Happenstance and Serendipity

Things I planned to do on March Break:

Buy paint and paint my bathroom

Switch out my disgusting shower curtain liner

Switch out my twenty-year-old shower curtain (it just took me a frighteningly long time to think "what is it called? Bath curtain? Bathtub curtain?)  for the cute new one I got from Redbubble

Do a bunch of yoga

Write a bunch of blog posts

Things I ended up doing on March Break:

Going out for lunch with girlfriends

Going to see Journey and Toto

Going to see a musical at our community theatre

Walking Lucy over to my parents' place in the glorious sunshine and drinking a gin and tonic at one o'clock in the afternoon

Having a lengthy nap after said gin and tonic

Taking care of my sick, between-international-trips husband

Reading a bunch of books

No regrets, largely. Although I need to get back to the yoga. My back is better from all the physio, but I need yoga. And I need to go back to physio because my Achilles tendons and calves have been troubling me for over a year, and I suddenly realized that I keep feeling like I'm stiff going down the stairs, but the only reason I feel that way is because it feels like my feet are going to break off at the ankles. I'm worried my physio guy is going to think I'm stalking him. 

In January four of us who see each other often met a fifth woman who we are close friends with but hadn't seen since before the pandemic (because she lives on the whole other side of the city and that was suddenly a Big Thing) went out for lunch and it was really fun. When we left, of course we said "we'll do this again before three years goes by ha ha ha", and then my brilliant friend Margot (HI MARGOT) immediately emailed everyone and made us pick a date for March because otherwise another three years would easily have gone by. So we went out for lunch again on Monday and this time could just talk about whatever without having to catch people up on three years of our (or, let's be honest, our kids') lives.

Monday night I went with my neighbours to see Journey and Toto because the sister that was supposed to go went to Cuba instead and there was an extra ticket. As usual with this kind of thing I acted like I was going in semi-ironically ("whoo-hoo, going out for some cheesy eighties goodness") and then ended up feeling pretty emotional about the whole thing. Toto played one of my breakup songs, the one that whenever it came on in my room I would stop whatever I was doing and star in my own sad little montage for. They all just looked like they were having so much fun, like the thrill of being a rock band never went away, and it was infectious.

Okay, so, Journey. I did not do my research. I wasn't certain that it would be original Journey coming out, but I did not inform myself to the contrary either. The first guy out looked vintage (old). Then some others. Then the lead singer came out. He was....short. Also, possibly...Asian? And yet the voice was Steve Perry's.

So apparently Steve Perry left the band forever ago, and they replaced him with this Filipino guy. At least that's what they claim. I'm pretty sure it's actually Steve Perry wearing a tiny Asian skinsuit. It's kind of a cool story - guy who does Journey covers ends up actually in Journey. It makes the whole '50th anniversary tour' thing a little sketchy, but whatever, nobody likes a math geek, Scully.

My niece is only 21 but she got big into eighties music as a teenager, so I sent her a clip and got this very satisfying reaction:

(insert frustrating interlude where I figure out how to upload a video to Youtube and STILL can't manage to post it here because I am a FREAKING LOSER). Instead, enjoy my eighties concert shirt which I bought and brought home before I realized it has my birthday on it. 

Tuesday I went to see Memphis the Musical with my friend Sarah (HI SARAH) at the smallish theatre fairly nearby. I had a subscription to this community musical theatre a few years ago and it was so much fun, and I'm not sure why we never did again. I had thought about getting tickets for this production too a month or so ago and then forgot, so it was fortuitous that Sarah wanted to go. I didn't know anything about the story, but it has to be a pretty crappy musical that I don't like at all. The show is loosely based on the story of the Memphis disc jockey who was one of the first white DJs to play black music in the 1950s. Like Sarah said, it's sort of similar to Hairspray - the funny parts are very very funny, the dark parts get considerably darker. The music was great and the acting and singing was amazing, considering this is amateur community theatre. 

Look at me, going out two! nights! in a row! Meanwhile, Matt got home from California on Saturday and was sick. He confined himself to the basement until he tested negative for Covid a couple of times, and then still mostly confined himself to the basement because he didn't want to get me sick during March Break. I stuffed him full of citrus fruit and chicken soup, plus this which made him full and also possibly high:

After I made him lunch on Wednesday, I took Lucy for a walk because it was cold but sunny. We stopped by my mom and dad's because they usually dog sit a couple of days a week and we hadn't seen them yet. I managed to land there precisely at happy hour, so I had a drink with them while Lucy snuggled with my dad and ran around their back yard. They have a deck with stairs down to the yard, and she seems to feel that the extra distance means she has to bark extra loud while firing herself out the door. 

I walked home, invigorated with the sun and the wind and the gin and the giddy excess of being out for two! nights! in a row! I got home, sat down with a book and nodded off in about three paragraphs.

This morning I woke up and looked next to me on the bed and saw this

Basically same, girl, same. I stayed in and finished some laundry so Matt could pack for Malaysia, which he's been desperately trying to get healthy for, and finished a couple of books, including my buddy read with Eve. Soon after she got back to school we Facetimed and she told me that the night before she woke up a couple of times and felt like she was sliding off the silk pillowcase I gave her for Christmas. Then she woke up having fully slid off of it and knocked the water glass on her bedside table over. Unfortunately one of the books I gave her for Christmas was in the line of fire water. 

But felicitously, our buddy read, The Drowned and The Saved was on top of the other book, and while it might have been drowned, it was actually... yeah, we shouldn't be joking about a Holocaust book like that, but we were both happy it was spared.