Category Archives: Cello

Virtuous

I have further caught up on the holiday backlog of e-mail and cleaned out most of my in-box, I have yogaed, and I have celloed. I am very pleased to see that my cello skills haven’t completely crumbled in my two-week hiatus. In fact, wow. Positive proof that my two months of lessons have made a definite impact and improvement. The Lee piece sounds excellent, especially considering that this is only the third time I’ve played it. But in the interest of full disclosure and humbling myself, the piece from the Mooney book sounds awful: I can’t get the damn rhythm of “Erik’s Minuet.” I subdivide, I count, nothing works. Argh. It figures I’d stumble on the easy piece and whip through the more challenging one.

Now for a snack (because I had an early lunch before celloing), and then work. I think I’ll do the first half of the proofs today, or however far I get so long as it’s at least five chapters. Drat; I need to download and install Foxit on this computer so I can mark them up if necessary.

And later, when I need a break (and I will, because I remember what page proofs are like) I will sew up the ends of HRH’s scarf and put the tassels on, because I went over to Ceri and Scott’s house last night and Ceri gave me a J crochet hook of my very own. The test tassel I did was too long, so I’ll need to find an intermediate-sized book to wrap the yarn around. And in other knitting news, I did indeed frog those two inches of hat last night; I cast the Softwist yarn on my size 8 Addis instead, and wow. I prefer bamboo needles to metal, and I thought the slippery yarn on the super-slick metal Addis would be a match made in hell, but it’s spookily easier, somehow.

Right; Foxit has downloaded. Time to install and get to work.

2008 In Review

Things I Did In 2008 That I Have Never Done Before:

– finished, submitted, and handled the edits on my fifth book (there is only one fifth!)
– received only SIX edits/queries on that book
– took up cello lessons for the second time, after a ten-year hiatus (there is only one second time!)
– knitted not one but THREE complete objects
– wrote a synopsis and outline for a YA novel in one afternoon
– then pretty much finished writing that YA novel within six months once I started
– joined not one but two social networking/contact sites (Facebook and Ravelry, to add to last year’s Shelfari and Last.fm)
– started shopping for a new cello, something that is going to take me years to do before I find The One
– voluntarily left my former luthier and moved to a new one, with whose services I am very happy indeed
– headlined a Pagan festival as a special guest along with Serena Fox of Circle Sanctuary and presented a workshop on an intro to hearthcraft
– adopted a kitten from the Animal Rescue Network (that’s for the ARN thing, because I have certainly adopted kittens before)
– baked my own bread for an entire year (thirteen months if we count from when I started, which was November 2007)
– gave a guest lecture at the university level
– made a specific trip to meet someone I met via the Internet
– performed a handfasting for two of my dearest friends (yes, I’ve done a legal wedding, but this was a purely spiritual ceremony)
– performed a baby naming/blessing ceremony for another set of dearest friends, the subject of the ceremony being my second godsdaughter
– stopped using shampoo entirely (having a baby did wacky things to my body chemistry, and while some things were good, the uber-sensitivity my scalp developed to sodium laurel/laureth sulfate was the worst; I now use a silicone-free mild conditioner with the occasional baking soda/water mix instead, and my hair is happier, too)

Things I Did in 2008 That I Am Proud Of:

All of the above, plus:

– performing in my second “public” cello recital ever (“public” is in quotation marks because it was for a bunch of people I don’t know, but was in a private venue)
– cutting my hair to above-shoulder length after having it very long for years and years
– joining a new RPG for the first time in, um, a number of years that I do not remember
– teaching myself a new hobby/skill (knitting!)

