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A summer with no to-do list

Posted byMezzoid Voice StudioPosted inUncategorized
I realized that it’s been awhile since I did a to-do list. And then I checked my online to-do list and realized that it’s been two months to the day. 

This is not like me. I have always been an obsessive list-maker. Shopping lists, to do lists, bills to pay, bucket lists – it’s who I am. How on earth can I get anything done without one?
Well, I didn’t really get much done. In part because the wrist tendonitis that plagued me from mid-April to early August, and was especially bad after the move was completed, didn’t allow me to do very much. I couldn’t really do any yard work, I couldn’t do a lot of unpacking and organizing (crumpling up paper hurt), and it even hurt to write.
And I didn’t really have that much to do – I had two students at Howard Community College, both on Wednesdays. They were pretty low-maintenance, so it wasn’t like I had to do a lot of prep work.
I did a lot of traveling – I went to New York three out of the five weekends of June; the first weekend, up to Manhattan to see my dear friend Sorab Wadia on his closing weekend of Bunty Berman Presents off-Broadway and to see my I-wish-he-were-my-dear-friend Alan Cumming in his tour de force performance of Macbeth on Broadway. The second and third weekends of June I spent in Baltimore, enjoying the weirdness that is HonFest in Hampden on the 8th and spending my birthday (the 15th) with my BFF Carrie Widegren at the Penn-Mar Irish Festival (skip it) and just hanging out.
The following weekend Bill and I celebrated our tenth anniversary in the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, where we’d spent our honeymoon. We stayed in the same B&B and in the same room and drank some of the same wines – which we didn’t like as much as we did ten years ago. Our palates have changed, I guess.
And then the final weekend of June, I went up to NYC on my own and saw my wonderful friend/former student/cabaret partner/studio pianist Ryan Cappleman and other friends in the off-Broadway production of Waiting: A Song Cycle. 
I felt really unproductive this summer, but I wasn’t, all told. I just wasn’t obsessing over everything that needed to be done. I think I needed that time to collect my energies to prepare for my new life. 
And now that I’m here – the house is sold, I have a job, and I have a studio to market – I’ll be returning to my list-making ways, but hopefully allowing enough time for spontaneity and life to creep in.

Published by Mezzoid Voice Studio

Christine Thomas-O'Meally, a mezzo soprano and voice teacher currently based in the Baltimore-DC area, has performed everything from the motets of J.S. Bach to the melodies of Irving Berlin to the minimalism of Philip Glass. As an opera singer and actress, she has appeared with companies such as Charm City Players, Spotlighters Theatre, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Theater of Northern Virginia, Opera North, the Washington Savoyards, In Tandem Theatre, Windfall Theater, The Young Victorian Theater of Baltimore, and Skylight Opera Theatre. She created the role of The Woman in Red in Dominick Argento’s Dream of Valentino in its world premiere with the Washington Opera and Mary Pickersgill in O'er the Ramparts at its world premiere during the Bicentennial of Battle of Baltimore at the Community College of Baltimore County. Other roles include Mrs. Paroo in Music Man, Mother Abbess in Sound of Music, Dorabella in Cosi Fan Tutte, Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, both Hansel and the Witch in Hansel & Gretel, and many roles in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Her performance as the Housekeeper in Man of La Mancha was honored with a WATCH award nomination. Ms. Thomas-O'Meally received an M.M. in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She regularly attends master classes and workshops in both performance and vocal pedagogy, and is certified in all three Levels of Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method. Her students have performed on national and international tours of Broadway productions, at prestigious conservatories, and in regional theater throughout the country.

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