Relaxing Day

Love that Debra!  She knows how to make a girl feel good, and look good too.  "Kate" shoes by Naot.

"Peru-B-Ruby" by OPI on the toes.

Other than that I went to Body Flow and cleaned out studio files. It's too hot to be ambitious.

As the World Turns

Thursday I had a headache. Thought it was the heat and allergies. Thursday night I had a bit of dizziness. Friday morning when I got out of bed, it was more like vertigo, but passed quickly and I had a full day of activity, including Bodyflow at the gym. Last night the vertigo re-turned. This morning EVERYthing turned. This afternoon Muffin turned into the Doc-In-the-Box and held me up while I walked in to the "walk in clinic".

`Hi Doc. I'm not blonde, but I sure am dizzy.

`Stop the world! I want to get off.

`I'm not spinning a yarn, here. I need some help.

`Can you 'top' this off?

`Let's keep 'rolling' out the paperwork.

Forty five minutes later I was shot full of decadron and had a prescription for a Z-pack and a cortisone pack. Lots of fluid is sloshing in my ears and pressing my sinuses. I've never had vertigo like this. Am I in a movie? Is this temporary? When will the meds 'get around' in my system? Why was it my 'turn' to have vertigo? This is true. I'm not 'tilting windmills'.

My Dream

I woke this morning at 5:26 a.m. from a dream. It was very violent. A beautiful woman was being held hostage and was terrorized and abused by two totally unfeeling men. They were violent, totally disregarded life in all forms, and had taped a gun inside her mouth while interrogating her. She was hidden away during the interrogation in a public building that was an obvious place, but the room in which she was held was hidden away inside the building at the top of a flight of stairs which was not obvious. No elevator accessed the floor where the room was located.
I had a terrible sense of urgency. This woman's life would be over soon unless...? Somehow one other person and I were called to this place and given directions to find the room and were admitted and allowed to see the violence. We were questioned. I don't remember any of the questions or the nature of them. I knew that I had to use my wits and wisdom to escape this situation alive, and to save the other two people. Again, the urgency. Somehow I was released to the hall outside the door and I was talking on a cell phone, my own cell phone that I own now, and talking in riddles to a network of people, trying to send coded messages to reveal the situation, the urgent need to preserve two or three lives, and the location. That is when I woke.

For almost an hour I asked God what this dream meant, and finally I felt a strong urge to pray for the upcoming election--presidential, judicial, education, and senatorial races in particular. After another half hour I sensed the Lord revealing that the beautiful woman in the dream was Truth, Wisdom, Freedom. This made sense to me because our current women's Bible study is on Proverbs, and Wisdom is personified as a woman. I believe the Lord is saying that the network I was trying to reach is unaware of the urgency of preserving all that is Wise and True. I had to talk in riddles to preserve my own life. I began to pray that Wisdom and Truth will be set free and Life will be honored, protected, and revealed in a way that will not need to be "coded". Again, the sense of urgency was so very strong. Please, as part of my "network", join me in praying.

For several weeks Muffin and I have been compelled to pray that the people of this nation will receive truth regarding this election and will act upon it. We have prayed that every indiscretion or area of falseness in every candidate will be revealed. We need to know the whole truth about candidates and they need to enter office in humility--not humiliated, but in a spirit of service to the people who elected them.

Father, we release Wisdom and Truth in our nation in the name of your precious Son, Jesus. We know that You are the Way, the Truth and the Life. Please set Truth and Wisdom and Life free before this election. We release Truth and Wisdom from hiding and from oppression in our culture. We look to You to give abundant life. In Jesus' name.

Must be Autumn

Top 10 reasons I know it is Autumn:
10. Apples are getting cheaper at the market
9. Roses and other flowers are blooming again in Texas
8. Butterflies are growing more numerous as they migrate through Texas on their way to Mexico
7. Early mornings are cooler
6. I got my flu shot last Saturday
5. Ragweed is blooming and making everyone sneeze and sniffle
4. Football--on TV, radio, intramural fields--is all around me
3. My favorite fruits--blueberries, apricots, and nectarines--are no longer available or not as sweet as they were in spring and summer
2. Musically, all organizations are preparing for Christmas. We rehearse through the Fall so the sounds of Christmas will be sweeter.
1. It's that week again! Five concerts and six rehearsals for student concerts and classical performance on Saturday night.

Whew!

I played lots of notes this week. (I missed quite a few, too) The Symphony No. 2 by Dvorak is a very powerful piece of music, a composition which, in all my years (48 in orchestra) I have never performed until tonight. Compositions like this are why we practice scales and arpeggios. Problem with this music is that it doesn’t lay well under the fingers of the left hand, even after practicing it for hours. We were all hacking at the same passages over and over backstage and it still felt like a panic attack when we saw them coming at us in the performance. The audience loved it, however, so we must have done enough of it well to be pleasing to the ears.

