Aweary

Okay, I’ve had my fill of winter. It hasn’t been particularly bad this year. It’s been very pretty. I am, in fact, fond of how the light shines on the snow out here. I am fairly certain that I’ve made it further this winter than in previous winters before coming to this conclusion: I’m ready for lighter coats, shoes again, crocheted fingerless gloves, and watching for the tips of crocuses peeping through the leaf mold. I am ready for hyacinths in the supermarkets, for bouquets of tulips and daffodils. I am actively observing the sun hang around a little longer and be a little higher each day when the boy gets off the school bus, and cheering it. I’m tired of the very cold damp that saps my strength, and that leaves me cold in my very bones when I go out, and for much too long after I’m back inside. I am very, very weary of the bitter wind, and the wintry accessories like mittens and heavy boots and long, thick scarves and my long, down-filled, periwinkle coat.

There you have it.

Catching Up

There’s family-related health stuff going on that isn’t for public discussion, much of it stress-inducing, so I’ve been kind of quiet.

Still no call from the luthier about the mini cellos. I’m hoping we hear from them this Thursday or Friday so the boy can go to his first lesson this Saturday. If not, then hopefully they’ll call next week and we’ll get it in time for a lesson on the following Saturday, then the group class on Sunday.

I handed in the edits on the repurposing project. The editor said very nice things to me, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside after struggling with the project; she apologised, too, because she hadn’t known I wasn’t the original author till after she’d done the edit. All’s well that ends well. I accepted a new copyedit project, too, due at the end of the month. Because you know, what I really need is something else to take up my work time when I’m trying to get half of the first draft of the bird book down for a review in mid-February. Actually, the way I seem to work these days is doing editing in the morning, then research and writing in the afternoon; it allows my brain to shift gears and I’m more productive.

Oh, right; I’ve contracted to write another book, this one on the symbolism and folklore associated with birds. It’s due at the beginning of May. I have no idea when it will be released. There, now you know everything I know. I’ll do a formal pro announcement when things are less nebulous. I have half a dozen secondhand research books coming my way from the US and the UK, all ordered about ten days ago. The only one to get here so far? The one from the UK, on last Thursday.

I got the biggest cheque of the four I was expecting last week, which was a terrific lovely surprise. I paid lots of bills and put a chunk on my Visa, and today I treated myself to ordering my new Saxony spinning wheel, which was the plan all along when this particular cheque landed (whenever that would be). I initially tried to order it from the wonderful and incredibly helpful London-Wul in NB last Friday, but the proprietor called me back, quite distressed, because the distributor wouldn’t let her order it in. She directed me to Gemini Fibres instead, and I called them this morning after lots of wibbling because I am phone-phobic. They were absolutely lovely, however, and I’m all set with them now. They don’t keep the unfinished Kromski Symphony in stock (yes, it amuses the musician in me that my wheel is called the Symphony, and I have ordered the unfinished version) so they need to order one in then ship it to me. I’m guessing that ought to take about three weeks. That’s probably a good thing, since I need to focus on work right now. We’ll finish it ourselves with a walnut stain and a nice satin wax. I ordered the extra slow and fast whorls, too, which will give me a full ratio range of 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 25 to 1 with the 24″ diameter wheel. (Just for comparison, my Louet S15 does 5.5, 7.5 and 10.5 to 1, with a wheel diameter of 20″; I have a high-speed bobbin that gives me ratios of 6.5, 9.5 and 15 to 1, but I wanted something more efficient overall.) A couple of people have asked if I intend to sell the Louet, and no, I don’t; it spins thick lofty yarns very well, and plies quite efficiently. I can also toss it in the car, which I can’t do with the Symphony. It’s also a single treadle, whereas the Symphony is a double treadle wheel, so if I ever have temporary knee or hip issues the Louet is good to have as a backup. I think the Louet will reside in the family room downstairs so I can spin down there.

