Monthly Archives: October 2008

Memo To The Weather Gods

Hi, it’s me. You probably know me as the wife of that guy who works with you sometimes. He’s fine, thanks. I’m actually writing to address a certain anomaly many people in the area witnessed this morning.

Said anomaly was white, small, fleck-like, and swirling around in the air, and is usually referred to as “snow.”

Now, I know we live in a place that has freaky weather. Eastern Canada is cool that way. However, I think this particular anomaly was a wee bit too much for most of us today. After all, on our street the trees all still have their leaves, and most are still green.

I suspect there is a motivating factor in this case, and that motivating factor’s name would be Liam. Yes, you might remember him from that little debacle last summer where he stood on a chair on the back deck, leaned forward into the storm, spread his arms and cried, “Thunder and lightning! Come play with Liam!” Well, for the past week he’s been saying eagerly, “Maybe snow will fall from those clouds!”

Weather Gods, I completely understand how adorable and persuasive he can be. I get it. But handing him snow just because he keeps asking? That’s a certain road to spoiling the child. Next thing we know it will be early July and plus thirty degrees and you’ll be handing out the snow because you no longer know how to say no to him. We just can’t have that.

The way to avoid certain disaster is to gently but firmly refuse his pleas and leading statements. Trust me, this will make your relationship with him far more rewarding in the long run.

I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to chat about this. Just so we’re clear: no more early snow just because Liam’s asking for it. Pretty and/or decorative snow after the first of November is more acceptable, but really, the serious stuff doesn’t have to happen till December.

Best,

Autumn

P.S.: Really enjoyed the sun this fall. Nice work.

Weekend Roundup

As much as I would love this to be detailed, point form is the only way I’m going to be able to record it and still have time for, you know, breathing.

FRIDAY:

Morning: Running errands. The boy dawdles and doesn’t listen to repeated instructions, and develops a very annoying pattern of taking six steps then falling to his knees, hanging off my hand. Despite this, he is in a good mood. I carry him bodily out of Sears and give him a sound talking-to back at the car. We do not find the birthday gift we planned to pick up. Also, somewhere during the very first stop I lose the list detailing All The Other Things We’re Supposed To Pick Up. Ergo, I forget them. We do, however, acquire a ball for the boy to bring out to the country with us (see ‘Saturday,’ below).

Afternoon: Arthur comes to visit!!! (And we get to briefly see Curtana too.) For the rest of the day we have two giggly boys who bound through the house, build fantastic train layouts, and make loud but enthusiastic music. Dinner, bath, jammies, then a special treat of curling up on the chesterfield under a throw with bowls of popcorn and a brand new Thomas hour-long film to watch, which means Liam gets to stay up and hour and a bit past his bedtime. (Thank you, Pierce Brosnan, for making the narration not completely irritating to listen to.) Arthur is collected at a quarter to nine. Liam is sad but the fun they had during the day wins out mood-wise. The boy falls dead asleep at nine on the dot. Wow.

SATURDAY:

Morning: HRH heads out to get the oil changed and to pick up the housewarming gift I forgot on Friday. He comes back to collect us, we put a wee bit of gas in the car, and grab breakfast for the trip out to the Coalition Stronghold. I figure out that the reason I’m squinting is because I forgot to put my glasses on before we left, and naturally I don’t carry my extra pair any more. Back home; pick up glasses; hit highway. Liam pulls out his blanket and BunBun, arranges himself, and falls asleep at 10:45. Argh! HRH and I enjoy the drive to Maxville, appreciating the autumn trees and the golden sun. The boy wakes up when we turn onto a gravel road. Well, at least he got about seventy minutes of sleep. Too bad it was two hours early.

Afternoon: We relax at the Coalition Stronghold, the new abode of t! and Jan. We have the place and out hosts to ourselves for a while before the next car shows up. In the meantime the boy’s track is set up and the trains run, and HRH and I are handed bottles of beer that we cannot find in Quebec. Yay, colonial loyalty! More friends show up; there are hugs and news exchanged. HRH, the boy, and I go for a walk into the back forty behind the Coalition Stronghold through mowed and unmowed fields to see the pond. There are no ducks on said pond, which disappoints the boy mightily. When back, I try to get the boy to lie down for a nap. It might have succeeded if someone hadn’t opened the closed door while exploring the house, causing Liam to jump up and greet them enthusiastically. Ah well. There is food that mysteriously aggregates on the dining room table, and an impromptu Scrabble game that Lu wins. More friends show up, just as we leave to be home in time for a proper wind-down, dinner, bath, and bed. We bring our winter order of organic beef home with us; the size of the roasts and hamburger packages are perfect. Our chest freezer is full. We will have to shift things or pack them in canny fashion in order to fit the 15ish pounds of pork we have coming in soonish as well. We also gas up in Ontario. Gas for under a dollar a litre! Whee!

