Category Archives: Cello

Wednesday Log

We suffered another crushing disappointment today, the second in two weeks (and much worse than the first), so yeah, not so much with the productivity. I wish I had more energy to deal with the waves that life’s throwing at us.

In the meantime, today I:

– updated househunt spreadsheet
– researched more houses
– beta-read awesome spy story
– wove a bunch of blanket (didn’t measure, but it was at least a foot)
– scoured the oven (like scrubbing the bathtub, this knocked me out for a couple of hours)
– spun the rest of Jan’s fibre (I will ply it later this week)
– practised
– put aside the new freelance assignment till tomorrow, because I was in no way capable to wrapping my mind around it

The honeysuckle is just beginning to blossom, and the clematis is a day or so behind it. And the buds on my rosebushes are starting to open, too. The backyard is going to be spectacular for the boy’s birthday.

In an effort to cheer myself up I dragged the spinning wheel outside, changed into a halter top and my short jean skirt, and spun on the back porch in the sun while listening to my iPod. It was nice. Except now one of my arms and shoulders is sunburned, while the other is not.

I pulled my wooden cello bow out yesterday, the one with the cracked frog that I retired because I was afraid it was going to break. I’ve been using the fibreglass one that came with the 7/8 instead. I played with it all afternoon and really liked the feel of it; everything was easier. Then on a whim I pulled out the scale I bought to weigh fibre, and holy cow: my wooden one weighs 71 grams, while my fibreglass one weighs a whopping 83 grams. I used my fibreglass one today and it felt like I was sawing at the cello; I switched to the wooden one at the end and it danced. So I’m taking the wooden one out of retirement, and I intend to use it until the frog disintegrates.

Tuesday Log

Today my accomplishments included:

– business calls
– wove five inches of a new blanket
– did the programme notes
– translated the programme notes
– edited the recital programme
– practised for fifteen minutes (better than nothing)
– went out to buy the boy’s birthday present and some decorations for the party this weekend
– practised for another seventy-five minutes (trying to get the runs in the first movement of the Mendelssohn up to speed; working the pretty singing cello we’ve-got-the-theme moments of the second… in other words, going from first to seventh position, whee; plus my solo for the recital, and all my recital ensemble stuff)

Things that helped: Ceri has been sending me periodic e-mails reminding me to fret, which always makes me laugh. I acquired a Tolberone bar while out shopping for the boy’s gifts, and that also made the day happier.

Things that did not help: My first Quiznos experience. Yes, sandwich boy, I really do want a small ham and cheese on brown, with no spreads or sauces, and only lettuce. Asking me three times in disbelief doesn’t mean I have a low IQ or a communication problem, and your tone was, frankly, rather insulting. I’m the customer; I know what I want, and what I want is a sandwich not dripping with the excessive glop sandwich-makers pour over it. Just because I don’t want you to drown it in crap doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Also, I didn’t want it toasted, and you didn’t ask; you just threw it in the oven. So you failed mightily in securing a return customer: instead you ensured that I will never walk into one of your franchises again.

On the schedule for tonight: Remembering to breathe.

Weekend Roundup

Yet another insane weekend. Househunting is incredibly draining.

Friday afternoon the boy and I dropped HRH off to install gyproc while we ran errands, had ice cream, and visited our local LYS so I could spend my Mother’s Day gift certificate. I came home with a selection of some lovely fibre and a couple of little knitting tools (because you know I knit so much). Upon return I discovered that I’d mis-programmed the timer on the bread machine so the pizza dough was only just starting to mix, which meant that the dinner I’d planned was shot. I was about to defrost some hamburger meat and make spaghetti sauce when HRH suggested ordering pizza instead because we were pressed for time, and I gave in. As we were putting our shoes on to go to that night’s game HRH listened to the two message on the phone and we discovered that the game had been cancelled, which made both of us rather cranky. We ended up watching another three episodes of Chuck with Blade, who had come down stairs to be the Designated Responsible Adult On Site while we were out.