I, um, may also have bought two spindles through Ravelry destashes last week. I claim brainwashing by the SpinDoctor discussion group on Ravelry. I am hoping these change my opinion of spindling. The entry-level machine-made spindle I’ve got weighs 1.75 oz, and is a bit clunky; these are much higher quality, handmade, and weigh just under and over 1 oz respectively. I’ve got a Spinner’s Lair reclaimed black walnut and maple spindle at 0.88 oz coming to me, and an inlaid Kundert inlaid oak, English walnut, and black walnut spindle at 1.2 oz, too. I knew I needed a good spindle when I went mildly crazy over the Christmas holiday without spinning equipment at my parents’ house. (The alternative was investing in a real travel wheel, like the adorable upcoming Schacht Sidekick, but it’s probably going to cost more than my new Saxony wheel did, so that’s not in the cards. Two handmade spindles costing a total of $50 is much less expensive!)

I got to see the video of my piece at December’s cello recital at last week’s lesson, which was interesting. My physical technique looked really good, which was reassuring. We’re now working on making my RH fingers longer, as I tend to have a very flat hand from the wrist through base finger joints when I bow. I need to arch the unit more. I came home with a pile of work: the Bazelaire suite, some last review of my final piece from Mooney’s Position Pieces book 1, starting book 2 with Pattern 1 in fifth position (playing this totally messed with my perception of every key I played in afterward, as it goes from Bb+/Eb+/Ab+/Db+ because it’s the same finger pattern on each string), and carrying forward with Suzuki book 3 and the Bach C major Minuet revisited with the new bonus middle section in C minor. We’ll be getting new cello ensemble music the the group lesson at the end of the month, too. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with this and orchestra, too, but I now my teacher’s assigning it all for specific reasons, most of it inter-supportive. She put a Stringvision grip on my bow, too, and it makes the frog just grippy enough that I don’t feel like it’s about to slide out of my hand when I relax my grip to lengthen the fingers.

Missed Capricornucopia on Saturday due to fibro dragging me down and HRH recovering from whatever threw his back out. By all accounts it was brilliant, and I’m sorry we weren’t there. Highlights of the family weekend otherwise included sorting eighty percent of the Lego in the house by colour, warping the loom with yarn for two secret swap projects and then having to figure out how to work around the oversight that one project was almost twice as long as the other (lashing a second shorter apron rod to the first to tie on for the shorter warp, and using fingers to beat the weft on the longer one for the first while), dinner with HRH’s parents, and the second episode of Downton Abbey on PBS last night.

Right. Off to punch the first rise of bread down, switch the last load of laundry, and get going with putting more words in the bird book. Or possibly doing the first eighth for the copyediting job. No, definitely the bird book.

The Countdown Begins

We went to the local music store yesterday to buy the boy’s first cello book.

No, there’s no excitement here, none at all:

He opened up the cover and wrote his name and what the book was inside as soon as he got home.

Assuming a 1/8 and 1/4 cello get set up within the next two weeks, his first lesson is Saturday January 22.

Today’s To-Dos

Things I should do today:

    * Practice the cello (lesson tomorrow; I need to look at the final pieces in Mooney Position Pieces vol 1, review the first movement of the Bazelaire and play through the second movement in prep for beginning it, and probably drag out Elfintanz again, too)
    * Run errands: mini grocery order, buy printer ink cartridges
    * Bake a cake for tonight’s coven meeting
    * Finish the first pass on the edits of the repurposing project (This is frustrating because I’m considered the ‘author’ for this part of the process, but none of the manuscript is my words or arguments; I moved someone else’s around. So when the editor asks me to clarify or explain or support my claims, I’m at a loss because I didn’t write it.)

What I could do, or want to do, instead:

    * Reskein my lovely finished singles Merino yarn on my brand-new swift and photograph it lovingly; also, cuddle it
    * Curl up on the chesterfield under an afghan with reference material for book #6 (Have I mentioned that here officially yet? Well, I’ve got a new book due to be handed in in May. More news as I have it and can release it.)
    * Working on my swap parcel for my first swap project ever (My initial plan has to be discarded due to time constraints, alas, but I have a back-up plan that involves weaving.)

