Marriage and Verdi and Surgery - Oh my!

Well a few busy weeks have have come and gone. I was lucky enough to marry my beautiful woman Nicole and unlucky enough to have my gall bladder removed yesterday. I am writing during my convalescence, trying to sit comfortably while writing this. I know the obvious question is why write anything when you are in pain, but come on - I've already watched Airplane!, Top Secret and Princess Bride - I need a break from the TV.

In between all of this was a nice musical interlude: performing "Va, pensiero" with John Wustman and several colleagues from the University of Illinois. Granted 6 people singing a huge Verdian chorus may seem anticlimactic, but Mr. Wustman is one of the great pianists of my lifetime, and it was an honor to share the stage with him. With any luck I may get to coach with him at some point.

So for the good news - we had predictions for a gorgeous day when I got to the University of Illinois Arboretum with the menfolk (Jasper, Cliff, Eric and Jeff), but even as we setup 107 chairs and an arch, the clouds rolled in. We ignored the changing weather predictions and made it to the gardens and even got most of the pictures taken but then the rain came. Finally we had to call it so we rang our reception site - the University of Illinois Alumni Center. They were outstanding and had the lobby rearranged and set up for us in 30 minutes (with the help of many of our good friends). The next thing I knew I was being dabbed by my wonderful sister-in-law Aimee (apparently I get sweaty) and given a glass of wine (or two ) to sooth the nerves.

Then came the fun part - Cliff sang Ideale, Wenn ich in deine Augen seh, A Cloris and several other pieces in his splendid rich baritone, Kent and Teresa played beautifully and all of our friends were amazing in singing Bernstein's "Make our garden grow". There were some very personal and amusing moments as well - Riccardo missed his cue to come read the first poem, so since I didn't have a program I walked over to my uncle who was officiating and whispered "What's next" to which he answered "The Readings". So I pointed to Riccardo in the audience and waved him up. He read "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and then my father read a poem written for us entitled "The Long Duet". I really can't describe it - both readers were wonderful, but my father is a retired English professor and now a published and quite wonderful poet, so while the poem itself is splendid - his reading was exquisite.

We wrote our own vows, and while I won't quote them I will give you the opening of each. Nicole's began "When I met you you looked like a homeless Jesus", while my was "I met Nicole in a blaze of blonde". Intensely personal is my best description of the entire ceremony, and absolutely wonderful. Following a night of great food and much merriment, Nicole and I escaped to Chicago for 2 days, then returned to our regular lives of school, teaching, work, and her current "night job" of music directing Jekyll and Hyde.

We had about a week to enjoy the married life and then it was time to go to the hospital. As you may have read before, I was diagnosed with gall bladder disease and after a surgical consult we decided to take that sucker out. If you have had abdominal surgery before it isn't much fun, but the Vicodin helps. The only downside is that I am tired all the time (which is actually normal for me), so perhaps this is my body's way of making me nap more.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue

If you don't get the joke, watch the movie "Airplane".

Today is August 18, 2009. Here is the upcoming schedule:

August 19 My father's 69th birthday - very good!
August 20 My children start school again - good for me - they are less than thrilled.
August 21 Aural Skills test at the University of Illinois - very bad.
August 21 At work we begin migrating the whole firm to Exchange 2007. Hopefully good - but also the beginning of 4 months of work - mostly at night.
August 24 My third semester of graduate school begins. So far so good?
August 26 My three year anniversary with Nicole - very good!
August 27 The 2009 Opera season auditions at the University of Illinois - both good and bad.
August 29 I start teaching at Millikin University again, Very good!
(skip a bit and drum roll please . . . . )
September 5 My wedding to Nicole! Outstanding!

Sorry to be so tedious with all the detail but I got a phone call today and now I need to add something to my schedule - surgery to remove my gall bladder. Very bad. Or at least not fun.

I have Biliary Dyskinesia - technically an 18% Ejection fraction. That means I have 18% use of my gall bladder and they have to remove it. I will say that since they gave me the news today it hurts more consistently than it did before. Must be a mental thing.

I have had what I thought was muscle cramping since last fall, and after finally going to the doctor 3 weeks ago she told me I don't have muscles where I have the muscle pain - just a gall bladder. They did a sonogram - nothing - so Friday I had a HIDA scan. They called me today with the test results.

Now as you can see I don't really have time for all this surgery nonsense, but apparently I don't get to decide. The doctor can't see me until August 28, and with a 10 day to 2 week recovery time from surgery, the numbers just don't add up here. So unless something goes very wrong, I will have the surgery after the mini-honeymoon in early September.

I won't thrill you with the information I have found on life after Gall Bladder removal, but I wouldn't recommend it. Limit dairy, spicy food, greasy food, caffeine and very sweet foods. I will miss spicy food and caffeine but I don't care about the rest.

I suppose I will actually have to sit around and watch movies during my recovery - perhaps I will start with Top Secret, Princess Bride and Airplane. That should give me enough good quotes to start at least 5 more blogs.

If anyone has suggestions for movies suited for recovery from surgery I'd love to hear them - preferably nothing with . . unpleasant bodily functions.

Parenting and the Yankees

I love the Yankees. I sat up listening to the 1981 Yankees\Dodgers World Series on an antique radio long after I was supposed to be asleep. The radio got terrible reception and I figured out that if I took a book of matches and stuck it under the tuning dial then the reception was better. I listened to the whole series - sad to hear the Yankees lose 4-2. Dave Winfield, Goose Gossage, Ron Guidry, Don Mattingly - a great team. Don't ask me why I choose the Yankees - probably because I grew up in North Carolina and the closest team we had was the Atlanta Braves - and to be honest it was boring to watch baseball on TV. For some reason it was really exciting on the radio.

