Author: Stacy Horn

Except it’s the afternoon now. No coughing fits at either performance. I came close once, when the soprano began her solo with the flutes and oboe. It was the worst possible place because it would have been not only the most noticeable, but it would have also killed a particularly pretty part. But I popped a lozenge into my mouth and I was fine. Oh Mozart. What would we have done without you? I cannot imagine life without singing and being surrounded by your music. Sucks how young you were when you died.

My family came and brought flowers and took me out to dinner. That’s them in the picture. Them meaning the flowers. Because I totally didn’t think to take pictures of my family. What is wrong with me?? I love hanging out with my brothers Douglas and Peter and my sisters-in-law Robin and Karen. They’re so nice and happy and relatively sane. Not a closet serial killer among them. No seriously, I am SO lucky in this respect.

God, I’m tired. I went to the gym, inspired by Karen and Doug who are more physically active than I am. Except now I am going counter that by laying on the couch for the rest of the day and night.

Snow!! Bring it on! More snow, please!

I had a coughing fit last night at the beginning of the dress rehearsal. Today, my cough is even worse. Maybe I should change seats with the person at the end of my row so I can leave without disturbing anyone if it gets bad.

The soprano soloist was SO good last night that during the rehearsal I was thinking Mozart would have adored her if he were alive to hear her. Afterwards another person in the choir said she was thinking the same thing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better soprano in person in my life. Her name is Yulia Van Doren. They were all great, she just stood out for me at the time.

Oh God, I keep hacking away. If I can’t sing tonight I think my heart will break. I called my doctor about it yesterday and they prescribed these pills, but they work by numbing your lungs and I’m too scared to take them. Can you believe me?? They’re called benzonatate.

People below a certain age may not get that post title. I am not having a good day. My apartment still smells, although I finally heard from the landlord’s office about it. I have no heat or hot water, AND water is leaking from the ceiling in the front, and my desk now has a few water spots. I’ve come down with a cold on concert week, the week we’ve been working towards for months. I’m going to be sick for the dress rehearsal with the orchestra on Thursday, this is my favorite part, and then for the performances on Friday and Saturday. I just want to take a hot bath, but I can’t.

Whine, whine, whine. I know. This is a Charles Addams drawing. Don’t you just love Charles Addams? I wish he was alive and we were friends. Charles Addams understood days like today.

One possibly really good thing though. I found a child who was at the center of a poltergeist story I may end my book with. I don’t know how much he will be willing to talk to me, but he didn’t hang up on me and asked me to call him after work. He could have been blowing me off, but maybe not.

Playing around, trying to be creative here. That’s an extreme close-up of one of my new ornaments, my favorite one. It’s fun putting up a tree, a fake tree, but it’s not very pretty in the end, I don’t think. And it doesn’t have the nostalgia appeal of a real tree. Maybe I should get a real tree. I will ponder this.

So, today is the big Bad Haircut Undo Day. Not too much pressure on this stylist, ha. But please please please let me get a decent haircut today. In other news: a friend of mine just decided out of the blue to go to Mexico for Christmas. I’ve always wanted to do something like that, just take off for the holidays. And now she is. I can’t help feeling she is living the life I only dream about.

I’ve got to get up off my ass. It’s not like I’m going to live forever. Except, maybe I need to get up off my ass in different ways, and not take off for vacations.

I had such a terrible day yesterday, oh man oh man. My editor wants a new opening for the book, which is fine, so I started working on it yesterday. But it just wouldn’t come together and I refused to give up and I kept working on it and working on it, hour after hour after hour — and you have to realize we’re only talking a few paragraphs, not a whole new chapter — but I worked the whole damn day and night and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and I couldn’t stop. I knew I would feel terrible unless I got it into shape. Finally I had to throw in the towel. I had to force myself to give up. You may have beat me now New Beginning, but I will be back. For those who decide to read the book when it comes out — know that I suffered for those measly opening paragraphs, whatever they turn out to be.

It’s just that they’re so important. Someone is going to pick up your book in a bookstore, take a look at the first few paragraphs and if you don’t somehow grab them immediately, you’re dead.

My plan is to have a better day today, except I have no hot water AGAIN, so we’re not off to a good start. Can’t shower. But The March of the Wooden Soldiers is on a 9, and while I don’t like that movie, except for the scene at the end when the wooden soldiers come to life, I will have it on for nostalgia’s sake. Which brings me to the title of today’s post. It comes from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, I’m not sure which, although for the record, 100 Years of Solitude is my favorite book of all time. In whichever book it is, everyone in a town is infected with the “nostalgia disease” and will die if not cured. When I first read that I thought, ‘oh, that will be me.’ I do love to wallow in nostalgia,

Here are the words from Toyland from The March of the Wooden Soldiers. They are actually kinda depressing!

When you’ve grown up, my dears,
And are as old as I,
You’ll often ponder on the years
That roll so swiftly by, my dears,
That roll so swiftly by.

And all the many lands
You will have journeyed through
You’ll oft recall,
The best of all,
The land your childhood knew
Your childhood knew.

Toyland, toyland,
Little girl and boy land,
While you dwell within it,
You are ever happy then.
Childhood, joyland,
Mystic merry toyland,
Once you pass its borders,
You can ne’er return again.