Broadway, baby

Note: I make references to specific songs and for the enjoyment of my readers, I've included links to those songs, if you'd like to take a listen.  But really, it doesn't matter.  You can totally ignore all those links.

I love show tunes.  I make no secret of it.  It's probably my number one conversation killer. Some friendly new person will say "So, what kind of music do you like?"  Then I'll tell them I love show tunes and they awkwardly trail off and desperately look for someone else to talk to or tell me that they like Rent.

But despite my inability to have a proper conversation about musical tastes with most other people, show tunes have always been there for me.  There is a song for every occasion.  Making small talk at the office after a hard day's work?  Bam.  "It's Been a Long Day."  Frustrated that your exotic plant won't sprout? Bam. "Grow for me."  Just want to celebrate your ridiculous amounts of hair? Bam. "Hair."

 I was dancing to "Cotton Eye Joe," but I was thinking about "Hair" the whole time.

And in their bountiful wonderfulness, show tunes came through for me when I realized I'd be spending the next year in Ohio.  Right into my head popped "Ohio," a beautiful lamenting song about how wonderful Ohio is and how maybe the singer should return home to Ohio.

Jane Lynch and Carol Burnett pretending to be mother and daughter and that they love Ohio.

Actually, all of that is lies.  Well, the song  "Ohio" mostly consists of "Why, oh, why-oh, did I ever leave Ohio?" but everything else was lie.  That was not the song I thought of.

I thought of "A Summer in Ohio" from The Last 5 Years.  If you want, take a listen to this sketchy and probably illegal video of the song.

It starts off encouragingly enough:

I could wander Paris after dark
Take a carriage ride through Central Park
But it wouldn't be as nice as a summer in Ohio
Where I'm sharing a room with a "former" stripper and her snake: Wayne

But it quickly turns into this:

I could shove an ice pick in my eye
I could eat some fish from last July
But it wouldn't be as awful as a summer in Ohio

Without cable, hot water, Vietnamese food, or you.

I may be lucky enough to have hot water, but I do have to pretend to be interested in baseball.

Truthfully, I love what little of Cincinnati I know so far.  Admittedly it's not that much, but I'm enjoying the process of getting to know it.  I've been to some good restaurants, checked out the art museum (which is having a special Monet exhibit. Can you say fate?), grabbed several loads of books from the library system and have become quite the connoisseur of our local Kroger (Kroghetto, if you will).  I even enjoyed driving a borrowed stick shift car up and down the many, many hills of Cincinnati (well, enjoyed it once the feeling returned to my fingers).

That doesn't mean every day has been a piece of peach pie.  I miss my poodle and the family I babysit for and my church family at Wyomissing Church of the Brethren, and my own family (sometimes).  And part of BVS and living a simple lifestyle is making sacrifices.  Again, I haven't been here that long and haven't had to make all that many sacrifices, but I know that there are things I'm not going to be able to go home for and be a part of.  Life at home will go on without me.

So whenever I feel myself getting too sad, I just start singing to myself "I'd rather be going slightly batty, in Walnut Hills, Cincinnati..."