Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Hello World…

… I am not dead, just busy. (And in a curious amount of pain, for some reason. It’s fine as long as I don’t move.)

The concert was lovely. As I expected I enjoyed myself immensely for the first half and played very well, with the overture standing out as particularly good. As I’d feared, though, I began wilting in the symphony. I aced and loved the first movement but the second movement was faster than usual, which was fine up till the fugue-type bit started by the cellos. As we came up to it I realized that there was no way I could do it at that speed so I just hung on and did what I could. Which wasn’t much, really, and it depressed me despite knowing that it was the speed and not my ability. The mood clung to me and I just couldn’t enjoy the scherzo and trio much, but I was bound and determined to enjoy the fourth movement, and I did, but only because I insisted on it.

Thank you to HRH, Ceri, Scott, Marc M, Marc L, Mel, Amanda, and Val for sharing the evening with us. I think the audience was at about sixty percent capacity, although it really seemed like more when everyone congregated in the hall for cider and cookies at intermission. I can’t even estimate actual numbers.

Now we have two weeks off. This may not be a bad thing, as I suspect the pain at the base of my spine is from sitting in the new chairs three times in four days.

I took my manuscript printout with me when I dropped the boy off at the caregiver’s yesterday, and betook myself to the cafe in which I used to write before we moved. I got myself a decaf latte and a brownie, then sat and worked on editing the manuscript for two hours. It was good to be out, in a silver of sun that slowly moved from my papers to myself, away from the distractions of the internet, my bookshelves, and the chores in the kitchen. I slashed and rewrote Chapter Three and some of Four, then came home and began transferring last week’s edits to the file. Chapter One and Two are mostly done now, with just one or two places I’ve marked to polish or check a fact. I think I’ll be doing the cafe thing again on Wednesday, except I may try a different location because the music was loud and not very conducive to my mood. Trying to listen to my MP3 player above the cafe’s music was worse, though. When I used to go there the staff was friendlier, and they played jazz.

It was so beautiful yesterday that I had the back door open while I was making dinner. Sparky and I were watching blackbirds from the back deck when we had a visit from a rather large plump squirrel. It climbed up the stairs and inched its way on to the deck looking at us expectantly, and I had visions of the thing turning ugly when I informed it that we were not serving. I also hoped that none of the cats were sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, or they’d be outside like a shot. Sparky spent a lot of time between the car and the front door bending over to see the quarter-inch tall first signs of all the bulbs we planted last fall, poking at them and saying with great excitement that he could see the flowers growing. And we saw a robin, which was lovely too.

Spring is good. And it’s not going to take as long for all the snow to melt as we’d expected, because the temperature has radically readjusted and we’re looking at sun all week (Thirteen degrees today and Thursday! Sixteen degrees tomorrow!) with periodic clouds and scattered showers before light rain all weekend. The middle of the back yard is already mud and dead grass. The sun is doing wonders for my outlook.

Sparky and I are home together today and having a lovely time so far.

Five Things

1. Jteethy has a job! Woo-hoo!

2. Sun! Sun! The snow of yesterday is pretty much gone! (Only a metre or so of the winter stuff left to go now…)

3. A weekend that feels like a weekend so far, and will only get better with a visit from Ceri and Scott this afternoon, a flying visit with the inlaws while we get ready to go out and they start minding the boy, and then the concert tonight.

4. Fresh bread, Dijon mustard, fresh slices of grilled Angus roast beef, and Swiss cheese.

5. A really wonderful night of sleep after a decent dress rehearsal.

Friday Photos

Hurrah! This has been an extraordinarily good mail day. Not only did I get a CD I’d ordered for Liam and the ceramic poetry pendant I’d bought from a handcrafter, but the Fed Ex man just came and gave me the box of the newly redesigned Way of the Green Witch!

Every time I get a box of author’s copies I post a hero shot, and today is no different:

I’m sure Fed Ex guys have seen it all, but this one either truly didn’t notice or tactfully said nothing about the smear of hair dye on my jawline. Sigh. Figures he’d ring just as I was halfway through.

And as I’ve brought up the topic of my hair, I just have to say that I’ve been loving this cut. I especially love feeling the curls brush the back of my neck when I shake my head. I adore long hair, especially long curly hair, but I’d finally decided it was time to cut it after years and years of long hair. Last year I had four inches cut off in June (which translated to six inches shorter when the curls sproinged post-cut), then two in November, and now another three gone which translates to four and a halfish post-sproing. That’s almost ten inches hacked off in nine months, and no, my hair doesn’t grow very fast at all. I haven’t had hair above the shoulders in years and years. It’s certainly much cheerier and easier to care for. I’ve been asked for photos of my haircut, so here you are:

And a gratuitous Liam/Autumn picture too, taken when we were having so much fun a couple of days ago in the sun:

And, heck, why not, a hero shot of the boy to show off how big he is:

There are your Friday photos. I have no idea of this will become a regular thing; it’s just the second Friday in a row that I’ve posted pictures.

