Is this the part where I get all I ever wanted? Who said that? Weekend update!

Yes, a weekend of so many updates- chiefly because SO much happened!

Friday night my husband and I finally went out to use our gift certificate to a fancy restaurant- Il Terrazo, and it was amazing! We had been meaning to go there since September, can you believe it? I had bread, tapenade, we shared an appetizer of grilled scallops, tuna, seaweed and cucumber salad. For my main, I enjoyed a very fulsome ciopinno. I couldn’t finish it!

I remember Friday night as the first night all week I felt like I actually slept.

Saturday was the big day. I was a ball of anxiety. I ended up dragging my poor husband around with me for the whole day (this would also be true for Sunday as well…). We first got gas, I went riding, we went to the feed store to buy grain, then he provided moral support for me as I went and had coffee with my parents, launching what was probably the most difficult discussion I have ever had with another person in my entire life.

It was hard. It was unpleasant. It was important. It was cathartic. It was necessary.

Telling your parents, firmly and honestly, that you are not having children and therefore they do not get grandchildren is so hard, but I needed to be heard, and they deserved my honesty- not to get ignored, get swept under the rug again, put off for another time. No. This time it’s for real.

They were sad, and cried. I wasn’t. I finally felt free.

I went home and bailed out on my friend’s birthday party- it was just going to be too draining, and I also had my VIRA 8k race the next morning even! I needed some time to recover (oh, and drink wine…oops). My nutrition that day consisted of pancakes for breakfast, pancakes with smarties and peanut butter for lunch, and wine. Oh and chocolate too. Dinner was better, a stir-fry…with two peanut-butter cupcakes for dessert. Whoops!

Emotional eating for the win!

At least I had a stir fry?

And on Sunday, after racing, enjoying a beer at Category 12, falling unceremoniously off my horse, I went with my husband to go see La La Land. I liked it, and enjoyed watching it more than I thought (I have a notoriously difficult time watching movies. I can’t sit still for that long, get fidgety, need many breaks, etc) so getting me out to a movie is kind of a big deal, haha.

It was still about 15 minutes too long, in my opinion.

And that wraps up my insanely busy wknd! I sometimes feel as if I live enough on weekends for most peoples weeks 😉

Going to the Opera: Simon Boccanegra

And now for something completely different…I took last night off riding and attended the opening night of Simon Boccanegra, a Giuseppe Verdi opera that was showing at the BC Royal Theatre.

And how was it? Well!

It was my first opera, I’ll be the first to admit I have a hard time sitting for that long- and it was LONG. 155 minutes, including intermission. I didn’t get home until after 11am~ on a school (work) night!

The opera singing was very impressive, the sets were super cool and I really liked how they used the sets to advance the plot. The plot was incredibly ridiculous and basically impossible to follow, with much of the action happening either off stage or in the page-long prologue. So…I’d say that this opera is not for beginners, hahah. It was like a soap opera on crack!!

The opera is based on the play Simon Boccanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez, and it is definitely hard to follow in Italian, though the opera house offers subtitles in English so we could read along–thank god.

Curiously, while I was reading about it, it seems like the plot was generally disdained by a lot of people for being too hard to follow. Found this info on Wikipedia, thought it was interesting, hahah.

Given the complications of the original plot and the generally poor popular response – although the critical one was more encouraging – the opera dropped out of favour after 1866. Finally, 23 years later, Verdi’s publisher persuaded the composer to revise the opera, with text changes to be prepared by Arrigo Boito, the librettist who aspired to work with the aging composer on a project which eventually became a new opera, Otello, but to which Verdi had not totally committed at that time.

The revised version of Simon Boccanegra, with the now-famous Council Chamber scene, was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 24 March 1881. It is this version which is the one most frequently performed today.