I won this ribbon tonight at Toastmasters. It's the first ribbon I've won... well, I won one for Best Speaker once, but I was the only one speaking that night so it didn't really count.

Tonight I got chosen to speak on the Table Topic of "something I am to blame for." I didn't like that topic because it made all sorts of things run through my head that I didn't really want there... things like a voice demanding why I took Dave for granted and whether he really knew I loved him at the end. I did not want to go there. Not tonight.

So instead I talked about why I don't like the word "blame". "Blame suggests guilt, the feeling that I did something wrong, that I ought to be ashamed of," I said. I then explained how I've struggled with perfectionism... I'm often too hard on myself, and have only recently learned to "forgive myself, the way God forgives me."

Then I went on to talk about responsibility. I talked about being the author of my own life, of always having choices, of always being able to improve. I talked about the importance of living a life I could be proud of.

I ended my speech ten seconds before the upper time limit. I knew I was going to win before they even called for a vote. It was easily the best, and truest, speech I'd ever given.

Tihs was the bright spot in an otherwise very strange day. It wasn't a bad day... it's just that things are not quite going right. When driving the two blocks to Toastmasters, my oil light flashed on and then went off. I don't know what that means, but I suppose I should take the car in tomorrow.

I have places I need to go so I need a working car. But, more than that, it was always an important part of the team. Me, Dave, and the car. One of the last things he ever did was get the car to me. If anything happens to this car it'll be a real loss... I'll be the only member of the team left. The car was important to Dave and important to me.

When I came home, I found my toilet clogged and not responding to my plunger. Time to call a plumber...

And all of a sudden my ear has started hurting. I don't know if it's a reaction to flying twice in four days or if I'm sick. If it doesn't go away, that will have to be checked too.

It's not always easy being responsible. I'm trying to make the life I want, and I'm laughing at all these tiny mishaps... but I could do without problems when I'm trying to get everything together.

Drum lesson (and other adventures in timing)

This entire evening has been strangely off-time.

I left for my drum lesson at 6:15. I set my burglar alarm (which I had installed today so that I won't worry about my drum set--or anything else--while I'm traveling for Thanksgiving) and left. I stopped to check the mail outside--one piece of junk mail one rejection slip from a magazine I didn't really expect to be interested in Disillusionment.

No sooner did I reach the car but my alarm went off. Apparently I had been thinking about the mail and had not closed the front door all the way. Fortunately, ADT doesn't respond to stray alarms until after a few days have passed, so that people can get used to their systems--I stood out there for five minutes before I realized the annoying alarm sound was coming from my house. (In retrospect, it's a good thing I have the alarm--otherwise I wouldn't have realized the door was open and driven off).

I went back inside, turned off the alarm, looked more closely at my junk mail, reset the alarm, and tried again. This time the door closed all the way.

I couldn't find the directions to my drum teacher's house, but I was pretty sure I knew the way. I started out fine. I thought I had to make a left on a little street called Water's Edge, which is nearly impossible to see in the dark. This street is on a very curvy, very not-lit road. Worse, there was construction halfway down the road. Lanes had to merge so that traffic going the other way could use the free lane. Their side of the road was closed.

So I did this, and drove and drove and drove, and passed a bunch of stores I didn't remmeber having seen before, and thought I was coming to Water's Edge soon, and drove some more, and came to a huge supermarket and realized I had gone way too far.

So I turned off the road and went into the supermarket lot and turned around. Unfortunately, I have a poor sense of direction (in case the above paragraph failed to enlighten anyone about this.) I turned the wrong way out of the supermarket and ended up on some pebbled private driveway.

I backed out very carefully, since I couldn't see which side of the road was which, and turned around again. This time I was determined not to miss Water's Edge.

At about 7:05 PM (five minutes after my lesson was supposed to begin), I made it all the way back to where I had gotten on this road in the first place. I had a feeling I should call and ask for directions. Instead I went through the light in case I had gone the wrong way.

Since I recognized absolutely nothing, I realized I was lost, and finally called. I found out I was supposed to make a right on Water's Edge, and that it was right where the construction began. I made it to my lesson within five minutes, thinking about how funny it was that I had been right there all the time and not known it.

My lesson went very well, however. My teacher said he can tell I've been practicing because I'm much improved from last week. He then asked me what I thought the drummer's main role in a band was. Without hesitation, I said, "To anchor the musicians so that everything is played at the right time." I had heard Dave say this so many times that it automatically came to me. My teacher really liked that way of putting it... I hope Dave was listening up there in Heaven, because he always felt supremely honoured that my teachers would say the same sort of things he said, as if he didn't realize that he knew things.

Anyway, we worked on timing during this lesson (ha!), because my teacher said that the main mistake beginning drummers make is wanting to do all sorts of fancy stuff and not paying attention to their timing. (I think Dave told me that more than once, too...) My teacher was so impressed with my ability to play in time to the exercises he gave me that he lost track of time and let the lesson run over by ten minutes.

I have a lot of homework exercises, which is good because next week is Thanksgiving, so I won't have a lesson. I have to continue practicing my buzz rolls and double strokes as well as the new exercises we went over today. I don't quite know how I'm going to fit it all in to the half-hour I allot myself for practicing homework exercises... I may have to do an hour a day even though my inner 16-year-old whines and complains and wants to practice actual music instead... it's a struggle sometimes to sit still through a whole practice session when it comes to those exercises.

As I drove home (going the right way this time, though at first I had my doubts...), I thought about how much of what Dave taught me was already integrated in me before I started taking lessons. The radio was playing classic rock, all the songs Dave loved, and I thought: even though he's gone, he's still part of my life, and he always will be. He taught me so much and meant so much to me that no matter what I do, his memory is there. I guess that's what people mean when they say that someone's spirit "lives on in your heart". I woud rather have him with me here on Earth, of course, but it doesn't hurt as much now to remember all the things he was associated with, for me. It's like visiting with him whenever I do.

