Wednesdays

While for other people it’s the middle of the week, it’s just another day for me. There’s bread rising, I need to go out and collect the tomatoes that are falling off the vines, and I should eat something. There’s a cello lesson tonight, too.

I discovered this morning that the Rock Band USB mic is actually recognized by the Mac, and records the cello. Unfortunately, it’s a mono mic and the sound is awful. But what I did discover by listening to the playback is that my sound is too timid most of the time. If I want it to sound better, I have to go all out; no holding back, giving notes their full value, especially before a rest, and so forth. Vibrato! Positions to avoid open strings! The whole nine yards.

In unrelated Apple news, I would like my Touch to actually connect to the internet when it says it’s connected.

It was cool enough this morning that I turned off the A/C and opened all the windows to let air move through the house. So much cooler, right away. The A/C and strategically-placed fans can only do so much for so long.

Twenty pages got edited yesterday. I found one last [write this bit] that I’d forgotten about, and that’s the last one in the book. Then I go back to trying to find a good hook to open with. I wrote a new prologue and a new opening page for the first chapter last week; let’s see if they’re still any good when we get to that point again.

Yawn

Yeah, I know. The Court’s a bit boring these days. If I’m here, I’m tired and uninspired. If I’m away, well, I’m away.

I made homemade bruschetta with pearl onions and tomatoes right out of the back garden last week. Piled it on freshly baked focaccia and couldn’t stop eating it. That ended up being dinner for me. I used Lu’s recipe, roughly, but used lime juice in place of the red wine vinegar. I don’t think I put any herbs in at all. Just tomatoes and onions that tasted like sun, plus sea salt, the olive oil, and freshly ground pepper.

The editing/second draft work on Orchestrated continues apace. I’m at the Oh Noes Accident And Hospital part of the story, which means I think I’ve bridged all the [write this bit here] gaps that I needed to bridge. I’ll find out as I continue on, but I seem to remember everything being pretty straightforward from this point to the end. This could, of course, be an entirely falsified memory cleverly crafted by my subconscious in order to maintain sanity.

With the air conditioner installed as of last Saturday morning, we are blessedly free of the high heat and humidity warnings that are piling up. And as an added bonus, I no longer hear the landscaping crews and power tools working outside. We were trying to make it through the summer without installing it, and really, we did very well. The summer has been cooler than usual, but apparently the weather’s making up for that with a vengeance. Yesterday around six o’clock the thermometer in full sun on the back porch read 42 C/106 F, and that was before factoring in the humidity. (Putting in the A/C unit two weeks before September. What is this world coming to?)

Camping last weekend was lovely. There was plenty of tree cover to shade us from the sun and a very good fire pit on our site, which ended up being the central gathering area for everyone. Lovely new people; and so the (co!)coven grows. The only bad part of the experience was arriving to find the fire pit still smoldering, which means the people who used it before us weren’t responsible. The not sleeping well and waking up in lots of pain wasn’t great either. But everything else was enjoyable. There were many marshmallows roasted.

My spinning wheel still has not arrived. I am antsy and cranky about it, as we are rapidly coming up on a month since I ordered it. I was hoping to have it by Saturday, as that’s when we’re heading out to the Fearsranch in Alexandria for an overnight, and both Fearsclave and his Wicked Old Step-Mother want to see it. Of course, the WOSM has just gone out and bought her own gorgeous double-drive double-treadle Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel, so we may end up geeking out together over hers instead of mine, as was the first plan, or comparing the wheels, which was the second plan.

I have a cello lesson tomorrow night. I need to play for a while today.

This is the boy’s final week of part-time preschool. As of next Monday he is full-time, which means this Thursday is his last day with the caregiver, and Friday is his last weekday at home. We’re going to go see Ponyo together to mark the occasion.

So yeah. Not very exciting, here. Mostly tired, with a side of exhausted.

It’s A Cello Thing

If I start thinking of second position as being 1 on 2 instead of 3 on 4, my targeting and intonation might improve.

(Yeah. Stupidly obvious. I know. Trust me, I’m cradling my head in my hands wondering how I got so off-course.)

It’s Friday…

… which probably means something. Except it doesn’t, because I work at home. Not that I can do that today, as the boy is home with us due to rescheduling, and grr. It’s been one of those Days of Broken Ears, you know? That frustrates me more than outright naughtiness does, somehow. (Although this morning’s episode in the car of rolling down the window and then asking if he could do so was outright naughty, because he can’t roll the window back up on his own. “But I did ask! I asked at the end!” he protested when I reamed him out. Not on my watch, kid. Do it without first asking again and your seat’s going back in the middle of the backseat, where you can’t see out the windows properly.)