Evening: Coven meeting, at which the ritual we’re leading at next weekend’s all-day retreat is approved by all, and some final questions noted down to pass along to the other participants.

SUNDAY:

Morning of cleaning and housework and errands. I roll three balls of yarn, two necessary because Gryffindor weaselled them out of hiding and neutralised the dangerous woolly threats by turning them into hopeless messes. I hem that new pair of pants I got last week. After lunch I head out for a baby shower, which is lovely, but which I have to leave early because I have my first cello lesson to attend. I wear my funky red shoes for confidence at the lesson, and those new pants. I mistime the travel and realize I’ll be half an hour early if I go straight there, so I stop at the needlework shop to buy the needles I need for my next knitting project. (Note: ‘Next’ implies I’ve ever finished one. I have failed miserably at every knitting project I’ve ever tried. But I have begun a new one [armwarmers for me] and have decided to heroically attempt a hat for the newly hairless Mousme.) I go from the needlework shop to my lesson and am ten minutes early anyway. Sigh. I make a critical decision and unpick the new hems on my pants with my Swiss army knife. When someone else shows up for the group lesson I unload the cello and walk into my teacher’s house behind her. I enjoy myself, after the initial ‘oh hell I’m the only one who doesn’t know anyone here’ discomfort. Once the group lesson itself begins, to my surprise I do not suck. (See ‘Expanded Cello Stuff,’ below.) Home for dinner made by HRH, a really awesome steak done on the barbecue. Put boy to bed, then sit down for an hour and hammer out the phrasing for ‘Itsumo Nando Demo’. Go to bed, read, fall asleep.

All in all, a Very Good Weekend.

EXPANDED CELLO STUFF:

It was odd: I was both nervous and not about this lesson. My first lesson was supposed to be a private one last Thursday, but last week was a disaster of sick people and forcing four days of work into two, so it didn’t happen. Instead, the once-a-month group lesson ended up being my first. I am, as I repeatedly point out and people seem to disbelieve because I do an impressive job pretending otherwise, extremely shy, so walking into an established social group of ten people was daunting. What’s the etiquette? Where do I put my stuff? Did I take someone’s parking spot? Am I sitting in someone’s customary seat? At the same time, I knew my teacher and one other student, having played with them in the orchestra for seven and three years respectively, so I had something of a lifeline. The little coffee break between the youngest cellists’ lesson and the group lesson was the most awkward, so awkward for me that I took a cup of coffee to have something to do with my hands (and it was really, really good coffee too, which was nice). Eventually we settled and our teacher put us in various places around the room, we tuned, and started playing.

This is the point where I actually relaxed. I know, I know; normally I’d be tense about playing in a small group with people I don’t know. But somewhere a couple of minutes in, I realised that I didn’t suck. I am used to expecting to be/actually being of a lower technical proficiency than others. Here I was at par with, or even more confident than, others in the group. The beginning was rocky because I was having trouble hearing my intonation, but then something clicked and then it was all okay. There was the disaster of misplacing my hand badly when I had to go really high up while sight-reading an arrangement of Satie’s ‘Gymnopedie’, but hey, sight-reading for fun; no harm, no foul. (Lovely, lovely pieces in that Cellobrations collection for cello quartet, I hope we play lots of them in the future.) I enjoyed it all so much that I played one of the new pieces I was given at the lesson when I got home while the boy was in the bath ( “Is Mama playing her cello for me? While I’m in the bath?” followed by appreciative applause when I’d done), and after I’d put him to bed I sat down for another hour and really worked on bowings and phrasing for the song Sandman7 and I are working on. It took me the whole hour to play bits with different bowings, make a decision one way or the other, and put slurs and bowings in for the entire piece to get it to where I was happy with the phrasing. Next comes recording it while I play it in this version and listening to it to see if it actually works from an audience POV.

Also, my teacher showed us the most adorable Twinkle bow, a fully functional miniature bow used to teach children how to hold it properly and to use the proper wrist and elbow motions. Because it’s so tiny you can’t help but hold it properly in order to get the maximum yield from the hair. We squealed when we saw it.

I think that’s a decent summary of the weekend. We loved having Arthur over. I had a terrific beginning to my first lessons in ten years. I saw people I only get to see once in a while both at the housewarming and at the baby shower (including the mother-to-be!). We really, really enjoyed being out in the country on Saturday. We want to try to visit the Coalition Stronghold at least once a month, but realistically it will likely end up being every six weeks or so.

