Making friends...creating a village all my own!

I have lamented on here more than once about not having a circle of friends here in Tulsa. Well, that's changed! As you can see from Libby's birthday post, we had a nice gathering of folks. Who are they!? Our new friends! One gal, I actually met online before I ever thought about moving here. She was married in Hawaii and we "met" online in a forum for brides getting married in the islands. We've gotten together a handful of time since I've moved here but she's super busy as a SAHM to three littles and I work during the week so it's hard for our calendars to align. She also travels a bunch with her family since her hubby works for American Airlines. Anyway, she's a great gal and whenever we do get together we have the best time!

The second family, we met in October. They've just adopted a new baby and really wanted to feed her breast milk. So they looked for local donors and voila! They happened to contact me just as I was debating what to do with a freezer overflowing with frozen milk that Libby had NO INTEREST in drinking. I was days away from heading to Seattle for two weeks and told J that if the milk disappeared (read: was thrown away) while I was out-of-town to make room in the freezer, I'd understand. But there was no way I was going to dump all that milk myself! There was well over 100 oz.! And I was devastated just to have to dump 30 oz. when I discovered my excess lipase issue back in March! Anyway, long story short, this family contacted us and we gave them all of our frozen milk. I continue to freeze what I can (although I've been pumping less and less now that Libby is older) and give it to them. They've had us over for a couple of visits and are just the nicest people! They're originally from California, so we have that in common as well.

And finally, my newest friend is actually my dental hygienist. I met her in December when I went to a new dentist for a routine dental cleaning. Turns out pregnancy and a less-than-attentive previous dentist created some issues that needed resolving. FOUR appointments later, it's been taken care of and I got a new friend out of the deal! I knew I liked her as soon as I saw a framed photo of her pet pug dog in her office. It turns out that she's got a daughter just a couple of months younger than Libby and we immediately clicked. We talked about being working moms, breastfeeding/pumping, in-laws and mothers, and life. Even though we had just met and most of our conversation had been between work in my mouth, I brought her a birthday invite and hoped she could make it to the party. She did and we're going to take the girls to the aquarium in a few weeks. I appreciate that she's a working mama and knows how hard it is to balance being a mom, a career-woman and a wife.

So it goes...I'm developing a little circle of friends. We've been here 2.5 years and it's finally starting to happen. I am SO grateful!

Do I look like a peacock? Because I sure feel like one...

This short video explains EXACTLY how I've been feeling since late June 2010.

http://www.perrythepeacock.com/

I would say more, but I can't. So for those of you who know me and know what's been going on...yeah...this little video about sums it up. Onward and upward! I am not going to let the last six months bring me down anymore. Life is WAY too short!

What's on your list?

Found this list at JanineB's blog and wanted to play along too. 

The things I've done are bolded:

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondla
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been inside an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90 Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Eaten lunch on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
101. Lit candles at St. Patrick’s Cathedral
102. Been stopped by the cops for making out in my car
103. Been threatened with arrest
104. Had surgery
105. Played on the beach at Malibu
106. Been a bridesmaid
107. Caught the bouquet
108. Been engaged
109. Broken off engagement
110. Acted in a play
111. Directed a play
112. Been to Las Vegas
113. Been to Euro Disney
114. Been to Disney World
115. Been to Capri
116. Seen a snow capped mountain only from afar
117. Been to the Atlantis in the Bahamas
118. been given a kiss that makes you weak in the knees
119. participated in an international student exchange
120. kept a juicy secret for a good friend no one else knows
121. shared a juicy secret with a good friend you haven't shared with anyone else

How many can you check off? What would you add?

I’m adding:

122. Been to Greece
123. Sung at on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera
124. Picked wild blueberries in Alaska
125. Owned a convertible car.
126. Been on television
127. Got a tattoo
128. Divorced
129. Remarried
130. Visited Fiji
131. Camped in Yosemite
132. Hiked to a waterfall
133. Met royalty
134. Ridden in a hot air balloon
135. Stomped grapes into wine
136. Won prize money

No longer my own dot-com

Over the past two years I have slowly transitioned away from my former email address of info@myname.com and to full time use of myname@yahoo.com which before, I only used for my students to contact me when I was still teaching private voice lessons. That said the Yahoo account gets checked a few times each day and the other one I maybe log into once a week or so. So today I went to log-on and sift through the hundreds of spam and junk mail that normally fill the inbox to see if there were any legitimate messages waiting for me. I typed the usual www.myname.com/mail expecting to see the netmail log-in screen, but instead I saw one of those generic domain parking pages come up in the browser window. Hmm…maybe I misspelled the URL? I tried again. Nope. Same thing. It’s a NetSol page and it says, “Myname.com expired on 5/21 and is pending renewal or deletion.” Wow.

