Category Archives: Diary

… And Birthday Prep

Today is kind of a mess. There needs to be a cake and two batches of cookies baked, as well as our regular bread. HRH is doing most of the grocery shopping after dropping the boy off with the caregiver, while I finish up the latest assignment and hand it in. We need to head out to the craft store in the east end to pick up supplies for the crafty part of tomorrow’s party; party decorations need to be picked up as well, at a different store. We need to hit a particular grocery store for a couple of items not available at our regular grocery store, and another speciality store to pick up gel colouring for dyeing roving tinting the cake icing. I have a cello lesson tonight and it would sure be nice to get a lick of practise in today before I go. Dinner needs to be made and eaten in there somewhere, too. At least HRH has offered to ice the cake while I’m at my lesson. (ETA: Ack, need to pick up reserved books at the library, too.)

I think the tension is coming from the fact that I’m thinking of today as a work day with a bunch of other stuff that needs doing.

I suspect I will pass out once everyone’s left tomorrow after the party. I intend to hit Ariadne for the subversive Spin (Not Knit) In Public day when the boy naps, but evaluating how achy I am today after yesterday’s outing, and knowing what today and tomorrow morning entail, I suspect it’s not going to happen, no matter how much I want to try the wheel.

Ooh, news flash as of a phone call two minutes ago: Sparky has a new baby cousin! Well, of a sort; my cousin has a new daughter as of this morning, and we call our children cousins. (His daughters are my cousins once removed, but I don’t know what the term is for the relationship between our children themselves.) Hurrah! Can’t wait for pictures. We’ll get to meet her when we go down to Toronto in ten days.

Birthday Aftermath

Last night: After an extra-long bedtime snuggle, I tucked the boy in and kissed his forehead. He held his arms up for one last hug. I obliged, and he gently nuzzled my cheek with his and whispered, “Thank you for my happy birthday.” My heart just about exploded.

This morning: “Look! This blue balloon isn’t going up any more! I throw it up, and it falls. I need to pop it.” Oh, blue balloon, your usefulness is at an end; your immediate execution is ordered.

Belated Weekend Roundup

Okay, here we go.

Thursday night: Marc’s vocal concert, at which I unashamedly cried because I’m so darn proud of him. He gets better every year, and his range is really expanding. (I mean vocal range, but the style of songs he’s exploring is also broadening.) There were about ten of us there, and it’s always fun to sit with friends at this kind of thing. We are all about the support.

Friday: Lunch meeting with Marisol, at which I was much more with it than the meeting we had in late winter. We nattered about a bunch of different things connected with her thesis, which she’s trying to recast as a personal memoir and anthropological exploration of language, cultural origin, and spirituality, specifically in Quebec with all its wackiness. It’s fascinating. I know nothing about anthropology, but I made a few suggestions to help make it more attractive for marketing and she’s all excited and fired up to begin. It’s fun helping someone uncover and refine their focus. Then I wandered around downtown in the sun for a bit, hitting the Body Shop and Lush and a used bookstore, where I scored copies of Deborah Lipp’s The Study of Witchcraft, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, and Robert Jourdain’s Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy, all of which I’ve been wanting to read. (Eclectic, that’s me.) The boy begins showing evidence of a cold.

Saturday: Errands, mainly going out to pick up a gift certificate for Jeff and Pasley’s eleventh wedding anniversary, and prep for the family dinner. The big event of the day is the boy’s family birthday party. This is kind of blurry for me, as I was low on energy and doing stuff, but it went well. Everyone arrived around four, was served a drink, and the boy opened his presents. We were somewhat shocked to watch him tear one open then another and another without pausing to appreciate what was inside, which is most unlike him. We suspect an unintentionally misleading gift bag with a large WALL*E on it, which led him to think there was a large WALL*E toy he’s been coveting inside, so when he found clothes he kind of rifled through them and then turned to the next large thing, expecting to find it. Once everything was open he did go back to each gift one by one to explore it, though. There was a simple Millennium Falcon kit, a bug terrarium, new Lego, and Transformers, which wowed him thoroughly. He got me to open them right away, and grabbed Bumblebee from my hands. I said, “Just a second, I’ll show you how to…” and didn’t bother to finish because the four year old who’s never seen a Transformer before went flip-flip-flip and transformed it from car to robot in no time flat, then back again. (HRH and I = very proud. Also, go us for choosing a cool toy.)