Saturday was a solid list of house viewings. Anyone who’s done this knows how exhausting it is. We got back around three-thirty and HRH did a whirlwind housecleaning while we waited for his parents to arrive, as they were babysitting the boy while we had an actual date night out. They arrived later than planned, so we pretty much ran out of the house. Dinner itself was lovely, delicious Italian eaten in the company of Ceri and Scott. The plan was to go see the new Prince of Persia film afterwards, but when we got to the theatre they were on the verge of selling out, so we all looked at one another and decided to go have dessert instead. We toyed with the idea of playing Rock Band, too, but we were pretty much all exhausted and went home.

Sunday morning the boy woke us up at five-fifteen for some reason. I left the house at 8:30 for a cello lesson at 9:00, followed by a two-hour group rehearsal at 10:00. I then raced home, picked up the boys, and we went househunting again. I ended up spending an awful lot of time outside in the cold rain, what with getting the boy to run around to keep him busy and working off steam and inspecting exteriors. It was longer than we expected, and on the way back into town we debated whether or not to attend the Preston-LeBlanc singalong that was about to begin. None of us were really in the mood: we were cold and wet, we weren’t dressed for it, I hadn’t had the time to buy the ingredients for the dish I had promised to bring let alone cook it, and we were all exhausted. But it was important that we at least make an appearance, empty-handed though it was, and I’m glad we did because a whole slew of other people cancelled. When we arrived I was wrapped in a warm pashmina and given hot tea to counter the cold chill I couldn’t shake, and after some nibblies we all felt much better, and we ended up staying two and a half hours instead of only half of one.

Both the boy and I had hot baths when we got home, and he fell asleep about five minutes after we tucked him in.

Weekend Roundup

Busy end to a busy week. Gah.

The kindergarten orientation went brilliantly on Friday; when the boy’s name was called he hopped up and trotted out of the library to get his nametag and wait in line without even looking back. There is another boy in his class with his full name, and one with his nickname, so things should be very interesting. (There are also two Scotts, a fact the boy finds very interesting. He thinks it’s fun that someone else shares his name(s), too). If the stars align he shall have one of his old preschool educators as his teacher, although the second kindergarten teacher is very nice as well.

We enjoyed our own school tour, and our orientation sessions about school life and rules and such. Looks like HRH may join the parent committee that handles things like planning events and upkeep and such things, and I will likely volunteer at the library one day a week. Every single teacher and administrator we met was cheerful and open, and the school had a wonderful vibe to it. We’ve made the right choice. We eventually met the boy in a kindergarten room where he showed us all sorts of things with great excitement, like building toys in bins and caterpillars in little containers that the current kindergarten kids were studying.

After that we walked the boy back to preschool and I went to run errands and set up in a coffee shop to handle the interview questions that I’d been poking at for a couple of weeks, and HRH went back to work. He picked me up a couple of hours later and we went back to preschool for the boy’s play, which was hilarious. The educators and kids did a fabulous job on the sets, the costumes (that parents helped with those), and their lines. The kids were all animals on a farm, and the boy was the billy goat. Then we all had a feast of classic summer backyard picnic foods, and I wish we could have stayed longer.

My cello lesson went really well, something that surprised me. Apparently the key is to be exhausted, because then you don’t overthink or tense up.

Saturday morning we went out and got the boy new sandals (these are size 11, his old ones from last year were size 7, what are we feeding him?) and shorts, picked up groceries, and hit the library for some books on trains — no, robots — no, spaceships! — and I collected the pile of reserves i had waiting for me. That afternoon I had a group cello rehearsal where everyone was finally in the same place and we played through pieces we’d never really rehearsed before. I wasn’t as on as I’d been the night before.

Going to see the weavers at the cultural rendez-vous in Pointe-Claire over the weekend did indeed get dropped, as did the boy’s monthly pagan playgroup meeting on Sunday morning because we were scheduled to go to another series of house viewings. The last one we saw was hard to pull ourselves away from: it was all polished glowing wood inside, just like an old cottage or farmhouse, with an exquisite new kitchen and bathroom, with two bedrooms upstairs under a peaked roof that had painted wooden floors, one of which could easily be split into two for two smaller bedrooms. But it just wasn’t big enough; we really need a basement and somewhere for my office, and this house had neither. Well, it had a basement, but I felt like I had to duck, and HRH could barely fit through the door to the very awkward stairs down. It would have been storage and nothing else. In fact, the last time HRH went down he cracked his head really badly. Later he joked that it was the house slapping him and saying, “I’m all wrong for you!” It’s sad when you really love a house but can’t do anything about it because you’d need to severely alter it just to live there.

