What Are You Afraid Of?

_______________(I took this picture literally 3 minutes before posting this)_____________

I’m just over a day out from my flight, and I’ve been a bit fretful. Not that anything in particular is bothering me still – I think it’s a generalized anxiety about the whole experience. So I thought I’d make a list of things about this trip that worry me, in the hopes that it’ll help me feel better.

I hope my flatmate is nice. I have a fear that she’ll be standoffish. Since I only have one flatmate instead of 3, it might be harder for me to meet people.

I hope I have the fortitude to become the new and improved Sarah that Jennie was telling me about. This is related to the above fear. I can be a whole new, confident person in Scotland, and people there won’t know any better.

I hope this sudden spat of awful weather gets better. As of now my flight, and the one from Miami bringing my plane to Cleveland are on schedule, but we’ll see what happens.

I hope that when I get to the college I will be able to figure out where to go to get myself checked in or whatever.

I hope that I don’t get terribly homesick. Just in the past few days I’ve started feeling the impending sting of missing my family. Hoping that Skype-ing with my mom, sister, Kendra, Jennie, etc. will ease that considerably. By the way, if you readers have anything to say, anything at all, don’t hesitate to leave a comment on my blog. It’ll remind me that you guys are still out there. 

Similarly, I hope my family doesn’t get too sad when I leave. I can picture my mom sitting on my bed and looking around my room and crying when she gets back from the airport. That makes my heart hurt just a little.

I hope my checked baggage doesn’t get lost. I can’t help but remember Joanne and Randy’s experience in Scotland a few years back, when they didn’t get their luggage back until something like 4 months after they got back.

I hope I can get my tail in gear and iron out my Sherlock Holmes papers within a reasonable time frame. Similarly, I hope my classes aren’t too hard for me. Anya and Gimpy both suggested that the classes will be easier than they are here. They are really long, though. That could burn me out.

I hope I can deal with the plane ride. I hope my RLS doesn’t harass me too badly, that I can sleep, that if I do sleep I don’t snore too badly, that I don’t get my flight companions sick, that the air pressure changes don’t hurt me too much.

I hope I can afford this trip!!! I need to ask my dad if he can give me some money to replace what I spent on my doctor visit yesterday. He keeps asking me if I need money, so I shouldn’t be feeling anxious about this.

I hope things aren’t awkward when I stay in Edinburgh for Easter break. I’m not a Christian, and part of me is worried that my hostess will expect Catholic leanings out of me.

I hope I can meet some guys while I’m over there. Not that I’m planning on losing my heart, or anything else, to some exotic foreigner (I don’t know that I believe in all this love crap [Hanson reference! Ka-chow!])], but you know, guys in America mostly ignore me. This is related to bullet points one and two as well.

That might be it. Maybe. Even if it isn’t, I think I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish here to the best of my ability. Mom hasn’t been acting weird (like telling me horror stories and worrying about me out loud and stuff), which is odd but as long as I don’t think into it too much it’s much less stressful than it would be otherwise. Dad I haven’t heard express an opinion about it recently, and because he’s a man, and my dad, I’m sure he’s trying to hide how sad he is. He did tell me he was a little jealous of my opportunity, which seems to me to be an encouraging sign.

Finishing up watching Masterpiece Sherlock “The Great Game” for the 6th time. Have to call my internship locale and let them know that I accept the job.

That’s a WHOLE new set of fears. For another time.

(Picture of the early birthday cake Cindy and Mom got for me two nights ago)

February 19th, 2011
Birthday/Going Away Party at the Hooley House

Night 2 – Richie Reece

First of all I would like to say that all in all, Kendra and I had fun. Richie’s performance was on par with his usual, but with less drunken heckler action, as he stayed sober for the whole show. There was one caveat which in the end tainted my experience – he promised me a certain song, and never played it. It’s different to make a request of someone, musician or otherwise, and have it go unfulfilled – in this case, I’ve had requests at any given show that Brigid’s Cross didn’t do. But being hopeful is one thing. It’s an entirely different breed of disappointment when expectation doesn’t suit action. I will try to write this with my usual zeal, but if you find it to be fouled up by the faint odor of frustration… it’s Richie’s fault.
When we sat down at our table I learned something that just about shocked my socks right off: Kendra drinks Dr. Pepper now. That’s right. Used to drink Root Beer but turned her nose up at my favorite soft drink, which she now slurps with gusto. Took me by surprise. Looks like she’s finally come to her senses.

