Category Archives: Diary

Also, Good Things

Because I should note these things for my records:

Gas is currently priced at 88 point something cents per litre, which is a full fifty cents below the high it hit this past summer. I honestly never thought we’d see it below a dollar again. (The ninety-nine point whatever cents it was sitting at does not truly qualify as under a dollar.)

And today is an incredibly beautiful Indian Summer day, warm and sunny and still. Heavenly. We’ve had highs in the double digits for the past three days.

Oh, let’s add a few more thing to be thankful for and call this a Blessings post:

The bow hold and the leading with the elbow thing last night at orchestra. Look, I can be taught! (The mess I made of the Vivaldi? Not so good. Ditto on the scale runs in the Haydn. But you know, that can be easily remedied by the thing called Practise. I just need to remember that there is Orchestra Stuff to Practise as well as Lesson Stuff.)

Sleep. Sleep is good. So is my son calling “RISE AND SHINE!” from the living room when I’d gone back to bed to snuggle with Nixie and, erm, had fallen fast asleep again. Oops. Extra sleep, kitten cuddles, a conscientious son. All good things.

There was no one on the roads this morning. No one. I wonder where everyone was.

Did groceries, got lots of meat and such for a decent price. Treated myself to a bag of chips.

Now, to work.

Doctor’s Report

Yay, I am doing just fine, thank you! So fine that we’re going to try lowering the dosage of the fibro meds again.

Also, those headaches? The ones in the front are almost certainly sinus headaches, due to congestion. “But I’m not congested,” I said. “You are,” she said with a smile, “I can hear it in your voice. Congested sinuses have nothing to do with breathing. Your voice sounds different because it usually resonates in the sinus chambers, which are more full than they should be. You’re allergic to a lot of stuff. This time of year there’s still a lot of ragweed and leaf mold and it won’t go away until we’ve got a good blanket of snow on the ground. Take an allergy pill in the morning and see if it gets better.”

Oh. Huh. Right. I forgot about that allergy thing. And the headaches at the back on the right? I figured they were tension headaches, and she nodded. “Do you do a lot of computer work?” she asked and then kind of laughed because she remembered that it’s pretty much all I do. And then something occurred to me. “I just started cello lessons again, and my teacher has me…” I sat forward and positioned my shoulders and bow arm properly, and immediately felt the muscle just behind my right shoulder aching a bit as it settled into the place we’re training it to go. “Aaaaaand…. it’s right there. Never mind, I just figured it out.” We laughed again. Nice to recognize what’s going on in one’s own body. Good thing I hadn’t made the appointment just for that. Also good to know that once the muscles are used to the new position the headaches will fade away.

I’ve got a flu shot scheduled this Saturday with the boy, too.

Now to go get myself an allergy pill, make lunch, and maybe write for an hour before I have to get ready for my lesson. And this time, I will be Mentally and Emotionally Prepared for traffic. I will take the 40 est and the 13 sud come what may instead of avoiding them, and stay on the damn highway 20 est until the St-Pierre exit, since experience has shown me that going around the other way (Lakeshore into LaSalle) is just as congested with traffic and construction. I will make sure to have very good music in the car’s CD player. The rice has already been made for supper, and the pork tenderloin is slow-cooking with barbecue sauce. The caregiver has reassured me that a few minutes late isn’t a huge deal. I’m good.

Orchestrated Update

Took the morning and the first half of the afternoon off. Did me good, too. Took those Tylenol and lay down for an hour. Played a lot of cello, finished reading a book. Made dinner and didn’t screw it up.

Orchestrated:
New words today: 1,776
Total word count, Orchestrated: 34,683

And evidently wrote, too. Yay me.

*Squint*

I think I may actually be getting a handle on this new bow hold thing. No pun intended, but if you like it, it’s yours. The proper bow hold works quite well with the drawing-from-the-elbow thing. Who’d’ve thought? Let’s see if we can actually demonstrate it at tomorrow’s lesson.

These more-on-again-than-off-again remarkably bad headaches are going to be the first thing I talk to my doctor about at my appointment tomorrow morning. Because, seriously? No fun. If they were all in the same area I’d be extremely concerned, but they migrate all over the damn place. Today it’s the sinus areas in the forehead and inner eye/nose area. I’m going to go torpedo it with Tylenol and lie down for a while.

House was in fact on last night, although it was a repeat. It was a repeat of one I hadn’t seen, so all was well. And The Tudors was also on, although we started flipping to ABC and Jon Stewart during the commercial breaks to watch the pretty blue states pop up on the US electoral map. Saw McCain’s very graceful concession speech, but couldn’t stay awake long enough to watch Obama’s victory address, which was by all accounts pretty impressive. Reading it for myself this morning confirmed it.

Yeah, it’s lie-down time. The monitor’s doing nothing good for the headache. And although the lovely, lovely sun outside is, glorious, it’s not helping the headache either.

What I Read This October

Kushiel’s Mercy by Jacqueline Carey
How To Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
The Sisters Grimm 1: The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley
Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke
Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand (reread)
The Comfort of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander McCall Smith
Cassandra and Jane by Jill Pitkeathley
Cupcake by Rachel Cohn
Exploring the Northern Tradition by Galina Krasskova
Ravens of Avalon by Diana Paxson
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (reread)

Slow month.

