I understand now why I’ve been avoiding doing a second draft of Orchestrated. I have to rework the beginning, and I don’t know how to step into it properly. I’m doing a lot of staring at the renamed document on the monitor, the printout in front of me, and feeling like I’m going nowhere.

In other news, there are four more rehearsal till the Canada Day concert, one of which I will be missing as we’re out of town. I need to work on the speed of the Grieg dances, and to smooth out the shifts of the Ralph Vaughn Williams and the Faure Pavane. But really, that’s it. We’re coming together. So long as everyone keeps up their end of the practise-at-home bargain, we’ll be golden. Gods, I love the Vaughn Williams. But that’s just me; I like RVW to begin with. The cellos get to do a lovely stompy theme in the first movement, and a nice lyrical theme in the second. And because I know the piece well, I can play it better.

HRH cleaned out the garage and sorted things into give away/sell/donate piles, and reorganized the storage area. We can all get to the bikes now. I went through the piles of clothing to donate to the local charities. It’s good to have all that out of the way. It was getting very frustrating not being able to find things down there, or easily access the things we needed. I finally saw the water/mold damage to my lovely thick white office carpet Blade gave me as a birthday gift a few years ago, and it’s awful; it was rolled up with one end resting on the floor and got soaked one day. Just one of the irritating reminders of the past downstairs tenant whose washer leaked regularly, flooding the garage floor (and yet she insisted nothing was wrong, argh). I’m pretty sure a thorough steam cleaning will rescue it, and as the upstairs furniture needs that kind of cleaning too we shall rent one of those special vacuums from the grocery store and go to town one day.

Things are ramping up in the family for the boy’s series of birthday celebrations. This Saturday it’s the family thing, with my parents coming in from out of town to join the local grandparents here. Next Wednesday we’ll send cake and possibly balloons to preschool. Thursday is the day itself, and if the weather’s good we may abscond with the boy and take him to the train museum and lunch out. Then next Saturday is the kid party. That’s two cakes and a batch of cupcakes to make, which also means a lot of icing. I hope butter’s on sale somewhere. We asked him what kind of theme he wanted this year, and it wavered between Star Wars and superheroes for a while, before settling on superheroes. Not that we go deep into the theme thing, we just like to have a loose thing to tie colours and cake and invitations together. This is the first year I haven’t done homemade invitations, which makes me slightly sad, but there’s that whole not having colour ink for the printer and money being tight. (Till, well, today, but today would have been too late for the invitations.) It was less expensive to buy them.

I have just discovered Amanda Palmer. I am, as usual, late to the party. I knew about her, but hadn’t actually heard her music till today. I’m currently listening to Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and it’s excellent. Not something one can just throw in the CD player; it’s a very specific sort of music. But very good. Lovely sting arrangements.

HRH got his provincial tax refund today, which means mine is close behind. Hurrah!