Category Archives: Holidailies

The (Nutcracker) Prince and Me

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This post has been included in this year’s Best of Holidailies collection!

A Very Young Dancer

Hi, I’m Melissa, and I’m addicted to The Nutcracker. Oh, not the story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, but the ballet based upon the story. You know the one – it has music composed by Tchaikovsky, and everyone trots it out in December.

I blame my Auntie Annette for this addiction. Of course, she wasn’t really my auntie at all, but a dear friend of the family, one who always seemed to waltz, rather than merely walking, wherever she was going, and who always smelled like the forest at Christmas, even though I’m pretty sure the most rural place she ever lived was Connecticut.

Every junkie has a gateway drug, and mine was a book called A Very Young Dancer, by Jill Krementz. It’s not a story, so much as a captioned photo-essay about a young girl named Stephanie, a student at the School of American Ballet, the feeder school for the New York City Ballet, who is cast as Marie in the annual production of – you guessed it – The Nutcracker.

It was Auntie Annette who gave me the book – a book I still have, by the way, the year I was six or seven. (Amazon says the publication date was October 1976, but I’m pretty sure I had it in August. Then again, Auntie Annette had connections so it’s very possible she gave me an advance copy. I have vivid memories of being the first of my friends to know anything about this book.)

Let’s assume my memories are correct, and I was six. I was still taking ballet lessons then, and I have an equally-vivid memory of another aunt’s dog eating my ballet slippers the following summer. But really, it doesn’t matter, that book got me hooked on The Nutcracker, and I remain loyal to it decades after I stopped taking ballet lessons, or, in fact, any kind of dance classes whatsoever.

But isn’t The Nutcracker the first ballet for almost every little girl? I mean, I guess some kids see Coppelia first, but it’s not quite as engaging, or as magical. (By the way, has anyone noticed how many ballets are based on some kind of doll coming to life? Not just ballets, actually, but children’s stories in general.)

My earliest memory of seeing The Nutcracker live is when I was nine and we lived in Arvada, Colorado. My best-friend-at-the-time and I had been in a fight for the weeks leading up to the performance, but our mothers had bought a row of seats for the four of us and her little sister. Each of us, independently, had worked out how our mothers would sit next to each other, with us on their far sides, so we wouldn’t have to talk.

Of course, by the time the actual day came, we’d started speaking again, which both good – because for weeks afterward we did our best to recreate the ballet in their basement bedroom – and bad – because my mother worked with one of the dancers, or knew her mother, and had arranged for us to go backstage, and that meant I had to share the experience.

My addiction was cemented at that point.

Since then, I’ve seen numerous productions, both live, and on video. San Francisco Ballet’s version is one of my favorites, but I grew up on PBS’s annual airing of the ABT version with Mikhail Baryshnikov & Gelsey Kirkland, and that’s still the one I know best. I’ve seen the movie that was made out of the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s version (which features sets designed by Maurice Sendak. (Yes, that Maurice Sendak.) It’s a favorite as well, and just the other night I was watching a version of the NYC Ballet’s interpretation that was filmed years ago, and features a Home Alone era Macaulay Culkin as the Nutcracker/Prince.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve started to see different things in the different versions of the story.
For example, Marie (who is sometimes Clara), is often played by a child, as is, in fact, the Nutcracker Prince. These interpretations usually have lots of children in the first act, and very few in the second (only those who pop out from under Mother Ginger’s skirt), while Marie and the Prince pretty much just watch Act II from a throne all the way upstage.

Other interpretations use an adult dancer as Marie/Clara, or at least an older teenager, and play up her budding romance with the Nutcracker/Prince. Sometimes they even get an Act II pas de deux.

The Nutcracker/Prince is often introduced in the Act I party scene as Drosselmeier’s apprentice or nephew, which means that, if Drosselmeier isn’t merely an ‘affectionate’ uncle, Marie and the boy are kissing cousins.

A rare few interpretations (and Pacific Northwest Ballet is one of them) add a dash of unresolved sexual tension between Marie/Clara and Drosselmeier. (There’s a fanfic waiting to be written.)

I haven’t catalogued all the details of every production, obviously, but I do know this: during December there is a version of the Nutcracker playing somewhere almost every day. In the next two weeks, my DVR will be recording at least six different productions, only one of which I’ve seen before. There are at least seven local live productions of the ballet happening in the same time period, within 30 miles of my house. (I might drag Fuzzy to one. He’s never been.)

