09/09/2025
I had 3 sessions scheduled today, I should have earned $140, and all 3 "fell thru". It's Really frustrating for me when people blow off a scheduled session. The first one we had major technical complications trying to get logged in to Zoom, for the 3rd week in a row! I use my own personal meeting room, the login credentials are Always the Same. After 20 frustrated minutes we tried Google Meet instead which IS how we did her 2nd session, but couldn't get that to work either, so went back to Zoom, finally got it to work, then 8 minutes in the screen froze and connection dropped over an hour after her scheduled start time, then she sent me a text message asking I'd we could reschedule. Last week I sat logged in for 20 minutes, I text at 5 minutes, call at 10 minutes, text again at 15 minutes, logout saying please reschedule at 20 minutes. Last week she sent a text an hour and a half later apologizing she just woke up from a nap can we start in 30 minutes? Then 10 minutes later asks if we can reschedule 2 hours later, we finally got logged in and she cleared her throat, obvious sounds of phlegm. NOBODY is allowed to sing with any signs of mucous on the vocal cords. She's on the west coast and schedules for 1pm central time so my next clients aren't until 5 or 6pm my time but she has disrespected my time professionally 4 afternoons this month, rescheduling for a total of 11 thirty minute sessions earning me a whopping $80 total. I just don't get it. I mean being sick cannot be helped, don't ever sing with phlegm on your cords unless a lot of money is involved or other people are depending on your performance and I could write maybe a 3 or 4 page book on vocal health things you can do if you HAVE to sing. Everybody has to work late sometimes, and of course I know if life bites anybody in the ass singing lessons are the first thing out the window, but the sheer number of people who schedule sessions with me and No Show and maybe call to Apologize and reschedule the next day just makes me go insane! I don't mind cancelations even last minute it's okay, but respect the fact that I am extremely disabled, and yes since Walter passed last year and I'm no longer only scheduling Monday thru Thursday because the rest of the week I was away from my piano at his place with my kids and the rest that grew up calling me Mama Manda, I say I schedule 8am to 8pm central time 7 days a week but there's a whole lot of things on my plate trying to regenerate and rehabilitate to the best of my ability is close to a full time job all on its own and all the things I invest my time and energy into making the community, humanity, our country, our world, and our place in the universe, my mom gets paid for 37.5 hours a week as my live-in PCA and I have IHS services and targeted case management too, I used to only schedule one hour singing sessions back when they were all face to face in my livingroom because I was convinced anything less just wasn't enough time to accomplish anything, but now that I'm on Zoom (or Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, but Zoom definitely has the best sound quality available in a free program) therefore nationwide 90% of the sessions I book are 30 minutes and I've invested some time and energy and even a little money retraining myself on teaching the building blocks and how to use positive reinforcement especially for working with kids and folks just curious who have never tried singing outside of their car, I trained 5 years in Bel Canto which is actually designed for opera but I let my clients always choose their own songs to work with. My first 3 years we were only allowed Italian more than 150 years old, I stand corrected, I was allowed to compete using Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Pie Jesu" because I insisted I was sick to death of Latin and Italian (even though Papa Joe Aunt Nene and Uncle Carmelo tried very hard to make Italian Mt first language, Mom's new boyfriend in 10th grade and stayed 15 years, had dual citizenship in Britain and France so we were trying hard to learn French at home so for my senior ACDA contest solo piece I (I don't even remember the song, I just remember the accompaniment was nearly impossible to play, and the only comment the judge put on my score sheet was "tone is too dark for french" and scored me 82 out of 100. That's like getting a C minus grade, and anyone with a superior rating (90 or higher) got to perform during the school Spring Concert between the Chorale songs, I was also the Alto 2 by myself and Alto section leader of our school Madrigal choir which rehearsed 6:30-7:20 Monday mornings and received no school.credit for, 8 part harmony with 14 girls. My choir director sometimes moved me from 2nd soprano to 1st alto to 1st tenor all in the same Measure of the amazing Kyrie Eleison we sang unscheduled in the government building in Winnepeg we were on a walking tour of and the architecture was so amazing, a round opening in the 2nd floor we were on with a matching rotunda on the 3rd floor to a raised ceiling 3 stories above us, I think there were 27 of us, 9 sopranos, 8 Altos, 6 tenors, and 5 basses, our conductor asked permission to perform just one song, we stood boy girl alternating around that circular rotunda facing each other, but of course as always I had to stand next to Sarah because if we were a capella went down one major second she was the one who dragged us there. Our conductor was amazing, and she lost her job for too many selections that glorified worship of God, but we were so perfectly in tune, and with the 6 second delay or whatever a pro would call the reverberation of that architecture, I've come this past year to understand but barely scratch the surface of the power of solfeggio frequencies, we turned a few keys in the fabric of the universe, the universe heard us and responded, the entire gambit of chords within range of human hearing rang out in completion from deepest bass to angelic high notes the universe responded to us it was so perfect. I've looked up a few members I was honored to share that experience with, I believe out of the 40 or so kids I sang with during my 4 years of high school 5 are protestant pastors with fairly large congregations (compared to the 70 family congregation I grew up in and drove 17 miles across the metro to raise my children in the