Dinner was excellent: wet-brined home-cut pork chops glazed with a Dijon/maple syrup/beef bouillon glaze, and grilled vegetables, preceded by various seafood hors d’oeuvres courtesy of our mothers, and followed by a chocolate cake with vanilla icing, upon which the boy had scattered sugar dinosaurs. There was a lot of wine consumed. The boy went to bed around nine, two hours later than usual. Yikes.

Sunday: I slept horribly and woke up thoroughly ill. The boy and HRH made the Millennium Falcon while I tried to get some more sleep. We met Mum and Dad at their motel and headed over to Ceri and Scott’s house, because Mum was giving Ceri her old spinning wheel for the sunroom. (An antique great or walking wheel, for those who are interested and wondering why I didn’t jump on it; it’s technically functional, but it’s a Saxony style and I have no room for it, and I’m looking for a modern compact castle-style wheel.) The medication I took for the cold started kicking in and I don’t remember much about the visit other than it was sunny and we were outside for most of it. We stopped at La Belle Province and had hot dogs and french fries for lunch, then went back home and the boy conked out for two hours straight. Mum and Dad joined us later and we had a very pleasant visit. Once the boy was up things moved outside, and I was so out of it I couldn’t drag myself out after them all; I lay down and read. My parents left early, and HRH fed the boy while I went to bed. We ended up having to cancel our late dinner out with friends, because I was non-functional. (I remember hearing HRH call to cancel, and him using the phrase “she has a bit of a cold” and being annoyed, because “she can’t get out of bed” would have been more honest and made the cancellation sound less wishy-washy.

Monday: The boy stayed home from preschool as his cough wasn’t completely gone, thereby annihilating one of my precious work days this week. We got out to wander around and tried to do errands, but were thwarted by lack of stock. I was still dragging myself around with low energy, and cancelled my bi-weekly anime night with Marc. HRH and I ended up watching TV together after the boy went to bed, a very pleasant thing indeed as (a) I don’t get to spend a lot of time alone with HRH these days, (b) I don’t watch TV much but I was curiously in the mood for it last night, and (c) both House and Bones were on back to back, the only two shows I’m even remotely interested in these days, and I had seen neither of the episodes.

Today: Cold mostly gone. Dark and cold and rainy outside. An hour of cello. Baking bread.

And now, to work.

In Which She Drags Herself From Bed

The Weekend Roundup will be late, Gentle Readers. The boy woke up Friday morning with a terrible cold, which he generously shared with me. We were okay for the first birthday celebration of three or four on Saturday, but I was knocked off my game on Sunday, my parents left early, and we cancelled our evening out due to me not being able to stand up straight thanks to a combination of the evil sinus cold and the evil medication I took for it. I was in bed at five-thirty and didn’t get up till seven this morning.

The boy is home with me today because his cough isn’t completely gone, so don’t expect to hear from me overmuch.

The weekend summary: Wonderful in every respect but for the health thing and associated fallout.

Have a good day, everyone.

Meandering

I understand now why I’ve been avoiding doing a second draft of Orchestrated. I have to rework the beginning, and I don’t know how to step into it properly. I’m doing a lot of staring at the renamed document on the monitor, the printout in front of me, and feeling like I’m going nowhere.

In other news, there are four more rehearsal till the Canada Day concert, one of which I will be missing as we’re out of town. I need to work on the speed of the Grieg dances, and to smooth out the shifts of the Ralph Vaughn Williams and the Faure Pavane. But really, that’s it. We’re coming together. So long as everyone keeps up their end of the practise-at-home bargain, we’ll be golden. Gods, I love the Vaughn Williams. But that’s just me; I like RVW to begin with. The cellos get to do a lovely stompy theme in the first movement, and a nice lyrical theme in the second. And because I know the piece well, I can play it better.

