Sometimes this child is so punk it is unreal. Check out the sneer.
Of course, the kitten next to him, the cartoon sippy cup, and the Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirt do lessen the effect somewhat. (Thanks for the photo, Pdaughter!)
Reports on a most excellent weekend will follow later. I need to get back to work.
We’re all stretched a little thin here. HRH has injured his right wrist somehow and can’t lift things or grab things; he was sent home from work on Friday. The humidity, courtesy of a lovely rain/stormy thing that has happened on and off for the past 36 hours, makes everyone feel like they’re suffocating. Sparky is all right for a while then turns all Toddler Jekyll on us without warning. I have hit the phase I hit every couple of years where I absolutely cannot stand my house and must change it in some way. I feel as if there’s nowhere I can go to relax in my own home, which is problematic. The living room and bedroom make me tense, and my office is a workspace with no room for any other furniture, otherwise I’d try to put a reading chair in it. We can’t afford a new living room sofa and chair, of course, but these ones are now past well-used in a colour that has never thrilled me, and HRH and I can’t agree on slipcovers. (Come to think of it, the boy is the only one who has new furniture in his room. The only new pieces of furniture we’ve ever bought are bookcases, the fridge, the living room carpet, and the kitchen table.) The television is having major issues with the visual display on the screen and it appears to be dying, another costly problem we’re reminded of every time it’s turned on for a movie or to watch the news. I live and work at home, and if I don’t like being there, well, it creates tension in my brain and body. Not a good thing. It’s odd that I can put up with objects that I don’t enjoy for a long time, then suddenly, as if a switch is thrown, I’ve had enough and things have to change or I will go mad.
Also, no matter how many times I wash the kitchen floor, it remains sticky. Little things like this are dangerous to my temper.
But there is freshly baked bread as of an hour ago, of which I have eaten a quarter-loaf already.
I put the new strings on the viola Thursday night (I so want to say ‘I restrang the viola’), and I think the previous set of strings were violin strings. (Whoever owned this before I picked it up knew nothing about stringed instruments.) My trip to the easily-reached luthier reaffirmed that I don’t like them much; no matter who talks to me they seem to think I know nothing about the instruments I play or consider any of the research I’ve done ahead of time of use or import. Telling me you’re giving me forty percent off the list price of strings and making it seem like a huge favour when I know every luthier does it impresses me not a bit, and in fact makes me think you’re condescending to me. Also, if I wanted to spend a hundred dollars on a bow, it would be put towards one for me and not one for my son to mess around with. I’ll be going back to Archambault to pick up one of the cheap-quality ones for $37, thanks.
(Note to self: just stop trying to like them, okay? Give up. Use your regular luthier, even if it’s further out of the way via public transport and has no parking, and be thankful.)
We went out this morning to Valois, where I made a quick stop into the Bramble House for dolly mixture and Walnut Whips. HRH and Liam hung out at the train station and watched four long freight trains go by, up close and very loud. This thrilled Liam beyond belief because we took him to the Montreal train museum last Sunday and he has asked to go see “the big trains” every day since. I poked about the secondhand bookstore in Valois while HRH and the boy relaxed on the back bumper of the car with the hatch up at the station. It was a nice morning out.
The second batch of ratatouille on Thursday wasn’t as good as the first. I baked the first for a half-hour longer than the recipe indicated, which mellowed the vegetables out more, I think. The second batch was cooked for exactly the specified time, and the veggies were crunchy but not as sweet.
Read Christopher Priest’s The Glamour in its entirety on Thursday. Good, but not as good as his Extremes. I finally finished Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora which was good, but took me a long time to settle into. The style of storytelling wasn’t exactly easy, but the story was interesting enough that I stuck with it to accustom myself to the style. Once I had, it was enjoyable enough that I found myself chuckling now and again.
The boy just woke up early from his nap, crying as he does sometimes when he wakes up and wants to still be asleep. I slipped into his room and wrapped him in his blanket, picked him up, and carried him to the chair where we snuggled for about five minutes until he fell asleep again. I sat there in the dark with his long rangy preschool-like body across my lap, his head on my shoulder and his eyes closed, his breathing a bit snuffly, and I wondered where the past two years had gone. I have sat with him in that chair so often, more so when he was younger. There is a certain peace that descends when you hold your sleeping child. Part of my mind frantically tells me to make the most of this time by putting him down and getting stuff done, while the rest (thankfully) ignores it and rests in the moment, feeling that peace, the weight of the warm body, the soft damp curls on the head, the fists that twitch randomly in sleep, that snuffly post-cry breathing, the legs that dangle off the side of my lap. I’m having trouble with life in general these days, so moments like this give me the still time I need for both my mind and my spirit.
Once he’s awake (again, and at the proper time), we’re off to a barbecue with friends this afternoon. I’m looking forward to it.
I would have sworn on my life that my viola had no soundpost in it.
Today, as I was gathering things ahead of time before my lunch meeting, I opened the viola case to clear out anything non-essential before taking it to the luthier.
