Wrong Spritzer

Last week I was about two quarts overloaded on adrenaline because I was so pumped about our symphony concert on Saturday night. I would rank this in the top five most difficult concerts in my forty something years of playing in orchestras. Remember that my "word for the year" is skill? I practiced for hours with the metronome. I listened for hours to the recording of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. I studied the music and listened for more hours. I practiced one measure, then added another, then another, etc. until I could play whole passages at the tempo markings without a breakdown. I watched youtube videos of performances of the concerto. By the first orchestra rehearsal I was really tense. The following day I did two hours of workout at the gym (an hour of Body Flow and an hour of Pilates training shared with a friend), exhausted myself, recovered with a nap, and practiced another hour before the second rehearsal. At the end of the second rehearsal I was more confident, and also even more anxious about either becoming lost in the compressed rests or just playing in a rest or getting lost in the complex bowing. I didn't sleep too well that night, woke up edgy and was really wiped out at the end of four hours of rehearsal. After a nap I warmed up for about 30-45 minutes and was ready to kill it. And we did! It was a very decent performance of the Bartok, followed by the orchestra accompanying Giora Schmidt's solo of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Which is also on youtube illegally.

I was so distracted with my learning process last week that I did a really crazy thing one morning. I shampooed my hair and toweled it almost dry. Reached into the cabinet for my yellow can of mousse for curly hair, shook it up and spritzed it on the back. Only it didn't sound right. I looked in my hand and I was holding a can of spray on sun screen! Also yellow. And although I appreciate that the back of my head was protected from sun, it was pouring rain outside. Hair do- over!

Sunday after church I was so drained of intelligent thought that I skipped lunch and went to sleep and didn't wake up for about four and a half hours. I moved that second yellow can far, far away from the hair products.