When we got home I had to scurry off yet again for a cello rehearsal, this one a private accompaniment rehearsal. And while my first go was rocky in the intonation area, I adjusted my endpin, played through it twice more, and declared myself rather happy with things, somewhat to my and my teacher’s surprise. I think playing this piece with the piano accompaniment is easier, somehow; it gives me something on which to to hang the cello line.

HRH and I started watching the first season of Chuck this weekend, which we are enjoying immensely. I had no idea HRH had borrowed it, but I am hoping we can borrow more.

Monday I finished polishing the interview as I planned, even though I discovered to my chagrin that it had been due on the Friday, not the Monday as I’d plugged into my calendar and schedule. The interviewer sent a polite note asking if I wanted to reschedule as I was finishing up, and I felt like an idiot for my error. But It got done, and handed in, and I received another request for an interview that day for a different source, due in three weeks.

And finally, Monday late afternoon and evening I finished warping the loom that has been languishing in various in-between stages for the past few weeks. Hurrah!

Stuff

How’s that for an inspired post title? That’s pretty much where I’m at.

It’s been a remarkably awful week. Not in terms of bad things happening, but in terms of not having enough time to do everything that needs to get done, and the literal (oh, how I wish it were figurative) nigh-incapacitating headache I’ve been fighting since Monday morning. My schedule is insane, and the insanity continues through to next Monday. I owe people stuff like replies to e-mail and uploaded writing and it’s just not happening. I’m writing this post to cover a lot of what otherwise would be a series of “I can’t respond due to workload,” the number of which would take up more time than the post itself. Essentially, I’ve been miserable and stressed, and it’s been building for a while (this week has just been the final-straw kind of thing) to the point that I am almost 90% sure I’m going to contact my doctor and talk about going back on medication, a decision that upsets a couple of other life choices, which in turn stresses me. (No, there is no winning in this situation, and it sucks. And no, I’m not convinced it should be the fibro meds, either.)

I may go back and do a proper weekend roundup (I’d like to, as there were a couple of things I’d like to write out for posterity) but in brief, it was lovely Victoria Day weekend with my parents in which the boy learned how to climb a tree (with help; he got out on his own quite handily, though, and no, that does not mean he fell). I picked up a refurbished Airport wireless card for the iBook I have on semi-permanent loan, so now I have a laptop that can access wifi, for which I am truly thankful. I was testing t!’s Asus eee, and while it’s okay, it’s a tad too small for me (scrolling back and forth to see a full display of a browser or word processing window is Not On) and runs so hot that it hurts my lap. If I were to get a netbook I’d go for one that has a 10″ screen instead of the smaller 7.5″. If this iBook ever gets recalled to its rightful owner, then I’ll just pull the $20 card and there’s no great loss.

We hit the ground running at home on Tuesday. I had a freelance thing I needed to have done by Thursday at noon, which looks great on paper, but Wednesday was a complete write-off due to errands, travel time, and house hunting. And even with Wednesday struck off the workday list, I would have been able to finish it by noon on Thursday if I hadn’t found a tumour-like object on Nixie’s stomach that was large enough and sudden enough to merit an emergency trip to the vet Thursday morning. (Thanks for cranking that stress up some more, there, universe.) That vet visit turned out to be a great relief, as the vet has pronounced it a non-infected mammary cyst that needs removal, but is fairly certain it isn’t cancerous. We’ll schedule surgery for her next week.

I got a few hours of extension for the assignment thanks to the emergency vet visit, and I had just as much trouble with this one as I’ve had with others recently. I think part of that has to do with how I’m second-guessing everything I write in the evaluation thanks to criticism, and while I know I’ve got great support for my recommendations I’m worried it will come back to me for major rewrites as the others have done, for tone if nothing else, even though I did what I could. I have other pro bono freelance things on my plate; there’s two pages of questions I need to answer for an interview with an e-zine, due May 31, and they’re insane. Each question is actually four jammed together. I’m going to have to pick and choose what to reply to, because otherwise it’s going to take about three solid days of work that I didn’t have time for before, and I certainly don’t now. Last week it was decided to do programme notes for the Canada Day concert, too, a decision I fully support because we’re playing an original piece composed by our conductor and artistic director that deserves notes (thank goodness they already exist), but that means I need to fit writing those in somewhere, too. The original due date was June 1, but the manager told me that I could have an extension, bless her.