same church family, with David Nordli as our music director their whole lives (Hopkins high school choir director) with Neil Lubke directing our congregational musicals, I didn't know our high school was going to turn Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat into a 2 1/2 hour production improvised by the students led by the amazing Ertwin Marvin Jones Hermerding, I couldn't believe and was floored/so honored to be asked to give the opening eulogy of Herm's student led memorial service when he crashed his motorcycle into a tree shortly after retiring. His retirement party we threw foe him renting out the Paradise Theater in Saint Paul had to be theater needs only, there wasn't enough room to invite the junior varsity football team. That's why Mr Jeff Phillips always directed the Fall Play and the contest one act play that usually gets no audience besides the judges and other competing actors from other schools, but backing up I had already been first narrator in Joseph at our church, it's only a 20 minute production as written, but it's great I didn't because I ended up missing school from Thanksgiving to Saint Patrick's Day, I was back and forth between inpatient and outpatient, and my first discharge was the day before Winter Break, then I was back in Mercy Hospital in C**n Rapids so technically in the Anoka school district but how do you get grades for band, choir, and orchestra if you're not in class? I didn't Want to be in Chambers, I would have had to drop band, and I never got school credit for playing my beloved cello, just like Stephanie Kukachka never got credit for playing French horn sitting next to me, she's had just as amazing life as imaginable! Her husband played both French horn and cello too, they finally had a girl after 6 boys and his job with our government has had her raising kids in India, Brazil, and Patagonia! I tried going on the road with the Renaissance Festival as a personal ethnomusicology endeavor living the music and culture of the Roma Gypsy, the Sephardim Jew, Irish folk music, madrigal, and learned so many more amazing things along the way I never intended to, but cancer and spinal complications made that very short lived. My brother Zachariah followed in my footsteps with a contract for $10 an hour doing "ye Olde Renaissance paint ball" in Arizona and became a master artisan of bone and antler carving with his own booths in Arizona, Colorado, and Waxahachie Texas as Buschfineartstudios.com he's still visible here on Facebook and so is his art but he died October 4th 2024 we waited until what would have been his 44th birthday to celebrate his life, of the kid who auditioned and showed up for the first night of Academy and told ,",no sorry kid you were supposed to get the letter to stay home" and had to wait for Mom to come pick us up, I had volunteered half days at Garlands and Garde s from Jeremy's moms gardening club in exchange for a pass, the year before, and had auditioned for The Cast having no idea anyone working in a booth the previous year automatically can go thru the Academy. Zachariah was 12 years old and had to sit on the floor with his back against the wall watching Gary Peterson do "Hello hello, Welcome to our Show" knowing he didn't get to stay, but the following year our youngest brother auditioned and he WAS allowed to stay "because management thought he was my son, not my brother" Zachariah became a fencing booth volunteer for a handful of years before his 15 year successful tour of duty on the Renaissance Festival circuit, but he hadn't been home to visit in 6 years until the week before he died October 4th 2024. At least my kids got to go out to eat with him Saturday night before he died. I'm the one they said "would never live to graduate from high school" I've been told i'm "on death's doorstep" for some new unbelievable reason so many damn times I'm starting to think I've got Munchausen's myself. Mostly it's because I'm very resistant to and highly allergic to ALL antibiotics so I've been on CADI since 2015 meaning "I require a nursing home level of care" but my mother became my live-in PCA when I lost my house after the pandemic hit and Walter took off for his mother's with the kids, it was for the best, I never would have believed anyone trying to tell me the George Floyd Riots would come within 3 blocks of my house on BOTH sides! but everyone really should know at least 3 tourbusses were seen unloading folks on University Avenue, those riots were NOT the citizens of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, not entirely anyway. Walter died March 15th 2024, I haven't seen my kids more than a few hours at a time since then, I had spent over 3 years usually spending 3 or 4 days a week at his place with them. We've had 9 deaths in or directly affecting the kids and I since then, I live like Rapunzel with my mother as my live in PCA after a lifetime of calling me a hypochondriac they changed my umbrella diagnosis from severe degenerative disc disease to "fetal alcohol spectrum" to which both of my parents raised their hands high insisting my mother suffered 6 weeks of blinding headaches at the beginning of her 3rd trimester with me cause by carbon monoxide poisoning, they moved and the headaches immediately cleared up and a few weeks later the old address went up on flames due to furnace problems. So I live like Rapunzel with my mother who "didn't want music to ruin my life the way it ruined hers" but now I feel like it's the only real thing I have worth anything to give back to share with other people and help them reach for the stars and reach their own dreams. band supplement my income in any legal way because I still have uncontrolled seizures a few times a week, petit mal, but disorienting, and don't go over well in public places, and I'm walking the best I have in 15 years but still not well enough on uneven terrain to do like Zachariah did his final weekend alive, to go walk around the place we were part of over 25 years wishing folks well, I DO really enjoy the reactions even on stranger;'s faces walking around Minnesota Renaissance Festival site as a patron wearing my favorite white T shirt saying across the back in big black lettering ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION STAFF so what if it says 1993 on the front? I should stop editing this, no one will read it anyways.