As much as I love playing symphonic music, I’m having doubts about how long I will be able to play first violin parts. All the reaching for high notes and the shifting to high positions is aggravating my joints—especially the right hand, wrist, shoulder and both shoulder blades. I was feeling my age this afternoon after the 4 hours of rehearsal, morning and afternoon. I hit the sack with a hot pack on the shoulder, after spraying it with pain killer and taking more Advil. Muffin dragged me out of bed, cooked an omelet and poured a big Diet Coke to lure me into getting dressed and out the door.

Our first item of performance was the Bolero, by Ravel. Our conductor had “choreographed” the orchestra so that only a few musicians were on stage to begin—led by the snare drummer. Gradually, we added soloists and sections until shortly after the trombone solo, all personnel were onstage and playing. It was very effective in showcasing the soloists and drawing attention to each of them. We followed along backstage in the darkness on an orchestral score on a music stand with a light. Following the Ravel, we performed with a famous saxophonist, Dr. Eugene Rousseau, who played an incredibly difficult concerto by Tomasi. I can’t believe I heard such beautiful tone and interpretation, fully memorized.

I enjoy each week of teaching my students, and I always enjoy providing music for weddings, receptions, and other special events. But, symphonic music is what inspires me. The music of Beethoven, the sound of the orchestra, is what drew me as a very young child, to study violin. It is the overtures to opera, the driving rhythms of 20th century music, the dissonances that resolve to rich harmonies, the subtle timbres of rich symphonic works which drew me to choose to major in violin, rather than piano, which I began to study when I was four years old.

One of these days I will need to retire from playing with the orchestra and I will miss that fabulous sound, the experience of playing from the center of the sound on stage in a violin section and knowing that the audience is hearing it full on—impossible to experience any other way that LIVE in a concert hall.

But I will not miss the joint pain, the adrenaline drop-out, the soreness the following morning (moving into several days as I age), and the moments of terror, wondering if I have practiced enough to truly perform my best. Even the youngsters were complaining of aches and pains tonight. It was truly vindicating!

Age and Experience

This is my banner this week. So far I have dropped a jug of water I picked up by the unreliable handle. I knew that about the handle--just did it anyway. And I forgot to close off the doggie door after a rainstorm, even though we had just cleaned the carpets. I stayed up very late last night hand-cleaning off the mud. Then, there was the DVRecording I tried to drop to a DVD, although I should have known that the recording was bad, because I was there when the TV went to green screen because the local station lost its feed. One DVD wasted.

Yesterday I picked up a flower pot off the front porch so I could plant some recently rooted basil in it. It only had potting soil in it. Brought it inside, planted the rooted plants, poured a bit of water over it, and started outside with it. When I realized all the water was running straight through the drainage hole, I remembered why the plants originally planted in it wouldn't live. Plus I had to clean the tile where all the water leaked. I shoulda known better!

Tonight, tomorrow, and the next day I'll be reminded again and again that making mistakes is a way of life, until my fingers thoroughly learn all the notes and bowings for the Saturday night concert. Discipline. Wisdom. Practice. Knowledge. oops. Discipline. Pracitce, knowledge, wisdom. Oops. Discipline......

Tuesday Trouble

All began well. View this, and this. Made me smile. Two siestas came over for our final Bible study of the summer. We studied, prayed, and ate well, avoiding the Three Dreaded H’s of summer. But I had an outstanding internet order with guaranteed delivery today and the tracking indicated delivery at any moment. I waited. I ran errands and got a lovely pedicure. I made schedules, phone calls, wrote policy and calendars for the studio. I watched a recorded episode of Burn Notice, eliminating all commercials. I nursed a headache. No delivery. I work more on the schedule as the evening wore on. No delivery. I took leftover goodies to Nannie and great books for her to read if she cannot sleep, which has been too often since Dubbie died.

On the way out the driveway the garage door bounced up, which it sometimes does, but this time it would not stay down. On the way home I called Muffin who gave me instructions on using the ladder and a screwdriver to make adjustments, except it didn’t work. About 5 trips up and down the ladder, many turns of the screw and many lift/lower bounces later, a terrible clattering noise occurred and no movement at all on the next trial lift/lower. So, down the ladder, and a trial to manually lower the door and SNAP! The chain broke. So, with many errands to run and a trip planned I will be manually operating the garage door until, oh, say 10 days from now, when we can get parts replaced. This is not the sort of uplifting experience for which I pray. Oh, and while the door was halfway up/down and I was gone for 45 minutes delivering goodies, UPS delivered. The scan indicated it was out for delivery at 6:30 a.m. and the delivery was about 8:30 p.m., but still within the 3 day limit, so Yea. I think I’m experiencing two of the three dreaded H’s now—hungry and hormonal, so be warned to BOB! Back Off Buddy!