Robin McKinley's Blog, page 113

Bleeeech con't, day two

 

I couldn't get out of bed this morning either.  Ratbags.  Gigantic throbbing neon ratbags.  Did I tell you that I was going to the concert that I missed last Wednesday, tonight, as the tour swung back (roughly) in this direction, pausing at Barnstorming, which is not implausibly far by train?

            I didn't go.  And as I write this it's happening  now.  Whimper.

            Sigh.  Well, I kept the booking for the dog minder to hurtle hellhounds this afternoon.  She said when she brought them back, shiny-eyed and panting,* that they had been very lively.  Yes.  I'm sure.  They've been a trifle short of hurtling the last day and a half.**

            So, day two of no energy and very little brain.  With reference to the latter it is a very good thing that Penelope rang me this evening to tell me that the (bell) ringing tomorrow morning has been moved up twenty minutes.  The . . . ?  Long pause my end.  Oh.  Right.  Memorial ring tomorrow morning.  Of course.  I knew that.

            As long as I had her on the phone I asked her about the no-flour bread I mentioned here the other night, and for which I've now had several requests.  She confirmed what I remembered, that she made it up as she went along, and I have continued that tradition, creating a batter that looks right.  But generally speaking it goes like this: 

Baked ground-seed somewhat breadlike substance 

Start with an egg.  Beat it up.

Add ¼ c oil or melted butter.   Groundnut (peanut) oil is good.  If you like the flavour, olive oil is also good.  Beat together thoroughly.

Probably about 2c ground seed.  This is what Penelope used, and what I've used since:  http://www.linwoodshealthfoods.com/productdetails/36/milled_organic_flaxseed_sunflower_pumpkin_seeds.aspx  And yes, it's eye-openingly expensive—but your nonbread will be more filling than your average mere floury object too, and you can get away with thinking of it more as a vegetarian main course.  But stir in enough to make a softish but not runny batter—gooeyness more or less what you'd expect out of an ordinary tea or quick-bread batter. 

You may want a little salt.  I like a little tamari.

When you're happy with the texture, sprinkle or sift one or two (measuring) teaspoons of baking powder and one or two (measuring) teaspoons of dried herbs to your taste over your batter, and beat that in.

If you'd rather use fresh herbs, chop them up and add them before you add the baking powder because chances are they'll dampen the batter a little more and you'll have to adjust.  A big handful of parsley or coriander is good.  I don't think fresh basil bakes all that well:  if you want basil, I'd use the dried. 

Pour it into a round 8" pan.  I haven't cared to find out just how sticky ground seed is, so I butter and flour the pan and put a circle of parchment paper in the bottom and butter and flour that too. 

350°F for about half an hour.  It won't rise, but the baking powder and the beaten egg seem to stop it from turning into a brick.  Bake till the edges are turning brown, and the middle is firm to a light touch. 

I haven't made it for a while, but I'm clearly going to have to.  I'm sitting here remembering how good it tastes. 

* * *

 Bratsche wrote:

I always enjoy reading about your pleasure from your [singing] lessons as well as the progress you're making. 

Progress.  Blerg.  When I was warming up today it was taking even longer to persuade my voice to come out of hiding because we were both so traumatised by yesterday.  You know that weary old adage that voice teachers and random members of the populace like to quack at you—that you have no idea what you sound like from the outside?  Well, you do after you've made the mistake of recording yourself.   And since I played it back right after I made the recording, I know what this or that note feels like when I'm singing it.

            But, as previous, I like singing, and at the moment it's one of the few passion-engaging things I can do, because I can always sit down between phrases, or revert to Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes for a bit, or whatever.  So I persevered, in my wombly way, and the music started to get hold of me.

            Peter had been having a snooze*** upstairs when I started, and when I was about halfway through my practise he came downstairs and started rustling around in the kitchen.  I finished a song and was turning over my music and thinking about what to have a hack and chop at next.

            That's a nice noise, said Peter.

            My hand froze.  That's what? I said.

            That's a nice noise, repeated Peter.

            You're being kind, right? I said.

            No, he said.  You don't sound timid any more.  It's nice.

            . . . So maybe I am making progress.  You do have to remember that Peter is about as musical as a tablecloth or a cricket bat.  Still. 

I occasionally have students who really want to challenge themselves with material (most of the time I say, "Ok, let's go for it!", knowing they'll learn a lot from diving in somewhat over their heads). And as I work on learning a new instrument, I'm definitely drawn toward the harder pieces, because I like the sound of them better. 

