitch because it felt definitely higher than a D, and my feet were killing me. Upon getting home I finished off the very last of the Angostura special barrel reserve rum (wah! it�s all gone!), not enough to fill a liqueur glass even, and then followed that with a snack and hot chocolate spiked with Irish cream, and thus fortified, I told Hubby how angry I was earlier. Oh, this was when I could have been venting to the computer instead. This turned into a full-blown �discussion�, accompanied by raised voices and Little Princess closing the door so as not to hear us.
When I am upset, I get �prickly� and Hubby is actually afraid of me, of my unpredictability. I told him that I always love him, even when I am angry or frustrated or when I just want to throw something at him. It is the love which I bear that has kept me from walking out and seeking greener pastures, or a pastureless existence, the love which has sustained me through the horrible times as well as the good ones. He might feel the same way deep down, but when he is angry with me, that love gets overshadowed by other emotions, the kind that make him want to run away and get as far away from me as possible. The thing I need most, reassurance that he does still love me, is withheld because he can�t overcome his feelings of revulsion and just give me a hug and say that everything will be fine, which is all I ask. I finally decided (fortified with alcohol as I was) that I was going to let him know how I felt and tell him exactly how to defuse the bomb I become in such a case.
Men are so dense. I apologize to my male readers, but you really ought to know. I told him, over and over again, exactly what he had to do: namely, to overcome his personal feelings of revulsion and acquire a sense of humility, to not run away when the going gets tough, but to put his arms around me, tell me he loves me and that he�s sorry and try to make it up to me. I told him he doesn�t even have to mean it, just act like he does. He couldn�t get past that artificiality. This �discussion� went on for hours. I mean, how many times do I have to tell him exactly what I need? Men are always saying they don�t understand women. Well, could it possibly be because they don�t listen to us, they don�t hear us, they just tune out as soon as sounds start pouring forth from our lips?
Anyway, the situation did get resolved, we did kiss and make up, and one of the things I told Hubby was that I wasn�t going to change, and I knew that neither was he. But we could learn new strategies for dealing with situations where I fly off the handle (which seems to be more and more often now that I�m looking menopause in the face) et cetera, and he agreed. After 23 years of marriage, this is a good start.
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