Laugh It Up, Fuzzball

FuzzFact #44:

I am a fool for opera.

I inherited my love of the aria from my darling grandmother. When I'd go to Austin to visit her she'd settle me out on the back porch with a book and her walkman with an opera loaded up and ready to roll. I'd listen to Carmen, La Boheme, La Traviata, all the greats.

The very first opera that I ever saw was La Boheme. My school took our grade to the Houston Grand Opera and it was incredible. I don't think I'll ever forget the power of the music hitting me in the dark as I sat in my velvet seat trying to ignore the boy snoring next to me.

Sometimes I'll turn all of the lights in my living room off, light a bunch of candles, and put a particularly moving aria on the stereo. Music like that will absolutely transfix me and I'll want to hear it over and over...  I remember one night years ago when Cecile and I were roommates I was lying on the couch listening to Isolde's Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Cecile came in with our friend Michael and the two of them sat down to talk. I was so excited by my favorite part of the Liebestod that I wanted to share it with the two of them. Cecile knew better and tried to run but I sat on her and made the two of them listen. When it was over Cecile said I'd better not make her do that again and Michael began talking about a laundry list of items that he had been saving up during the music. *sigh* Ah well. ;-) (Cec is going to smack me for that one but I DON'T CARE ahaha)

Won't you please listen to my favorite part? Please? Don't worry, it's not the whole thing. Here it is, it's magnificent, it's...LIEBESTOD

You can thank me later. :D

It's a Fuzzcast! It's a FuzzFact! It's BOTH!

Dig it, y'all. Do you ever wonder why I'm single? Listen and learn. I ramble and it makes no sense but it's short and it ends with one hell of a song: 

FUZZCAST #3

FuzzFact #42

There is only ONE Tracy Manford in the USA. I just KNEW I was unique!

HowManyOfMe.com

There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

FuzzFact #40:

I believed in Santa Claus until I was in sixth grade.

I have always always always been (to quote Uncle Buck) a daydreamer and a sillyheart. I have a vivid imagination, I'm ridiculously optimistic, and I want to believe that the best is going to happen. What better candidate could you find to believe in Santa Claus, I ask you?

I credit my long-lasting love for Kris Kringle to a couple of sources: First, my parents. They gave me the ability to be a kid for as long as I could. When I was eight, I was actually an eight-year-old, not some Britney-Spears-wanna-be shaking my tiny rump to "Milkshake" while playing Grand Theft Auto after school. I didn't watch a lot of television (except for Saturday morning cartoons, of COURSE). I spent most of my time creating. I would build forts, make up dances, go on "safaris", forms secret clubs with my friends, you name it. It honestly never occured to me to question the existence of Santa Claus.

The other thank-you has to go to my fellow classmates. According to my cousin Nell Frances (who was in the same grade as I) no one wanted to disappoint me by telling me the truth. None of them could understand how I still believed, but instead of being mean about it, they just let me go on my merry (ha!) little way. Now, this may not make sense to you, but I feel like deep down, my classmates still wanted to believe in Claus, and so by keeping me in the dark they were still keeping a part of the fantasy alive for themselves. You think? Maybe? I like to think so.

Life is better with Santa Claus around. My family still has "Santa" presents and "family" presents, even though the youngest of us is 22. Don't rain on our parade, man, that's how we roll in the Manford house. No matter how cynical we may get from January through November, everything serious and adult in us dissolves at the top of the stairs as we wait to go down into the living rooms on Christmas morning.

FuzzFact #39:

I once stapled my own finger.

It was 1998 early 1999 and Cecile and I had just moved in together. My mother was in the hospital and I was making a card for her. (I make these cards with thumbprint characters that my mom just loves.) I was in the kitchen trying to staple the card together at the seam of the folded pages and I was talking to Cecile who was in the living room.

Tracy: Hey, help me out, I'm trying to staple this in the middle of the pages. *laying the card down on the counter*

Cecile: Well just don't try to do it on the counter or the stapler will slip.