Yes.  I don't know if it's like this for string players, or for professional musicians learning a new instrument, but certainly at my level I realise there's also a kind of ragged line about learning—there's more you could do on a simpler piece if  you could do it yet, but you can't, so you might as well go stretch yourself like a rubber band on something you clearly can't do yet, but that's a thrill just to try to replicate a little of.  And you can go back to the simpler thing later when you're all clevered up from the stretching.  Also as it happens most of what I've been singing lately is mournful and while I like mournful, Se Tu M'Ami is a kick because it's about a girl saying I like you fine, honey, but if you think I like only you, think again.  I doubt I'm putting much of this over, but I'm aware of the bounce when I'm singing it.  Erm.  Trying to sing it.  Although on the subject of putting it over, while I don't know if any of this is audible, I'm back on good terms with Caro Mio Ben again, thanks to Nadia.  One of the things she said—speaking of mournful—is that a way to approach it is that every phrase is a sigh.  

. . . it's the amount of time she spends talking me out of the holes I've dug for myself 

Yes, but that's just part of what a good teacher should be doing (in my biased opinion). Dealing with the non-technical and non-music-specific bumps is part of learning how to make music. 

Nadia says she knows a lot of voice teachers who have gone back to school and become shrinks.  Snork. 

* * *

* That's hellhounds, not dog lady.  Although she was possibly a trifle out of breath.  

** Although they're not complaining about the extra time on the sofa.  Hey, can anyone out there recommend a pretty-to-look-at but stupid hidden-object/mild adventure/no blood, killing or monsters, no-time-limit-setting, preferably unlimited hints, iPad-compatible game?   I finished Rosecliff and am almost through Crystal Portal, and have basically bombed out of Serpent of Isis because I loathe the freller.  I don't like the moronic cartoons, the hidden objects are too hard, the puzzles are IMPOSSIBLE^, I hate using your flashlight in darkened rooms, and—and this is why I'm quitting—the quality of the graphics for the level of complexity is frankly inadequate and since I'm playing the thing on my still-shiny-almost-new iPad 2, I don't think it's my screen.  I object to wasting (numbered) hints on things that I missed because they're indecipherable.  

^ One of my biggest complaints about computer games generally, every time I've had a little stab at this utterly supernumerary category of time-wasting, is that all of them seem to assume that you already know how to play computer games.  Is there a pill?  Or an energy drink?  And suddenly the scales fall from your eyes and all the frelling conventions and assumptions are writ plain?  

*** Peter's ability to sleep through my thumping and squealing is one of his greatest virtues as a husband.^

^ Although agreeing to pay for the extra quarter-hour of voice lesson is also high on the list.

Bleeeeeech

 

In the first place I'm having a melodramatically awful ME day.  The ME gods clearly don't like me talking in public about coping.*  How melodramatically?  CateK in response to last night's blog says 'What has really helped me live with ME/CFS is finding ways to engage in my passions.'  Yes.  I still want to write a blog post about staying sane with ME, but the bottom line for me is building a life I can have.  Building as much of a life as possible that doesn't constantly ram me up against the things I can't do.  This is why I don't ride any more;  I'm only interested in the kind of riding that involves a relationship with a specific horse, and horses need regular work.  This is why I don't ring quarter peals;**  I never know till the day, and sometimes the half day, whether I'm going to be capable of that kind of effort or not.  And so on.*** 

            There are one or two markers of Really Bad Days that I can't fudge.  One of them is hurtling hellhounds.  It's been a bad day for hurtling hellhounds.  One of those days where I need a double-yoke travois so they can take me home.† 

            So I decided to record myself singing.  While we're on the subject of, cough cough cough, engageable passions. . . .

            AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.††

            Well, you knew that was coming, right?  But before you all fall on me in a body and say What was I thinking of . . . believe it or not there was at least a little method in this madness.  Nadia had said some weeks ago that a number of her students are sorry later that they didn't record themselves at the very beginning so they can glory in their progress.  Very nice, I said, I can see that.  But not for me.  Noooooooooo.  And that remains true—I am nothing but grateful that I did not record myself last February.

            But I have begun to think that I might like a benchmark from now.  It's a pretty grim thought that now represents an advance—that it's not last February†††—that this is the new improved me.  Which is where my cleverness in deciding to record myself when I know I'm not at my best comes in.  It's wiggle room.  I suspect that if I recorded myself when I was feeling at the top of such game as I have I would be so appalled by the playback that I would give up singing forever.  And, as I keep saying, I like singing.  Monday afternoons are a highlight. 