Good Things About 2008:

– meeting Bodhifox in person at the Fearsranch and proving beyond any doubt that he is a kindred spirit
– the boy being accepted part-time into a wonderful preschool (and subsequently coming home counting in French, singing songs I have not taught him, and bearing lots of art not proposed or initiated by me!)
– discovering the novels of Barbara Cleverly
– joining the local library, thereby cutting down my book purchasing
– the loan of the Mystery Cello from my cousin, the turn of the century German cello that requires about 5K$ worth of repair before it is restored to a playable state
– meeting Brendan Myers and having dinner in Old Montreal with him and other like-minded souls
– meeting Serena Fox at the Hamilton PPD 2008
– a fabulous co-coven spiritual retreat at Samhain, so awesome that there are now three planned per year instead of one
– the resolution of the ongoing tension with the unbalanced downstairs neighbour: She voluntarily moved out! The entire building is much, much happier and more secure
– a lot of spending has been curtailed/refined/refocused: We make all our own bread and take-out has returned to a real once-in-a-while special treat
– a good crop of veggies harvested from the garden (not enough to last the winter — not even half a month, actually, but the thought is there)
– being diagnosed with fibromyalgia (you may think that would be a Bad Thing, but having that diagnosis was a very good thing because it clarified so much, gave me a plan for dealing with it, and allowed me to move forward)
– adopting Gryffindor and seeing him and the boy romp together
– two dear friends giving birth to lovely little girls!

Like last year I’m sure there’s more, of course; a lot of this year was good. But these are what stand out in my memory. Possibly more than anything else I am more thankful for my friends, appreciative of them and their strengths, proud of their accomplishments and successes, and love spending time with them. This is light-years beyond my enochlophobia and agoraphobia of previous years. I’ve become a lot more comfortable with myself, and trust myself more. I’ve also further refined my stop-spending-time-with-people-who-drain-me technique, with excellent benefits to my psyche and physical health.

Not-So-Good Things About 2008:

– my very dearest and oldest cat Maggie went to the Summerlands after seventeen years of love and companionship
– the pregnancy book was cut from the fall publishing lists and is on hold indefinitely
– losing Emru to leukaemia
– learning that the repairs of the Mystery Cello would require over 5K$, which shelved the project indefinitely
– ongoing financial balancing (the credit line is still looming over us, but everything else is okay)

How Did I Do With My 2008 Wishes?

– Rediscover my CD collection

Er, well. At least I didn’t bring a whole bunch of new ones into the house and ignore the old ones. This year everything kind of languished. I’d cull except every time I look at the CDs to sort through them I remember exactly what’s on each one and know that I might want to listen to it someday. Argh. My CD buying has really, really dropped off sharply in the past few years because I don’t hang out in music stores any more, nor do I go see movies and become enchanted by their scores.

– Make time for practising my spirituality in a more aware fashion

Not so much. It’s not that I’ve lost what I had, just that I did want to make a specific effort to do more things with awareness, and I didn’t get there.

– Make a stronger commitment to practising the cello

We have a winner! I mean really, how much more serious does it get? I’m taking lessons again after a ten-year hiatus, and still sitting second chair in orchestra. I am very, very proud of this particular resolution and how it has manifested.

– Let up on the second-guessing of the decisions I make, and the self-doubt I feel about my work

Still chipping away at this one, but it’s going to be an ongoing thing till the end of my life. I do feel a lot more confident about my ability in general, but I still have those slippery moments of Oh gods this sucks and why am I trying? I’m trying because it’s a first draft, and the subtlety can be woven in later.

– Remember frequently that I am a wonderful, kind, talented person

Not sure about this one. I got a lot better at saying If someone has a problem with this/that, then that’s their issue, which kind of connects to this wish because I don’t expend as much energy worried about what people think of me. I have definitely gotten better at telling myself that I or what I do is cool when it is. I still can’t accept a compliment gracefully, and I still dismiss too much of what people say about me when it’s nice things. I am getting better at being happy and/or satisfied with myself and I what I do, though.

– Focus my time so that I don’t waste as much of it

Lists have been my very best friend this year. Learning how to say no now that I understand how to manage my energy thanks to the fibro has helped immensely, too.

