Hannah's Blog

It went all right, it really did. I had so much trouble sitting still through church on Sunday, I was so antsy and nervous. But then things got rolling afterward. Sonja and Krissy arrived and we dressed their form in my dryad clothes..I put on my dress and practiced music with various people…about a hundred and twenty people filed in and sat down, and we started.

The concert was fair. It probably wasn’t terribly smart for me to start with the piece that was hardest technically, but I knew if I didn’t get it out of the way I’d mess up all of the others from nervousness. I was shaky, as people who know my voice confirmed, and had a little trouble with those high notes, but it was really nice to get to sing that song after wanting to for so many years (thanks Aunt Joni and Uncle Ted for giving me that Grieg CD years ago. That’s what got me interested in classical music again), and to be honest, I think this was my favorite part of the concert, because I got to do something with my cousin Matt. I really enjoyed that.
The other solo had a flubbed low note, but no one can be annoyed with me for only being able to sing high. The Chopin piece went really, really well! That was one of our best run throughs, and we’d had some horrendous ones. Krissy and Sonja and I had fun, and I heard that at least Caleb appreciated “Benjy met the bear,” so I consider it a success. Mom and Dad and I did pretty well on our piece. Worship team made it through, and I think that the song with Kayla and Bethany was the nicest, even if I did forget to turn the page so Kayla couldn’t see the words during her solo.

There. Analyzing over. The slideshow was great fun, though it was a little hard to see it go by so fast after so many hours of work! It was funny, seeing which pictures people liked best. I loved hearing individual people laugh when someone they knew came on the screen, like Aunt Joni at that picture of baby Hannah and Matt hugging, Krissy laughing when she was dressed up like Luna Lovegood, Mal and Megan groaning at the LotR exhibit picture. Everyone liked the one of Than buried in stuffed animals; great, wasn’t it? And some of the pictures had special meaning for some that others couldn’t know- the picture of Sonja and her bunny made people laugh appreciatively, but no one knew that this bunny had died just a few months ago, after a long happy life with the Birthisels.

It was a good day. I was really taken aback when I saw the pile of gifts and cards; considering I hadn’t known until a few days before that people give gifts for graduation, I’d say it was a nice surprise. What is really incredible, however, is that when I opened them all later, with Mom and Than and Sonja and Krissy watching, the tally of monetary gifts ended at about nine hundred dollars.
What a blessing- there’s my laptop. I was glad I had sensible Sonja around. “That’s a blessing,” she said definitively.
But you know, the gifts that I really smiled at were ones like the locket from Grammie, into which she’d carefully pasted pictures of me and of herself, the handmade walking stick from Alex, who I am slowly coming to realize is a very great friend (the sort that comes upon you gradually and never disappears), the story written by John, my ten year old gnome, the necklace made by Keturah…and all of my relatives, just their presence. I love my family. Grammie, thank you for having six children, because it meant that I have a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins. And Nana, thank you, too, because Aunt Sandy is one of my favorite people in the whole world, whether she knows it or not.

I have to go get ready. Mom and Dad are taking me and my gnome out to meet his family at Original NorthEastern Primitive Rendezvous- that means we’re going to dress like mountain men, F&I people, or Regency in my case. I have my hair in curlers and hopefully I’ll have nice little Regency bangs, we’ll see. It’s going to be fun.

Thanks, everyone. My graduation was a good day and I think I shall remember it most favorably.

I really have run out of titles for my posts… so once again am reverting to G&S. That one’s from Ruddigore.

I have an unpleasant feeling in my stomach, somewhat like the feeling you might get if you ate something that didn’t want to be eaten. I had dreams about several ways the musical portion of my graduation could go wrong a few days ago, and since then I’ve been nervous. I wasn’t at all before that. And the potential dooms weren’t even very realistic- like me borrowing Aunt Margaret’s car and finding it had no gear shift thing.

Anyway, I was unhappily very jumpy and tense today, but going over to the church at two relieved that somewhat. I brought all of the clothes I’ve made over the past four years or so and tried them on the dress form our pastor’s wife lent me! I have three dress forms and about eight outfits, and it was really hard to choose which three outfits to display. The rest will go on hangers, on a rack. In the end I made a very nice display of my F&I clothing, my dryad costume, and I think I will do one of my Regency gowns.

I enjoyed doing that so much, because I haven’t seen these dresses in 3D! I’ve seen pictures of them, and seen them in the mirror, but I’ve never been able to see ’someone’ wearing them, and been able to walk around and see the full effect. It felt like I was admiring my children. I think the colors of the dryad costume are very nice, my F&I things look properly used and useful, and my pre-raphaelite dress came out better than I’d thought all this time.

I’m going to go make some Konczal tea and drink it while watching something brainless (like our production of Gondoliers) for a little while, then go to bed as early as I can reasonably manage.

Well, Pirates finished very well. And now we’re on, past Pirates, to Prince Caspian.

Despite my best efforts to stress out everything eventually went well. We had great costumes and a great evening. The movie, I thought, was really good- a lot of people weren’t very happy with it, but as a stand alone movie I thought it was very good, and as a book adaptation, decent. They did change things, but I thought it was done well.

I’m sleepy.

Last night we opened the Pirates of Penzance. It felt surreal last night. I don’t know if it was because I actually felt ready for once that I was dazed, but regardless I couldn’t get into it quite as much as usual. I’m hoping to do a lot better tonight when I’m actually Mabel. Last night I was in the back or the middle of the crowd of girls and I felt so squished and hot I could hardly breathe.

Time for breakfast.