            So I went and propped myself up beside the piano tonight and warmed up for a bit.‡  And then I fished around for my poor neglected little palm-top video camera and discovered that it was, of course, deader than a Precambrian fossil, so while I plugged it in to (I hope) recharge I had a look at Pooka.  Yes, she has a video- as well as a still-camera option.  So then I propped both of us up at the piano and . . .

            I may still never sing again.  No, no, no, it's not that bad.‡‡  The first try we deleted hastily.‡‡‡  The second try . . . ah well.  We deleted that too.  By the third . . . well, I was calming down a little§ so what I was attempting to perform was almost recognisable.   Almost.  For variety I switched over to Astarte for a trial.  Oh dear.  No, the big screen is a mistake.  Back to Pooka.  Gah.  No, wait, I have an idea:  Astarte again, and I'll sing while I'm making supper, which I do a lot anyway.  I might almost forget the soundless whirring and the little beady eye. . . .

            Okay.  I kept two recordings, one per gizmo.  As benchmarks for future reference.  This had better be worth it.  After all I don't know but what Astarte's is less threatening, glorying, as it does, in three minutes of the corner of the kitchen with the cooker in it, adorned by the occasional blur of black jeans and pink-and-white pullover passing by, thumps, clatters, crashes, the sound of boiling water and the clang of pots, and a faint reedy voice, occasionally audible, singing Gypsy Rover.  I hadn't actually meant to be deliberately facing away from the thing the whole time, but this ploy was certainly effective.  I have hidden less well from Pooka, singing the first two verses of She's Like a Swallow . . . but I can always delete it later.

            And no, you can't pay me enough, so don't bother to ask.§§

            Ask me in a year.§§§  

* * *

* I'm tempted to say 'sod off, scumsuckers' but I don't dare piss them off too much.  

** My plan for 'practise' quarters crashed and burned, chiefly because there isn't really a big enough pool of local ringers.  I may try to resurrect it some day. 

*** There's the tiny additional whammy that I think some of what I've been calling an unusually bad go of weather-related rheumatism is a chest infection.  Oh gee.  Thanks.  Thanks ever so.  But it would explain why I can't seem to get rid of this probably-never-was-a-head-cold, and why there is still so much of it in my . . . duh . . . chest.  I'm bashing it with homeopathy at the moment, and if that doesn't work, yes, I'll go to the nice medical doctor and mangle myself with antibiotics. 

† Given how irresistible/immovable they are when having a head-to-head over their idea of the best spot on the sofa^ they are totally strong enough merely to drag me around town a little.  

^ Guys.  I need to be able to see, and I need to be able to move both hands.      

†† Etc. 

††† Or, worse, when I first went to poor Blondel.  He has a great future in politics as judged by his ability to keep a straight face in response to the seriously delusional.  

‡ And my new exercises are huge fun. 

‡‡ Yes it is. 

‡‡‡ One of the reasons I bought a dedicated video camera in the first place was because the aggressiveness of social networking makes me nervous.  And my video camera is a couple of years old and the social networking monster has meanwhile got bigger and meaner.   The vidcam predates Pooka, let alone Astarte:  I still had my old Blackberry clone when I bought it, and the Blackberry didn't channel its soul and essential being through a galactic consortium the way i-creatures Pooka and Astarte do.  You want to update your aps and your podcasts and so on and what you get is a knife-to-your-throat invitation to join the on line community.  I was playing Fruit Ninja^ the other day and apparently you can't turn off your connection to the great outer world^^, you can only choose which great bullying competitive gang of thugs you want to be oppressed by.  Meh.  Everything out there wants to drag you kicking and screaming onto the net . . . and the tools with which to do this are way too efficient, as evidenced by the gratuitously, the prodigiously ghastly YouTube recordings for anyone to watch and listen to.  I have a terror of accidentally pressing the wrong button and . . .  

^ Clearly I'm missing something because it rouses in me a great agonising sense of 'Unh, what?' 

^^ Which means our happy relationship was going to be short anyway. 

§ McKinley . . . it's true she has a name (and a gender), but you can still turn Pooka off.^ 

^ Well . . . I think.  See above, about inadvertently pressing the wrong button.  

§§ Oh, you could.  But I'd expect to get a new car out of the deal. 

§§§ Or three.  Or maybe six.   Or twelve.  Or . . .

Hanging onto your health with both hands

 

Springlight wrote:

From personal experience of ME, I'd second the magnesium as important – I was horribly deficient initially. And I'd add a metabolically active folate to the B vitamins and LOTS of B12. Again, only my personal experience.

Something else that's helped is taking a long hard look at my life & deciding that I get too stressed over relatively minor matters. . . . I was continuously draining my batteries by over-reacting to situations, mainly because I believed I couldn't manage them due to the ME. . . .