___________________Kendra enjoying her barbeque chicken wrap___________________

I had to show her the proper way to dip a Hooley Hunk (you have to cut it in half so that the clean inner chicken-ness is exposed), and savored my very last pre-Scotland Hooley Hunks. Speaking of dipping, our waitress didn’t give me an odd look when I requested extra teriyaki sauce, stating that she dips her food in all manner of odd sauces. I liked her, although I did notice that after she got her tip we didn’t get any more refills. In fact, I hardly saw her come anywhere near our table. That was more than a little annoying, needless to say.
Several songs into the show Kendra noted my characteristic head-weaving (to the music) and laughed at me. Apparently there’s something amusing about my inability to stay still when I hear a beat. And it’s not just music, either. Any steady rhythm can do it. This particular brand of head-weaving seems to be exclusive to Brigid’s Cross shows, and to Richie’s songs especially. I pointed this out to her, and she suggested that I am under a spell of some kind. “It’s magic!” she told me. “You’re like a cobra!”
I recognized two or three of the original songs he did, and took a video of a song called “Whiskey and Rain” that’s quite pretty. Upon playback, however, I noted that it’s a little difficult to hear him over the crowd, but it could be worse.
Kendra’s favorite part of the show was the country covers. When he did “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, a semi-standard with Brigid’s Cross, he insisted that one of the hecklers from the corner behind us come up onstage to sing the chorus with him. His criteria for choosing this particular person? He was wearing flannel; Richie commented that he was required to get in touch with his inner hillbilly. After all, Richie’s inner hillbilly had manifested itself in the form of a five-o’clock shadow and a Bud Light trucker hat. Actually, he called it a beard, although personally I think that was a little generous – he would look funny with a real beard – and the shadow suits him better anyway. Maybe you could call it a 7 o’clock shadow. I attempted to point out that Kendra was wearing flannel as well, and was badly in need of getting in touch with her inner hillbilly, but I went unnoticed (nothing new there). In any event, she threatened to kill me if I succeeded. She threatened to put her coat on.
Speaking of country tunes and drunken people in front of the stage that were lucky enough to have their requests actually played, Kendra also got excited about “Friends in Low Places”, by Garth Brooks. Garth’s lyrics apparently didn’t entirely suit him, and be it through creativity or ignorance of the real lyrics, he amended the final verse with this crowd-pleaser:
“I didn’t mean to cause a big scene
Just wait til I finish this glass
I’ll sit at the bar, and play my guitar…
And you can kiss my aaaaaaaaaassss…”
So, you know how in Friday’s’s blog I mentioned that I’d approached Richie to request a song called “Goodbye Michelle”? So here’s my story, self-indulgent as it may seem to my readers:
Last August I’d moved into my dorm just in time to attend my first Hooley with Richie. Since Jennie was not moving in until the following day, I went by myself, even though it made me feel self-conscious. I was impressed with Richie’s repertoire of original songs, and amused at how a show with him seemed to be even more relaxed than a Brigid’s Cross soiree. He tried his hand at songs he didn’t technically, if you want to be picky, know the lyrics to. Occasionally he would get halfway through a song and say, “Screw this, I’m doing something else,” and he had few qualms about heckling audience members.
At one point he introduced a ballad with the following paraphrased introduction: “This is a song that was written by my uncle, and I’m the only one that’s ever been allowed to sing it.” When he sang the song I was closer to tears than I’d ever been at the Hooley House. It was a beautiful song about a man who experienced heartbreak at a young age, a heartbreak that remained in the back of his mind and colored his life year after year before he finally found a way to get past it.
