Singing for my supper

Three auditions. End of semester recitals and exams. Sick kid. Holiday concerts (husband's, child's, students' and my own) No matter how carefully I prepare for the two weeks after Thanksgiving, they always catch me by surprise. To my delight, two more auditions came in for this period (the third one was scheduled weeks ago); this is historically ALWAYS the busy time, but so many companies have changed their plans for this year I wasn't really expecting much, so these are great news (even if one of them is at 10.30 in the morning!) The wrench in the works, starting today, is the sick daughter, but - for once! - she played it smart and stayed home, warm and quiet so here's hoping she'll recover quickly and won't need time off school this week. Just crossing all fingers I don't catch it. Every parent hates seeing their kid sick, but because her sniffles so often seem to coincide with my busy times (why IS that?!)when I must do everything in my power

Well fed, well loved and deeply grateful. Happy Thanksgiving!

but I managed to grab this. (Yes, that IS a rosebud. In November.) I call it "Survivor"

While standing in line today as our local bedding and household store finished its final day of trading before closing down, I had a lot of time to think. Being a devout bargain shopper, I was thrilled to score some seriously cheap goodies, but even as I gloated over the absurd discounts on the items I purchased, it all rang rather hollow; faltering retail is for sure a sign of the tough times ahead, and we would be foolish and naive not to acknowledge it as a worrying marker of what may be ahead. But among the sobering thoughts, there were some interesting observations to made, as well. Although the store itself was stripped nearly bare with only the most meagre selection of items remaining, it was packed. Each of the 5 lines had at least 10 people waiting to check out, and most of those people had carts piled high with bedding, curtains, small appliances and furniture, taking advantage of the 90% reductions on everything that was left before they closed their doors for good. Even t

It's hard to know how to start writing an entry at the moment. Is it "business as usual", or is the world as we know it in the process of imploding? Probably a bit of both, really. Normally even-tempered folks are on a short-fuse, stores are all promoting sales, coupons and discounts like their survival depends on it (which it very well may) and it's impossible even to do a quick check of the email without another barrage of panic-stricken headlines (whether media-inflated or genuinely to-be-alarmed-about getting increasingly difficult to judge). There's been plenty of bad news in the opera world this past week as some of the country's largest companies start to face the poor economic outlook, and it's hard not to wonder "what next"? Yet, at the same time, it's all very much the same - it's audition season (thankfully I still seem to have had opportunities to be heard by companies who are unfamiliar with my work, thus NEW opportunitie

My good friend over at The Next 100 Pounds recently posted some thoughts about the holidays that were a more than timely reminder in these testing times. Check it out.

But, like just about everybody in the US and possibly even around the globe, this week has by necessity been about politics. It has been a whirl of election mania, activity and emotions, somewhat foreign in a country which in recent years drifted into civic apathy. Strangely, there were fewer lawn signs and stickers than I have ever seen before, but perhaps people were putting their energies into action instead of banners, or perhaps passions were running high enough that nobody wanted to risk causing problems (this community in previous elections has been almost precisely 50/50 on both sides of the party divide, so while good fences make good neighbours, perhaps quieter politics make even better ones!). But lawn propoganda aside, I have never seen this country as committed, as passionate, as attentive as I did this past week; there was nowhere to go and nobody you could speak to where The Election wasn't mentioned or didn't in some way to make its presence felt, and people

I have decided that - this week at least- I am a diva-mommy rockstar. Following the 2008 New York-Every-Two-Days commuting marathon, we managed to host a Halloween party for 10 10-year olds. Granted, the long drives up and down highway 95 gave me lots of quiet time to come up with scavenger hunt clues, but even so - I always question my ability to "do it all" at times like this! (Happily, the auditions all went very well and for once the Travel Gods were on my side as the trains ran on time both into and in the city, which certainly decreased the stress factor!). Now, kids' parties aren't that hard, but they do take lots of planning. And plenty of space to do it in... which is where it proves tricky in our lives! We love our little house but it is, indeed "little". It is a 1920s cottage bungalow, and the rooms are small. Comfortable but.... small. So, it was with some trepidation that I anticipated keeping this thing humming along with that many girls. How