Tracy: Wait, what? I...AAAAAAH! I JUST STAPLED MY FINGER!!!!! *runs into the living room clutching her finger*

Cecile: You WHAT? GROSS! GROSS! Don't show it to me! Oh my God! I'm going to throw up.

Tracy: *running around the house* What do I do? What do I do? I STAPLED MY FINGER!

Cecile: Hold your hand above your head! Hold you hand above your head! I'm calling my mom!

*on the phone with Cecile's mom*

Cecile: Hi, Mama? Tracy just stapled her finger and I think I'm going to throw up. What do we do???

Tracy: *in the background* There is a STAPLE in my FINGER!

Cecile's Mom: What do you do? Are you sure you two are old enough to live on your own?

Cecile: Huh?

Cecile's Mom: Just get some tweezers and pull it OUT! *hangs up*

Cecile: Okay! I'll help you pull it out, but I can't look or I'm going to throw up.

Tracy: Well then how will you see the staple?

*Cecile waves tweezers in Tracy's direction while turning her head and closing her eyes*

Cecile: Just come towards me! Put your finger under the tweezers!

Tracy: No way! Get away from me! Owwwww I STAPLED MY FINGER! Get some ice!

Cecile: Okay okay I have ice! I'M GOING TO THROW UP!

Tracy: STOP SAYING THAT and just put it on my finger!

Cecile: I can't REACH your finger, you're holding your hand above your head!

Tracy: Well GET A STOOL!

This went on for awhile. The staple was pulled out and I was fine, of course, but it was an "I Love Lucy" episode to be remembered. Ah, good times.

FuzzFact #38

When I was in 7th grade my mother stuffed my bra and went to a costume party dressed as Dolly Parton.

Oh, you read that right. Embarrassing? You bet. There's really nothing else to say about it. Just take a moment.

FuzzFact #37:

If the weather is nice, I'm outside.

I absolutely love to revel in good weather. I'll grab a book, some drinks, a bratty dog, and spend all afternoon at the park. Ems sniffs around and I lie in the grass and stare at the blue sky. The smell of Houston fall and spring is just heavenly. The pollution is washed clean, there's a breeze, it's the perfect time to sit and enjoy life. I love to take my shoes off and walk around on the cool grass. The feeling of grass between my toes makes me happy. I've also been known to climb a tree or two...or fifty. :)

Emma and I put on our running shoes and headed out to the Houston Arboretum yesterday afternoon after work. Okay fine, I was the only one with shoes, but that's only because Emma is waiting on her eBay auction to close for those vintage Jordans that she has been craving. The Arboretum is the perfect place to escape the city. Just remember your bug spray. I didn't. *scratch scratch*

FuzzFact #36:

I once got my family backstage at a Broadway show by pretending to be a part of the star's family.

Before I tell this story I just need to make something clear: New York City loves me. LOVES me. I can't visit that city without having an absolutely fantastic time, and that even includes the time that our house almost burned to the ground while we were away. Which by the way happens to be when this story takes place...

We were in New York after Christmas 2001 and on New Year's Eve we went to see Aida. After the show we went to the stage door to see if the stars would come out and sign our programs. My mom and I are (of course) incapable of being around strangers without chatting them up, so we immediately made friends with another family in line. (They were actually first in line, right next to the door.) A very large man who I later found out was the stage manager was keeping watch by the door and would periodically open it and stick his head in. After a few minutes he opened the door again and turned to our new family of friends:

Stage Manager: Come on folks, she's ready for you to come back.

The family started in the theater and the crowd behind us began to push forward. The stage manager ushered them in and turned to me. In that split second I grabbed my mom's hand and stepped forward.

Stage Manager: You're with Mandy's family, right?

Fuzzball: Yes, yes we are. *pushing my mom and sister ahead of me into the theater*

Stage Manager: Just follow the rest of your family to the dressing rooms.