HRH cleaned out the garage and sorted things into give away/sell/donate piles, and reorganized the storage area. We can all get to the bikes now. I went through the piles of clothing to donate to the local charities. It’s good to have all that out of the way. It was getting very frustrating not being able to find things down there, or easily access the things we needed. I finally saw the water/mold damage to my lovely thick white office carpet Blade gave me as a birthday gift a few years ago, and it’s awful; it was rolled up with one end resting on the floor and got soaked one day. Just one of the irritating reminders of the past downstairs tenant whose washer leaked regularly, flooding the garage floor (and yet she insisted nothing was wrong, argh). I’m pretty sure a thorough steam cleaning will rescue it, and as the upstairs furniture needs that kind of cleaning too we shall rent one of those special vacuums from the grocery store and go to town one day.

Things are ramping up in the family for the boy’s series of birthday celebrations. This Saturday it’s the family thing, with my parents coming in from out of town to join the local grandparents here. Next Wednesday we’ll send cake and possibly balloons to preschool. Thursday is the day itself, and if the weather’s good we may abscond with the boy and take him to the train museum and lunch out. Then next Saturday is the kid party. That’s two cakes and a batch of cupcakes to make, which also means a lot of icing. I hope butter’s on sale somewhere. We asked him what kind of theme he wanted this year, and it wavered between Star Wars and superheroes for a while, before settling on superheroes. Not that we go deep into the theme thing, we just like to have a loose thing to tie colours and cake and invitations together. This is the first year I haven’t done homemade invitations, which makes me slightly sad, but there’s that whole not having colour ink for the printer and money being tight. (Till, well, today, but today would have been too late for the invitations.) It was less expensive to buy them.

I have just discovered Amanda Palmer. I am, as usual, late to the party. I knew about her, but hadn’t actually heard her music till today. I’m currently listening to Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and it’s excellent. Not something one can just throw in the CD player; it’s a very specific sort of music. But very good. Lovely sting arrangements.

HRH got his provincial tax refund today, which means mine is close behind. Hurrah!

Mailbox Joy!

Not one, but two cheques for freelance jobs! I wasn’t expecting the second one for another three months, and while it’s tiny, it’s good for a dinner out. Must rush to the bank to deposit them, as the Canadian dollar continues to gain strength against the USD and I don’t want to end up losing money on them. Also, well, hey; it’s money. And it does me no good as little pieces of paper on my desk.

Right; back to the freelance assignment that I started this morning. I want it done by the end of the work day. It’s short, although that’s never an accurate indicator of how much work it will require.

Weekend Roundup

Okay, who allowed this June thing? And why is it still going down to something like five degrees at night? Hello, late spring: We would just like to remind you that summer is twenty-one days away, and if you want to get any love you’d better start warming up to us.

As previously noted, on Friday afternoon after his nap we took the boy to see his first movie in a theatre. We really managed to arrange the best combination of circumstances: the perfect time of day, the perfect film, the perfect age. Go us! We sat in the very back row in case we needed to make a quick exit; he sat on a booster seat and we shared a little kid’s combo of popcorn and the tiny bag of Twizzlers that came with it. He didn’t talk a lot, only made the occasional comment, but he laughed and gasped and said, “That’s silly!” and such things at the appropriate moments. He got slightly upset at something at one point and started to whimper a bit, so I told him that it was all right, that it was just a movie and part of the story, and held his hand. Afterwords he whispered, “Thank you for holding my hand, Mama.” The majority of comments were heartfelt bursts of, “I love you, Mama!” which is shorthand for “I’m having an awesome time!”Up will never be my favourite Pixar film (I honestly can’t say what is at the moment) but they stayed true to their story and their characters, and the execution was as beautiful as it always is. Also, I cried about five or six times; it was very well-told.