I prefer the live performance experience: the thrill when the overture starts to play, the way the audience always gasps when the Christmas tree starts to grow (which is really Marie/Clara shrinking, of course, but…it’s still cool), the little girls all dressed up for what is, for many, their first time in a real theater, and the obligatory trip to get hot chocolate (when I was a kid) or Irish Coffee (now) afterward. I love the pure dancing in Act II, when the Sugar Plum Fairy dances with her cavalier, and the Dew Drop Fairy dances with her flowers.

But even if we don’t make it to a live performance, I’m looking forward to having a few dates with my Nutcracker Prince over the weeks between now and Christmas. He’ll bring the great music and muscular thighs, and I’ll bring coffee, Danish butter cookies, and my appreciation of the arts.

And when Christmas comes, and the magic is over for a year (because a post-Christmas Nutcracker is just as sad as the early morning walk-of-shame after a poorly chosen one-night stand) I’ll put my Nutcracker, the one sent to me from Germany, back in its box, and focus once more on more contemporary stories.

But only until next year, of course.

I mean, you can only go so long until your next “fix.”

Holidailies 2014

Black & White (From Music of Conscious to Melody for the Masses)

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This year for Holidailies, I’m also podcasting daily through the month of December. Click HERE to visit my podcast site, and listen to yesterday’s entry.

Pete Seeger

My #MusicAdvent pick for today, from 1972, was another Three Dog Night song, one I mentioned a couple of days ago: “Black and White.” My two-year-old self probably fell in love with the catchy melody and watered-down message of unity. Hey, I come from a progressive, liberal family. What else would you expect?

It’s a song that has stayed with me most of my life, partly because of it’s innocent optimism, and partly because it’s just fun to sing. And hear. And bop around the house to. In my head, when I hear this song I’m six or seven, with golden-brown hair that borders on being strawberry, and thick braids, and a summer tan, and sand in my shoes. I have memories of having a family friend, one who was trained as a classical musician, to play it on his organ (and we’re not talking a cheap electric organ, but one of those room-filling instruments with pull-out stops for different sounds, and a dual keyboard, and…yeah).

So, yesterday, when I went looking for the songs of my first few years of life, I investigated the history of this song (thank you, Wikipedia), and learned that Three Dog Night’s version, while immensely popular, is a cover of a song that was written by David Arkin and Earl Robinson, and first recorded by…wait for it…Pete Seeger.

No, really, it’s a folk song.

In fact, it’s a folk song about Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which ended segregation in public schools.

Here is one of the verses that the popular version omits:

Their robes were black, their heads were white
The schoolroom doors were closed so tight
Were closed up tight

Nine judges all, set down their names
To end the years and years of shame
Years of shame

And here is another:

Oh, the slate is black, the chalk is white
The words stand out so clear and bright
So clear and bright

And now at last, we plainly see
The alphabet of liberty
Liberty

The activist part of me likes the original better. It has more depth, tells a better story, and makes sense.

But the Three Dog Night version is the one that turns into an earworm, probably because they based their version on a reggae-inspired cover by a British band, and that freshens the melody, and adds syncopation that the original didn’t have.

But it loses the message.

Want to compare them yourself?

Here’s the Pete Seeger version:

And here’s Three Dog Night:

Which one do you prefer…and why?

Holidailies 2014

#MusicAdvent – Music and Coffee (and More Music)

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This year for Holidailies, I’m also podcasting daily through the month of December. Click HERE to visit my podcast site, and listen to yesterday’s entry.

Joy to the World

The first song I remember hearing on the radio is Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” It was released in November, 1972, or about three months after my 2nd birthday. Something about either the imagery (my story) or the cadence (my mother’s story) of the “clouds in my coffee” refrain stuck in my toddler-brain. Perhaps this means Ms. Simon is to blame for my coffee habit. After all, until I was a teenager, my mother drank instant. (Yeah, I know, the thought is truly frightening.)

The first pop songs I remember asking musician friends to play, or humming on my own were a kind of eclectic batch that included Donovan’s “Happiness Runs” (they taught it to us in school, Shaun (yes, you read that right, Shaun) Cassidy’s “Teen Dream” (which album my mother would not let my then seven-year-old self have, claiming I was ‘too young’), and 3 Dog Night’s “Black and White” which, interestingly, is also from 1972. This is relevant only because I told another Holidailies blogger that I was pretty sure no one actually remembered music from their ACTUAL FIRST YEAR OF LIFE, and, indeed, while I may have since learned music from my birth year, 1970, I don’t have any organic memories of commercial songs from before I was two.

Why am I talking about this at all? Because:
a) I love music. I mean, there are times when I think in music. If there was a movie of my life, it would be a musical.
b) One meme at a time isn’t enough, and so many people mentioned this #MusicAdvent thing that I’ve caved and decided to play.