There is a soundpost in my viola.
I am mystified.
A few years ago I gave the viola to a fellow cellist’s mother to mess about with, as she has an amateur familiarity with lutherie. It was, however, given back to me with the explanation that the soundpost, which had fallen before I got it, didn’t fit properly and would have to be taken to a professional luthier because it wouldn’t stand.
Except here we are, with a functional soundpost.
I have luthier elves, perhaps?
I still need to go to the luthier because I need new strings for the viola, and I want to look for a 1/4 size cello bow for the boy. But evidently I don’t need to bring the viola in with me.
This pleases me because the viola isn’t precious enough for me to entrust it to my regular luthier. I was going to drop it off at the luthier whom I am neutral about, whose shop is three steps away from the metro I take to get home from lunch with the Thursday gang. (I am neutral about the shop because of downright rude and emotionally scarring customer service during a Very Big Step I had worked myself up to taking thirteen years ago, but since then they have been helpful about a harp issue and a bow issue.) A simple purchase of supplies will be quicker and also much less expensive.
Done, done, done!
Just housekeeping to do on this file and a final scan to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid, and it will be delivered. There is an ice cream bar in my future.
The other revised file landed in my inbox moments ago. There is work for another week, once I’ve delivered the current file this afternoon.
This is both good and bad, though, as I was hoping to have a couple of days out with friends and assorted children during the week before school begins. Sigh.
Also, mailbox joy! The nice big cheque for the work I did on the project during July just arrived.
I’ve written some little dribs and drabs longhand over the past fortnight, bits of dialogue and scenes that don’t belong anywhere yet. It’s August and I’m engaging in the August Writing project as usual, where one writes every day. I missed a few days last week; for once, I’m not stressing about it or trying to write extra things to ‘catch up’. The Wings & Ashes novelette has submerged back into my subconscious to mellow some more; I can’t get into one of the key characters yet, and it’s understandably blocking things as she’s one half of the romantic pairing of protagonists and central to the story.
Yesterday, I sat down and plotted out the entire last half of Swan Sister, creating and writing out the key scenes in point form on index cards and ordering them in such a way that they made sense as a story. I now have the future of the rest of the book sitting on my desk by my pencil cup, existing as a quarter-inch stack of pink, green, and white cardstock and fountain pen ink bound together by a small green bulldog clip. Each index card is akin to a writing prompt. Now I know where to go; now it can be written. When I’m ready, of course. And the writing prompt doesn’t guarantee that the scene or scene sequences outlined on the card will be easy to write, or quick.
So yes, I am writing. I’m really enjoying the permission I have given myself to not write at the computer this month. I write for a living and I work at the computer; writing longhand somewhere else is a change I need. It’s more relaxing, less fraught with getting it right (write?), and a different method of creating. And allowing myself the permission to not transcribe and post it to the writing community (thereby removing a deadline of sorts) frees me up to create something less polished as well.
The August Writing project is about giving most people a structure to get them writing again. For me, it’s about removing the customary structure so I can write. Sometimes, as Bodhifox said last week, you just have to change the rules, to perform some sleight of hand in order to slip past the obstacles in your own psyche.
SCENE: After the morning ablutions, SPARKY and MAMA are back in the boy’s room, getting him dressed. SPARKY has flopped down on the floor, lying limply, making it difficult for MAMA to get his jeans on him. He pulls a large book over to him and drags it up onto his chest. Then he inches it up over his face.
SPARKY: Where’s Liam?
[MAMA looks at him. She knows darn well where SPARKY is: lying on the floor holding a book over his face. Then she gets it.]
MAMA: I don’t know! Where’s Liam? Where did he go?
[MAMA continues to wrestle a pair of pants onto the boy.]
MAMA: Is he… under the bed?
SPARKY: [very quietly under his breath, as if he were talking to himself; also with a hint of amusement in his voice, because he knows something MAMA doesn’t know] Nooooo.
MAMA: Is he… under the chair?
SPARKY: [as before] Nooooo.
MAMA: Is he… in the cupboard?
SPARKY: [as before] Nooooo.
MAMA: Where is he?
SPARKY: [lowers the book just enough to peep over the top, eyes merry]
MAMA: There he is!
[SPARKY giggles. Then he puts the book aside and reaches up, placing a hand firmly over MAMA’s eyes — or, rather, the bridge of her nose, because the hand isn’t big enough to cover both her eyes.]
SPARKY: Where’s Mama?
(This has been repeated with toys… toddler fingers covering the eyes of Thomas the Tank Engine, for example, followed by Liam looking at me with eyebrows raised and the free hand palm-up in the air making a ‘who knows?’ gesture, asking, “Where’s Thomas?“. It’s a variation of the old peek-a-boo game, this time with words, and it amuses me so much. I love how it still centres around the eyes and being able to see them, only in a different way: now if you hide someone else’s eyes, they become invisible instead.)