The hallway looks spectacular. The colour is a dark cappuccino, and HRH redid all the white trim that chipped off (yeah, not such great quality) when we used the baby gates as well. It’s the colour I’ve been seeing in my mind for the past four years instead of the washed-out-milk-with-a-drop-of-coffee-in-it with a chalky finish that was up there. I hated that finish; you couldn’t wash it, because any swipe with a damp cloth left swathes of permanent colour-change. Very frustrating.

It’s back to school season, and I’ve somehow completely disconnected from it this year. We walked into a department store this week and were attacked by Back To School!!! stuff, and I kind of shrugged and said, Oh, that time of year? It’s probably partly to do with the weather and its not-very-summery-ness. But otherwise, meh. Maybe getting the Mac and the Touch last month assuaged my new-school-supplies need for the year.

We officially have tomatoes. Two plants broke, but HRH rescued the fruit and they’re ripening on the shelf outside.

And… my contributor’s copy of Out of the Broom Closet arrived this morning! It’s a very handsome book and I’m so pleased with it. I’m not going to do a hero shot; I’ll wait for the box of author’s copies to do that.

We’re leaving tomorrow for an overnight camping trip with out local covens, which should be nice and relaxed. (Do you hear that, world? Nice and relaxed.) I handle organization of the two other annual local co-coven events, so this one I told others to handle. Other than offering to bring the camp stove/BBQ, a sack of corn on the cob, and outlining a menu for lunch, it’s someone else’s show/lists/booking/schedules, for which I am grimly thankful. All I have to do is show up and camp. Besides participating in rituals, that is. And any rit I don’t have to write or run these days is a good one; I am so burnt out doing that and the organization thing.

Right; they boy has shut himself in his room to read on his bed. I will try to take advantage of this by working some more on Orchestrated. Yesterday there were about twenty pages edited, and three new ones appeared. I found a decent timer app for Macs that helped immensely; I set it for five minute intervals and realized that by giving myself a five-minute minimum, I was also giving myself permission to write past five minutes. I found myself restarting the timer over and over. Also, the day seemed to go very slowly for some reason, which helped a lot.

Right. I have just been asked for crackers and cheese. That, then work.

Wow

So I picked up a couple of pet slicker brushes from the dollar store today to card that waste fibre. And yikes, the amount of vegetable matter it got out was astonishing. Or alarming. One of the two; I can’t quite decide. Anyway, cards > combs for this, that’s for sure. Now I have two wobbly little chains of roving (oh, it’s probably drafted sliver) from not even a third of the first bag. It will certainly be good for experimenting with once the wheel arrives. It was waste fibre, after all: the chains aren’t smooth in the least, and if I took out all the short bits and every last noil we wouldn’t have anything left. But it’s in a heck of a lot better shape than before.

My lower back hurts. That’s what you get for sitting cross-legged on the floor with the cloth in your lap for half an hour.

My hands smell like lanolin.

I think I’m library-bound.

The Home Update

When we got home we discovered that the garden had gone rioting while we were away, so HRH took it in hand. The first thing we did before we even got into the house was pull out one of the carrots with the boy, who had been asking about them for a month, and lo and behold, it was carrot-sized, and very sweet! He’s had one a day since we got home.

We should have harvested all the peas before we left; they’re a bit sour now, but cooking them in sugar water will help that, Ceri tells me. We have a staggering number of green tomatoes, and three or four are even ripening and will be ready in a day or so! Yes! Real tomatoes this year! If they all ripen I will be able to make staggering amounts of preserved tomatoes. It’s probably mostly due to HRH thinning out the tomato plant foliage before we left to allow sunlight through to the fruit. And when he weeded everything out and pulled out the last of the lettuce, HRH found that a cucumber seed had actually taken and had stealthily been growing under the lettuce and potato greens. There are a couple of flowers on it, so we’ll see what happens there.

It’s the eleventh and so time for the boy’s monthly post, but that can wait as it took me three days to do the post-trip roundup.

I pulled the cello out last night once the boy was in bed and HRH was downstairs. Just before I left for NS I’d done a bunch of water-related work: washing several loads of dishes, bathing the boy, scrubbing the bathroom, washing my hair, that sort of thing. Just a lot of it in a very short period of time. And my callouses started lifting right off! While I was gone the last bits flaked off entirely, so I sat down with very smooth fingers last night. Well, the callouses are starting already, which is good. I played for about an hour, reviewing things, trying a new piece in the Positions book by Mooney, then messed around with all the harmonic positions on the C string. My teacher contacted a few of us yesterday and asked if anyone wanted a lesson next week, as she’d be in town and free, so I waved my hand madly. I know I’m doing things wrong, I just can’t figure out what.

HRH tells me the hallway and the fourth wall of the living room will be painted this week! We’re off to secure paint chips today.