I’m not entirely certain of the rules, but apparently you share a song that matters to you every day during Advent, and this year, people are supposed to begin with their year of birth, and post song from each of their first twenty-five years of life…which means if you’re under twenty-five years old, you’re kind of screwed, I guess, or you can just make up your own rules.

Anyway, since it started yesterday, I’ve got two songs for today.

Day 1: The Carpenters, “Close to You,” the number one single from the week of 15 August 1970 (I was born on the 17th).

Day 2: The song from my birthday week is the Bee Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” but it’s not a song I really like, and there were so many good songs from 1971, so I’m going with Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World,” because it never fails to make me grin, and it was on Billboard’s Hot 100 list in the summer of ’71.

Holidailies 2014

Happy Holidailies

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This year for Holidailies, I’m also podcasting daily through the month of December. Click HERE to visit my podcast site, and listen to yesterday’s entry.

Coffee Spa Ever since I first heard about this ‘Holidailies’ thing several years ago (about a decade, I think) I’ve anticipated the beginning of December. It’s become more than a meme, more than yet another project added to the ton of things going on in December. It’s become a sort of annual reunion where I reconnect, not just with a daily writing practice, but also with the other people who also participate every year. It’s like getting a holiday newsletter that I actually want to read.

On the other hand, it’s nice to meet new people, too, so, even though I don’t typically do intro-posts, here’s the brief on MissMeliss

– I call myself the Bathtub Mermaid, because I was born near the beach, but leave farther from one than is practical for frequent visits. Most of my best ideas come from the time I spend steeping in the tub.
– I used to refer to this blog as both “escribition” and “uber-caffeinated.” I write this blog as an open journal, because I don’t do well with personal diaries.
– I’m a voracious reader, I bleed coffee and tea (they alternate), I have four dogs of my own, plus a foster, and I talk about them a lot. I hate reality tv, all the negative ‘isms’ that enlightened people always hate (racism, sexism, etc.), and bok choy.
– I use social media, but at the same time, I think our addiction to being plugged in has hurt our ability to be kind to each other. I believe we simply know too much of the surface stuff.
– My approach to religion and spirituality is kind of fluid. I’m kind of a questioning Episcatarian (that’s my combination of Episcopalian and Unitarian) with humanist tendencies and a culturally Catholic background.
– I don’t do selfies, and when I travel, I don’t always take pictures because there are times when being IN the moment is more important than capturing an IMAGE of the moment.
– I love to cook and bake, and usually find excuses to give away most of what I bake.
– Hot baths, hot coffee, good books, cuddly dogs, and time with my husband are some of my favorite things in life. Not necessarily in that order.

Holidailies 2014

Image Copyright: marrakeshh / 123RF Stock Photo

This Is the New Year

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2014

Happy 2014.

I woke this morning to the crying of a puppy who was in dire need of marking the New Year’s start by, well, marking, but once I left our bedroom I was greeted by the first rays of true dawn, and the intoxicating smell of nearly-cooked brisket (We marinated it in espresso and JD BBQ sauce, and it’s been in the oven at 225 since midnight (The coffee helps tenderize and provides a smokey undertone.).).

I spent yesterday feeling overwhelmed by having so much to do and learned several small lessons, the most important being that even when the Parking Goddess smiles upon you it is far wiser to avoid CostCo on New Year’s Eve.

Between cooking and chatting and shopping and wrangling dogs I wrote 5,000 words of a story. It’s just fanfic, but it made me happy to write it, and it was posted just after midnight, and I consider the fact that I greeted the new year at my keyboard in a happy, writing groove to be an incredibly auspicious sign.

Well, I would if I believed in signs.

Today, in just a few hours, we’re having friends come over to celebrate with us by sharing food and laughter. And possibly the champagne we never bothered to open last night, because by the time midnight rolled around we were exhausted, and couldn’t see the point in opening bubbly for three adults when one of them doesn’t even drink.

Instead, we toasted the arrival of 2014 with glasses of Mexican Coca-cola, and went to bed with smiles on our faces.

The puppy and the chihuahua have now finished outside, and the big dogs are having their morning romp. I’m going to go take a shower before I feed them.

Happy New Year.

Have a song to get you into the spirit of things, it’s a recent favorite of mine: “This Is the New Year” by Ian Axel:

Image Credit: Yulia Glam

You say Slumgullion, I say Schlumgallian

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Schlumgallion

It’s one of those days. You know the kind: when you’ve been busy doing stuff all day, and you know you’ve been productive, but you’re not really sure exactly how. It’s been one of those puttery days, when you bask in creativity and execute tasks here and there, and start projects that you don’t care if you finish – those days are lovely.