What I am hoping for:

    * One of the four freelance cheques I’m waiting for to land in my mailbox (I know there was a holiday in there, but my sense of time passing does not acknowledge that)
    * Any of the books I’ve ordered for research to arrive in the mail

What I have to do:

    * Pick the boy up at school to (a) go to the library to return due-today books, and (b) go to buy his first cello music book.
    * Think about dinner (augh please no I am so tired of meal planning and food in general… oh, hmm, maybe pot roast. There, that was easy. I have to go take it out of the freezer now.)
    * BUY CAT FOOD

Things I have already done:

    * Took the boy to the bus stop
    * Caught up on correspondence and news
    * Paid bills!

It was -20 C this morning, and I woke up incredibly achy. Fibro, I do not love you.

LATER: Go me; I did everything on this list except the finishing the first pass of the editing, and the three things under the could do/want to do list. Well, I did dye yarn for the swap, but that happened while I did other stuff.

No research books arrived, but the biggest of the four freelance cheques landed in my mailbox (YAY!). Ironically, so did our city taxes for 2011. That can be paid in four much easier to swallow instalments, though, so hurrah. This freelance cheque means paying a big chunk of Visa, socking some away, finally buying Amanda’s extra iPhone, and ordering my long-awaited treat for myself, my Saxony wheel.

New Beginnings

The boy is currently very excited.

We’ve been talking about music lessons for about two years now. We agreed that he would choose an instrument by new year’s, and start lessons this spring.

After initially wanting to play the cello when he was much younger, he decided against that and for the past year has been considering violin, or flute, or piano. (He really does want to play the trombone and the drums, but those will have to wait till high school age.) Those were his suggestions, too, not mine. He’s seen people play all of them and enjoys the sounds.

This morning I reminded him that it was the new year, and he had to settle on one. And he said, “Oh, yes, Mama, I want to practice the cello, like you!”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. But HRH told me that he had watched the littlest girls at my recital very intently, had clapped very hard for them, and had said, “Dada, they’re very good, aren’t they?” It must have had more of an impact than I expected. So I said I’d set it up with my cello teacher, and he said, “It’s a good thing I already have a cello.” Now, his “cello” is actually a cigar box viola I picked up secondhand on a whim about eight years ago to mess around with. So I said, “No, lovey, we’ll take you to the cello store (which is what he calls my luthier) and we’ll get you your own really real cello.” I didn’t think his eyes could get that big.

I am not a dreamer; I know this is going to be frustrating for him at times, and frustrating for me, too. But music is very rewarding, and lessons are good for teaching things like self-discipline, focus, and improving concentration, all of which he needs to work on. I’ve also seen my teacher work with her littlest students and he’s going to have a blast. It seems like they play lots of games and get to have a lot more fun than the grown-ups do!

I would have been thrilled with any of his choices. (Well, okay, the piano would have been challenging, but I would have found one for him if he truly and deeply wanted to learn it.) But he’s chosen my instrument, after telling me very definitely that he did not want to play it, and I admit to being heart-warmed by that. It’s something we can do together. We could have played duets with any of his other choices, but now I’ll be able to show him things and have a better understanding of what he’ll be learning technique-wise. And I know my teacher, so we won’t be starting from scratch with someone we’ve just met, and I know that she’ll do a wonderful job with him.

I’ve just sent my luthier an e-mail requesting an appointment for sizing a rental cello, and a note to my teacher about scheduling lessons. The boy is very much looking forward to all this. And to be honest, so am I.

Our Best 2010 Holiday Photo

Seriously.

That’s my dad and my son in the cockpit of a 727. There is so much awesome in this picture I can’t even begin to catalogue it all.

(What, my version of a holiday photo isn’t what you expected? Actually, we didn’t take many Christmas pictures; we rarely do. We’re usually busy.)

ETA: People who read this via LJ, it has come to my attention that some of you are leaving comments on the RSS feed at LiveJournal. I don’t get those; I just happened to trip across one today because my feed showed up at the top of my LJ friends page. Not only do I not get your comments, they are gone along with the syndicated post in two weeks. Please leave them on the original non-LJ blog post instead! All you have to do is click on the original post link at the top of the syndicated post to be swept through to Owls’ Court proper. A bonus enticement to get you to click through: You’ll actually see the pictures and images in my posts! Because no, those don’t always get syndicated along with the text of my posts for some reason.