Such A Monday

This morning, I drove home from dropping the boy off in white-out conditions. It’s cruel, after a lovely warm and sunny weekend. Wasn’t this supposed to be rain? The first few flakes began falling and the boy said, “Why the snow?” “I don’t know,” I replied. “I think we should tell it to go away.” From the back seat there came a very clear and deliberate, “SNOW, GO AWAY!”

Thank goodness for a lovely recording of The Lark Ascending on CBC that played on my way home. I always think of Pasley when I hear it. Otherwise I’m so irritated by the CBC these days. They’re disbanding the CBC Radio Orchestra — the last surviving radio orchestra in North America — and they’re changing the Radio 2 format yet again so that it’s no longer going to be a mainly classical station. Over the past few years they’ve slowly revamped it to feature more jazz and folk and so forth, with which I’ve not been thrilled but have tolerated (although the radio gets turned off at 6 on the dot because I cannot stand what the evening programming has become). Now, however, they’re formally announcing that they’re going to go more mainstream, and cancelling the existing shows. This was done to net a larger audience, but it’s backfiring already: the backlash has been dreadful, and they’re going to lose droves of current listeners (like me, hello, who’s been a faithful listener for decades). If they did market research, they certainly didn’t think of asking their current audience what they thought of the idea. I’ve been meaning to write about this since they announced it and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to put my resentment about this dilution of content and commitment to culture into words. This isn’t what I wanted to say, either, but I have to say something at some point.

I am stiff and achy and want to be in the better mood I was in this past weekend.

Sparky: Now With Wheels!

There were lots of fun things that happened this weekend, like trips to the farm, maple sugar, the boy’s very first Easter egg hunt, playing with his cousin, dinner out in a grown-up restaurant featuring a decadent plate of ice cream with real whipped cream and gourmet chocolate sauce… but I think one of the most exciting things that happened this weekend (certainly for HRH and I) was the triumphant acquisition of Sparky’s very first tricycle.

He wasn’t as enthusiastic about riding it as he was about petting it and taking it for walks and showing it off to people.

There’s a second-hand shop in the next town that I always hit for new coats, pants, shirts, and whatever else may be lacking in the boy’s ever-being-outgrown wardrobe. This time we got a new light spring jacket (not that he needed one; he has a raincoat and a perfectly good light spring coat, but this one had Dash and Mr. Incredible on it. Come on! How could I pass that up?), lined splash pants, and the tricycle. The trike was fifteen dollars. We were very impressed with ourselves. (Do you have any idea how expensive new tricycles are? It’s ridiculous.) Now we don’t have to introduce emotional stress into our godsdaughter’s life by asking her if she would be willing to pass along her old tricycle.

When we went downstairs to the garage to do laundry yesterday, he found the trike and wrestled it from the storage side to the laundry side. He wanted to bring it upstairs with us, and was very upset when I informed him that tricycles are not played with indoors. If things keep melting the way they’re doing out there, and the weather warms up just a bit more, then we can try the riding to the corner thing. Although I’m willing to bet that he’ll ride for a few feet then walk it along the rest of the way there and back.

A Quick Hello

Hello, dear readers. I have the boy at home with me today so I won’t be properly working till his nap and therefore I can’t devote much time to an update, but these are worthy of note:

1. We had a lovely weekend with my parents. More later.

2. The test editorial review evaluation I did in January got me hired as an ongoing freelance editor! Very nice news to discover in the inbox upon coming home after five days away. The company is currently moving so they’ve suspended ops for a couple of months, but they want me to set up my log-in and account and such now so as to be ready when things kick off again. This is extremely happy-making, as it gives me reliable work and income when I’m not on contract to write a book of my own. And as the frequency and number of manuscripts I edit is basically controlled by me (there are a pool of editor/reviewers, you see) I can handle things as the fibro allows, and do more when I feel sharp and/or want a larger paycheque.

3. We get our new-to-us stove this Saturday morning. Hurrah! Only four more days without an operative oven! I have been, perhaps overly optimistically, planning a roast Saturday night with one of the organic beef roasts that I have been hoarding in the downstairs freezer all winter. (Who am I kidding. I’ll start with something less expensive, so I can gauge the oven’s quirks first. There’s a chicken in the upstairs freezer that I’ll do instead.)

And a belated happy vernal equinox to everyone!