*Living with emotional pain that has no resolution can influence a person in subtle ways. It takes a lot of energy to smear metaphoric plaster adhesive in the cracks of one’s heart, and trying to silence that pitiful little creature that lives inside. After a while the poor thing’s voice becomes your own, until it starts to affect your self-image. The constant pain becomes easier to live with as time passes, until you can’t recall when that tightness in your heart wasn’t there. You still wish it wasn’t, since it’s always hovering over you, poking at you every so often so that you won’t forget that it’s there, but at the same time it had ingrained itself in your identity so that you fear that erasing the pain would cause you to lose the person you’ve become.
Not that I could possibly know anything at all about that personally, and not that my lack of said knowledge on the subject could possibly be a reason why I liked the song so much.*
Since that August show I have wanted to hear that song again, but at the next Richie show I went to the stage seemed less approachable (to my social phobic eye), as he was flanked on either side by backup musicians. This was true regardless of the fact that I looked really cute that night and was sitting at a table immediately to the left of the stage.
So I approached him on Friday night to let him know that I had really loved that song, but I didn’t know the name of it. All I could remember was the lyric regarding “finding the good in goodbye” and that it had a woman’s name in it. He enthusiastically replied, “Oh, yeah, that one’s called ‘Goodbye Michelle’. Absolutely, if we don’t get to it tonight, I’ll do it for you tomorrow (because I had told him I’d be back with Kendra for his show).”
The table in front of us was just getting up when he started the song “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, and these particular people got very excited about this and decided to stay an extra few minutes. The problem, in my opinion, with this plan was that the tallest of them decided in his excitement that he would stand directly between me and the stage. It was insult on injury when he reached around behind him to scratch flagrantly at his butt.
Kendra and I spent some time during the first part of the show creating a request list. “Goodbye Michelle” was the only song I really wanted to hear, but I added “Straight to Hell” by Great Big Sea because I keep thinking it would be fun to hear Richie do it. Kendra had 8 songs in her request queue: “Chicken Fried” (which I’d seen Richie do before), “The Dance” (which he also does), “Bennie & the Jets” (she was just being funny with that one), “Lola”, “Paradise City”, “Whiskey Lullaby”, “Sweet Home Alabama”, and one other that neither of us can apparently remember. She told me I needed to add more songs to my list because she didn’t like the disproportionate look of our respective lists, so I added his original “Get to the Pint” (a show staple that BC hadn’t done), and “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams and “Pour some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard, neither of which I’d ever heard him do but both of which he ought to know.
At intermission I gave him our list, and he was his natural enthusiastic self. Looking over the list he again mentioned that “Goodbye Michelle” was on deck somewhere. I left him with Kendra’s request that the waitress bring her his cousin Danny (one of only 2 Hooley Hunks currently waitering at the pub) in a to-go box. Kendra might kill me if she finds out that I put that in here. Or that I told Richie to begin with. *gigglesnert*
Kendra had been up since 5am, and she started to get tired at around 11. Knowing her, I figured that gave me about 45 minutes before the first tremors of grouchiness would start, so I figured that once he did my song we could leave. I didn’t know how long Courtney would stay up waiting for us, as we needed her to let us into the apartment when we got back.
By 11:30 I started getting tired too, having gone to bed at 1:30 that morning and living with a biological clock that kicks me in the butt if I even think about sleeping in. But I hadn’t heard my song yet, and had my camera at the ready to record it when it happened. I was quite excited, thinking that each song that passed meant one song closer for me, and 6 months has already been a while to wait, yeah? Meaning both that I’ve waited 6 months already and it’ll be another 6 months before I’ll have another chance.
The Dancing Nagy made his appearance, rocking out “Johhny B Goode”, which was fun, and Richie announced that the end of the show was nigh. It was at this point that I started to get annoyed. Well, so it would be one of the last songs. Okay.

