Something WICKED is not that way at all ...

Last night, my friend Wendy and I went to see WICKED at The Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake. It was absolutely spectacular! For some reason, I assumed I had purchased bad seats, but oh so not the case. Our seats were great and right on the main level, about row 15 (we sat way far stage left, but nothing to complain about). The performance was so wonderful, that Wendy and I cheered and screamed all the way home.

I felt alert the entire evening! This is one of four cultural experiences I'll have this month. Truth-be-told, the old Jennifer lived for cultural experiences. My friends and I were "kind of artsy." After all, I was a humanities major in college. I loved art museums and I assumed my future career would somehow include the arts (museum curator, art litigation attorney, writer for a community arts magazine, buyer for a theatre or museum gift shop - it's true, I considered everything) FYI, my career today does not any of these things.

But everything changed for me after my accident. My car crashed. My body crashed. My head crashed. Everything was broken and mangled. Thus, I honestly thought that parts of my personality were mangled too.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Approximately six years post-accident, I got third row seats to Mamma-Mia in Minneapolis at a very discounted price. I'm pretty sure it was Mamma-Mia, but I just had to call my mom and have her confirm because I can't remember. I was so cognitively overloaded and so tired during the performance, that I can't recall any of it. I literally remember sitting in my great seats, thinking, "I'm supposed be enjoying myself. Jennifer Mosher loves this kind of stuff, but I don't like being here right now." I feel like this during every cultural performance I've attended post-injury. In fact, a few years ago some friends and I went to New York City and I can't remember which Broadway performance we saw (surprisingly, I know that I saw CATS in NYC back in 1990 because that was pre-accident, and I remember nearly every cultural experience that I had pre-accident).

My point is this: I DID NOT FEEL THIS WAY LAST NIGHT AT WICKED! I'm 99.999% certain that this is due to my reformed Ambien self. Sleeping pills have changed me! This is no exaggeration. I'm sleeping longer and deeper, which makes me more alert and more like my old self during the day. It's wonderful. This month I've already attended The Utah Symphony, a Ririe-Woodbury modern dance performance, WICKED, and this weekend I'll see the Utah Chamber Artists. I've enjoyed every moment of every performance - just like I used to. I'm so happy because I really feel like finally my pre-injury self and my post-injury self are blurring into the same person!