Note To The PTB:

Yesterday was made of fail. I want it wiped from my mind and from the record in general, thanks. The only good points were scoring the cello case and my lesson. Oh, and the boy opening a thank-you gift from the Nightdemons family for the use of his baby swing and absolutely loving it. (Thank you!)

Seriously, I know that for a variety of reasons I must be stressed, but I didn’t need to combined total of two and a half hours in traffic. Especially when it made me late for both things I needed to be at on time. Especially not on top of the driving out into an area I’d never been, and through traffic there too earlier in the day. I cried in frustration so much yesterday at various times that I have the crying-hangover thing happening this morning.

Thanks go out to Pdaughter for keeping the boy an hour past her regular ‘closing time,’ for the hug, and the glass of cold water, and the rolls of Rockets; to HRH, who ordered Chinese food; to the boy himself for gently patting away my tears with a tissue and for his patience; and to Nightdemons for providing that little bit of gift joy when we finally got home last night.

I hate, hate, hate that after doing next to nothing all spring and summer, construction companies rip roads up just before winter, and more than they should at once in that final rush to get a Band-aid on the roads before the snow falls. I hate that there is no way to get wherever I need to go without encountering construction-based traffic on every alternate route I can think of, traffic made worse by people trying to avoid yet other construction. I would so be doing the public transportation thing if it wouldn’t take three times as long as a car trip and take three buses. Even with the traffic.

I am determined that today will be nothing but relaxed. And there is the boy’s first official Halloween excursion tonight to look forward to. Yesterday he was practising: “I knock on the door, and they open the door, and I say ‘trick or treat!’ and they give me… good luck.” Good luck? Whatever. I’m not going to correct him. The first time someone gives him candy his head is going to explode. Am I am so looking forward to seeing it.

Ups And Downs

I’ve dropped the boy off, gone to the bank (as usual, misjudging the amount I needed to withdraw so I have to go back again), done groceries, picked up ribbon, picked up dark transfer paper for HRH’s t-shirt, had brunch, and have just returned from a drive to Ahuntsic. That was certainly an adventure. Why GoogleMaps didn’t just tell me to go up the 15 to Henri-Bourassa, the street I needed to be on, I do not know. Instead I went all over the place in crazy circles and turns to get to L’Acadie. (Turns out there’s an exit for L’Acadie on the 15 too. Good grief.) Also, the Met is one of my least favourite highways to travel.

Anyway, in Ahuntsic I viewed and purchased a lovely light hard cello case. It is brown! With a grey interior! And it has backpack straps and good handles and a huge pocket for sheet music! I’m thrilled. It’s only about eight pounds, and since other hard cases boast about being light at 12 or 13 lbs, I’m feeling pretty smug. Don’t know the maker; there’s no identifying tag. The one drawback is that it doesn’t fit in the trunk. But it does fit across the back seat if I raise the armrests on the boy’s booster seat, so huzzah!

Yes, I’m pretty set case-wise forever now. Unless something happens to this hard case like happened to my first one, namely something punching a hole in the bottom while it was being shipped by train to Toronto.

I received what could very well be in the top ten worst pieces of news to receive this morning while dropping the boy off at the caregiver’s: Emru’s not doing well at all. I didn’t know this because I hadn’t been on-line since yesterday afternoon, and the news hit me like a physical blow. I had to surreptitiously reach out to brace myself against the door because everything started to go wobbly. I held it together for about half an hour, then found myself dissolving into tears in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. About two weeks ago it was the eighteenth anniversary of the unexpected death of one of my best friends, so this isn’t a great time of year for me to begin with. And like that friend, Emru’s classified as one of the best among us, and while I wouldn’t wish leukaemia on anyone it seems beyond unfair that it should take threaten to take someone as all-round good a person as Emru is. I cannot begin to imagine how his family must feel.

So. On top of all the racing around and emotional stuff going on today, I’m having what I used to call a flopsy day, which I now understand is a bad fibro day: muscles lacking strength to handle fine motor stuff and even some of the mid-range motor stuff. I can’t speak French to save my life today; my tongue and my lips won’t form the proper shapes required. I can’t hold a pencil or write properly, either. I’m mildly concerned about my lesson, but I’ll let my teacher know the situation. Looking back I see that this began yesterday, which partially explains the awful, awful showing I made of a stupidly easy passage in a Brahms Hungarian dance last night (when, naturally, the celli were playing alone to work the passage). On the plus side, my bow hold was more like the new one and less like the old one, and evidently I was bowing in some sort of proper form because the large muscles on the right side of my back were sore when I got home (the soreness was not the good part, the good part was that to get them sore I had been using them, which I was supposed to be doing).

Food now, then packing for the lesson, then resting a bit, then to the lesson I go. I’m worried about getting from the lesson, which ends at five in Pointe-Claire, to the caregiver’s, which is in Montreal West. Traffic is going to be awful. If this doesn’t work I’ll need to find another time slot, and finding this one was hard enough what with having the car and no small person to care for only once a week.

Right. Let’s get on that, then.