Author Archives: Autumn

Thirty-Five Months Old!

The countdown to three years is officially on!

We are firmly entrenched in the time of “No, I can do it myself!” He insists on pushing shopping carts, strollers, wagons, and anything else he can get his hands on. He vacuums and sweeps, refusing help even when he’s struggling. When we shop at Metro we let him take one of the tiny kid-sized grocery carts and he pushes it around very importantly, putting things in the basket, and then unloading them onto the conveyor belt for the cashier. I spend a lot of my time diverting the cart from crashing into shelves because he looks at the displays and not the aisle ahead of him, or catching it as it falls over when he tries to make too sharp a turn. It is terribly sweet to see how proud he is when he handles it all it, though, and it amuses other shoppers too.

He is also very helpful when we drive. “Green!” he exclaims as soon as a traffic light changes. If I’m not careful he will bounce into the front seat when I get out of the car and say, “I’m driving!” When we start out for wherever we’re headed, he will make his request for whatever music he wants to listen to that day, and then very often shout “Make it louder!” with much glee. Sometimes he listens to whatever classical music I have in the CD player instead of asking for his music to be played, and now and again remarks, “I like this, it’s pretty.”

“It’s big, and huge!” he said excitedly the other day as he was telling us a story. He uses words neither of us remember teaching him — feature, silo, treatment, airflow, aileron — and unless he’s speaking too fast he can be understood by just about anyone. His letter recognition has just skyrocketed (thank you, TMBG — this learning leap brought to you by the letter F for fridge, upon which are the letter magnets) which is kind of dizzying, because suddenly we’re fielding letter questions again, only this time they’re tests of our own knowledge.

Something I’ve never mentioned is that he sleeps with BunBun over his face. I know he’s settling down for the night when he stops chattering and telling a disjointed review of his day to his toys and books and curls up on his side, pulling the stuffed rabbit over his face. Lately he’s been wanting me to curl up with him so he can fall asleep holding my hand, which is fine. I’m not seeing it as a problem, as he falls asleep perfectly normally on his own everywhere else. He’s also taken to inviting BunBun along on outings, and sometimes cradles him across his lap in the car. “This is my baby,” he informed me the other day. “He is hungry. Can he have a graham cracker?” And he solemnly held the cracker to BunBun’s mouth, and then asked for his sippy cup of milk and fed that to BunBun too.

Most of the time if the weather’s nice we take the wagon to the bus stop to meet HRH on his way home from work. Liam now pulls the wagon– or pushes it, depending on his stubborn preschool mood, which engenders resistance when I try to hold the handle to steer the thing. “No, don’t help,” he insists, and stomps his feet in frustration when I explain that someone has to steer or he’ll crash. Or, you know, run over my feet. Again.

He spent much of our Mother’s Day visit to HRH’s parents running around the front lawn, turning over the ornamental rocks in the garden to look for bugs underneath them. He found an ant nursery, which suddenly began boiling over with furious ants shoving little eggs around in the sudden blinding sunlight, and was glued to the sight until we literally dragged him away and replaced the rock over the poor things. When he got tired of turning rocks over he ran up and down the front slope, looping around the pine trees, shouting, “I’m running! I’m running! I’m running around a conifer! C is for conifer! T is for tree!” His favourite DVDs right now, you see, are They Might Be Giants’ Here Come the 1 2 3s and Here Come the A B Cs. Favourite songs include BNL’s ‘7 8 9’, and TMBG’s ‘Seven’, ‘Nine Bowls of Soup’, and ‘Triops Has Three Eyes’, all of which he can be heard singing at various times. He is also fond of ‘Five’ as sung by Robin on The Muppet Show.