This weekend is cello-intensive. I have a lesson tonight, a group rehearsal tomorrow afternoon, and a piano rehearsal with my accompanist tomorrow afternoon. This weekend we also really need to fit in a grocery order, buying new sandals for the boy (whose toes are peeking out last season’s, and half his shorts are too small with the other half being too big so I should buy a couple of pairs of those, too), and Pointe-Claire is having their twice-yearly Cultural Rendezvous where the weaving guild is hosting an open house type of thing, and I promised I’d stop by at some point to meet them and tour the guild room. That may be what falls off the schedule, alas, because we have house visits scheduled on Sunday late morning/early afternoon, which also means the boy will be missing his monthly pagan playgroup meeting.

We had our first round of house viewing on Wednesday, and it was… interesting. We love our agent. What I do not love is the fact that you have to go into every house looking for the bad stuff. The third and final house we saw Wednesday afternoon was very close to a Yes, except for the fact that it was close to the Louis-Hippolyte bridge, and I am so very tired of living near bridges and highways; I want something more quiet. That and the fact that the company next door built too close to their property line and as a result has annexed a chunk of the middle of the house’s back yard in order to have their code-required-15-foot-clearance around their emergency exit meant we crossed it off our list, which saddened us, because otherwise it was brilliant: solid construction, fabulous new kitchen, excellent-sized rooms with new windows, new roof, good layout, huge yard (except for that annex) and a full-height unfinished basement. Properties are cycling fast, so good ones will continue to pop up, though.

I tried to install the secondhand Airport Express last night, which failed miserably because neither it nor my computer sense one another as wireless devices, even though my computer is firmly under the impression that it has a wireless network set up. I picked it up with the intention of streaming my computer music to the living room stereo, but I gave up on it after an hour of trying to get it to work before I broke something, and installed the printer instead. That, thank goodness, worked. Yes, I ditched my failing-and-not-fully-functional HP Photosmart that lost the ability to scan when I switched to Mac a year ago, and whose ability to do straight printing degraded so badly that I banished it. (No great loss; I found the bill for it and I paid $50 for it on sale three years ago, so it had a decent run for the money.) We bought a new Canon MP560, which works like a dreamy charm with no hissy fits. HP and Apple had a weird sort of ‘nyah-nyah-can’t-hear-you’ thing with the all-in-one printers, where each claimed the other was responsible for creating new drivers so the all-in-ones would work properly with Macs. Every single HP product I have had has failed in some way, so I am more than happy to ditch them and start dating Canon. HP, we are breaking up for good and I will never, ever buy another one of your products. Go cry into your beer with Sony over there. In researching a new printer I discovered that Canons have a really good reputation for being Mac-compatible; in fact, Apple sells them in their online Apple store, which says a lot to me. So we picked one up last week on mega-special, and after testing it this morning I am very, very pleased indeed. I even love the bundled software, which is wildly unusual for me.

We had a ridiculous mini-heatwave this week that killed my appetite and energy levels. My sleep has been broken, which hasn’t helped the general state of things. I am, however, astonished at what I’ve been able to pull off so far this week. I will probably pay for it in spades next week.

I haven’t had time or energy to write, or warp the loom. I got half an hour of cello done Wednesday morning, but that’s it.

Today’s schedule:

– I am currently baking bread and muffins for tonight’s preschool potluck picnic
– get at least one load of laundry in (I have no idea when we’ll get the rest done)
– take bus+metro to the south shore to meet HRH (11:00), and to pick up my laptop that he took into work (I can’t carry that plus all the baked goods)
– head over to preschool to pick the boy up after his lunch, drop off baked goods (12:45)
– kindergarten orientation (1:00-2:30)
– take boy back to preschool (2:45)
– drop HRH back at work; go to office supply shop, then a Second Cup with the laptop to work on those interview questions (3:00-4:30)
– pick HRH up from work :94:45)
– go to preschool for the boy’s play (5:00)
– potluck picnic with kids and parents (5:30-6:30)
– take HRH and boy home, pick up cello
– cello lesson (8:00)

I should probably schedule in “pass out,” but I suspect that will happen regardless. Either that or I’ll lie awake for hours, like I did earlier this week.