– Take up formal study of another spiritual path to complement the ones I already practise

Yes, but not in the way I’d expected/planned to go. This ended up being a focus on Germanic spirituality instead of Druidism. There’s time enough for it all in my life.

– Take care of my body so that the chronic pain thing doesn’t negatively impact my life, as it’s beginning to once again (I’m hoping it’s the damp and the cold that’s made it increasingly bad over the past month)

Another winner! Having a firm medical diagnosis of fibromyalgia went a long, long way to understanding how my body was working and how to deal with it.

Wishes for 2009:

– Further refine and develop my cello skills
– Finish and polish and start querying Orchestrated
– Keep on writing
– Start making all our own pasta
– Plant, harvest, and preserve more vegetables from the garden
– Save more money (I did end 2008 with a nice balance in the bank but it’s earmarked for cello stuff in the future, and while it sits there it collects interest, hurrah!)

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If I had to assign a value to 2008, I’d say that again, it’s been an overall good year. Looking back at 2007 I see that I didn’t note much about how tense it was financially for us and how much of an effect that had on our day to day life and relationships within the family. That stress was much less present this year, and HRH and I have done a lot of repair on our own relationship. Things are certainly better than they were last year, for which I am very, very thankful. In 2007 my default mood was frustrated and tense; in 2008 I learned to let that go, both through the understanding that stressing just creates more stress, and as a result of things getting better job-wise for HRH and the general financial situation easing. Of course, with the market plunging as it is and the publishing industry closing doors and freaking out quietly behind them, I will likely not sell another book for a few years, but my freelance work keeps a steady trickle coming in.

May 2009 be even better for us all!

Grumpy

So there’s been all sorts of lovely things happening lately, but some disappointments too. Such as today, when the boy woke up with a hacking, barking cough, which was enough to send HRH to the phone to cancel our much-anticipated trip out to t! and Jan’s place for the day.

I love my boys, I truly do. But I’m used to them being gone for most of the week, and they’ve been home for a full seven days now. This plus all the holidaying has drained me pretty badly, and I’m turning into the Irritable Me that I’m not so fond of because I haven’t had any time to myself. I have an outing planned for myself tomorrow, which will help.

The boys are currently watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (which has been renamed as “The Hogwarts Express” by Liam) on the new TV and the boy was just dancing with excitement in the middle of the room, riveted by the Sorting Hat sequence. He jumped and cheered when Harry was sorted into Gryffindor house. “Gryffindor! Just like me!” he exclaimed. He’s enchanted (no pun intended) by the characters and the settings. I suspect that he doesn’t remember the first time we watched it with him in the room a couple of years ago. We’re currently reading the Magic Tree House series before bedtime, but seeing how much he’s loving the Potter universe I may try reading him the first book soonish. I suspect I’ll be making him a Gryffindor scarf as well, which would thrill him to no end because not only will he have a Hogwarts scarf, he will match his Da.

I suppose I will go sit with them and knit, since I can’t focus on work when the boy is running in and out of my office. I managed to get about nine hundred words of Orchestrated written yesterday while he napped, which cheered me up a lot, but there’ still lots of work I want done by the end of the year. I have a pile of cello work to do as well at some point. If the office downstairs is empty I may go down there in a bit to practise.

The Yule Week Continues

Things just keep rolling on with fun and joy and love.

Last night the Preston-LeBlancs came over for a evening of seasonal music-making. It was the first time we’d ever tried anything like this, and while we were excited we were all a bit anxious too. It all turned out beautifully, even with the cold-suffering Tallis squirming in her mother’s lap while Paze played the alto recorder. Jeff’s guitar work sounded fabulous. I mostly played pizzicato in order to not drown Jeff out, but when we got people singing the better-known stuff I switched to arco. So much fun! The Bailey’s certainly helped, and HRH did his part by keeping the kids corralled and occupied until it was present-opening or singing time.

