Cleaning House

Mom and I before the Opera.

Michael (the fiance) and I are cleaning the house. Not the whole house, just the living room and dining room and kitchen. Which is plenty.
Our reasons for doing this are three-fold.

1. We are tired of looking at the crap we leave lying around because we're too busy (read: lazy) to put it away.
2. Cluttered and dirty rooms are stressful. Clean rooms feel more productive. 
3. My favorite. We are installing a writing area just for me in the dining room.

That being said, we're getting a lot of talking done as we work about the overarching plot of my series. With book one well underway and chapters of other books written, I think it's helpful for me to discuss my plans for themes and subplots. Besides the fact that I'm spoiling Michael for pretty much every plot twist, I think it's working out beautifully.

Also, last night, I went to an opera for the first time. My mom and I went to see The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder. There are a lot of things about opera that present themselves as an easy target for ridicule. For instance, many of the characters sing their declarations of love and hatred at the audience instead of at each other. That takes some getting used to.
The other thing that really jarred me was the treatment of the evil plot in the story. Yes, The Magic Flute is a comedy. You can't really take evil all that seriously in a comedy. But in this story, especially, evil gets the boot so swiftly and dismissively that I didn't even get a chance to properly root for the good guy!
Having never actually seen an opera, these were unexpected elements which, I suppose, are perfectly normal for regular opera-goers, but that for me, a lifetime lover of musicals, were utterly alien. Still, the music swept any real need for a solid plot under the rug. Mozart blows my mind.
If you have never seen an opera, I highly recommend it. There is nothing like it in all other forms of theatre. Opera is easy to dismiss as melodramatic, but if you let yourself be carried away by it, the music and the sheer enormity of it all is breathtakingly impressive. 
One last thing. There was this one guy, Graham Anduri, who played Papageno, who really stole my heart for the show. He was fantastic. That is all.