So… yeah. Not really gonna cover world events or anything like that.
2023 was the First Year Without Charles, of course, first one of those since I was 30. Life is quite different from 1994 – you can definitely do a Major Epoch of my life that would just be Before Charles, Charles, and After Charles. And I’m figuring out what After Charles looks like.
The Estate
The paperwork officially declaring me as executor arrived just before Christmas last year, so last winter was spent closing and moving bank accounts and retirement accounts. Luckily, most of the banks I had to deal with had offices across the street from my office, or within an easy walk. There were minor annoyances – probably the most major annoyance was that I was trying to move the household joint account over to a ‘just me’ account without losing the ATM card, which most of my bills were associated with. This was mentioned in the many conversations I had with bank employees as we went through this, but it turned out in the end to be impossible – and I wish they had just said that up front. Ah well.
Other than than, the big items to close the estate were passing the apartment to me (it’s been my home for almost 30 years, but he owned it) and setting up trusts for the kids. There was some paperwork BS around the (paid off) mortgages that had to be resolved before we could close on the apartment, but that happened and we closed in August. I’m a homeowner now (ack!) and of course had already started doing homeowner-y things that C had dealt with before, like resolving plumbing problems. (I now know how to unfreeze a refrigerator water line with a hair dryer.)
The trusts also experienced a bit of weird argle-bargle – two identical trusts handed off to two different Schwab team members to enact. One passed it through with no problem, the other contacted me with all these issues to resolve. I did my best, but ended up going, “why are we doing this, the other trust went through with no problem.” And now that’s done.
My next big task: redo my own estate and will (my holdings and beneficiaries are significantly different now). That’s for this winter.
In May, I held a gathering to celebrate Charles on the year anniversary of his passing. Lots of food and drinks, and I’d had my friends help me set up in the guest room and the office and the bedroom a big display of Charles’s clothes and cookbooks and various other things that they could pick through and take what they want. I think everyone took some sort of nice sweater, quite a few cookbooks were grabbed, and quite a bit of it did go out the door. One of our porters took a lot of stuff to send to his family in the Dominican Republic and my cleaning lady took the rest of the clothes for her church. Bottom line – all of that stuff is now gone, which is great, and everyone who would find it meaningful had a chance to get a memento.
Cooking
On the home front, I did start the year with big ambitions to learn how to cook more and better. My friends Patrick and Susanna, when visiting in February, at my request walked me through preparing a meal of pork tenderloin, roasted potatoes and a vegetable melange. I managed to reproduce the pork tenderloin for Xmas, and the roasted potatoes recipe is easy and delicious. I probably won’t do the melange again any time soon, but am grateful for the simple knowledge that you can just coat veggies in olive oil and red pepper flakes, then roast them at 400 for 20 minutes and come up with something really yummy.
I also made certain soups for the first time, including one that started with homemade stock using bones etc. that C had had in the freezer. That turned out to be not difficult and ended up delicious.
We had had a Cuisinart Griddler (like a George Forman grill) in the box still, because C didn’t feel he needed it), but I unboxed it and use it all the time for hot dogs, hamburgers, pork chops, and paninis. Super easy and the cooking plates go in the dishwasher.
My Xmas gift to myself is a combo air fryer/toaster oven, which has been ordered and should get here on Wednesday. Looking forward to trying that out.
Performing
I played some orchestra concerts and one pit orchestra gig on horn. But my focus through the summer was preparing for the production of Ruddigore I was music-directing at the International Gilbert & Sullivan festival in August. This was the perfect project to ground myself after the past year of woe. I’ve been attending the festival every few years for a while – my first show was 20 years ago – and I was very excited to conduct Ruddigore, which is my favorite G&S. I’d played in the orchestra for a production on college, and been on stage the last time Savoynet did it, but had never conducted it before. Also, the festival, which had started in Buxton, but moved to Harrogate in the 2010’s, had (suddenly, which was a surprise) moved back to Buxton. I was delighted – I liked Harrogate, but the Buxton experience is something special.
The week-plus rehearsal period went swimmingly – our cast was top-notch and everyone was excited to be part of this. And the show, despite an on-stage accident that stopped the show for a half hour between overture and Act I, was fantastic! I remain deeply proud and happy of what we managed to pull off. You can see clips of the show here. Ruddigore clips.
Travel
I did some small trips this year – Philadelphia in January, visiting family and revisiting old haunts (some locations, some people). Minnesota over Easter, visiting my niece and her family (and my other niece, who also came in). A summer weekend in Port Jefferson, just because it was on the water and I could get there easily. A couple of trips to Durham to visit my dad and brother – and Dad and I went up to Providence again to have lunch with his high school class in September. Rochester for Thanksgiving. And Provincetown in early October, but I’ll get to that in more detail later.
But the biggest trip I did was part of my England trip. Before I ended up in Buxton to start rehearsal, I flew through Manchester to Oslo to visit Bunthorne Boy and the Viking. I’d visited them before, third time in Oslo, but this time we went out to their beautifully renovated country home in Sweden, an hour and half away. This country house is gorgeous, on two lakes, a two story house and several outbuildings, including Brad’s “cocktail cottage” which is literally a one-room building, beautifully decorated, for small tea and cocktail gatherings. We spent two days in Sweden, then two more in Oslo before I flew (back) to Manchester. It was lovely and fantastic. (And then they came to England a week later to see my show, which was very sweet of them.)