But they end in those evenings, those nights really, when you realize that, oh, damn, we actually do have to eat dinner, and payday isn’t til tomorrow so pizza is NOT an option, and anyway, we can’t really justify ordering pizza when we have a house full of ingredients.

So you improvise.

For me, improvisation in the kitchen generally begins with sauteing onion and garlic in olive oil. I mean, really, what can’t you do with onion and garlic? So we started with that. And we added some 98% lean organic grass-fed ground beef that was mostly defrosted because I remembered to take it out earlier, but not really early enough.

Oh! There are mushrooms in the fridge. We should use those.

Oh! And tomato paste, because why not? And Worcestershire sauce, because it adds bite. Hmm. This is a little young. Squeeze in some lemon. Garlic and onion powders. Italian herb blend. Merlot-infused sea salt. Freshly ground black pepper. Stir til it bubbles, but it’s not quite complete.

Go to the fridge – nothing inspiring. Beets, but they SO don’t work with this. Maybe the freezer? Jackpot! A frozen veggie blend, kept around for “emergencies” just like this one.

So you add that and you stir, and then you turn the heat way down, and put a lid on it…what else? What else? Oh, awesome! Pasta.

I have this cannister on my counter. Whenever I make a pasta dish and don’t use all the macaroni or rotini or whatever, I put the extra (dry, uncooked) pasta in the cannister (note: dear autocorrect, canNister is an acceptable spelling for this word. Use one ‘n’ or two. Both are good). Nights like tonight, that pasta gets boiled in hot water, olive oil, a little salt, and when it’s done, it goes into the tomato and beef mixture.

Voila! a meal that isn’t horribly unhealthy, and doesn’t take forever to make, either.

But what do you call it.

Well, I grew up calling it, at least phonetically, “Schlumgallian,” with the assumption it was a family-originated made-up name for “throwing the kitchen sink in a pan,” but then I learned that there’s actually a dish called “Slumgullion,” which is an Irish word and refers to a “watery beef stew.”

Feral Kitchen‘s version of Slumgullion is not really that different from what I made. You can see their recipe here.

Mine is in the image at the top of the page, but the whole point of this dish is that you can make it with whatever’s at hand.

A Day Without Coffee

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meteor coffee

I posted the other day that I was feeling blechy but not really sick, but last night – this morning really – that changed. I finished my column for All Things Girl just after midnight, and was watching Call the Midwife on Netflix.

(By the way if you haven’t seen Call the Midwife, do so. It’s a well-done BBC drama about midwifery in the 1950s and there are tons of fantastic female characters.)

And then my stomach, which had been tender all day, impelled me to go worship the porcelain god.

I must be very devout because I continued my bended-knee worshiping until nearly six AM, at which point I FINALLY, BLISSFULLY, was able to sleep.

I woke around 8 am to tell Fuzzy the dogs were fussing, and woke again around ten-thirty because I was sure they were fussing again, only to find out that they weren’t even in the room, because he’d fed them and taken them out…without being asked.

I made some tea and toast, and, somewhere, found the energy to start a batch of chicken soup in the crockpot and crashed again, woke up later, starving and somehow thought a peanut butter and banana sandwich would be okay for a lunch…and got lucky. I think I was craving comfort foods.

Went back to sleep, with Max and Perry in the bed with me…their doggy breathing is so relaxing to listen to…and slept til 6:30 or so.

And now? Now it’s nearly midnight, and I’ve had no coffee, and I’m not sure if I still feel SICK or if I’m just TIRED, but it’s probably both, and so I shall say Good Night.

Bubbles

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Bubble Glass and Candles

In the china hutch in my dining room is a collection of bubble glasses, each originally a pale pastel, though the tint has aged into mere hints of color. They were my grandmothers, then my mothers, then mine. I used them a few times a year, mostly for special occasions: Egg nog on Christmas Eve, brandy on New Year’s Eve, sometimes champagne because I don’t own flutes. Well, I do, but I like the bubble glasses better.

At times, they seem as fragile, these hemispheres of translucent colored glass, as soap bubbles. There are times when I think they might just float into the air, tinkling as they meet each other in a gravity-defying toast, and then settling back into the waiting hands of myself and a few carefully chosen friends.

* * *

I can’t imagine soaking in a bubble-less bath. Ever since childhood, with the exception of a few flirtations with the “blue water” created by Vaseline Intensive Care Bath Beads, I have loved bubble baths, and longed for a deep tub, full of soft piles of white bubbles.