_____________________________"Johnny B Goode"___________________________

Then we heard “Jack and Diane”, which annoyed me even more because I discovered some years ago that I hate John Mellencamp’s music. At around half past midnight, to the delight of everyone else in the crowd, he sang Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” with Hooley House-inspired lyric changes, then announced that the show was over: “Well, that’s it for us! Thanks for coming out…” etc. I turned to Kendra, her expression mirroring my own. Hey, Richie, the show can’t be over. Aren’t you forgetting something?
The customary bid for applause for his backup drummer and sax player followed – it was indeed the end. I hadn’t expected to be crestfallen at the end of the night, but at that moment I was quite tired, half an hour past being sick of waiting, and thoroughly annoyed. I gathered up my camera and Kendra and I left.
I would like to know what the hell happened (or maybe I wouldn’t – I might be disillusioned).
4 ½ days til Scotland.

February 18th, 2011
Birthday/Going Away Party at the Hooley House
Night 1 – Brigid’s Cross

So as my readership (all 3 – and possibly 5! – of you) knows, my birthday is March 18th. As you are also no doubt aware, I will be leaving February 26th to go to Scotland for a semester. How is that going for me? I started getting nervous several days ago about both of those things which this blog is to be dedicated to. As far as I’m aware, there is no more paperwork to do, tickets to buy, people to talk to (other than Jonathon letting the college know when I’ll be arriving), random travel items to purchase, etc. All I need to do is get on the plane. Well, I need to pack first. And when I land I’ll have to get my visa. Apparently because I’ll be there for 91 days we’re not sure if a visitor visa will be sufficient or if I’ll need a student visa as well, but I’ve been told (See, Jonathon? This is in writing now!) that the good people at the Edinburgh airport will be able to help me out with that, and I shouldn’t have any problems.
As you also know, my favorite local band, Brigid’s Cross, has made a home for itself at a family-owned pub on Mentor Ave. called the Hooley House. Approximately once a month the band (or sometimes just Richie) holds a St. Practice Day celebration, which is essentially an excuse to party and drink and sing Irish songs in preparation for St. Patrick’s Day. I have already lost track of the number of times I’ve been to a St. Practice Day gig, but my rough estimate for Brigid’s Cross shows in general is 40. I’m calling this one 41. Maybe I’ll be able to keep track from this point on.
The reserving of a table for a party of 12 necessitated my being there an hour before show time, and after some confusion and ironing out of details, I ended up riding with Courtney, Courtney (“The Courtneys”, if you will) and Claire. Cindy and Dave showed up at around 8:45 and Rachel, Scott (who also has a March 18th birthday), Tiffanie and Anne-Marie got in just before the show started. Kendra had to work Saturday morning and couldn’t come up until the Richie Reece show on the 19th, Brittanie has had the flu for a while and Richard was just being a poophead and didn’t RSVP. ____________________________Anne-Marie, Me and Scott_________________________

______________________________Me and Courtney L___________________________
_______________________Tiffanie, Claire and Rachel (Gimpy)____________________
____________________________Courtney G and Claire____________________________ ________________________________Cindy and Me____________________________

As is my wont I will now present you with everyone’s favorite part… my bulleted highlights:

Before the sound check started I asked Richie about a song that called “Goodbye Michelle”. I had heard him sing it when I’d seen his show in August and it almost brought me to tears. He told me that he would do it Saturday if the band didn’t do it Friday.

A few songs into the show I pilfered a piece of paper from Claire in order to create a request list. We got “Twelve”♥♥, at which I dutifully screamed, “Lisdon Verne”, “The Scotsman Song” (if you’ve never heard it, you must) in honor of my trip, and of course “Happy Birthday”. Claire got “Johnny Be Fair” (technically they played it right before we sent up our list, but she got it nonetheless), “Drunken Sailor” (“I know what to do with a drunken sailor!” she declared) and the Devil medley. Tiffanie and Courtney G wanted “The Mailman Song”, a tune which tickled Scott to no end.
_________________________Paul and Peggy analyze my note_________________________

At some point when Peggy was playing her bodhrán, Cindy turned to me to clarify what “the little stick that you hit the drum with” is called. When I told her, she said “I should have remember that, but I keep wanting to call it a banger. It’s, you know, a thingy-majibbler. Oh, heck, I’ll just call it a thingy-banger.” This of course brought on a laughing fit on both our parts, during which Cindy’s eyes started tearing up and I was grabbing the three friends I had within earshot so they could hear what a tipper is called as well. Claire gladly joined in, helping me relate the story to Courtney L. Then I told Cindy that that was definitely going in the blog.

