This is the girl who has never seen a show on Broadway

If you have read more than, like, three of my posts, you know that I'm really into Broadway/West End shows. To quote my wonderful customs people (kind of like orientation leaders... Bryn Mawr is cooler than other schools so we call them customs people because they teach us the customs... At least, I think that's why we call them that... They have nothing to do with bringing things in and out of the country or passports, and that's the only other definition of "customs" I can think of, so I think I'm right...), I am a "Broadway aficionado."

So here's something interesting.

I've never seen a show on Broadway.

Actually, I've never even BEEN to New York. I've driven through. I've taken the train through. I've even hung out in Penn Station for half an hour waiting for the next train.

But until a year and a half ago, I'd never even SPOKEN in New York City. My dad had a quiet rule for driving through the city when I was little. I think the first time I broke this rule (unless you count the time one of my brothers and I were really into maps and we thought we were helping Dad navigate...) was when Dad and I went to visit Bryn Mawr the second time, in October 2009. It was just the two of us in the car and there wasn't any traffic, so Daddy didn't mind me talking.

I've seen plenty of shows. I've seen six shows in Boston: Peter Pan (check out this post to hear about it), the Boyfriend, Rent, Wicked, Rent (again), and A Chorus Line. Plus lots of Gilbert and Sullivan in some college theater (I think? I don't know exactly...) my grandparents used to take us to all the time. And I saw Les Miserablés at the North Shore Music Theater. And bunch of amateur, community theater, and school shows.

And I've seen things in London. The Woman in White, Mary Poppins (I didn't know it at the time, but I actually saw the original cast. Which is very exciting for me...), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera (same post as Peter Pan above...).

That's a grand total of 11 professional performances (although only 9 shows) and plenty of nearly professional performances (North Shore is pretty close to being professional, I think. As was the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff.).

And I'm going to see West Side Story in Boston this summer.

But I've never seen anything in New York. Me. The girl who could perform nearly all of these shows by herself. I don't think I could do Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and I might lose some lyrics in A Chorus Line, and I don't think I've been able to do Peter Pan in years (Although I could definitely still get the gist of most of the songs. I'll just swap verses and things...), but the rest of them?

I could perform all of them pretty much start to finish. And that includes switching between characters when multiple characters sing different parts simultaneously. Like, the end of Phantom when Christine, Raoul, and the Phantom are all singing together? I know all of Christine's and the Phantom's and most of Raoul's. And know all the best places to swap between them for the best effect.

So. My goal for college, besides the surviving and graduating thing, is to spend a night in New York and see something on Broadway. Preferably something I'm madly in love with. And it'd rock if any of my favorite actors are performing. Although I realize that the chances of seeing Richard Harris AND Julie Andrews in Camelot are less than nil.

It can't be that hard, can it? I mean, any time I go back and forth to school on the ground, whether train or car, I have to go through NYC. Surely at some point I can arrange it...

*Cough cough* *This is my hint to my parents that sometime we should take an extra day or two when you're driving me here/home and we should break the drive into two days and spend the extra evening in NYC. Just saying.*

*Wait. Is it too late to arrange that for the drive home in a week and a half? I mean, we were debating between Daddy coming down on Tuesday or Wednesday anyway... What's to stop us getting home Thursday??*

Ok. My oh so subtle suggestion to my parents is done now.

Town Meeting Back Home

I'm not gonna get into the issues, but I think Town Meeting back home as been funny this week....

I wanted to listen to TM online on my high school's radio station, but I can't get it to load. So I've been skyping either my sister (who had break over Passover. Plus, her school is close enough to home that she can go home for it...) or my father so I can hear what's happening.

So I've also been getting the commentary from various family members on Skype (using the IM feature... They have their sound off, so it's not like I can just talk to them...).

But I've also been using my status for commentary.

Which has been getting lots and lots of comments and debates and stuff. Last night, one of my statuses wound up with almost 90 comments (87 I think...).

Anyhoo. I didn't have any other ideas to say, so I'm telling you all about TM.....

Dining Hall Pesach

I believe I have just discovered the thing that will get me through four years of dining hall Passovers kosher and not starving.

Matzah with cream cheese and grape jelly.

I used light cream cheese 'cause that's what was more convenient/what I normally use. I imagine it'd be just as good with regular, but light is smoother and stuff (or at least the stuff BMC dining services gets is...) so it might be different. Who knows.

Anywho. IT IS SPECTACULAR.

Just be careful 'cause the jelly likes to slide off, which gets kinda messy.

It is so spectacular, in fact, that your previous craving for waffles, despite not actually like waffles, will dissipate.