I saw my first live Yankees game shortly after moving to Brooklyn in 1996. It was a regular season game, and I don't remember who they were playing but it was great to be in the stadium. That year I also went to a Mets game at Shea stadium for the first time. But the best was yet to come - the Yankees were playing a very strong Cleveland team in the ALCS that year, and game 6 was at Yankee Stadium. I was working in Manhattan and got a call around 3PM from a friend whose brother had tickets. "Wanna go?" he asked? No question about it - off we went. BTW - thank you James!!!

The stadium in September can be really cold and I was there without a coat - so $60 later I had a sweatshirt and a hat (still have them actually) and watched an amazing game that the Yankees won - the beginning of 4 World Series titles in 5 years - a great run for a Yankees fan living in NY.

While the Yankees have played well and been successful since then, and though they haven't reproduced the magic of those years, I still watch and follow them, sometimes to the annoyance of my fiancee as we only have one TV. But as to how the Yankees tie into parenting? Since you asked I'll tell you.

The last 2 days the Yankees have played the Chicago White Sox - a team with lots of talent but having a bad season and in with the Yankees on a roll, it should have been an easy series for the Yankees. Instead they lost the first game by an extra inning base hit, then got blown away in the next two games. My frustration was high - I was getting used to success. Parenting can be the same - you have a good run with great kids and you get spoiled.

Fast forward to my son - age 9, entering the 4th grade. He is in this lovely place in his development where he is never wrong, never apologies (except under pain of punishment) and has no consideration for his parents' feelings once he has decided what is right (or should be). Argue, complain, argue, debate, argue (did I mention argue?) . . .

The past three days have been very taxing for me - my patience has frayed on multiple occasions, but in truth nothing has worked to this point. I am considering some dramatic steps such a emptying his room of all the toys and making him earn them back, but the next few days will determine that course of action.

So I realized this morning that watching the Yankees and parenting a 9 year old are very similar exercises. I realized that while I have no control over the Yankees (I even switched to the Cubs game yesterday to avoid watching the blowout - heresy!), I have precious little control over my 9 year old in some areas as well. I wonder if I had taken away the toys from the Yankees bullpen yesterday if the 14-4 loss could have been avoided? Burnett - you can have your 60" LCD back when you start throwing strikes! Phil Coke - you blew 2 games in 3 days - no Nintendo, computer or Xbox 360 for a week!

There is another game today, and another day of parenting awaits, so cross your fingers for the 9 year old, and the Yankees. The frustrated parent and fan ultimately believes in both of them but will take a deep breath as he wades into the new day . . .

A busy day and a sad night

Nicole and I spent the day working outside - mowing, cutting tree limbs, beautifying the yard. We added window boxes to the screened in porch and re-potted several plants to let them stretch their arms and legs in their new homes. We rediscovered the garden in the back yard after removing an acre of weeds and were pleasantly surprised to find many of the vegetables and flowers still thriving.

We tried to go see an open house of a beautiful old Victorian but strangely it had been cancelled so we snooped around the house and peered in the windows anyway. A nice dinner with friends and a glass of wine and a movie, then off to bed. An exhausting but rewarding day.

5AM the phone rings - which can never be good news. Nicole's grandfather had passed away about an hour before at the age of 90. He was a big strong man even in old age: a flight instructor for the military after WW II training pilots on B29s who then went off to bases in Germany. One day he and a friend decided to have a little fun and they flew a plane under the Golden Gate bridge. Luckily he knew the right people, and didn't get thrown out of the Air Force and rose to the level of Captain. He left the military when his parents got sick and came back to run the family farm, leaving behind a career that inspired him and defined him. Wish for Ray the best for all that he sacrificed, not just because he served his country but for his own personal dreams set aside and the family that grew because he came home - including Nicole.

Be gentle - It's my first Blog

I have had many careers and many ambitions, but other than a run at poetry in my youth, I have never thought of writing until recently.

A short history: I have a degree in vocal performance, but have worked as a fast food cook, pizza maker, computer lab monitor, auto parts salesman, waiter, mechanic, record store manager, temp, receptionist, secretary, and finally many incarnations of jobs in Information Technology.

I seem to have a habit of taking on too much, but I am seemingly unable to decide which portions of my life to set aside in favor of the others. I am a father of two, almost a husband again, a teacher both privately and at a university, a singer, a techie, and a graduate student.

Now why with such a full plate would I start a blog which may end up stale, much as my two websites are? Good question, and I hope the answer is an unfulfilled desire to put something down on the page (cyperpage that is) that would mean something or at the very least give me the feeling of releasing my inner writer. I realized years ago I have only a small gift at poetry so I gave it up, but there is a writer sneaking around behind the ghosts of the mechanic, record store manager and waiter and I have to give him a chance.

So here is my first blog - a run on sentence of 39 years compressed into 5 paragraphs. Let me spice it up a bit with some life updates: I am 45 days away from my second marriage, and in another month I begin my second year of graduate school, as well as moving away from a quiet summer load of 3 students to a full load of Saturdays at the university (5-7 students) and 4-6 private students.

You may wonder why the blog address is tenorforhire and yet I am babbling about my life outside of music. No worries there - being a tenor I will inevitably rant on and on about singing, teaching and graduate school.

One last note here - my daughter is 7, and just yesterday she starting riding her bike all on her own. Hurray!