He has taken to disguising himself in the bath by scooping up a handful of bubbles and plastering them to his chin, then saying in a deep muffled voice, “Where’s Liam?” which is hilarious to play along with. He has also taken to frequently pretending to be a cat, saying “Meow!” in response to whatever I ask him, and curling up in my lap and leaning against my shoulder. It’s fine by me; I take the opportunity to put my arms around him and stroke his back, and murmur to my Liam-Kitten. His sense of humour is developing nicely. On the other hand, so is the little-boy fascination with Destruction as played out by Toy Cars and Trains. And finally, the enthusiasm for dinosaurs has kicked in. I was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

Recently he was playing with the cardboard tube from a paper towel roll while I made dinner. “Oh, hi,” he said, holding it up to his ear while looking at me. “Hi,” I said back. “I have to go to orchestra now,” he said. I figured out that the tube was a phone and said, “Oh, really?” “Yes,” he said, “you can wave at me through the window.” “Have fun!” I said. “Okay, bye,” he said and ran off, then came back into the kitchen without the tube and said somewhat sheepishly, “I need my cello now?”

He has also discovered painting with tempera and nice big thick paintbrushes! When he gets going he paints in a gleeful frenzy and then cries out, “More paper!” I whip the finished painting away, place a blank piece down in its place, and away he goes again. He is having great fun discovering what happens when he mixes colours together, and what shapes he can make with different strokes of the brush or thumping the bristles down on the paper in various ways. He’s into art, letters, and music; no surprise, I’m sure. But he also loves tossing balls around, playing “sockey” (which is what he calls both soccer and hockey), and riding the trike. It makes for a lot of fun these days.

More Liam posts this past month:

The trip to the EcoMuseum, where Liam loses his cap
The resolution of the hat drama
Liam discovers the library
Liam helps feed the baby squirrels

7/8 Adventure

This morning I went to Longeuil to test the 7/8 cello the new luthier had called about. I want to get all this down while it’s still fresh in my mind.

It is indeed an Eastman model 100, which is the higher-quality basic student model Eastman offers. Eastman is Chinese-made and finished/set up by the luthier. The website says “Entirely hand-carved from solid tonewoods; Spruce top and maple back, ribs, and scroll; Ebony pegs and fingerboard; Attractive and durable amber-brown varnish”, which pretty much covers it. It has an absolutely lovely warm golden brown varnish with amber highlights, sort of a chocolate caramel glow to it all. It has a silky finish, and a very feminine neck; I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s daintier than mine. In fact, when we’d installed ourselves in the practice room, I immediately took my cello out to lay it down next to the 7/8 and the difference in size was astonishing. The neck was significantly shorter, there was about an inch and a half of difference in body length, although the width was only a quarter-inch different. Depth-wise, the 7/8 was about a half-inch smaller.

Sound-wise, it’s warm and mellow and silky. The G string is a bit buzzy, but that can be adjusted. It’s currently strung with Helicores, a brand that most luthiers have tried to sell to me, and now I can see why: they’re velvety under the fingers and soft to play on. The tension is lower than my current Evah Pirazzis are. The sound is even and balanced across all four strings, and what I absolutely loved was that I couldn’t tell I was playing an open A string. My cello has that nasal open A; this one was just like all the other notes. The dynamics seem to respond well, but this is what I need another cellist to hear it for: there’s a world of difference between sitting behind it and hearing it from the front. Same with the projection. HRH said he could hear mine more clearly, but this is where his hearing problem might adversely affect the evaluation: mine has a sharper projection, the 7/8 was warmer and buttery, so he couldn’t hear it as well. I preferred the 7/8’s sound, but that may be the novelty of it, and I was in an unfamiliar room. It took almost no right arm power at all to draw sound out of it. It felt as if the bow was gliding along the strings instead of dragging them.

Physically, it felt like it fit better in the curve of my body, just as I’d felt when playing M’s 7/8 last month. The bridge and fingerboard were less arched than mine, so I kept bumping strings when I tried to cross. I’m used to making larger movements. The scroll sat almost on my shoulder, something else I’d have to get used to. It’s so easy to play; I can see how it would be less tiring to play it for long periods of time.

HRH and the boy were with me, and the first thing I played was ‘ZYX’ from TMBG’s Here Come the ABCs album, after which the boy applauded enthusiastically. Of course, he applauded after scales and the E flat major runs from Mozart’s third symphony too before he got restless and HRH took him outside to play. Wonderful for the ego. I played through some of the Gounod Symphony no. 1, and never got around to Valse Triste or the arpeggio exercises I’d packed.

