After work yesterday, I drove home and made a huge platter of nachos for dinner, which Brett and I ate – as usual – in front of the TV. (Brett won’t eat at the table, which is why our dining table is pushed against a wall in the kitchen and doesn’t even have chairs in front of it, and serves mainly as a place to put the microwave and pet the cat.)

After dinner I read for awhile, then left for rehearsal. Since I’d left too early, I pulled into the 1-Stop parking lot, parked behind a U-Haul, and warmed up by singing along with my iPod for fifteen minutes. I haven’t fully warmed up vocally in YEARS. Amazing how rusty the instrument can get. I have very little resonance in my head anymore; keeping a warm tone in the sinuses is not really a natural thing to do and takes a lot of, well, practice. Fortunately I have a big ol’ resonant NOSE so my tone’s still warm enough. (Snort!)

At a quarter after seven I pulled up at Jonas’ and went inside. Kevin was playing hand drums but other than that it was just Greg and Jonas as before. We practiced until about twenty after ten, and I had a really good time. Jonas is a leeeeeeeettle bit controlling but not too horribly so, and I’ve worked with Greg before so he makes sense to me musically. By the time we were finished I was more warmed up than I’d been in ages and remembered that I love singing, dammit. There’s a portion of my head range that’s really thin and tinny, and there are still some places between ranges where I don’t have a smooth transition, but hope is not lost. I could be back in vocal shape if I just kept at it. The voice is, after all, just a muscle. Maybe I’ll start taking lessons or something.

We practiced four songs, and I really like two of them. The other two are okay, but since I don’t write myself I rarely spend much energy not liking songs someone’s actually bothered to bring into the world. We spent about twenty minutes jamming on a part of one of the songs with the keyboard’s built-in drum track going and that was a wee bit cheesy, but all in all I had a really great time and am looking forward to hearing the finished project on CD in a couple weeks. Hopefully they’ll let me post a couple MP3s here on goblinbox.com.

Friday morning I went to Jonas’ house and auditioned for him and Greg. They liked me, so now I’m busy for the next three weeks: I’ll be rehearsing Tues-Thurs. nights next week, then recording Tues-Thurs. the next two weeks.

It’ll be a nice little project. Not hugely challanging musically, which is good since I’m totally chopless in my old age. It’ll be interesting to record again after, what, ten years?

I’ve got holes in my range that didn’t used to be there. It’s weird to reach for a note and not have it.

After the audition/rehearsal at Jonas’, I went up the street with Greg to see Christina. Brett called so I had lunch with him, then went back to chez Wadsworth and worked on the seva laptop for a few hours. Christina made me decaf chai that turned out pretty cool.

After that I tried to hook up with Chloe – she lives across the street from Jonas and I’d seen her that morning and said I’d drop by – but she was out. I played phone tag with her for hours. Then I hit the grocery store and drove home.

One of Chloe’s messages informed me she was having a housewarming party that night, and Brett and I decided to go. But after dinner I was having some panic symptoms so I went upstairs to meditate…

…and woke up at midnight. Brett was asleep on the couch. FUCK. We missed the party.

I got a month’s worth of Paxil for my anxiety symptoms. Then I went to the website and read the entire prescribing information PDF and decided not to take it. I’ll stick with yoga, hydration, meditation, caffiene-avoidance, and St. John’s Wort. Thank you very much.

Holy cow. Fuck Paxil. First of all, it takes weeks to begin to work, secondly they really have no idea what it does or how, and third of all the list of possible side effects include – at a statistically low .03%, BUT STILL – death by horrible physical dysfunction. Not to mention what happens when you go off of the shit. Not to mention they gave me the wrong dose anyway: I should have gotten 12.5mg, not 25mg. 25mg is for depression, not anxiety.

I haven’t had an actual panic attack since I did this program J. loaned to me (it comes with a cool audio track of a nifty 23-minute ‘visualization exercise’ that always puts me RIGHT to sleep), but I still sporadically have all the symptoms: racing heart, skipped beats, sweating, tension, EXTREME DISCOMFORT, insomnia, blah blah blah. In my case, the overwhelming feeling of panic is a reaction to the pre-existing physical sensations. So I’ve stopped having to feel like that, but it’s still a royal pain in the ass to feel like I’m on bad speed. Waah.

Now it’s Easter Sunday and I’m blogging from a computer at 1-Stop Rental. Joe called me this morning and begged for coffee and something delicious to eat, so I came into town and got him two cans of Starbucks espresso and a raspberry croissant (and myself a DECAF Radiance Dairy latte) (*sigh*). Then his mom and her boyfriend showed up with his lunch, so I sat my ass in front of the goblinbox and started typing.

I LOVE MAROON 5. I DO NOT CARE HOW GAY THIS IS. And yes, I know their band name is awful. They’re just SO fucking adorable. (One of the reviews at Amazon.com said ‘every song on the album is about sex, which I don’t really like.’ WTF? Isn’t all pop music about sex?!) It’s just so hooky and tasty and funky and yummy. And I no longer give a shit about liking cheese – remember my Hall & Oates post?! After THAT, I’m not ashamed to admit anything.