It was wonderful to have such a positive weekend.

I think that’s about it. The end.

Headaches

Yesterday, not long after I wrote my journal entry about practising, my Internet connection went kablooey and I spent the next couple of hours unsuccessfully trying to fix it. I ended up turning the damn thing off and going to work in the living room. It gave me writing time, but I had tons of Internet-associated research to handle and correspondence to catch up on, and it made me very cranky. Also, I lost an expanded ETA form of that last post in which I rhapsodized about a particular shift that I love doing in one of my lesson pieces. And the post didn’t actually post thanks to the kablooeyness, I discovered this morning. Gnarr.

However, I managed to play cello for a while longer, and accomplished this as well:

Orchestrated:
New words yesterday: 2,508
Total word count, Orchestrated: 26,246

Uh-oh. The protagonist’s mother came home early and found her with a boy in the house. Alone. Playing music, but still. Also, a date? With someone else? What is this turning into? Where the hell did that come from?

Orchestra last night was good. I don’t know if someone mentioned something about our situation to the guest conductor but he’s really focusing on interpretation and phrasing. Quite nice. And the principal showed me a terrific fingering for the opening phrase of the Wagner clarinet piece we’re accompanying (five flats! dear gods!).

Today I have an awful, awful headache that extra-strength Tylenol is doing nothing to assuage. Thanks to this headache I fell asleep again while the boy was playing this morning and didn’t get him to the caregiver’s till just before ten o’clock, so the day started somewhat later than usual. I did get the Internet connection up and running once more, thanks to an installation CD lent to me by the upstairs neighbours (bless them) so that headache has been taken care of although it took an hour to do. We have groceries for dinner. I have mostly caught up on correspondence and stuff. I have even eaten lunch. There are more errands to run tomorrow morning.

Now I get to do a draft of a ritual, and write some more. My head hurts an awful lot, though. Time to drag out the white flower balm, and hit what I suspect is a baby migraine with some extra-strength Excedrin.

Canny

Yes! The way to successfully avoid work is to practise the cello loudly for an hour!

(I can’t feel my left hand from the wrist to the base of the fingers. It’s a very odd sensation. Or lack of it, I suppose. All that vibrato, you know.)

I am so incredibly pleased with the sweeter tone the luthier coaxed out of this cello with the new strings and the bridge. I noodled about with ‘Itsumo Nando Demo’, trying out different slurs and phrasings, then played through some of my lesson stuff again. All in all I’ve done about an hour. Most excellent.

Standing Still

Lowest voter turnout ever. Well, since 1898. I’m disgusted.

We spent election night drinking Quebec ice cider, Nova Scotia beer, local venison-cranberry pate, and baked local Brie. How much more Canadian can you get?

Far more interesting than the Official Federal Election In Which Nothing Happened was the Student Vote program, a project designed to educate children and teenagers about the election process and the structure of government. Students assessed platforms, debated, listened to candidates who were willing to meet them, and finally ‘voted’ and ‘elected’ 100 Conservative seats, 66 NDP seats, 54 Liberal seats, 44 Green seats, and 24 Bloc seats. Take a good look, people; these are tomorrow’s voters.

In other news, we had an absolutely lovely weekend with my parents. The weather was lovely; the food was incredible (as always). The only drawback was Liam coming down with a cold and his first case of conjunctivitis, which we caught right at the beginning before it got bad and thus was cleared up before we left for home. (Well, okay, there was that other drawback of having to wade through two hours of traffic to get out of Montreal, and experience so awful that we came very close to turning around and going home. Except to go home would have taken us the same amount of time that continuing to get out of the city would take. You know, that whole ‘I am in blood stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er’ thing. And had it taken any longer there very well might have been blood.)

Naturally I have the cold now too, and mine are always worse than the boy’s. It’s like he amps them as he passes them along. He stayed home yesterday and we ran errands together. “We’re going to vote for the government!” he told everyone with great excitement when we went to the bank, the grocery store, the place where I bought pants, and where he got his hair cut. The actual voting was anti-climatic for him though once he’d helped me find the polling booth by number (although he kept trying to steer me toward 126 instead of 136). We were in a school gymnasium, and he was very distracted by the climbing bars and the benches against the wall. I voted very quickly in order to lunge and catch him before he got more than a foot off the ground and up those bars.

After a very overcast day, the sun broke through for the most glorious autumnal end of afternoon glow. There was a warm wind all day. It was a beautiful full moon last night, and when we lit our Happy Full Moon candle at the altar before the boy’s bedtime he chirped, “Thank you, Goddess, for all the things in the world!”

Also, I found three pairs of jeans that fit me that were all on sale. And I only have to hem one of them.