Daily Archives: June 5, 2008

Checklist

All the day’s correspondence handled (responses, business, weekend planning, proposals): done.

Edits on the anthology essay submission (all three of them, ha!): done.

Contract for permission to consider/use said submission ( “We are pleased to inform you that your story submission has been selected as a finalist for publication consideration”): done.

New manuscript evaluation assignment received and downloaded (this one is YA, hurrah!): done.

Planning meals etc. for the boy’s birthday weekend with family: done, with help. (Parents arrive tomorrow night, more hurrah!)

And now, the boy has been asleep for almost two and a half hours. I will check on him again.

Musical Madness

If there’s one thing that playing medleys of musicals for the Canada Day concert does for me, it’s reawaken my interest in musicals. On one hand the medleys are frustrating: they’re all arrangements and never exactly the same as the original song, which makes playing them somewhat counter-intuitive (there’s lots of but but but that’s NOT the rhythm of the song! when one begins playing a theme, and I have to try to not think about the original and play what’s in front of me). Plus they require several lightning-fast changes of key and time signatures, and challenge me to think fast.

On the other hand, they remind me of how much I love musicals. And as a result, over the past few years I’ve ended up replacing some of the musicals I only had on cassette tape so that I could listen to them again. This year, thanks to the efforts of Gmarc and his parents, I’ve acquired My Fair Lady (hurrah for Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison! — and this is actually the second My Fair Lady medley I’ve done with the orchestra; I believe the first (and substantially different) one was done for the first Canada Day concert I did with them), and South Pacific (which I have managed to not hear throughout my entire life). And with Sandman7 delivering an intense rendition of “On the Street Where You Live” at his recital last week, well, we’ve revisited the idea of organizing the occasional musical movie night at some point for the musical lovers of the group.

Now, astute readers will already know that we are also playing a Sound of Music medley this July. I know The Sound of Music; I watched the film several times as a child (despite the fact that for years I thought it ended with the wedding, thanks to bedtime and what I suspect was also my mother’s caring attempt to keep me blissfully ignorant about war and Nazis until I was mature enough to understand it), and heard selections in various school concerts over the years. I used to sing “Edelweiss” to the boy when he was very tiny and needed help falling asleep.

The thing about The Sound of Music is that its themes are particularly insidious. I have found myself singing them at odd times since we started rehearsing the medley. Normally to cure this I would throw the CD in the player and I’d be over it in a couple of days. However, The Sound of Music is not and has never been among my albums or soundtracks. (Well, there was a Julie Andrews compilation LP I had as a child, but that is long, long gone.)

So when the boy wakes up I’m going to take him out to the shops to pick up a copy of The Sound of Music soundtrack; it’s a $9.99 bargain CD now and I’ll be using a gift certificate I’ve been saving in my wallet. I think the boy will enjoy the songs too. Rodgers and Hammerstein aren’t exactly They Might Be Giants, but time supports the fact that they did turn out catchy tunes, so we’ll see what the boy makes of it.

Maybe someday we’ll do a medley of one of my favourite musicals, such as Kiss Me Kate or Showboat.

Highs And Lows

Both literally and figuratively.

The boy woke up at 2:40 this morning, came into our bedroom, announced he was awake and asked for Rice Krispies and milk. HRH put him back to bed with a drink and some bread and butter. Then at 5:40 the performance was repeated, only this time HRH said, “Wow, he’s really hot. As in way too hot.” So I found the thermometer and we took his temperature, and yes, he had a fever. He was acting perfectly normal in every other respect, albeit a bit cuddlier than usual, so I gave him acetaminophen and we checked the temperature every half hour until we were sure it was going down.

It’s been a quiet morning (if you count watching Veggie Tales songs on YouTube as being quiet). I checked his temperature again at 11:30 and it was back up, so he got more acetaminophen. Apart from that he’s had some juice and water and a nibble of pancake, and a Rice Krispie square from the pan we made; he just hasn’t been hungry. For lunch he had a couple of chicken nuggets with a huge glass of milk. And then he literally fell asleep on my lap, so I carried him to his room and put him to bed, where he rolled over onto his stomach and didn’t protest at all. I’ll keep an eye on him. At the moment it’s a high fever but not dangerously to-the-hospital high, and above all else he’s acting pretty much as usual. He’s fighting something off.

Best news of the morning: There has been a match found among international bone marrow registrants for Emru, who was was diagnosed with leukemia and a condition called monosomy 7 just over six months ago. Does this mean the fight to get the word out is over? Not by a long shot. The donor has to agree, Emru still has to go into remission, be prepped, do the surgery, and then hope the donation doesn’t attack the host, the host attack the donation, and a variety of other things. The most important issue at the moment is that we don’t stop educating and spreading information about the importance of adding your name to the bone marrow registry of your country. Emru is only one man; there are thousands and thousands of people out there who still need a bone marrow transplant to save their lives. Keep the HealEmru.com link circulating; keep mentioning it to everyone you meet. The majority of racial groups are still under-represented, and that’s not going to change overnight. Here’s a passage from Kino Kid’s post, with the pertinent info.

If you’re not going to read this message straight through, that’s ok, but if you resend it to anyone, do so in its entirety or post this paragraph, the next paragraph and point one at least.

A match was found for Emru on Wednesday. If you tell anyone, please remember you must tell them to that many other people are still waiting, and the actual crisis that made us spring into motion is not yet alleviated. Talking about it and passing the information along is an educational tool that you must continue to use, even if we can all breathe easier.

1:

Emru’s donor could change their mind and decline at any time. Right now there is no backup. This is not your cue to stop talking about bone marrow donation and registration. Keep going. Emru wants you to. I want you to. People you have never met need you to. Their lives are in our hands.

There are still massive shortages in the donor pool, and this will not change unless we continue to care about it. What we do will only be known at the end of March next year. What do we want to see when we get those numbers? That 100 more people have registered or 1000? 10000?

If all goes well Emru will have another chance at his life, and will transform from someone needing a transplant into someone who has successfully gone through the process, an ambassador for those who still are in need of a match from the registry. And he’ll have given his name to a campaign that will continue.

Are you a match? Find out how you can help save Emru’s life: http://www.healemru.com

Got Facebook? Please join Help Emru Find a Bone Marrow Donor and if you learn something new, invite your friends.
Got Livejournal, WordPress or Blogger? Blog it!
Got Youtube? Subscribe to www.youtube.com/healemru
Just find someone you care about and tell them.

Contact info:

Hema Quebec http://www.hema-quebec.qc.ca
Canada Blood Services (Canada, except Quebec) http://onematch.ca/registry
National Marrow Donor Program (US) http://www.marrow.org
Anthony Nolan Trust (UK) http://anthonynolan.org.uk