Two other people, Greg and Carol, were also there to celebrate their birthdays, although theirs were legitimate birthdays while mine was just a surrogate (I’d planned since last September or so to have a February St. Practice Day shindig). I folded my arms in a pouty manner and pantomimed a breaking heart at Richie when he said I had to share my song with them, but two heart-pieces found their way back together when he told me, “You know this song’s always for you.”

Afterward, when Paul announced “The Scotsman Song”, I had the following exchange with him:
“March 18th! That’s a month away! What’s with that?”
“I’m going to Scotland!”
“Well, how long are you staying there, that you can’t come back and see us?
“Three months!”
“What the heck are you going to be doing for three months?”
“School!”
(At this point there was something said between him and Peggy)
“What does Scotland have that we don’t have?”
“Scotsman!” (was my immediate answer)
“Oh… well, yeah, I guess that’s true… but what else do they have?”
I thought of my next response (“What else do you need?”) a moment too late and I don’t think he heard me. But I was surprised that no one on stage made any cheeky jokes about the content of the song after it was sung.

_______________________I really like this picture. Not sure why._____________________

Cindy was absolutely delighted by Dick Goonan’s performance of “The Rooster Song”. Claire and I had sung it to her while Claire was home with me for Thanksgiving break, and she’d been entertained but thoroughly confused. I was thrilled that she would get to hear it from the man himself, and before too long she turned around to tell me that “It’s WAY more entertaining to watch an old man sing it!” I told her to be happy he wasn’t singing “The Oldest Swinger in Town”, as he has a habit of showing off his nipples during that little number. ________________________Cindy's reaction to The Rooster________________________

Dave was so impressed and entertained by The Rooster’s antics that he had me bring his phone over to where the old man was sitting and ask for a picture. Rather than sit for a picture on his own, The Rooster walked back to our table with me and told Cindy that she was going to be in the picture too. It ended up being the three of us in the picture, but Courtney couldn’t get a picture with my camera because The Rooster wandered immediately back to his seat.

__________________"But then that rooster... he came into our yard..."______________

Cindy and I had a wonderful time when we got to the bathroom to discover Drunken Bathroom Princess, so named because she was plastered and wearing a tiara, drunk-dialing somebody. She was telling the person on the other end, in a slushy voice, that Anne had left, then she told the person on the other end that Anne had left. Then, in case there was something inherently confusing about that three-word sentence, she told the person on the other end that “she” (Anne?) was the queen and that she had left the show early. As Cindy and I were studying her half of the conversation, I helpfully offered, in a voice loud enough so the person at the other end could hear me, “Anne is no longer here!” This caused Drunken Bathroom Princess and to gaze at me with wonder. “How did you KNOW that?” she asked me. I wasn’t sure what to say, confused by her earnestness. “I said something to the effect of “Um… Because you… you said… you just… told me… that.” At that point a stall opened up for me, but I got a synopsis of what happened next from Cindy.
Drunken Bathroom Princess expressed a thirst for water and asked where she could get some. One of the bystanders, probably confused because we were at an Irish pub/restaurant, which are generally known to have potable water on hand, told her that she could probably get some at the bar. Drunken Bathroom Princess spotted a Random Abandoned Tumbler That Had Been Left in the Bathroom, Complete With Stir Sticks, gathered it up and declared, “Well, obviously you guys are too drunk to know that I can just empty this glass right here and fill it up in this sink.” She immediately suited action to word.
When I left the stall and started for the sink there she was, contentedly sipping her sink water while the tap was on full blast. I moved the handle over so I could get some warm water, helpfully (again) letting her know, twice, that she could get ice water from the waitstaff if she wanted some. She told me that the water would “soak up” the alcohol in her system and said not to worry, that she was just going to stay in the bathroom long enough to sober up, when she’d go back out. I wonder if she’s still there.
Cindy didn’t wait until she had all the soap off her hands before snatching up a towel and lunging back into the Hooley House Proper, where we immediately burst into laughter.