Five years ago, when I renewed my domain name for awesome deal of one-hundred-dollars-for-the-next-five-years I thought, “sure, that’ll be great. I am sure that in five years I’ll still need my domain name even if my website changes before then…”  By “changes” I was hoping that meant being picked up by an artists’ management firm and having my website design overhauled to coordinate with the style and layout of the other artists on the roster.

Well, here I am…five years later. Age thirty-five and not a managed artist and no longer a professional singer. (In operaworld being thirty-five years old is still considered quite young and yet having certain professional credentials by that age is seen in the business as an indication of whether one has the capacity of “making it”). I am not even teaching voice lessons, for that matter. So there’s honestly no real need for my own domain and website to exist. Still, today, when I saw it was gone, it felt weird. I admit that I had a small twinge of melancholy for I no longer have a place on the web that features my bio, my reviews, my resume and stage photos. It’s no longer useful to this married-mom-in-the-Midwest with a nine-to-five desk job. Sometimes that life, the one of the struggling-artist-scraping-the-funds-together-to-travel-on-a-transcontinental-red-eye-flight-to-catch-an-audition, seems like an entire lifetime ago. But it really was just about three years ago that I decided to give it all up. Until then, I had spent most of my life making my dreams of being a professional performance artist a reality and suddenly, as my late twenties gave way to my early thirties, I was no longer satisfied with that trajectory. I had never imagined that I’d ever feel compelled to give it up, but I did. The only singing I do these days are acappella intonations of made up ditties and repeated refrains from childhood lullabies. No piano, certainly no orchestra and for the most part, no vibrato.  Just simple singing of simple tunes in a simple way.  It’s quite amazing that so much has changed in such a short amount of time.

Five years ago, when I renewed myname.com domain for another five years I had aspirations of being thirty-five and singing leading roles at The Met. Of traveling across the Atlantic to make my debut in some vintage European opera house and translating my stellar reviews into English so I could post them proudly to my Press Page. Of appearing through the stage door at midnight with my naturally curly hair coaxed into swoopy, romantic waves from being pinned into circles under the wig I had worn on stage that night.  Of smiling graciously, saying “Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it” or “...it’s always a privilege to perform this piece” while signing programs with the autograph I had so carefully practiced to look effortlessly artistic and befitting of a diva. Of wearing sparkling, silk gowns and sipping imported wine with well-known maestros while cleverly negotiating my next big debut. The person that paid a hundred bucks to have five more years with her own plot in cyberspace never imagined that she’d ever give up singing. Or get married. Or move to the Midwest. Or have a day job. Or have a baby. Today? That person is happier than she had ever been when she was her own dot-com. Go figure.

Now that I am a mother...

I feel I need to make amends to those parents before me that I judged in ways that I simply couldn't understand:

To my older cousin whom I unfairly judged when she was still breastfeeding her 14 month old son.  At the time (and to be fair I was 22) I just thought it was so gross and ridiculous that she let her walking and talking son with teeth treat her like a snack bar (he'd lift up her shirt while she was mid-sentence and start crying for milk).  Now that I am a nursing mother myself I realize what a gift it is to be able to nourish a baby, both physically and emotionally, with my milk.  If all goes well, I hope to be nursing Libby well after her first birthday.


To my brother and sister-in-law who received all sorts of flack from me for letting their daughter sleep with them until she was about 3 years old.  Now, with my own, I see the importance of bed-sharing to foster the nursing relationship, especially as a working mother.  I also recognize the benefits for baby...co-sleeping and/or bed-sharing (if done safely) is the natural thing for a mother and baby to do.  And for what it's worth, I see my niece, now 8, sleeps just fine on her own, in her own bed, in her own room.

To my friends who used a blow dryer to create white noise and calm their newborn baby.  Boy, I though they were nuts.  Now I know better.  They're geniuses!  It's the only way we can get our baby to calm down when she's totally ramped up and crying at the top of her lungs!

To every parent on a plane or in a store who's had a screaming kid that I gave the side-eye too.  I now realize that you know how annoying it is to everyone else that your kid is screaming.  But even more, I now know that it's pure torture for you to see your baby in pain (physical and/or emotional) and that his/her crying stirs a biological response that is overwhelming and the last thing you needed was a complete stranger passing judgement on you. 

Finally, to my former self...who thought she would never want to be a mother...."how ordinary, how expected!"  I am sorry that I almost denied you this wonderful gift...for the promise of a career or not being tied down or whatever it was that I feared might happen if you were to have children.  I am glad you waited, until the time was really right for you...when you truly yearned to become a mother.  And now that I am, no amount of fame or money or glamour could ever replace how I feel as a mother.  It's the most amazing thing in the world. It's truly transformative. And I am so lucky be able to experience its awesomeness.