Which is a really good thing since, unlike, say, rice, there is no way to explain waffles away as kosher.

The previously mild desire for a jelly donut might not go away though. It might, in fact, grow. Which is kind of unfortunate.

I'm making a list of everything I'm going to eat next week. It's getting very long, very fast. First I just have to decide what I'm going to eat as my first bready thing. Burrito? A roll from Bertuccis? Chocolate cake? (Wait. Not sure where I can find a proper chocolate cake to end Pesach with, since my usual epic chocolate cake places are all at home...) A burger?

If you have any suggestions for what I should eat come Tuesday night, leave me a comment.

Leave me a comment if you have ANY thoughts, actually.

People have found me on google!!!

I'm really excited. People have found me on google. Terms that apparently will lead you to me:

"head gear" braces
"my head gear" braces site:blogspot.com
braces headgear
headgear underbite
seventh amendment funny
wendy my take on the world

And I have to say, I am very impressed by people's ability to find me. I just did a quick search. I'm only on the first page of google for the second one and the last two. The other ones I clicked through a couple pages and couldn't even find me....

But yay!!

I'm very excited to know that I am being found....

PS I'm really curious if people I don't know are reading this... Please comment if you read this and you don't know me personally!!

UPDATE: It occurs to me maybe I could mention something else super exciting. People outside the US have also been reading. Ok, so my global readership isn't much but I do have 8 page views each from Canada and Germany, 3 from the UK, and 1 each from Costa Rica, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Seeing as how I don't know anyone who lives in any of those places, although I do know people who know people who live in some of them, this makes me super happy.

I'm guessing the Costa Rica is my lovely bestest friend on her vacation. And the Canada ones are probably mostly sent to me from links my mother has posted on knitting things. But the other ones I don't think I can identify...

Which is exciting for me.

UPDATE AGAIN: In the last 24 hours, two people have found me using google with braces headgear as the search term. I'm trying it now. I'm on page 15 of google and haven't found myself. How are you finding me?? I'm really very impressed.... And kind of guessing that two people read this post and decided to try a few of the searches... If you did this, how far did you have to click through google to find it?

Some background on my teeth

If things like teeth, braces, or whatever freak you out, skip this post.

Basically, my orthodontist (who is wonderful and fabulous) doesn't like my teeth. Since I'm going to have jaw surgery this summer and expect this topic to come up, here's the general background of those little white things in my mouth.

I have a weird under bite. Normally, when you say "under bite" people picture lower teeth that are in front of the upper teeth in the front. Although that is what my teeth look like right now, the orthodontist actually did that. Before the various metal contraptions that have been put in my mouth over the years, my upper front teeth were actually in front of the lower ones. The problem with my mouth is that my lower jaw is basically wider (not to mention off center) than my upper jaw.

So if you look at the sides of my mouth, all my life my lower teeth have been on the outsides of my upper teeth.

I had a series of retainers starting somewhere between 1st and 3rd grade, although I honestly don't remember when I started. These fixed things like the fact that one of my upper front baby teeth decided it liked me too much and wouldn't fall out, even when the grown up tooth had grown in behind it (for a little while, I literally had two teeth there...). Eventually, the dentist yanked it out and a few years later the orthodontist pushed it forward with a bright pink and purple splotchy retainer (is it bad I remember what colors I chose for it? The case was pink and purple marble colored...).

I don't remember what I had in 4th grade, although I'm sure I had something, but in 5th grade the real stuff started.

First they put in a metal band around the inside of my lower teeth to make sure nothing moved while they futzed with my upper teeth.

A few months later they gave me a palate expander which also had little rings on the front. The goal at this point was to beat my growth. Dr. H wanted to force my growth in a direction that wouldn't require surgery.

To do that, he gave me head gear. Not normal head gear, though. Reverse head gear.

My head gear had two lavender plates connected by a metal bar. One plate fit over my chin, the other on my forehead. The bar went down the center of my face. In front of my mouth was a cross bar. The cross bar was connect to those rings on my palate expander with elastics.

I think I had to wear this 12 hours a day for something like 6 months, maybe it was a year. I don't remember.

What I do remember, and I'm sure my whole 6th grade class remembers, is that if I slept in it, I'd wake up with it twisted sideways. So I had to wear it while I was awake.

I wore that stupid contraption to school all year.... Luckily it looked like a medieval torture device, so I mostly I just got sympathy.

I have a very high palate, so I never learned to talk properly with my palate expander. For 2 years, I never said one hard G properly. I can't describe the sound I made instead, but eventually Dr. H took pity on me. He took my palate expander and that little metal band thing out a couple of weeks early. There was no metal in my mouth at my Bat Mitzvah.