I did not get my free Apple Pie shot from Richie, but Dave randomly bought Cindy and me each a shot of something that smelled like Sprite and came with a sugary lemon slice. I tried to get him to explain what I was supposed to do with it, as I honestly didn’t know (I thought I was supposed to drop the lemon in and drink it). Claire and Courtney G tasted the stuff to certify that it didn’t taste that great. Apparently you’re supposed to do the shot then take a bite out of the lemon, which makes sense, in retrospect. I’m sure I’d heard of people doing that before.
Dave also got Cindy a rum and coke and decided to randomly buy me one as well. I discovered was not as disgusting as the one I accidentally drank at my cousin Shawna’s wedding, which tasted, generously, like carbonated cough syrup.
I ended up having two of them, after answering three inquiries from Cindy about whether or not I wanted another in a noncommittal way. After all, I had my water, and could hunt up a Dr. Pepper from the waitress if I felt the need for something bubbly. I’ve never been drunk before, and have no intention of ever doing so, but the sensation that I felt reminded me strongly of the time I strained my neck in my self-defense class in my last year at LCCC and the doctor gave me a muscle relaxer that I later found out was probably too strong a dosage for me. I felt light-headed and light-bodied and walked around like Jack Sparrow for a week. I wasn’t really a fan of that feeling – like a dizzy spell that won’t go away.
At that point I declined any more drinks.

Courtney L, being a Hooley House AND Brigid's Cross virgin, was duly impressed by Paul’s fiddling and Richie’s… umm… well, his amazing Richieness. I also pointed out to her, as I usually do, “That’s what a REAL bodhrán player sounds like,” during one of Peggy’s solos.

Speedo Scott had lost a bet regarding the Steelers’ expected prowess during the Super Bowl… and as a result his fluffy mop of hair was gone when I saw him. I think it makes him look older. We’ll see if he keeps it short.

When I first met Scott I thought he was incredibly arrogant and had no qualms about telling him that he annoyed me. Somehow we’ve reached the point where I invite him to my friendly gatherings, don’t get irritated by his constant bid for hugs and dance with him to “Freebird”, not to mention all the wacky random dancing we did with Tiffanie, Claire and Anne-Marie. I didn’t do that much, comparatively speaking, but it was a record for me for a Brigid’s Cross show.

_________________________________Scott and Me_____________________________

The previous bullet was actually two bullets masquerading as one. I didn’t feel like disentangling them. And now this is a bullet that’s not really a bullet at all, to make up for it.

Cindy and Dave were going to leave around 11:30, just as Paul was announcing the “Fields of Athenry/Freebird” medley. I told Cindy that the show was almost over, and that my experience with the band suggested that they’d probably do the medley, then “Brigid’s Reel Set”, and finish with the national anthems. And so they stuck around, and the show finished as predicted. Dave bought me birthday cheesecake bites as well, which I shared with my friends because I didn’t think I could finish them on my own. Oddly enough, come to think of it, I never did order Hooley Hunks for myself. I definitely will tomorrow, though. Mmmmm… teriyaki Hooley Hunks… nom nom nom…
Afterward a round of hugs went around, Peggy approached to talk to me for a minute and Cindy insisted on snatching Richie for a photo op when I told her that I haven’t yet had my picture taken with him. He scuttled away before that happened. Oh, well. Also, the rug in Courtney’s living room feels amazing against bare feet. I’m going to get up right now and walk on it. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about Richie’s show.
Bye.