So, um. A lot of today was “lie on the chesterfield under an afghan and read”, because that’s all I had the energy to do.

I did practice for half an hour, and, as I expected, my hands are wrecks. See, one of the hallmarks of fibro is a loss of power in limbs and extremities. Mine manifests mostly in the hands, which means I can no longer amaze people by opening jammed pickle jars and the like as I used to. Now, twisting a bottlecap off a beer can be a challenge. (I know, I know; that sounds like such a first-world problem.) With weak hands, I have to watch my cello playing rather closely. By addressing some of my bow hand issues over the past eighteen months my teacher and I have been able to maximise the use of my right hand. My left hand, well, it’s mostly fine, except when I’m really tired and my focus isn’t the greatest, and then my fingers actually trip one another up because they don’t get out of the way quickly enough in a shift/string crossing combo. (I am certain that made no sense to anyone but a cellist, and even then you’re probably wondering why it happens because the hand is a unit. If one of my fingers has just played a note it tends to tangle up in the rest of the hand as it moves in a shift if there’s a string crossing involved because my hand jumps the gun while my finger lags. This is absolutely a result of trying to cross strings and shift at the same time, which is a no-no and a habit I have yet to train out of myself with complete success.)

Today, I:

– plied the 4 oz of fibre I spun yesterday
– wet-finished and skeined said yarn
– rested an awful lot
– practised for half an hour
– finished Lady’s Maid by Margaret Forster, a semi-fictional story about Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s maid and companion
– went to pick up the boy
– house research

Dress rehearsal tonight.