It wasn’t an immediate “Oh I love it!” sort of thing. I like it, and it’s very comfortable to play, but it would be a sort of lateral trade. I was hoping to trade up, but one of the things the luthier told me was that he’s looked at other models, and that in his opinion after this kind of quality the next real step up is the Wilhelm Klier 7/8, which runs between $6000 and $7000. He said that if I really wanted him to he would order a 200 or 305 Eastman model, but that the difference in quality was really only going to be negligible and the price higher.

I need to take a moment and say how much the luthier himself impressed me. First of all, he was fluently bilingual, and didn’t make me feel as if I was beneath his notice. It was the luthier himself who sat with me and talked to me about the cello, not an assistant or a salesperson. And being much more confident in my people-judging skills now than I was fifteen years ago, I can say with confidence that he is one of the most honest businesspeople I have met. He’s one of those rare people who wants the best for a client, not what will turn him the most profit. He listened to me, took my comments seriously, and addressed concerns capably and reassuringly. And in turn I was very honest with him, and told him I was going to take my time, but that he’d already gained me as a client because I would bring my cello to him for its tune-up at the end of the month. (He did a quick exam and agreed that the bridge needed changing, and when I mentioned that it was greedy and needed a new one every two years or so he frowned and peeked inside, took an internal measurement or two, and said to himself “Yes, and that’s why” although he didn’t elaborate; I got the feeling there’s an adjustment out of whack). In the end, he didn’t want to sell me something or push me into making a decision I wasn’t comfortable with; he wanted to make sure I was going to end up with something that was right for me, whatever and whenever that was going to be.

The tentative plan at the moment is to talk to the principal cellist at orchestra, who originally told me about this luthier, and line up a date when I know she’ll be at rehearsal (or perhaps a single lesson date at her house, as she’s not playing in the Canada Day concert). Then I’ll sign the 7/8 out for a week or two, and let her pick it over and listen to it, and play it for me so I can hear it from the other side, as well as playing it at home myself. The trial period is unreal in its honesty and simplicity: all one does is sign a contract agreeing that the instrument is in my care and is my responsibility while anything happens to when I’m in possession of it. No security deposit; my cello doesn’t get left as collateral; nothing. If this 7/8 sells before I can take it home on trial or decide to buy it, he will order another one for me.

Before I could bring it up he also asked if I would be open to looking at smaller 4/4 cellos. I agreed immediately, and he went on to say that when he saw me take mine out he had been astonished, and immediately understood why my principal cellist had remarked on it: it’s larger than normal. It’s a big, boxy cello, square across the shoulders and wide across the bottom. So not only am I petite, my damn instrument is oversized. (Ah, the sweet taste of irony. Is anyone else rolling their eyes?) He took the full measurements to have them on file and confirmed that it was on the large side. He pointed out the difference in the necks especially. My current one is thick; the 7/8 is much slimmer depth-wise and width-wise, and it’s not just because of the proportion. So as he comes across smaller 4/4s he’ll call me. He said he’d order in a Wilhelm Klier for me too if I really wanted to try it, no strings attached (no pun intended!), but I passed. There are other places that $7000 needs to go.

What else, what else? We talked about the honeymoon period and both the instrument and musician settling in with one another’s quirks. We talked about playing lots of double stops in the sweet spot once it had been found to help vibrate the body and loosen it up to help everything become even mellower. Half a year after a new cello a new bow, probably, because as I know it’s useless to buy a new bow if you’re about to buy a new instrument. He looked at my current bow and liked the flexibility of the stick, sympathised with the cracked frog, and agreed that replacing the frog wasn’t cost-effective. He guarantees all adjustments and repairs (beyond regular-use wear and strings, of course) for a whole year. If the instrument develops dry cracks or separates along a seam, for example, he will repair it or order a replacement if the repairs wouldn’t absolutely solve the problem.

He asked what I would do with my current one, and we discussed selling privately versus through consignment at the shop, and even the option of not selling it at all and keeping it as a second or gigging instrument. This one’s seen battle, after all, and the trade-in value may not be worth it. I would be extremely hesitant about bringing the delicate 7/8 into a gig situation, and when I explained he said immediately, “I understand.” (Nice ringing G and C for the opening of ‘Rock’n’Roll Radio’, by the way! I forgot to try anything else, but next time I’ll run through ‘J’veux pas viellier’ and ‘Wheat Kings’, both of which have the tricky C on the G string that my cello swallows up.) He also warned me that I wouldn’t recoup much of what I’d paid for it, as instruments of similar quality are going for much less these days. This was what I’d expected.