Fuzzball: *still shoving my confused family forward* Yes, yes of course we'll just follow right behind!

It was awesome. We got to see the backstage of a real Broadway show, meet the actors, everything. Mandy and her family loved that we loved her performance, the stage manager was never the wiser, and in conclusion, New York fucking loves me and always will. The End.

FuzzFact #35:

I absolutely love to slow-dance.

Allow me to clarify: I love to dance, period. I like to jitterbug, salsa, mambo, twist, and just generally get my freak on. But what really melts me into FuzzGoo and sets my heart to pittypat? Slow dancing. I love it. I've loved it ever since that dance in 7th grade when Brandon B.* asked me to dance to Stairway to Heaven. (Work with me, okay? We were 12.) I'll never forget how it felt. I rested my head on his shoulder, and breathed in his boy-smell. (At the time it all seemed very romantic, I'm sure he just smelled like nervous adolescent boy sweat. Whatever.) His arms were low around my waist and I could feel his breath tickling the back of my neck while we swayed in a circle. All of the kids loved Stairway because it was extra-long, so you could get in all that extra snuggle time on the dance floor. I loved dancing with Brandon because he was taller than me, a luxury in middle school where all of the boys resembled Hobbits in stature...and Orcs in manners, for that matter. But I digress.

High school brought formals, where the girls got ALL dressed up and the boys wore Texas tuxes (Tux from the waist up, jeans and boots from the waist down). I fucking hate Texas tuxes. Why? Because by the end of the dance the boys would have ditched their ties, jackets, and shirts and would be dancing in their t-shirts and jeans, while the girls were still glammed out. *Snarl* By the end of high school my friends and I were formal-ed out. We had been to three to four formals a year and frankly we were sick of getting dressed up to watch a bunch of drunk preppie assholes lurch around the dance floor and puke on their dates. BUT I did miss the slow dances. I remember my last dance in high school-- it was at the end of prom, after graduation. Everyone had left the ballroom to change for the after-prom party. The Boy and I met in the middle of the dance floor and had our last dance. We swayed slowly in the dim lights as he crooned "Our Love Is Here To Stay" in my ear. Yeah, he was really good at that kind of stuff.

I'm not sure how to end this post other than to say that if you want to sweep me off of my feet, slap a cd into the stereo and dip me low. :D Hooray for slow dances!!

*I'm not listing last names here, you know, to protect the innocent. Heh.

FuzzFact #34:

I am a member of Delta Omicron, the International Music Fraternity.

Gimme a break. I was a vocal performance minor in college and I spent a lot of time with my fellow music nerds and other Fabbies. If you were in The Chorale, you probably joined Delta Omicron. I must admit that I had a lot of fun. My big brother was a hottie. Heh.

Fine arts people at Southwestern were called "Fabbies" because they hung out in the Fine Arts Building, nicknamed "The Fab". When Southwestern remodeled The Fab they also renamed it the "Fine Arts Center". Well hell, that threw everybody for a loop. But I digress.

I was an anomaly at Southwestern because I wasn't really a member of just one group. The Greeks, the Fabbies, the jocks, the Res Life folks...I had friends in all groups so I just bounced around, though never really feeling like I belonged in any one of them.  I remember walking through The Fab once with some Greek friends and there was a group of Fabbies lounging around on the couches outside of the theater. They all said hi to me and as we left the building my Greek friends said "Yeah, nice of them to acknowledge our existences." At the time I didn't even realize that the Greeks had been snubbed by the Fabbies, it didn't even register. I said "That really bothered you? I didn't know you guys even cared!" They said "Are you kidding? Fabbies are even bigger snobs than Greeks! That's why they only talked to you. You're one of them."

Well, whatever I was, I made some good friends. I also want to point out that those Greeks friends of mine showed up to all of my choral concerts. Sure, some of them were drunk and some of them might have passed out ten minutes into the concert and had to be slapped awake later, but they CAME. That's what mattered to me.