But I am improving! For a topical example, last month, I managed a visit to the local-ish bell foundry. Two years ago I couldn't have done that. Six years ago, anything over 50yards away necessitated the use of a wheelchair. 

Big ugly ugh on the wheelchair and YAAY for improvement.  (And for the visit to the bell foundry.  Loughborough, I assume.)  I've never been to wheelchair stage—on the other hand, I had a caretaking husband.  That first eighteen months of acute ME . . . I got up, got dressed, often in stages . . . went downstairs, also in stages . . . and spent the rest of the day on the sofa.  But I had to get dressed—otherwise I was an invalid.  It seems a really dumb thing to choose to spend what energy you had on, but it was totally a morale thing, and that's what I needed then.  Dressed I could, for example, ask my husband to bring the books and journals I wanted and eventually, word by word by sentence by sentence, began to learn about what was wrong with me.  I discovered magnesium lying on the sofa.  But I wouldn't have if I hadn't gotten dressed first.  This is the woman who used to get up and put her dressing gown on and go straight to her desk till lunch (taking an apple and a cup of tea with her).

And yeah, stress, totally.  I should leave my adrenal glands to science, they have probably mutated into a hitherto unknown substance which does not belong to this universe.  I'm pretty sure I'm volatile anyway, and I then got put through a variety of insalubrious experiences when I was younger which accentuated this tendency.  This makes my situation now both more and less endurable;  if you're born volatile I figure you're also born to deal with it.  So the essential framework is there, you might say, but it's like pouring the Atlantic Ocean into a two-inch storm drain.  Oops.  But at least you have the idea of channelling even if the practical details are a little inadequate.  And this blog, while a very energy-expensive means, is a daily reminder that my best aid is silly humour.*  I'm less over-reactive than I used to be, believe it or not.  Hannah says so, and she should know.  

theplotchickens writes:

I have fibromyalgia and Systemic Lupus. I supplement with magnesium, B vitamins, etc., but what changed my life and made me able to walk from one end of the (tiny) house to the other, and perform such miracles as . . ."combing all my hair in one sitting" was removing gluten from my diet. . . . My holistic doc's stance is that modern wheat and other gluten-containing grains are much stronger than our bodies evolved to deal with. The gluten causes inflammation.  Now, however, having been largely gluten-free for some time, I have observed . . . My body responds to gluten proteins as though I have the flu (minus the runny nose; just the massive body aches that are the body's response to inflammation.)

Sometimes people ask me if it isn't hard to eat a gluten-free diet … my response is that it's a lot easier than lying in bed unable to make it to the bathroom unaided.

Other of my friends with fibromyalgia and other inflammatory or immune response illnesses (including shingles) have tried the gluten-free diet with similar results. . . . It's simple . . .  go gluten free for 4 weeks, then spend a day in which you indulge in your favorite wheat-based treats, and see what happens the next day. You may not notice the difference in the gluten-free days, as the adjustments are so gradual . . . But then, WHAM, when they come back full-force after a couple of buttered scones, it's pretty hard to deny the evidence. . . .

Gluten is not my problem;  I've gone off it two or three times, once for nearly a year** and while some things certainly changed, they didn't improve.  I kept thinking it ought to be an issue . . . but apparently not.  Post-menopause when every calorie is an enemy I have more than once thought that I might rather be gluten-intolerant and be able to eat tomatoes,*** but hey. 

            It's interesting about the mock flu though.  For years after I went off dairy I used to permit myself an ice cream blow-out about once a year.  For a long time I could do this.  And then about five years ago—I think shortly before I stopped eating tomatoes, so it may all be to do with Getting Old and Losing Your Tolerances rather than just ME—I couldn't any more.  Wild, over-the-top inflammatory response.  Yeep!  Okay!  I'll be good!  Really I will! 

            One of the biggest ratbags is how long it takes you to get used to your major life change.  When I went off dairy I thought life was no longer going to be worth living.  No ice cream?  No cheese?†   And I missed it terribly for years.  The pizza-face thing kept me honest—most changes you make, as you say, are felt gradually, however dramatic the conscious experience.  But twice in my life it's been a startling ZAP.  Going off dairy was the first one:  I watched the stuff on my face and back disappear.  It was live time-lapse photography.  The second occasion was going off the tomato family.  I went from wondering how much longer I could type, walk or ring bells to Wait, remind me,†† was there a problem? in about a week.   The smell of a good spaghetti sauce still makes me whimper.  But by the time I stopped eating spaghetti sauce††† I'd become so accustomed to viewing myself as a (cranky) work in progress or a Heath Robinson contraption it was almost like well, okay, let's see what happens if we press this button and yank on this strut. . . . 