Friday night I had my first post-recital cello lesson, where my teacher told me how impressed she’d been with my bow control and intonation. We looked at the current Suzuki 2 piece I’m reviewing, and I get the feeling she thinks I’m going to be done my book 2 review by the end of the month, which just so happens to be the end of her teaching year. We talked about setting up a review plan for the summer and basic prep work for book 3 in the fall. She also reminded me that I take good notes, and to review them regularly to remind myself about pronating hands and dropping shoulders and elbow angles. I feel a bit less panicked about two months without structure now. We finished by looking at some of the tricky passages in the orchestra music, and I’d done very acceptable fingerings for most of it, only really changing one. Was rather proud of that. I must be learning or something.

On Saturday Ceri took me to a spinning workshop as an early birthday present. We sat in the sun on comfy couches and chairs at Ariadne, and learnt about fibre and how to draft and how to use a drop spindle. The instructor looked at us all and said, “Hmm, well, I guess I’ll demonstrate how to use a wheel once we’ve covered plying, because you’ve all caught onto this really quickly and we’ll have the time.” My major problems are connecting a new draft to the draft that’s being spun (my joins come out lumpy); drafting evenly enough so that my resulting yarn is even; and keeping the spindle going with just a single twist of the fingers. I know there’s a technique where one taps the whorl that keeps it going, but we were parking it while we fed the twist up the draft. It was exciting in a relaxing sort of way, if that makes any sense. I demonstrated when we got home, and the boys were duly impressed. Wrapping the single for plying was just as annoying as it had been in the workshop, though. HRH: “Could you… knit with that?” Me: “I could go get needles and do it RIGHT NOW.”

But I didn’t.

Ultimately I’d like to spin enough to string my loom (note to self: using the loom will work better if you have a shuttle and a heddle hook) and make something. As I was falling asleep that night I thought it would be really nice if I could make something for my mother using yarn I’d spun myself and woven on the loom. Evidently there’s still an eager first-grader inside me, sticking macaroni to a tin can and spray-painting it gold to give to her on Mother’s Day. Why do I have such expensive hobbies? I think I’m a relatively simple creature, but I end up playing the cello and spinning. I need to sell another book just to supply myself with accessories and raw material.

Sunday was the multi-family outing to the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. The Zouak family had to bow out, as poor ADZO is still recovering from an appendectomy, but everyone else was still on board. Google lied through its virtual teeth when it said it would take just under three hours to get there. It took us two hours, and we ended up knocking about the museum lobby and lunchroom for forty-five minutes waiting for the others. The drive there was wonderful, one of those early summer mornings where all the colours are extra-vivid. The boy was very patient (as patient as someone on the threshold of four years old can be) and was overjoyed when the rest of the party arrived. The museum is half closed, as they’re undergoing extensive renovation, but the holdings that were on display were terrific. Lots of dinosaur bones from Canada, and great life-sized models. The other floors were mammals and birds, all very interesting. There’s some great interactive stuff presented on touch screens, which thrilled the boy because buttons and dials and such are always Very Cool. He’s still at the “what’s around the next corner” stage, which is hard to control when the rest of your party is taking the time to really look at the exhibits, but once we got to the higher floors he started focusing better. It’s a quite remarkable museum, and it was all brilliant enough that we decided we’d be going back next spring once the renovation was complete. We enjoyed our packed lunches in the lunchroom, and we left just after one o’clock for the trip home, knowing the boy, although apparently fine, would very soon reach saturation level. The drive home was not as nice, with dramatic pressure changes back and forth, storm fronts all around, and really dreadful wind.

Overall it was a wonderful weekend. Now, back to work. The anthology galleys are due back tomorrow, and I want to finish a second pass on them. I have a new freelance assignment that’s due on Friday, too (blessedly short). And I came up with two story ideas on the trip to the museum yesterday that I want to noodle about with. One is courtesy of something Liam said while reading a book in the back seat, so I think I will write it for him. It’s going to end up being a short chapter book, possibly for the eight to ten age range. We shall see. It’s quite nebulous at this point.