Wednesday Activity Log
Today, I:
- handled correspondence
- showered
- took public transport out to the south shore to meet HRH
- visited seven houses
- came back home
- edited yesterday’s freelance assignment at the coordinator’s request
- brief cello practice
And now I am going to go pass out on the couch till the boys get home and dinner is made. Orchestra tonight; I’m so exhausted that I know it will be a minor disaster.
Weekend Roundup, Birthday and Recital Edition
What a wonderful weekend.
Friday I did over half of the freelance thing in four hours, had a catnap, wrote the boy’s five-year-old celebratory post, did more househunting research, and started the laundry. We let the boy stay up an hour past his usual bedtime to finish building his Lego Atlantis sub, and HRH went out to the party store just before it closed to get helium balloons with which to surprise him the next morning.
Saturday morning the boy woke us up at 5:15, and while HRH got back to sleep I did not, so I gave up around 6:00 and got up with the boy. He was not impressed that the World Cup coverage was on instead of his cartoons. The morning felt rushed for some reason, and I headed out for our recital dress rehearsal just before nine-thirty, which was fifteen minutes later than I wanted to be out the door; as a result, instead of taking the detour and time to treat myself to a breakfast sandwich as I’d originally planned, I hit the local depanneur to pick up an orange juice and a huge granola bar. I’d expected the rehearsal to be as stressful as home had been, but it wasn’t; it was relaxed and went very well, and was very enjoyable.
After lunch I made the boy’s birthday cake while HRH did the final tidying up (who knew the front window could be that clean?). My parents had arrived in town the night before, and they came over around one-thirty. The overcast skies and drizzle cleared up enough for us to sit outside, which was lovely. Mum brought fresh peas (both the kind to be shelled as well as sugar snaps) and Niagara cherries, both of which the boy was into as soon as he saw them (he won’t eat tomato sauce, but will eat sugar snap peas by the handful, and asks for them as a treat; go figure). And he got cherry juice on a brand new button-down shirt, of course, but at least the juice kind of matches the shirt’s colour scheme.
HRH’s parents joined us around three, and the boy asked when we would be able to open birthday presents, so when everyone had settled down with a drink we let him go to town. He was perfectly thrilled with all the Playmobil and Lego (”Oh, this is what I wanted! Thank you!”), and while he didn’t seem as enthusiastic about the clothes, he has chosen to wear three new shirts from the pile of birthday clothes already, so while they were not immediately gratifying they did make an impression. He finagled various adults into helping him build the new sets of things until dinner, and had HRH fill his pool so he could play in it and take the Playmobil seaplane in. He was in and out of that for the rest of the afternoon while the adults snacked on crackers alternately piled with Brie and my mother-in-law’s wonderful seafood dip.
We had flank steak and herbed sausages for supper, and while the sausages were dry (partially a result of their composition and partially to miscalculating the cooking time) the flank steak was really quite excellent. We put out a pile of fresh raw veggies and made dip to serve with it, and a potato salad. Dessert was the cake the boy had requested, vanilla with maple frosting. The recipe for the cake is a definite keeper, though I used four whole eggs instead of eight yolks. I’m not sure why I continue to use new recipes for special occasions because so much can go wrong, although it didn’t in this instance: it was lovely and moist, although the frosting I made was essentially my regular frosting with about a half-cup of maple syrup added to it for flavour, and since maple syrup is sweeter than sugar it was a bit cloying. Now I understand why people use maple extract.
Sunday morning we introduced the boy to The Rocketeer, one of our favourite films, and it was a hit, as we’d expected: it has racing planes, a dirigible, and a rocket backpack. After lunch we got tidied up and headed out for my spring recital at the seniors’ residence, meeting my parents there. The last time my parents saw me in recital was at my first and only big public one about twelve years ago, where I played the full Breval Sonata in C (my mother tells me I have definitely improved, which is a relief). We had a really big crowd in attendance this time; either the seniors were more active, or our fame has spread. (I doubt it’s the latter.) We had two more cellists, and three violinists, so there was an increase in attendant families as well. There was a bit of oddness during setup when we discovered that the piano was tuned to A443, which meant we had to crank our cellos up three notches above the 440 we’re used to, translating to about a quarter-tone on my instrument in yesterday’s weather. You get used to A440 sounding one way, and when you adjust the tuning across the instrument it sounds really wrong to your ear for a bit even though it’s in tune with itself. The opening ensemble piece felt unsettled to me and a couple of other cellists as a result, but the audience probably didn’t notice a thing. Apart from that, I think that this is the recital I have enjoyed the most so far. Everyone did a wonderful job with their solos, and the ensemble pieces were great. I was comfortable both physically and mentally, I aced my trouble spots in my Lully Gavotte, and we delivered lovely versions of The Entertainer (all of it, no shortcuts; it’s a longer piece than people expect in its proper form) and Ashokan Farewell. All the ensemble pieces were good, but those two really stand out in my mind. Our final piece was a unison performance of the traditional fiddle tune Soldier’s Joy, and we had four violinists, a pianist, and twelve cellists playing it. We did it three times, each time a little faster, and at the dress yesterday our teacher reminded us not to speed up during each repetition because then the final set would be too fast for precision. Well, of course that’s exactly what happened, but everyone hung on and made terrific noise. My parents told me that the little kids had a blast barrelling along at the end, and it was a great way to finish the programme. I’ve never left a recital feeling that good about myself and the class. I felt like I looked good, I sounded good, and I felt really secure about everything. So secure, in fact, that when HRH complimented me repeatedly on the way home about my sound and delivery he didn’t make me feel awkward or self-conscious. I got some very nice comments from my classmates about my sound at the dress rehearsal, too, which was nice, detailed comments that went beyond the basic encouraging sorts of remarks, too.