Blogmom wrote 

Now, however, having been largely gluten-free for some time, I have observed that . . . eating that lovely muffin . . . will give me aches and pains profusely the next day.

Yup. This is also seen in gluten-sensitive people with various forms of arthritis. It can be an issue even if you're simply wheat-sensitive absent other health problems.

Besides having a higher glycemic index than a Snickers bar, modern wheat is also chockful of proteins that can confuse and confound the body by escaping the gut and entering the bloodstream where they confuse and confound the immune system. . . .

There is a range of gluten intolerance, of course, as there is a range of almost anything to do with the human critter.  Spelt tends to be the wheat of choice for the mildly gluten-sensitive;  it's a much older, less overbred type of wheat, and people who can't deal with modern commercial bread and bready things may be fine with home-made spelt bread.‡  There's also rye, which has far less gluten than wheat;  and various other gluten-free cereal grains which clever people have contrived remarkably excellent bread-substitute recipes out of.  My last gluten-free stretch, Penelope used to make a quick 'bread' out of ground seed—a commercial (organic) mix of sunflower, flax and pumpkin seeds.  Well worth eating even if you can digest gluten. 

Blogmom also wrote: 

Chocolate is a very good source of magnesium. Chocolate cravings become evident when magnesium intake is low. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

And a very good story it is.  I don't know if magnesium is a common craving-blocking mineral or whether it plugs into my molecules particularly well, but I find it helps food-cravings generally.  I have recently raised my own magnesium intake and find that the gnawing, post-menopausal zero-metabolism-and-don't-want-to-buy-whole-new-wardrobe comprehensive desire for FOOD is significantly abated. 

Jacky wrote:

Modern medicine has a hard time with diseases that aren't straightforward and consistently quantifiable. They have a bigger problem with the psyche/body interface diseases and treating them well. 

Which includes ME, you realise.  Not unlike depression, we are regularly told that it's all in our heads (the brain-fog certainly is) and if we'd just get a grip and stop whining we'd be fine.  Even now, when both ME/CFS and clinical depression are official medical conditions which need to be treated as such and their victims handled respectfully if kindness is beyond the medic in question, you can still feel the 'malingerer' waves coming off the get-a-grip types in great drowning billows.  And as I keep saying, the last thing you need when you're ill is to get into some kind of confrontation with some bozo with a lot of fancy paper degrees and a totally closed mind. 

I have suffered from clinical depression in the past, and the problems ME sufferers have are similar to the problems faced by people with mental illness.  We aren't attractive people to be around. It's hard to live with us. Especially for us, and there is only one way to get away from ourselves – and no, I don't recommend it. 

I've been to the edge of that cliff and peered over it too.  Not a pretty sight.  And that popular myth that menopause makes you look at the stuff you've been sweeping under the rug all your life?  Not a myth.  I keep thinking that one of these days I will write a blog on some of the books on depression I've found helpful over the years, but I never quite get around to it.  It would be a high-energy blog and frivolous is a lot less demanding.

One of the most important lessons I learned about dealing with illness, is don't be so hard on yourself . . . keep chugging when you are going through a rough patch. 

Yes.  That's the bottom line of bottom lines, I think. 

holmes44 wrote:

my husband takes magnesium for leg cramps  

Yes.  It's crucial for me for this too.  I twigged that I'd stopped taking magnesium that time when I didn't replace the empty bottle not because of the increasing ouch level but because I was blasting out of bed two and three times a night because of the leg cramps.  This is even less ideal for someone prone to insomnia anyway. 

Blogmom:

Speaking of mood issues, we have had much less trouble with what we unfondly call "Seasonal Affective Doodah" since bringing our Vitamin D levels up*. Vitamin D has a wide range of other health benefits as well, particularly for people with inflammatory disorders.

Vitamin D is another very common insufficiency**. . . .

* One rat can do footnotes: Vitamin D vs broad spectrum phototherapy in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10888476

** Demographic differences and trends of vitamin D insufficiency in the US population, 1988-2004. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1930752

Absolutely.  Take your vitamin D and smile.     

* * *

* I reserve the right to melt down about things like aggressive off-lead dogs and the misuse of 'lie' and 'lay'. 

** I think that was when I developed my intense dependence on Green & Black's, when chocolate chip cookies temporarily ceased to be an option. 

*** The rheumatism diet:  no tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers and mushrooms (except Shiitake, apparently).  And I know I've just been whinging about missing the opera on Saturday because I can't sit still that long, but before I went off tomatoes and their cousins I had got to the point that I couldn't close my hands when I got up in the morning.  It's made a huge difference. 

