A Musical Interlude

I brought my niece to town for a visit to the woods and the mountains last week. I'll be writing more about that trip on the hiking blog. This one is about what happened on her last night in town. 

We got checked into a hotel for the night (my studio apartment being too small for guests), and had taken the elevator several times before reading the little events newsletter in it. Now, my niece had been schooling me in musicals on this trip. She shared Hamilton, 36 Questions and Heathers with me while I drove us to campsites and back. And she had also mentioned the musical Dear Evan Hansen a time or two (or ten). 

So when I saw that the Morrison Center's Broadway in Boise was performing Dear Evan Hansen, and that the last date was that very day, I pointed it out to her. 

Immediately she wanted to go, and I was a little less enthusiastic. I was hungry and a bit cranky, to be honest. But then she found a pair of tickets for $6 a piece online. So we walked down to Freak Alley, because she's into art and I wanted her to see it. Then, while we got dinner, I figured out how to get the $6 tickets. It was less than $20 after fees for both tickets, a great deal. 

What an incredible coincidence that this musical, which she hadn't had a chance to see when it was in Chicago, just happened to be playing on her last night in town. And we were able to get tickets to see it same day, at a rate that shocked her Chicago sensibilities. I might just be the best aunt ever. 

But she's also a candidate for best niece. I never would have gone to see that musical without her, and I ended up enjoying it very much. It was very emotionally moving, and I'm not ashamed to say I cried a lot. I'd read that the movie version wasn't very good, and, going in I let that color my perceptions. But once it started, I just let myself enjoy the production. The cast was excellent; almost as good as the company. 

A shot of the stage before the performance began.

Travel Craziness

Last week, I went on a business trip. It was my first business trip since the pandemic started, and I was a bit nervous at the start. I knew that I was going to wear my mask on the plane and in the airport and just as much as possible. Maybe the COVID risks aren't that high, but "conference crud" has been a thing since before the pandemic, and I had things to do this week that I wanted to be well for. 

The travel started off well enough. The flight from Boise to Salt Lake was short and uneventful. The next flight to the destination was delayed, but not too long. It actually made the layover better, because there was time to get food without worrying about missing the connection. Again, an uneventful flight, though quite a bit longer all the way through to Nashville. 

Easy enough to check in to the hotel, and I then walked over to a nearby Whole Foods to get some snacks and a dinner. I could have gone to a restaurant for dinner, but it's a lot harder to know exactly what ingredients are in foods at a restaurant. It's just easier to buy a frozen meal. Plus, I got a popsicle for the walk back to the hotel, which was a fabulous idea if I do say so myself. 

The conference itself was good, and I learned a bunch. Departure was early Saturday morning, and it taught me something else entirely. 

See, the flight left at 5:25 am Saturday morning. Two hours before that would be 3:25, but the security line in Nashville doesn't open until 4 am, so the planned departure from the hotel was set for 3:15 in the AM. I tried to go to bed a little after 9, hoping I would get some 4 to 5 hours of sleep. Instead, I woke up just before midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. 

I tried, I really did. But I ended up being wakeful until after 2 am. I did doze off enough to miss my 2:35 am alarm, but the 2:45 am alarm got me up. I ate some cut watermelon I'd gotten from Whole Foods and got dressed. I didn't bother with a shower, just double checked everything was packed and left a tip for housekeeping. 

I was done before 3:15, but I was still second to last to arrive of my group. We got in an Uber, made it to the airport where I then had to wait in line to check my bag. Then security - where I had to go through twice because I forgot to drink the last of the water in my bottle. I blame that on the Uber - it was a tight fit for 5 passengers plus luggage, and instead of drinking my water, I had to use my elbows to keep other people's luggage from braining me. 

But we made it through and got on the short flight to Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta. Because why not go south and east when your destination is north and west? That's where things started to fall apart. Our flight's departure was delayed 50 minutes, and then 10 more. Then we sat on the tarmac after boarding for another 10 to 20 minutes. Our layover at Salt Lake was already going to be tight, but the pilot assured us that they would make up time in the air. 

Ha!

They may have made up time in the air, but it wasn't enough for us. When we neared Salt Lake, one of the flight attendants tried to help folks with tight connections by announcing said connections and having people raise their hands, something they don't typically do. Several destinations were announced, but not Boise. No, we had already missed our flight. 

Two of my party got rebooked on a flight later that day to Boise. Two got booked over to San Francisco to spend the night and then get to Boise in the morning. I got rebooked to fly into Seattle the next day and then Boise that afternoon. This was not acceptable. 

After a very long wait in the customer service line, I got onto standby for the same day flight to Boise, as did my fellow travelers who had not been automatically rebooked for it. We ate lunch and then went to stand by and see if there would be any room on the flight for us. I saw my name up on the board as being on standby - a first for me. But my fellow travelers were not on the board and were starting to be resigned to a night in Salt Lake or a return trip to the customer service line. 

But in the end, there was room for all of us. I even got to sit next to one of my party in the row right behind first class with more leg room than I could possibly use. The seat felt like how I remember airplane seats being in my youth, much wider than the economy seats are nowadays. It was tolerable, and I even managed to doze on the flight. 