The quiche I made was delicious, too, although we never got around to drinking the mulled cranberry juice and I forgot about the Brie and pate. The afternoon started later than expected because HRH and I got stuck in several kinds of traffic in different places, throwing us an hour and a half behind schedule (the music only got bumped a half-hour, but there was a lot of lost time in there that cancelled other things such as hors d’oeuvre prep). When we got home after being in traffic for two hours and fifteen minutes, we found a three-foot snowbank in front of the driveway. The snow-clearing crews had done the first ploughing but the snow-blower hadn’t come by directly afterwards to remove the banks. Scarlet pulled up right behind us and she and HRH dug out a single car-width, then each pulled into the driveway one after the other. Naturally the blower showed up once they were done. But even that couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for playing the real, traditional Christmas carols.

Today we awoke to another foot of snow, which gave HRH the opportunity to do something he’s always wanted to do. Our back deck has an oddly-placed gate that opens out into nothing. Once upon a time there was an above-ground pool in the backyard, and the gate opened onto a set of stairs that went into it. As there hasn’t been a pool in years, the gate has been fastened shut and is essentially just a part of the railing. Today HRH got the pile of snow in the backyard up to the level of the deck, so he opened the gate, and the boy now has a one and a half-storey snow slide from the back deck to the yard. The boy is shrieking as he throws himself down it on the little saucer sled and mumbling happily to himself as he trudges back up the stairs to the deck to do it all over again.

My parents arrived safe and sound in town last night (ahead of the storm, thank goodness) and will be here in an hour or so. (Which means I should wrap presents.) My mother will arrive laden with Christmas baking and a home-made tourtiere, our standard Christmas Eve dinner. There will, of course, be wine as well, lovely lovely wine that we cannot get in this province, and crab cakes. But best of all there will be my parents, whom we do not see often enough.

Family, music, joy, and love. It’s a good time of year. Not that we don’t experience these things during the other fifty-one weeks of a year, but this is a week we can all count on. I cherish these days, and count ourselves lucky to have them.

In An Effort To Focus On The Good Things…

… instead of the things currently driving me up the wall, I hereby present a List of Things for Which I Am Thankful or Excited About.

1. All I need to do is proof the overdue-new-to-me assignment I was given, then I can upload it and it’s gone. (Which is what I should be doing right now, but I have to decompress first.)

2. The roads were fairly clear yesterday. Traffic was not wholly insane.

3. My cello lesson was awesome. I got one new technical exercise assigned, one new Mooney Position Pieces exercise, two new pieces in the Suzuki book (apparently I’m doing that well) (the corollary to this, of course, is serves me right for practising the next few in the book after the piece I just did in recital), and a lovely three-movement cello duet sonata thing by S. Lee (op. 60 if anyone’s keeping score) (and ooh, I just discovered that my teacher gave me the first and second sonatas, not just the first!).

4. The Murphy family (no relation, although we have messed with people’s minds that way, heh) sent HRH, the boy, and I a special gift: two of the extremely awesome cat cupcakes that Elspeth had as part of her birthday cupcake extravaganza! Mmmm, cupcakes. With icing in the middle. And fondant cats on the top.

5. The boy was remarkably good during this morning’s bank/breakfast/seasonal shopping run. (Except when he REALLY wasn’t, but we are focusing on the good things.) We really enjoyed lots of it together. He asked for pancakes for lunch and I figured why not, so he ate three (!?), asked for a glass of milk, and went for his nap mostly without acting up or major incident. (I suspect he finally figured out I was about to completely snap after having to deal with certain of his shenanigans while shopping.)

6. Two complete strangers in the dollar store passed me three loonies to buy him the three wooden train cars he was coveting. I’d told him he could choose one and he couldn’t decide. I was staggered. I mean, sure, I’ve done things like that before for others, both for strangers and friends (and on a much, much larger scale too), but I’ve never expected it back. Complete strangers? Giving me loonies? To buy the boy the trains he was stroking? They were both moms with grown-up kids in other cities who they couldn’t treat like that any more, they said. The boy, who had been behaving very well at this point of the trip, was a perfect gentleman and said thank you and told them very excitedly all about what he would do with them when he got the trains home. I guess this is life demonstrating the ‘pay it forward’ principle. Thank you, universe!