† As I get older the order has changed.  It's now:  No cheese?  No ice cream?  I keep thinking I'll try goats' or sheep's milk cheese some day—the parameters of dairy intolerance are also pretty varied.^  And then I think, yes, I will . . . but not today.  If it turns out all cheese makes me react—the pain, exhaustion and digestive hysteria are so boring.  

^ I can eat butter, for example.  

†† Unfortunately it has done nothing for Menopause Brain. 

††† And if I'm moaning, I miss fried aubergine worse. 

‡ It's worth getting your hands on somebody's properly homemade bread to find out if it's not the wheat at all but the 'flour improvers' you're reacting to.

Voice lesson

 

Mondays are good days. 

Although it's been rather a frustrating week on the singing front, but then what week isn't, since I go on waking up every morning and finding that my voice has not become a clone of Cecilia Bartoli's.*  The present exasperations include (a) that I seem to have hit the wall with Caro Mio Ben** and (b) that it's taking me so long to sing myself 'in' lately, so that I can start doing something, that I zone out and then it takes even longer and is even more boring.  So today we started with a little chat about my unreal expectations.***  You do set the bar rather high for yourself, said Nadia, and added that Caro Mio Ben is not a beginner's song.†  Feh.  I was thinking about this on the drive home however and a further aspect to my problem is that I like the ones that aren't beginner's songs.  I really, really like She's like the swallow †† for example and am happy to sing it, but I also have a slight case of okay, fine, where's a scary one?  I'm bad at physical heights, but bring on the metaphoric ones, you know?  I admit I'd feel a little better about my foolhardiness if I didn't suspect it's also a way to FAIL myself.

So first Nadia taught me a couple of more amusing singing-in exercises which she then had to write out for me because I'd never remember them long enough to go home and write them out for myself.  And while she was doing this she asked me to explain what I meant about hitting the wall with Caro.  Um, I said.†††  I can't make it do anything. ‡ 

. . . At first I thought it was just I didn't know the melody well enough yet.  But I know the dranglefabbing melody backwards ‡‡ by now and I still . . . just plod it.  I suppose I'm talking about dynamics, but what it feels like is that I can't connect with singing it—it's so gloriously mournful, but when I sing it it's just one note after the other.  You don't necessarily have to have a good voice to sing feelingly.

This is where the teacher-magic comes in, and I can't explain what she did—and gods frell it anyway, I won't be able to reproduce it at home either.‡‡‡  And there was nothing Cecelia Bartoli about it.  But I was beginning to sound like I was singing the odd phrase here and there with some emotional resonance.  Your emotions are okay, said Nadia.  Use them.  Ha frelling ha.  However. . . .

What we didn't get to is that (because I have a short attention span and am easily baffled) I'd gone back to The Roadside Fire this week—hey, it's in English—for something else to sing, and discovered, rather thrillingly, that I'm singing it differently—differently in a good way, I hope, which I need Nadia to pass judgement on, in her tactful teachery way.  I also asked her if I could please have something else in Italian to go on mumbling and failing to engage with§ which she said she'd think about this week.  Meanwhile I'll have to go on singing Roadside §§ and losing faith in what I thought was happening, and, knowing me, since I have neither been bodily prevented §§§ nor deflected onto a more suitable piece, playing amateur luge with Se Tu M'Ami.

Nadia also said that while when we first spoke on the phone most of a year ago and I had told her that Blondel gave hour-long lessons and she said no, no, she only ever did forty-five minutes, that she was reconsidering this in my case because I seem to like to bite off rather large mouthfuls at home and tend to come in with more music than we can get through in forty-five minutes. #  So if I feel like spending the extra money ## we can talk about scheduling for an hour.

I'm going to take this as a compliment.

 * * *

* Nadia is such a hoot.  Have I told you this?  I said this to her once and she said promptly, we already have a Cecilia Bartoli.  We don't need another one.  You want to find your voice.  —Well, yes, I do, but that's only because Cecilia Bartoli's is not on offer.  Or Marilyn Horne's, or  Janet Baker's, or Bryn Terfel's. 

** Which Bartoli sings divinely, which, as Nadia points out, is also part of my problem.^ 

^ I'm pretty sure I've posted this before:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hlk8EDA02M   I also want the dress.  

*** See previous footnotes. 

† The thing is . . . I do know I'm not Cecilia Bartoli.  I haven't wasted my life because I never was going to set the world alight from the opera stage.  It's not a problem.  But there's some kind of disconnect between that comforting thought . . . and what the hell I still think I ought to be able to flog out of myself.  Sigh.  