I forgot to buy rosin, but I will when I take it in in two weeks for the bridge replacement and fingerboard adjustment. I pointed out a scratch on the side of the fingerboard around where the neck joins the body and asked if it was a crack or just a surface scratch; he sanded it lightly and said it was a crack, but he would fill it in when he adjusted the fingerboard.

I have never been treated so personally and directly in a luthier’s shop before. I like that he spoke to me very honestly about what had to be done and didn’t gloss over anything. He was direct and open, and at no time did I feel pressured or patronised. It may have had something to do with how young he was; I don’t know. I feel like we’re going into this new cello search together, instead of me trailing behind him as he holds forth on what is good or bad, talks down to me, or makes decisions about what I need without talking to me.

Now what I need to do is make a list of pros and cons about the 7/8 versus my current full-size cello. It would be a lateral trade, but I wonder if it might not net me a more enjoyable playing experience in the long run. I know how mine reacts, and I know that I can play it, but if it comes down to playability, comfort, and evenness of sound I might turn to the 7/8. The fibro’s not going to get any better, so smaller movements and less energy required to create sound might be a good thing in that respect too. There’s no rush. I can take my time.

Grateful

Thank you, life, for a lovely relaxed day with no stress. Played lots of cello, finished another book, picked up a few groceries, lay on my stomach with the boy to watch the ants in the backyard, ate strawberries together in the sun, took the wagon to meet HRH at the bus stop, had barbecued burgers for dinner, curled up with the boy and cuddled him until he fell asleep holding my hand.

I am so very thankful for a good day. Another bad one would have been… well, cumulatively Very Bad.

And now, I am going to go run a hot bath with either honeysuckle bubbles or lavender honey milk powder, and read the new issue of Strings magazine that arrived today.

Eeeeee!

The new luthier just called! There’s a 7/8 cello that just arrived in the South Shore workshop! The price is hilariously low, which leads me to suspect that it might be very entry-level, which isn’t what I want, but I’ll check it out anyhow to be sure. I have a tentative appointment to go try it out Saturday morning.

I was looking at mine today thinking that it needed a new bridge and so forth. I’ll be taking it with me, of course, so I’ll ask what the cost of replacing that might be while I’m there. And I will type out here that I need new rosin, so maybe I won’t forget to pick that up too.

ETA: Have confirmed appointment Saturday morning at ten! Hurrah! After doing a bit of research I am very certain it’s below the level I want, but if I like what it is I may ask them to order in the next level or two up for me. I wouldn’t be able to buy this one now anyway; it will be a month before the cheque for the hearthcraft book arrives.

*headdesk*

Two. Two cellists out of six were there last night, and our principal was not one of them. At the end of the evening our conductor came over to us and said, “You did very well. You must be starting to feel like the violists.” Which was terribly funny, really, and if I’d been in a clearer headspace I would have laughed instead of tripping over myself to downplay the mess I’d made of My Fair Lady. We’d sight-read the MFL medley and while the first half was fine, at the halfway point we got to an arrangement of ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’ that made no sense to me rhythm-wise and I lost the wave I’d been riding and crashed. (It possibly has something to do with the fact that I can’t remember how the song goes to save my life.) On the other hand, we’d handled both the symphonies very well, which was quite encouraging.

At least I got the chance to sit as a stand partner with M. for the first time ever, which was a truly delightful experience. She has absolutely lovely tone. And as one of the violists said, when there’s only two of you you can suddenly hear what you’re playing. And it was nice to discover that I don’t suck, but it was also stressful in that all of a sudden I didn’t have the principal cellist’s wing under which to play. I couldn’t fudge the runs like I sometimes allow myself to do in order to be ready for the next bits. Sometimes my fingers surprise me by demonstrating that they actually do know where to go and when.

I would like to work on the quality of sound I’m producing, but all that seems to fly out the window when I’m trying to get my fingers in the right place. I know, I know; practice…

Good Things

Life is remarkably miserable these days, so I’m trying to look for good things to share instead of the crap. Here’s a selection.