Treading Water

I’ve been having trouble recently trying to keep up with things and not sink under a general miasma of depression. There’s great stuff happening — the pre-approved mortgage which now allows us to act on the listings we’ve been researching for the past year, I’m writing again (baby steps, baby steps), great weather — but I’m struggling with the good old self-worth issue again. I’m dealing with a lot of general pain and achyness, my back is screwed up again, sleep is back to the waking-up-a-lot-and-not-hitting-deep-enough-cycles, and I seem to be saying, “Is [insert goal or activity here] worth it?” a lot more than usual.

Cello is currently freaking me out. Not only is there a lot of pressure at orchestra with new music that’s pushing us past our comfort zone again, but my teacher’s studio year-end recital is coming up and I’m uncomfortable with the lack of prep on the ensemble pieces. This isn’t necessarily me; a lot of people have missed the group classes for various reasons, and so our group pieces are all over the place. There’s that whole obstacle of the opening two notes of my solo piece which isn’t helping. Overall, it’s the pile of work that’s making me freeze like a deer in the headlights. It doesn’t help that when I do work on stuff, especially for orchestra, it doesn’t seem to matter or make a difference.

Most of my freelance assignments are coming back with requests for tweaks or rewrites, which isn’t helping my self-confidence at all. Monday I was ready to chuck it all and just spin yarn to sell on Etsy or something, because I obviously couldn’t handle my job, as light as it is. Rather surprisingly for me, I was proactive and wrote an e-mail to the coordinator I’ve been working with the longest and pointed out that I was getting a lot of revisions, and what could I be doing better? Her response was reassuring: I had been really strong for a couple of years, but had lately been developing a weirdness concerning one particular part of the manuscript evaluations I do, and she pinpointed it for me. I’d successfully addressed the not-positive-enough problem that had popped up in my work earlier, which was good to hear, but part of what had made me ready to give it all up on Monday was a criticism that I was being too positive now. (This has happened before; I’ve been corrected on a couple of things and applied them to the next few assignments, only to have my corrections pointed out as incorrect for a different reason. Frustrating, but all valid.) We talked about the new problematic issue and it was somewhat of a relief to hear that she didn’t know how to fix it either. A solution would have been nice, but both of us brainstormed a bit, and we’re trying a couple of different techniques to see if we can adjust things. I came away from it feeling a lot better, or at least I wasn’t writing up a resignation letter in my head any more, convinced that they were about to fire me.

I got two inches cut off my hair last week, which helped somewhat. Now when I look in the mirror I’m not cranky. I went to the salon around the corner that I’d tried just after the boy had been born; I’d felt neutral about it then, and still do, but it’s thirty dollars less than the salon that the stylist I’d been seeing for the past three or four years moved to. What she was charging at her last salon was pushing my budget; the new place made it impossible for me.

I spun two ounces of BFL in a pretty purply colourway; it’s one of the Fleece Artist braids that I picked up in Mahone Bay last summer, and reminds me very much of the colours inside a mussel shell, a couple of cooler purple shades with touches of pinky-browns and a bit of old rose-silver. It’s not quite long enough for what I’m aiming for, so I weighed out two ounces of tussah silk and started spinning that to ply with it. A handful in, I realised that the natural honey color of the tussah was lovely but was going to ruin the colour effect, so I messed about in the kitchen with my dyes and ended up with a truly gorgeous one of a kind colourway that will complement the BFL nicely:

It looks a bit muddy in the photo (silk doesn’t seem to photograph very well) but it’s got the same colours the BFL has, only sort of in reverse weight: mostly warm pinky-browns and blueish silver with the cool purple tone. I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to look like spun up and plied with the BFL, but I know it’s going to look beautiful:

I wrote 1200 words the other night, and five hundred yesterday before the boys came home and there was no hope of focusing. I think I’m going to have to draw up a schedule so I can check things like a half-hour of cello off, an hour of writing, some spinning or dyeing work, and block off time for whatever assignments come my way. Crossing things off a list make me feel much more secure regarding my time management. Last week I was attacked by naps pretty much every day, which didn’t help my productivity (but obviously rather important). So far this week I’ve avoided that, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to continue avoiding them if I’m not sleeping at night.