7. I found four of the main things I needed for Yule, three small things, and two unexpected very small things. What I did not get were two of the other main things because the boy was acting up and also none of the stores I went to had one particular thing in stock. I could have checked two more shops but we ran out of patience time. I knew it was time to go home when I couldn’t string a complete sentence together to talk to one of my favourite bookshop clerks, partly due to having to keep grabbing the boy before he wandered off or pulled one. more. thing. off a shelf, partly because I couldn’t think my way through an unexpected obstacle (someone’s postal code? and phone number? off the top of my head? so not going to happen).

8. We cased the mall’s Santa set-up (you think I’m kidding? The boy went all the way around the fences, running his hands along the edges and calculating how far he could reach into the fluffy fake snow, found every single entrance and exit, and I will bet you that he has it memorized) and checked the visiting hours for the Official Santa Visit tomorrow.

9. The boy got a return letter from Santa in the mail today! He probably would have been much more excited if he hadn’t been trying to open those new train cars at the same time.

10. I finished the first colour block and a third of the next block on HRH’s scarf last night while we watched some of the making-of features on the Prince Caspian DVD. One and one-third down! Eighteen and two-thirds to go!

11. We shared a nice chummy breakfast in the mostly empty food court, sharing a breakfast sandwich and some juice from Tim Horton’s while we looked at the Nutcracker decorations (or, as Liam calls them, ‘the Christmas soldiers’). And the boy learned how to make a wish and toss a penny into the fountain.

There, see? I’m in a much better mood now. It doesn’t matter that I only got some of what we went out for, and that the groceries didn’t get done at all. We had lots of fun in between the argh bits (and really, the argh was mostly an aggregate of the usual things one has to tell a three year old over and over and over, which I know perfectly well must happen because of how their brain are rewiring but still gets to me) and encountered unexpected kindnesses.

Now, I will proof that assignment and upload it, and then, Gentle Readers, I will knit some more once I’ve mixed a batch of bread dough and another of pizza dough.

Slightly Fuzzy Proof Of Recital Fun

My stand partner just sent me a couple of pictures taken at the recital. See? I’m smiling! I’m having fun! It’s slightly out of focus but a cheerful souvenir anyhow.

Not as much fun: Being told that you’re a week late on an assignment that you never got. No initial contact regarding the assignment, no file in the FTP folder, just an automated “you’re late” notice. My contact has apologized for the glitch but wants to know if I can do it anyway. Sigh.

Have Survived

Made it through my second recital ever. Go me!

Didn’t screw up my shifts. Didn’t let the bow skip. Didn’t let the rhythm go ragged. Held a half note a wee bit too long but adjusted. The second repetition was better. I don’t think I really lifted the bow as had been my bad habit before lessons either, although it wasn’t as ‘in the string’ as I would have liked. All the trio and ensemble stuff was great, too. I wasn’t a mess leading up to it, but the nerves did kick in after we’d set up and I encountered the ‘will it never be day?!’ mood that develops when you’re ready and it’s not time to start yet. Apparently we have another recital in June, and I’m actually looking forward to that.

Liam fell asleep ten minutes into the programme. He got to hear the littlest girls do their pieces, but fell asleep either during mine or directly afterwards. He was very impressed with the butterfly someone had painted on the youngest girl’s face in full colour, complete with sparkly highlights.

Now it’s on to making shepherd’s pie (well, more correctly, cottage pie) for supper, and casting on HRH’s scarf, as we nipped out to Ariadne Knits before lunch to pick up the yarn. Liam was very impressed with the yarn store, although was firmly convinced that there ought to have been a cat.