I have really weird pitch. I can absolutely recreate notes, hear the right pitch, make them come out of my mouth. When I hear a song in my head, I'm hearing the correct notes, even the correct octaves. But identifying them...terrible. Beyond terrible. Even identifying simple intervals. This, despite the fact that I can always find middle C. But I work forwards from it completely laboriously, like I'm 99 and recently had a stroke. Can't move from one note to another without so many supports and railings as to make the process pointless. Plus I'm never quite right when I get there. Like the day I was called on to spell the word "wire" in second grade and couldn't figure out how to spell it any other way except "wiereireire"...it wouldn't stop. Slythy toves gyring and gimblin in the wabe.

I mention this because I've only recently discovered "Shy" from Once Upon a Mattress. If ever there was a song built for an amateur belter who can build a house on two or three notes and do nothing else, like me, it's this one, but the problem is...the money note is just slightly too high. So sad. Which of course is making me wonder what it is, because what I should do is transpose, but because the pitch in my head is so tenacious all I can do is reach for the real note (probably not bad for my range, but that's not the point). I've been warbling it in the shower and trying to climb carefully up the ladder from C to find it and just having no luck. Best as I can tell I think it might be the C sharp above major C. I tried looking up scales/charts online and it would fit with the key on some of the sheet music (A major), although of course you can't look at actually sheet music online.

All I know is boy, I really want a piano. I'm tired of living without one. And yet I think I want the kind of life right now where that's the last thing I have to dust/tune/move/worry about/protect from cats/find a home for/think about the burdensome physics thereof. Ah, to be 41 and single in 2008. Confusing.

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Rich, but good: In a big pasta bowl put some leftover sour cream (1/3 c?), a handful of Parmesan, and a spoonful of grainy mustard. While water/then pasta (campanelle) boils, heat a skillet quite hot and add a layer of olive oil. Throw in two salmon fillets, salt and pepper them, let them brown in that careful way salmon does. When you flip them over, add: orange juice, balsamic, the last squeeze of teriyaki sauce, Worchestershire sauce, soy, grainy mustard. Flake the fillets up, cook liquid until a loose glaze, then add the entire contents of pan plus super al dente pasta to the pasta bowl and toss all together. This was crying out for herbs...chives? tarragon? Deep greeny ones, that I did not have, to snip on top. Good, though.