Settling Into 2011

I am so very tempted to just say, “Yo, in 2010 WE BOUGHT A HOUSE, that trumps everything else, also it is both the best thing that happened but the three months leading up to it were the worst” but I owe it to myself to be more in-depth than that. At some point however; today is not that day.

The Tooth Fairy came the other night, so we know she has our new address after all. The boy was somewhat dejected when he got up. “The Tooth Fairy didn’t come,” he said. “How do you know?” HRH asked. “The little bag is still there,” the boy said. (We’d put the tooth (the tiny, tiny tooth) in one of my little velvet jewellery pouches.) “Did you look inside it?” HRH said. The boy blinked at him. “She doesn’t need the bag,” HRH added. So the boy scrambled to pull the pouch out from under the pillow, upended it, and said, “SHE GAVE ME A MONEY! I have a two dollars!” He’s back at school today after his first all-day playdate yesterday, and I have no doubt he will be brimming with news about his other friends when I meet him at the bus stop this afternoon.

There is now a new wall in my office, complete with what will be the closet eventually. The room is definitely smaller; three feet is more space than one thinks. We’ve had to move one tall bookcase downstairs into the hallway as a result, which means I have to rethink where all the books get shelved yet again. I keep reminding myself that I used to do this for fun. It is not as much fun when you have to do it, nor when the books in question are spread out over two floors of the house. And then I keep realizing that we’re going to have to do it yet again once the upstairs loft is finished and we move the offices into the attic, and that will be spread out over three floors.

So there is a wall; it has been framed, there is drywall up, the seams have been plastered, and today it gets sanded, primed, then painted. I am told there will be a louvered folding door on the new closet door, too. The boy was actually a help instead of a hindrance in the framing, HRH says. My parents had a set of toy construction tools put away in a closet somewhere, so they sent those home with us and the boy got to open them Tuesday morning. He wore the hard hat and the ear protectors all day, although the tool belt kept falling off. HRH gave him a pair of safety glasses, too, and taught him how to use the power drill. ( “Do they make safety shoes in kids’ sizes?” he said in aside to me. I’m mostly sure he was joking.) The boy is very excited about having to wear a mask when sanding happens, and he was a bit disappointed that it was happening today while he was at school. He has been promised full involvement when the drywall gets plastered and sanded in the attic, however. They both wrote their names on one of the 2x4s of the new wall, which I think is a charming tradition when you add to a house, and I’m glad they did it.

HRH found the original maple hardwood under the floating laminate floors. It’s very thin, though; it couldn’t have taken another sanding.

In the meantime, all my bookcases are RIGHT BEHIND ME when I am at my desk and it is quite claustrophobic. I’ve been doing a lot of my editing work downstairs in the family room on the antiquated and borrowed iBook. On one hand that’s frustrating, because I can’t check the Internet quickly for facts as it’s running Panther and the oldest version of Safari I’ve ever seen, which freezes if you look at it wrong and won’t run or load a lot of current web stuff. On the other hand, I can’t lose time in wander around the Internet in search of distraction. It’s too old to use a Twitter client, too, so I use the web-based version; it loads the old Twitter web page but not the new. It’s essentially a word processing machine now.

And a quick gift summary: My wonderful yarn swift, two cookbooks and a novel I’d asked for (all read before 2011 hit, sigh), a pair of excellent loungy pyjamas from both sets of parents, a beautiful pair of leather gloves, gift certificates to bookstores and iTunes and Tim Hortons, an owl mug and owl notepaper and an owl blank book, a lovely little whisk and mixing/dip bowl set, kitchen stuff like two new non-stick pans and Teflon utensils and a new cookie spatula, socks, and a pretty tiger’s eye lozenge pendant. No chocolate. (I KNOW. I think everyone remembered that I have problems with dark chocolate and decided to play safe, and also that HRH gives all his chocolate to me so they didn’t get him any, either. I have been sneaking Lindt reindeer and snowmen that theoretically belong to the boy.)