Weekend Roundup

It was a lovely weekend. It felt like it went on forever, such a nice change from wondering where the weekend went. The weather was spectacular, which helped a lot. Our windows were open all the time, and the scent of the lilacs from over the back fence is just heavenly. I’m enjoying it, even though I know it’s all two weeks early. Normally we’d be gardening in weather like this, but as we now have our official pre-approved mortgage and are looking for a house on the south shore this summer (yay!), we’re not planting annuals or doing the vegetable garden this year. The extent of our planting was scattering wildflower seed in the front and side gardens, and trimming the deadheads off the tulips.

First thing Saturday morning HRH and I went to get our passport photos taken. And wow, in this day and age of digital cameras, it’s five minutes and done. They even showed us the digital pictures and asked if they were okay. Then we went to the library for our new library cards, and the boy got his photo taken because it’s been two years since the last one, which is almost half a lifetime ago for him. (I got to keep mine, because I don’t change as rapidly as he does.) It’s been about six weeks since I’ve managed to get to the library, so I paid my lingering fine and grabbed a couple of new releases.

Saturday morning I had one of those cello lessons where I almost reached the point of tears because I couldn’t play an open D followed by an open A. Yes, you read that right. I hate the opening bar to pretty much any solo piece, and the Lully gavotte is no different. I’m too forceful, I’m lifting the bow, I’m not articulating properly, where’s the contact between bow and string at the tip of the bow… I could go on. Two stupidly easy notes, open strings. And yet I can’t do it properly.

While I was celloing HRH took the boy to the toy store so he could buy a Playmobil airplane with the sixty (!) dollars he’d saved up in his piggy bank. They picked me up from my lesson and we stopped over at Ceri and Scott’s place so they could sign our passport applications as guarantors and references. Back home we had a light lunch and then everyone kind of rested, the boy on purpose and HRH and I somewhat unintentionally. I started measuring the warp for a new project on my warping board and managed to completely overestimate the finished length, so I measured two feet more of warp than I needed, which meant I ran out of yarn very quickly. In self-defence I must point out that this is the first time I’ve used a warping board for a full-length piece, and zig-zagging back and forth in a small area makes a length look much shorter than it is when you stretch it out. I redid my calculations and saw that I’d been overly generous with my calculation of loom waste, but even if I’d been measuring the two-feet-shorter version I’d have been short of yarn. I would have to buy another skein of it, which was mildly annoying because I was doing this to use up this particular yarn. Other really frustrating things happened too, like the skein tangling terribly while I wound it into two centre-pull balls, and then the centre-pull balls tangling terribly. (This last is particularly infuriating because centre-pull balls are supposed to eliminate tangling.) Coven was cancelled that night, so I had a hot bath and went to bed.

Sunday morning we were all up stupidly early, so the boy and I headed out to buy that other skein of yarn. When we got home the boy and HRH mowed the back lawn, and then we all went out to do our weekly grocery order. After lunch we were ambushed by naps, and when we got up we went out for a bike ride! The boy biked to the local schoolyard and HRH and I walked our bikes behind him, and he practised cycling on a flat surface. Next trip the training wheels come off, because he hasn’t quite figured out that he needs to go fast enough so that he won’t fall over without them. But as this is the second time he’s used his two-wheeler (rain and the busy have prevented us in the past month) he’s doing pretty well, and is understanding steering and braking and putting a foot down on the ground when he stops. There was a bit of not wanting to try because it was hard/scary/required attention, but we worked through that. And he loved that we had our bikes out with him, too.

I finished measuring the warp for the new project, and I’ll wind and sley it today so the loom will be ready for weaving when I feel like it later this week. Today is also slated for writing and transcribing for my own work, making bread, and practising those two damn notes on the cello.