A week or two later, though, I got good old fashioned rail road track braces. That was the end of January in 7th grade.

Those braces were just on the top. For three years, that's all I had. They scooted upper teeth around and ignored the bottom.

Then in 10th grade, on the Friday of I think the second weekend of the musical (I don't *think* it was opening night...) they put in bottom braces too.

For another 2 years, they pushed things around but honestly didn't move much. Mostly, they just changed the elastics every month.

Sometime in January or so my senior year, they gave me elastics. This is when I started getting really really frustrated with my teeth. These elastics pulled my lower teeth forward. By March of 12th grade, I had a good old fashioned under bite.

Now I'm going to back track a little. Sometime in high school, the orthodontist decided we failed at beating my growth. My options were either surgery or lots of junk when I'm 40 because my teeth don't hit each other properly. We opted for surgery.

Between a lot of non teeth related things (like submitting things to insurance and stuff), my surgery didn't happen in 10th grade, 11th grade, or 12 grade.

One day in December 2009 (so 12th grade), I went to the orthodontist. I asked if there was any chance of not having braces at my senior prom.

Dr. H said I'd still have them.

At this point, I just broke down. I was convinced that I would have braces for the rest of my life. My children would get their braces off before me and I would probably be buried still wearing braces.

FINALLY the next June, after I had graduated and everything (so yes, my senior prom pictures have braces and an under bite.... Grrrrr....), we met with the surgeon again (we'd met him sometime when we first decided we'd do the surgery, but never went anywhere with it).

He said we might be able to do the surgery next December (that would be December 2010), depending on what method we decided to do and if my wisdom teeth were in the way of the surgery.

It turned out my lower right wisdom tooth would have to come out and would have to come out at least 6 months before the surgery.

So last December, my surgeon (who is fabulous and I think something of a perfectionist, since he insisted on taking out my tooth himself. Not having his staff do it or something, but doing it himself...) took out the tooth.

Rewinding back to August, my orthodontist told me that if we weren't going to be doing the surgery until next summer, we could take the braces off for the year.

A week before I left for college, they took my braces off. After 5 1/5 years of braces and 12 years of having some metal in my mouth with month long breaks between appliances, my mouth was utterly empty.

Of course, I have to have the braces on for the surgery (they need hooks on my teeth or something...), so I'm getting them put back on when I get home from school in May...

At some point, I'll explain exactly what it is that they'll be doing to me come my surgery date (beginning of July), but for now I'll just say that on that day I will stop having an under bite of any kind and through July and a good chunk of August I think I'll be eating lots of things I don't have to chew...

Revising Essays Should Not Be Allowed

I have an essay revision due in about 12 hours. I don't like revising so I've been putting it off.

I HATE REVISING.

Cat Calling

The main street near Bryn Mawr is cat calling central. The only other time I've had so many honks, yells, and whoops from passing cars is that night when we went clubbing in Spain.

Now, it's sometimes kind of flattering, but also incredibly awkward. And it's usually not really even flattering. More demeaning, degrading, de-anything you want to call it. Anyway, what are you supposed to do when someone yells out of a car at you? I normally just walk away.

I've had two times when that really wasn't an option. The first time wasn't really cat calling. There were a couple of guys standing on the side walk. After I passed them, they offered to walk with me. How kind, you might think. Let's just say it didn't feel "kind" per se. I tried to ignore it, they repeated the offer louder. I said no thank you and practically ran.

The second time was this afternoon. I wasn't even ON Lancaster at the time but a side street, about 50 yards from Lancaster. Maybe less. I dunno. I can't judge distance.

Anyway, there I was, walking back towards school and this guy walks past with two girls. I was on the sidewalk, which is kind of on top of a hill next to the road and they were on the street, so they were probably 10 feet from me and below me.

First the guy yells "hey" at me. I try to ignore it and speed up, but I made the mistake of glancing slightly to the side and back 'cause I wasn't sure he actually was talking to me. He definitely was. He was looking straight at me (which by now means over his shoulder since, of course, I had sped up...).

Then I hear the words "cutey with the booty."

I speed up a LOT and practically run away.

I can't decide what level of degrading/demeaning flattery this qualifies as. Normally I don't get particular assets appreciated by random people on the street, but I also don't particularly desire to have such appreciations.

Besides, couldn't he have come up with something a little more original?

And am I the only one who thinks it's weird to use a word like "cutey" in a practice like cat calling that makes me feel like a piece of meat? I mean, meat isn't the cutest thing in the world.... Cat calling makes me feel like the cat caller isn't particularly interested in the cuteness level of the cat callee........

Ok. I'm done with my rant.