My parents came back with us and we sat in the yard talking while the boy splashed about in his pool again, and then we went out to dinner, which was fun and pretty good. I can’t believe the amount of food the boy ate over the weekend. HRH and I wonder if he’s on the verge of another growth spurt, which would be just crazy. We parted ways in the restaurant parking lot, and after putting the boy to bed HRH and I sat down and seriously went through the latest list of houses our agent sent us for review. I think we’re ready to start this again after a few days off to heal.
It was a lovely weekend. We had lovely weather, we enjoyed great food and great family time, and the boy had a blast doing what the boy does.
In Which She Examines The Current Void (And It Probably Evaluates Her As Well)
So my comment spam these days tends to be mortgage and loan related. Ah, keyword searches. Why do I never get exciting cello spam when I drone on about music?
I’m sore all over today from the whiplash the life speed bump we hit yesterday. I know, I know; physical reaction to mental/emotional trauma. Who’d have thought? Fibro aside… well, no, fibro’s part of it, because I’m so drained I can’t bounce back properly. Still. Also, it sucks that therapeutic crying exhausts me. It’s a lose-lose situation.
I was looking forward to rehearsal last night, both to distract me and because I’ve done a lot of cello work this week. Except that exhaustion thing? I muffed things I can do in my sleep, and it was like a bad dream about dominoes or a house of cards: every time the celli were asked to work on a portion of music I got less accurate and dropped out more. Even on the easy stuff. And I sank deeper and deeper into that unavoidable self-loathing/numb detached headspace and general grumpiness at the world, because gods damn it, I practised this stuff, and I played it well at home. Not that it seems to make a difference when I’m playing where and when it counts, and especially not when the conductor turns around and is right in front of me to lead the celli. I just can’t do it at full speed, and it’s really, really frustrating me. We played through one of the hard parts I’d worked on my a lesson a couple of weeks ago and at the end my teacher leaned over and poked me with her bow with an approving nod. I shook my head, and I was so depressed at the end of the night that she sat there and gave me a pep talk. She reminded me of how I work within the rhythm, always being on the beat in hard passages, that I drop the right notes to drop in a run if I can’t get them all, and how I’m in sync with her bow changes. The left hand will get there, she said. She reminded me of how far I’ve come in a year, two years, and I realised that I could probably handle Scheherazade now without the problems I’d had last year. (The Hebrides overture, well, no, and there are some very similar runs in the Reformation symphony, it occurs to me now, damn you for being a pianist, Mendelssohn.) She pointed out that I drop a lot less than I would have dropped before, which is true. I appreciated the pep talk, but it didn’t lift my gloom entirely.
There’s that not-comforting-at-all adage that “What does not kill you makes you stronger,” and you know what? Maybe you don’t die, and maybe you do get life experience from all the crap, but when you have fibro it doesn’t actually make you stronger. It just keeps eroding you, bit by bit. On the other hand, it’s certainly character-forming.
I read a terrific spinning-related metaphor this morning from The Crafty Rabbit, though:
[F]ulling is a pretty good metaphor for life. You’re all ugly and uneven and imperfect and full of little bits of hay. Then you get beaten up–tossed from hot to cold, agitated with a plunger, smacked against a table. And then it turns out, after all that, that the abuse has smoothed you out, rendered you shiny and resilient. You’re still imperfect, yes, and you’re beautiful.
Fulling is the process whereby yarn or cloth gets cleaned and transformed or locked into its final form, for the lack of a better description. Some cloths felt when you do this (usually intentionally) and some yarn will, too, if you’re not wholly careful. Part of what you try to do with yarn, though, is shock it so that it plumps up and the scales on the fibre catch one another to make a stronger strand. You can’t turn a worsted-weight woollen-spun Coopworth yarn into laceweight silk by this method, but you can smooth out your Coopworth skein, plump it up, and make it stronger and nicer to touch.
It’s a good life metaphor, but this particular Coopworth skein (read: me) is tired of the fulling process and would just like to hang in the sun. Failing that, to stay in the hot bath with nice smelling soap, and have the cold immersion baths and furious agitation stop for a while.
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.