†† jjmcgaffey wrote:

She's like the swallow, and it's about a girl who apparently dies of love despite the fact that the bloke singing the song was apparently her lover and loved her. Backstory. I want the backstory.

How many verses are you singing? I Googled it, and found from four to eight – and the eight-verse one has a complete story.

http://www.songlyrics.com/blackburn-fiona/she-s-like-the-swa llow-lyrics/

She's pregnant, and he says he loves all women, not just her. Then she lies down and dies – makes a lot more sense than the 4-verse version. 

Duh.  Never thought to Google.  Thanks.  An awful lot of folk/traditional songs have cross-fertilised to such an extent it's impossible to know which bits belong where and which have migrated in.  To a great extent it doesn't matter—if it works, use it.  You're right that this makes sense of the story, but some of those middle verses require new music, because they don't fit with the rest—and the 'when I wore my apron low he was all over me and now I wear my apron high he sprints past like the devil or a father with a shotgun is after him' shows up in so many songs.  I haven't heard this version so maybe it works in performance. 

††† I'm so good with words. 

‡ See previous footnote. 

‡‡ Which is not necessarily a good thing.  Generally speaking you want to know a tune frontwards. 

‡‡‡ When I tell her this next week she will remind me that her rule of thumb is that there's a good six months' lag in what she's teaching me and what I can begin to do at home for myself. 

§ Or I'll go back to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THTUCtExVbo which has 'demoralise Robin' written all over it.  It's just it's lots of fun to sing till you hit the wall.

§§ Speaking of Bryn Terfel.  And Jean Ritchie. 

§§§ She could tear the pages out of the book, I suppose.   But I'd cry.

# What she kindly did not say is that it's not just the music, it's the amount of time she spends talking me out of the holes I've dug for myself. 

## And I have a birthday a little over a week away. . . . maybe Peter hasn't already filled his quota??

 

 

 

Bummed

 

I didn't go to SIEGFRIED yesterday.  So please don't all fall on me at once and tell me how great it was.  I've already had several emails and a tweet to this effect.  Okay, I can still hope they'll release it on DVD. . . . So, why didn't I go, when you all know that I was really looking forward to it?  Because I got up yesterday morning and realised I'd never survive six hours sitting in a theatre seat—even a theatre seat on the aisle, which is what I always book ahead to get.*  I don't know how many of my aches and pains are the ME, rheumatism—which, if you're asking me, is on the same spectrum**—having fallen off horses too many times in my youth, the straightforward wear and tear of being almost sixty years old, or my previous incarnation as a warrior woman.  You can only take so many lances and sword points through your soft bits before there's a permanent cumulative effect which may linger on through several ensuing lives.  But the combination of the rain, the change of season and, I suspect, the stress level of trying to write a book in five months***, has kind of ganged up on me lately.  Bleagh.  Etc. 

So since I'm in kind of a snarly mood anyway, I thought I'd do what I said recently I was going to, which is talk a little about how I cope with having ME—very much on the understanding that this is only how I do it.  This is crucial.  Everyone is different anyway, but ME/CFS is even slipperier than most diagnoses.  If you have measles, you'll probably have red spots, and if you have Bell's palsy one side of your face will probably be mostly paralysed (although it usually goes away again).  If you have ME . . . well, you'll probably be tired, but that's not too helpful.  But the following is more or less what I sent to the writer of one of the little flood of emails I've had over the last few weeks about living with ME, thinking (as I said to her too) that I'd also put it on the blog.  I've said most of this to you before, but here it is all in one place: 

. . . The problem with all the ME/CFS stuff is that it's so individual, which is one of the reasons both the doctors and the scientists have such trouble with it (and are inclined to blame the victims to let themselves off the hook).  I'd recommend finding a health practitioner of some variety who has a lot of experience in ME/CFS/fibromyalgia/etc and try and get the diagnosis so you know you're headed in the right direction.  (And then cross-examine your expert for useful info.)   You're on the right track, going to the practitioners you've gone to [acupuncturist, herbalist, etc, but she says 'nothing has stuck']—but if you have ME, that's what you're stuck with, and all the help in the world is only going to make it easier to cope, it's not going to cure it.  (Or that's my view.  I think it's like having one leg shorter than another or weak lungs made worse by repeated pneumonia.  You can learn ways to cope and to strengthen, but the facts are still what they are.) 