When I got home, a big gust of wind blew just as I was parking. As I got out of my car, the screen door blew open, and stayed open--as if someone was opening it for me. I was laughing as I thanked God for holding the door.

Marcing to my own beat

I have been incredibly busy over the past two weeks. I'm exhausted but I've wanted to write in this blog for a while and now I'm making myself do it.

I've mainly been busy with two things: playing the drums, and revising my novel. Now that Disillusionment is in the mail, it's time to get the novel ready for submission too. I've reviewed four chapters, and rewritten the latter two so far. I'm pretty happy with how it's going. What I'm not happy about is I haven't had time to work on Elsie Worthing since I started this... I really want to finish the next chapter, plus I owe it to my fans who have been enthusiastically supporting every new chapter.

Now, the drums...

I've been playing almost non-stop. I started taking lessons last week. Each morning I play the exercises I have been assigned for at least half an hour. Then I play whatever music I feel like working on. I've learned two Jewel songs and have almost learned one of the Firefly songs. (I wish I could incorporate video into my blog so I could share the practices I videotaped this morning.)

Ruben asked me when I first got my drums if I would like to learn the Firefly songs that Dave was playing. He would like me to work with them eventually. I'm in two minds about this. I'm very honoured and want to do this eventually. But I don't have nearly enough skill yet, I don't think... it's taken me two weeks to learn this one song and I haven't learned the cymbal parts yet. Ruben commented tonight that he hoped I was learning fast... I hope I'm not too slow for him! I'm pleased with my progress, although I miss Dave every time I play the songs he was supposed to be playing. Tonight I'm playing the drum track as I surf the Internet. I'm hoping to get it into my subconscious so I can at last put the cymbals and bass/snare beats together tomorrow.

In the meantime, I had an argument with my therapist last Monday night over this whole issue of the drums. According to her, I'm not honouring Dave's memory by playing with Ruben and Delyana because she thinks he wanted to play and I don't really. "You don't honour Dave's mmemory by taking on his goals instead of your own," she said. "Your highest priority is to become a teacher."

I got really mad at her. I felt and feel that the whole time Dave and I were living together, we were attacked from all sides... everyone, some who cared and some who clearly didn't, tried to convince me that we didn't really love each other, that Dave was just using me, that I was doing wahtever he wanted and not "being myself". I had enough of that then. Now that he's gone, I don't need to hear it.

And I think about the choices I've made in the past few weeks and I wonder... I'm playing at least three hours a day and writing for another two. Schoolwork and job hunting sometimes feel like impositions. There are times when I wonder if I really and truly want to teach, and then I think that if I don't teach then Dave died for no good reason, because I came out here ahead of him when it wasn't necessary.

I don't think that it's that I don't want to teach, really. I do. But the thing is that I'm frustrated with the lack of success in my job search thus far. Also, the idea that teaching is my "highest priority" strikes me as false. It feels like my ride cymbal when I hit it too hard, jarring notes and making so much noise I can't hear all the other things I'm doing right. I want to teach and I think I can make a difference in kids' lives. But honestly, if God told me right now that he would either bless my teaching career or bless my writing career, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment before choosing writing. Just like I never hesitated for a moment when it came to my choosing Dave as my partner. Now, as then, I know exactly what I want and I refuse to give it up for anybody's stupid ideas of who I should be.

I want to teach because I want to make a difference in children's lives. But I want to write for the same reason.

And I wonder, too, exactly what it is that drives me about the drums. My teacher was impressed today that I practice every day. "Half an hour a day?" he said. "I'm usually lucky if I can get my students to practice half an hour a week!" That seems so strange to me... my days are generally spent practicing songs in front of my digital camera, then playing back the video, finding all the places where I'm out of time, and going back and trying again. The batteries in my camera die about once every 24 hours because I'm using them so much.

It's true I have to discipline myself to do my exercises, but I also know that I have to do them in order to get better. My teacher doesn't know yet that I spend a lot of free time playing songs. He says that I have to start with these exercises, and eventually I'll be able to play actual music. I must have absorbed in my blood what Dave so often told me, about how when he was first starting out he practiced his lesson for half an hour a day and then was free to work on whatever music he wanted.

Anyway, I've never played anything obsessively like this. When I'm not playing, I'm either writing or listening to music so I can absorb the drum tracks. Tonight on the way home from my lesson, I was practicing the new stroke I was learning on the steering wheel at red lights. It's almost midnight now, and that means it's way too late to play, but sitting at the computer writing this is the only thing that keeps me from giving in to the urge to try Firedancing Butterflies one more time, just to see if I've absorbed enough from listening to the drum track yet.

I keep wondering if this is healthy. I don't think I would if it wasn't for what my therapist had said, and I know I'm not just imitating Dave, because I wouldn't feel this compulsion to play if that's all it was. But I wonder... am I really in love with the drums? Or am I trying to escape from the emptiness in this house where Dave was supposed to be by getting into the music?

It's at times like this that I miss Dave the most. He had a way of knowing what I felt and knowing what to say to make me shift into thinking clearly. Oh, I would get really irritated when he was too quick to tell me what to do instead of listening. But I miss our endless conversations now.

Well, I had hoped to uplaod at least one of my videos to Photobucket by now, but for some reason everytime it's about to upload, Internet Explorer suddenly fails to find the server and I have to start again. I have a dull ache behind my eyes, as if I am straining them too much. So I suppose that will have to wait for another day.

I have so much more to say but that too will wait...