My favorite bathtub was in the apartment where I lived with my mother when I was nine. It was in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, and it was a claw foot tub, and if you craned your head in just the right way, you could see the ocean through the tiny window.

My second-favorite bathtub was in the house Fuzzy and I rented in Sioux Falls, SD, our last year there. It was a prairie cottage, and it, too, had a cast iron claw foot tub, in a bright, airy bathroom.

My third-favorite bathtub is in the house we have now, in my (well, our) bathroom. The tub upstairs, the one guests use, is a plain old tub-and-shower combo with glass doors (I detest sliding doors on tubs). But in our bathroom, the master bathroom on the ground floor, we have a garden tub. It’s wide enough for two, and deep, and it’s set in a window (though, sadly, that window can’t be opened), and I spend many, many hours there, 40 minutes at a time.

Sometimes, when I’m soaking in the tub, one of the dogs comes to say hello, and I will catch up a handful of bubbles and blow them into the air. Teddy often ends up with bubbles on his head, and he tries to eat the ones that float. Max is more cautious (though he has a taste for scented (flavored??) bathwater. Perry lingers at the edge of the room. Cleo used to sit on the step into my tub and wait for me to finish. I miss her at bathtime.

* * *

When you’re in the ocean, you pay attention to the bubbles because they tell you which way is UP. I remember a couple of times, when I was a kid, and reckless, being rolled in whitewater when I misjudged where a wave would break. It disorients you. It makes you understand how people can drown in shallow water. Breakers are rough, even when the sand is less than a foot below you.

As I write this, I’m watching Blackfish, the documentary about the killer whales at Sea World. (I hate that we do this to animals. It’s one thing to have zoos to preserve species, it’s quite another to imprison animals solely for our entertainment.)

I shouldn’t be watching this right before sleep.
I keep watching the bubbles.

Image credit: limpido / 123RF Stock Photo

Post-Christmas Pajama Day Blues

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reading in bed

Sometimes, I have pajama days.

Often on those days, I never bother to get dressed in “real” clothes, but because I work from home, I still get stuff done.

Other times, I turn everything off, and don’t even pretend to work.

I woke up yesterday morning feeling exhausted and dehydrated. “I’m writing a book review, and going back to bed,” I told my husband and our housemate. “I’m taking a sick day.”

I’m not actually SICK-sick; there’s nothing contagious. I’m just a little sinussy, overtired, dehydrated, crabby, and Marco the foster-pup is driving my allergies crazy, which is odd, because I’m not typically allergic to dogs.

I just needed a pajama day.

I spent yesterday sleeping and cuddling animals (yes, even Marco) and reading a mystery novel that I thought I was supposed to review on Monday (but I actually have another week for) and did I mention sleeping? Sadly, though, it was fitful sleep. I was too hot, too cold, had to use the bathroom, was incredibly thirsty, wash, rinse, repeat.

I woke up this morning feeling worse. “You’re going to have to be responsible for your own lunch,” I told my husband. “I’m writing this book spotlight that is due in an hour, and going back to bed.”

Except I didn’t quite go back to sleep. Instead, I made myself an omelet, read some more of that mystery novel (it doesn’t usually take me more than a day to read anything, so I know I’m feeling sluggish even if I’m not actually sick.), and watched some bad TV.

Then I took a bath.

Never underestimate the restorative properties of a really good steep in a tub full of bubble bath.

I didn’t read, or anything. Just closed my eyes, and steeped. Brewed. Marinated.

Then I washed my hair. I don’t often wash my hair in the tub, but sometimes it’s easier to just do it while I’m there. And sometimes washing it in the tub gives it extra body; don’t ask me why.

I’m not depressed or anything.
I don’t even feel blah – I just feel really depleted.

Here’s to a long weekend with tea and books and dogs.

And just a few more pajama days.

Image credit: abhishek4383 / 123RF Stock Photo

O Holy Night

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O Holy Night

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.

~ O Holy Night

2:40 on Christmas morning, but since we haven’t been to bed yet, for us it’s still Christmas Eve. This post, then, is short because between the hour and the amount of sugar and cognac in my veins, short is all I can do.

Tonight at mass, a young woman gave us the gift of her music: O Holy Night as a trumpet solo.

It was lovely and haunting, and even if a couple of her notes were wobbly, Christmas magic made her horn sound angelic.

It reminded me of another rendition of this carol, a carol I could never wrap my head around, until suddenly I could.

Enjoy:

Link (for iOS users):
O Holy Night – Studio 60