1. I read two books yesterday, Hale’s Austenland and Clark’s Because She Can. I’m so glad the boy is at an age where I don’t have to actively play with him all the time. Once in a while we can be in the same room or out in the backyard together, each doing our own thing with periodic interaction. This doesn’t work all the time: the boy has to be in a secure enough headspace to allow it. But yesterday was one of those days. There were other trade-offs, however, and other things were not as successful, which was very frustrating.

2. Last Tuesday I wrote twelve pages of Swan Sister longhand. I know I said the Vivaldi novel had ambushed my brain, but evidently I was wrong.

3. And perhaps Swan Sister‘s not the winner after all, because I sat down on Monday afternoon and drafted a two-paragraph summary and then a two-page synopsis for a new YA novel that had occurred to me. Because, you know, I don’t have enough unfinished YA novels lying around. At least this one has a full outline, up to a point at the end. I know that the protagonist’s obstacle gets worked through and she achieves her goal, and even how it happens, but there’s a secondary story in there about another character that affects her and that goal and I’m not sure how that resolves yet. Or even if it needs to be resolved, really; the protagonist may just go on being the only one to know this character’s secret. I’ve never written a full synopsis for a novel before it’s been written, and it was a very interesting exercise. I may even try to write the novel now. (I mean, of course I’ll write it at some point, and I didn’t expect to want to write it immediately. But it’s all there, so to speak.)

4. I’m sleeping okay, which I am trying to see as a tolerable trade-off for the increased pain I’m experiencing these days.

5. Sun is nice and good. Cats all returned to a level of sanity is also good. Life is less stressful when they’re all normal. (As normal as my cats, or any cats really, get.)

Adventure

Today, the boy and I went to the library.

This may not sound like an adventure to you, but ours is a family that thrives on books and money is tight. Add to this the fact that over the past decade HRH and I have lived near only one excellent library for three years (during which my reading time was otherwise occupied), and that in the past I’ve repeatedly had the irritating experience of being interested in reading the type of books that libraries rarely carry, so while having a library card is a Good Idea joining this one was never a must-do thing. I’ve wondered about our local library a few times over the past three years but for whatever reason never got around to checking it out (no pun intended). Today, however, I planned the outing for us as a diversion for the boy and a book run for new reading material for me.

The first thing we did was get library cards, which involved having our pictures taken and printed on hard plastic passes. The boy has one of his very own, which he insisted on carrying around in his hand until I persuaded him to put it in his back pocket, just like Mama. That lasted all of ten minutes before he pulled it out and dropped it into the basket he was carrying around for my books. He was very helpful once he had darted around the adult section as his whim took him, exploring everywhere. I had a list of books to pull (hurrah for on-line catalogues!) that I filled before taking him by the hand and leading him into the children’s section. He was thrilled with the ladybug stools and the low tables with paintings on them, the kid-made dollhouses displayed on top of the stacks, and the bins of picture books that he rifled through enthusiastically. Then I took him to the stacks and we talked about how libraries shelved their books by subject, stopping at the transportation section. He pulled several books on cars and trains out and sat on the floor going through them, eventually choosing one to bring home. He placed it very proudly in the basket on top of the Leo Lionni omnibus, an orchestra book, and a Tonka trucks book. I sat him on the check-out counter so he could see the woman scan his card and then each book, and print out the slip identifying the books and their due date. It was all very, very exciting. I wish I could find the kid-sized I Can Read bookbag I used to have so he can carry his own books next time. I’ll sew him one for his birthday, one with a pocket for his card.

Personally, I was impressed at the selection of English books in both the adult and children’s sections. I didn’t get a chance to see the adult non-fiction sections but I’ve already searched a handful of non-fic titles I want and found about three of the five. I took out six books, two of them Laurie R. King mysteries that I haven’t yet found in stock in a bookstore (why does no one carry backlist?), two of them novels that I know I’ll read once and never again, one a YA fantasy, and I can’t remember the other one. Maybe there were only five. I intend to put holds on the others I want too. So all in all I think I saved myself about eighty dollars today, and I have reading material for the next week.

I am smug, and very satisfied. And I am now going to return to reading Austenland by Shannon Hale.