Health
I started the year coming out of physical therapy for problems with my legs, but the PT seemed to fix them. I joined a gym so I could continue to do the exercises, which I did sporadically (and did some personal training sessions too, but the gym is really Not My Thing). But the leg problems seem to be mostly gone.
I still have a weight problem (I think I will always have a weight problem), so let’s just say I’m working on it.
In August I had no problem schlepping around all my luggage for the trips to Oslo, Sweden, Manchester and Buxton, nor with walking up and down the very steep hills of Buxton, no more than anyone else, anyway.
But in early October, off to an orchestra rehearsal, pulling my french-horn-case-on-wheels behind me, I noticed that I was huffing and puffing like I’d run a marathon. That was weird, I wasn’t doing anything strenuous. I did have a couple of minor medical things happening – my CPAP machine (for sleep apnea) had broken down a week ago, and although the company was sending me a new one, I’d slept poorly since. And my doctor had put me on Wegovy, a weight-loss drug like Ozempic, and I’d just taken my second dose. But neither of those things directly pointed to the weird breathing thing.
I had a four-day vacation that weekend, so I ignored it and headed off to P-town, a revisit from last year’s Cape Cod trip. I didn’t have any problem schlepping my luggage around, but still felt loopy and generally weird. I had a good time – saw several drag shows and comedy shows, and did a lot of walking and eating. But again, wasn’t sleeping well without my machine, the Wegovy was making my digestion not-great, and wasn’t quite in my head. When I headed home on Monday, I got short of breath just getting out of my seat and walking off the airplane.
Tuesday, I was ‘back at work’ (from home), but started the day by going to the Urgent Care around the corner and seeing if there was really a problem. The doctor took an EKG, said ‘whoa’, and sent me immediately to the ER. I went to Elmhurst, right down the street – went in, told them I had shortness of breath and they took me in right away. Another EKG, another ‘whoa’ – my heart rate was down in the 40s, even when I physically exerted myself.
Long story short, I had a ‘heart block’ type 2, was in the hospital for four days and came out with a pacemaker! Didn’t see that coming. But I was lucky to have local friends who came to visit and brought me stuff from the apartment, and I had my own room, and the staff was universally very nice and I was never really freaked out. Pacemakers are kind of routine, and there didn’t seem to be any alternative. (Also, the heart block didn’t seem to have an obvious cause. I told the doctors about the sleep apnea and the Wegovy, and they thought about it, but went ‘nah’.)
Since then I’ve kind of been taking it easy, but feel basically OK and possibly have more energy. I healed up just fine. I saw my cardiologist a month afterward and everything is on track and I don’t have to see her again for six months. And there’s a little device that sits on Charles’s nightstand that talks to my pacemaker, gathers up data from it, and sends it up into the cloud – so if anything starts to go haywire, I’m assuming she’ll get some sort of alert and call me. I still get little twinges, not at the heart, but where the pacemaker is (my body going, ‘WTF is this?’), but not enough to worry about.
I still get a bit of the shortness-of-breath, but haven’t had any problem climbing hills or taking sizable walks. Stairs are still an issue, but maybe I just need to stop avoiding them. And many things will get better if I lose weight, so I’m well aware of that.
But the whole experience did underline that I really do need to revisit my own estate, because you just never know.
Artsy Stuff
I did see a lot more live theater this year – often revisiting shows I’d already seen. I saw Chicago on Broadway for the first time in decades, because drag artist Jinx Monsoon was in as Mama Morton – and it was fantastic. Not only was Jinkx a delight, actually, the whole show was, which is unusual for a production in its third running decade. I also saw Wicked again for the first time in 20 years, and that was fun, seeing it was (mostly) no-names after the original cast. It was terrific (the show itself is flawed, but the performances were great). I saw both Peter Pan Goes Wrong (on Broadway) and The Play That Goes Wrong (off-Broadway) – PTGW for the 2nd time – both a riot. I took Patrick and Susanna to Kimberly Akimbo, which was lovely. I took Dad to both Some Like It Hot (new to us both) and The Book of Mormon (I’d seen it once before). And, joy of joys, on my birthday, I got to see Merrily We Roll Along, a problematic Sondheim show that I have deep affection for, and which couldn’t be done better than this production.
I saw excellent professional productions of HMS Pinafore and Patience, and amateur productions of The Yeomen of the Guard, The Pirates of Penzance, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Anything Goes, all fun. And I saw a bunch of Iolanthes – one at VLOG featuring a bunch of friends, one at Carnegie Hall featuring real names, one a goofy riff on the show with LOONY, and sang in one at a gathering in Baltimore in the spring.
What else? Normally I’d do a review of great books and movies and TV I saw. TV content has been great, but I will have to put together a list later. I haven’t seen many movies at all (I did see “Barbie” and loved it). I’ve read a ton of gay romance novels, and quite a few straight ones as well (go read Lucy Score, she’s amazing), and various thrillers and SF and detective novels. I’ve been working my way through Mary Rodgers’s bio, “Shy” for months – it’s great, but it’s a dense read.
I hosted my brother in November so he could give a book reading in the series my upstairs neighbor runs, and I hosted my Dad for a week at Christmas (and friends for Christmas day dinner, you can read all about that in the last post).
I’ve decided to try treating my life like ‘semesters’, or simply ‘seasons’, and winter’s going to be about my health. I have plans, and we’ll see how they do coming into being.
Happy New Year, everyone!
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