Even with my toes pointed, I couldn't touch the seat in front of me.

It was an absolutely draining, incredibly long day. It's one thing if you've got a flight and it just has a lot of layovers or will take a long time. It's a different thing if you're running on less than 3 hours sleep and don't know when or whether you'll get home. I'm really hoping my next flight has nowhere near this level of insanity - at the very least, I'll be protesting any attempt to book me on a flight before 6 in the morning... 

Body Work

I credit transitioning to barefoot shoes with calming down my iliotibial bands. I used to get intense pain from running and even backpacking if I didn't keep those IT bands stretched out with regular running. Rolling the IT bands on a foam roller was always incredibly painful. Now, I can miss a few days of running and now have the IT band pain come back. When I foam roll, it isn't excruciating. 

But in the last couple weeks, I was noticing a new pain cropping up on my right side. It was a weird combination of heel and ankle pain, and it only made itself felt when I was running. 

After one recent run, I did some self massage and figured out that the muscle running along the outside of my right calf was extremely tight. I massaged in some CBD balm and tried to decrease the tension on the muscle, but it didn't help very much. Enough that I could keep running, but the pain wasn't going away. 

I began to think about it even when it wasn't hurting, and I noticed that when I stood still, I had a tendency to roll my weight to the outside of my right foot. I noticed it once, and then again and again. It was definitely a habit. And it was a habit that clearly led to muscles tightening up on the outside of my right leg - exactly where I'd traced the heel pain to. 

I've been working on paying attention to where my weight is when I'm standing still, and I can feel how it's making a difference to the tight muscles in my right leg. My last few runs haven't been as painful in that area, though I still have a ways to go. 

And it occurred to me that this was a long formed habit in response to who knows what in my past. If I didn't pay attention and work on fixing it, it would probably lead to injury eventually. Or it would cause me to stop running. 

And if that can happen to my physical body without my noticing, then doesn't it also make sense that such habits could happen in my mind? What kinds of little habits have I picked up mentally that I don't notice until I try something "strenuous"? Something that stretches me beyond my comfortable routines. . .  

I'm going to be paying more attention to my habits, both physical and mental, going forward, that's for sure. 

Really Late Book

I meant to finish my second book from last season in February. And in March, April, and May. 

It's now June, and I haven't hit publish. I've been making progress, but of the very slow variety. To be fair, I felt ill for a good portion of those months - not from tummy issues for once, but a variety of long last colds. (I did a home Covid test at one point and came up negative.)

June really needs to be the month that I wrap this thing up. I don't want to go on more trips without having put this one to bed, so to speak. So I need to just focus myself and make it happen. I'm really down to the nitty gritty parts that don't take a whole lot of thought. Just a lot of persnickety placement work for the photos (which are all plated and captioned), and then the cover, and then the standard print size, and then the cover for that, and finally the ebook version and ebook cover. That should make it a wrap. That's one long day's work or several partial days, and the hardest part will be writing the back cover copy. At any rate, I'm aiming for no later than June 15th. 

It's definitely doable. I just need to make sure that I put the book first on my priority list. And that I don't catch another of those annoying colds that sap my brain and creative energies. 

The Fool

For much of my life I have tried to avoid humiliation. And not just humiliation but even the potential and possibility of embarrassment and humiliation. For whatever reason, I flinched from being myself out of the fear of being ridiculed for it. 

I have a vivid memory of being in fourth grade and trying to get my teacher's attention. There was some sort of classroom party going on, and the teacher was speaking with two other teachers. I spoke softly at first, "Mrs. Hornyak? Mrs. Hornyak?" I didn't mean to interrupt them, but I needed something, probably permission to leave class and use the restroom. "Mrs. Hornyak? MOM?" 

That last one got through to her, and she and the other two teachers burst out laughing. I flushed with embarrassment. I castigated myself, dumb dumb dumb, how could you do something so dumb?

And for years after the incident, just recalling it would cause my cheeks to flush and my hands to freeze. The memory of embarrassment was that strong in me. It was a monster, reminding me just how horrible it was to be embarrassed. Making me look for ways to avoid that pain. 

And the thing about that particular memory is that no one else noticed or cared. My classmates were busy doing something else, and the teachers had a little laugh and moved on. The embarrassment, the humiliation, the red cheeks and icy hands - all of it was internal. Caused by me, remembered only by me. 

And that embarrassment did not serve me. Remembering it so viscerally did not serve me. These things only served the monster that does not want me to be myself. The fear of ridicule has kept me from trying so many times in my life.

I eventually figured out how to let go of the bodily feeling bringing up that memory used to cause. I detached the emotions from the memory. But I still feared ridicule. I hesitated to be a fool. 

Over the weekend, I went backpacking. It was rainy and cold, and that meant that my husband and I spent a lot of time in the tent. The inactivity gives me time to think and roll ideas around and I thought about how I fear to put myself out there, to put my opinions and thoughts and experiences in a form that can be seen. Yes, I publish my books, but they are deeply personal and I have convinced myself that I am allowed to publish those because no one else has the authority to contradict my personal experiences. 

And so I must ask myself, what is so wrong with being a fool?

What is so wrong with being thought a fool? 

What are the consequences exactly?

What am I so afraid of?