There are some links in the 'about' section on my blog.  The three therapies that hold me together are:  taking handfuls of vitamins and minerals and other supplements, Bowen massage therapy, and homeopathy.  Beyond that I take each day as it comes.  You're going to have to do your own research because whatever you've got, it isn't what I've got.  But yes, most of my coping mechanisms are self help—my supplement list is my own, cobbled together from professional recommendations, picking friends' brains, a lot of reading, and the one-rat experiment of swallowing lots and lots of pills.  I've been my own homeopath for years, and although this is frowned on for obvious reasons†, I'm afraid I've done myself more good than any of the homeopaths I paid money to did.  Bowen massage is dependent, as so many things are, on the practitioner;  there happens to be a really good one not too far from me.  

Here's a tiny place to start:  what first got me up off the sofa when I went down hard with acute ME is magnesium.  Most of us are magnesium-deficient and can use some supplementation anyway.  Read up on all of this.  Do NOT repeat NOT take anything I say as gospel merely because I'm saying it works for me.  The other vitamin(s) I'd recommend considering starting with is B complex.  I take a B complex plus some additional B6 and B12.  The magnesium is both crucial to maintaining ANY energy level at all for me, and also really helps the pain.††  The B vitamins mellow me out (to the extent that I can be mellowed out which is probably not visible to the naked eye) and are also crucial for pain.  I'd be pretty much crippled without mag and B.  And you really do not want to be dependent on ibuprofen or any other OTC pain killer.  

Homeopathy is a gigantic subject.  Totally worthwhile, but it will pretty much suck up and transform your life if you study it.  Warning, however, it's pretty rough if entirely self-taught.  If you choose to go this route you'll need some help at some point.  (I eventually went back to college.)  

And yes, it's a ratbag that you have to do all this research when you feel like decayed faecal matter most of the time.  But that's the way it goes. 

Good luck. . . . ††† 

*  *  *

* So yes.  When I bail on an opera, I'm also losing money.  But I wouldn't risk going at all if I couldn't get an aisle seat.  I can sit (more or less) still for something average-film length (GHOSTBUSTERS, say), but not an opera, even acknowledging the existence of intermission(s). 

** I think I've told you this before:  when I first started having achy joints I thought, Say what?, because no one in my biological family has rheumatism.  Then I thought, resentfully, that it was probably just the ME finding new ways to goad me—but there's at least one more possibility.  There's the theory that those of us who were regularly stuffed up the wazoo with antibiotics as children are likely to go on to develop rheumatism in later life.  That would be me.  I had constant head colds that turned into bronchitis and on one still vividly recalled occasion, pneumonia, and I swear I was less often off antibiotics than I was on them through my childhood and most of my teens, although this is probably an exaggeration.  The irony is that—as I found out many, many, many, many years later—I'm also milk-protein intolerant, which would explain the constant head colds.^  But I was a kid in the days when (a) cows' milk was good for you^^ and the more you drank the better it was and (b) antibiotics were the perfect cure-all.  Feh.  It's not all bad though.  I'm glad I was born in the era after they discovered about soap and washing your hands. 

^ And speaking of antibiotics, there was the tetracycline I was on for ten years as an adult for pizza-faced-ness.  Which unsightliness also disappeared immediately when I went off dairy . . . which was after I had to come off the tetracycline when I developed an allergy to antibiotics.  Which is a long story.  But it's no wonder my immune system is whacked. 

^^ Even then of course some people were so allergic to cows' milk they positively couldn't have it.  But they were assumed to be poor sad things who would never grow up to be Superperson, or Popeye. 

*** Yes, thank you, it continues to go rather well.  Barring the fact that I wish it were due in June.  Or August. 

† You can't possibly have a clear, unbiased, clinical view of yourself. 

†† I once finished a bottle of magnesium tablets and for some reason forgot to start a new one.  By the end of the week I could barely move and couldn't imagine what was wrong with me.  And finally noticed that my—ahem—tote bag of vitamins did not contain magnesium.  I opened a fresh bottle and was—er—as fine as I ever am by about three days later. 

††† Yesterday and today, as I was grumping about the place thinking about SIEGFRIED, I was thinking about my bottom line in terms of mental health.  But I want to go to bed.  I'll put it in another post.

 

 

Photo Safari II – guest post by CathyR

As promised in part 1, here are some of the photos I particularly like, and which I hope you enjoy. (Although I'm afraid the resizing for the blog has meant a loss of quality).

Male Kudu

Spotted hyena

Lioness, quite unconcerned by our proximity

A young male lion, climbing the tree just for the fun of it

Baboon

Vervet Monkey amongst the acacia thorns

Panic Lake – tranquil and beautiful for birdwatching

Grey Heron

Grey Heron

These buffalo emerged from the undergrowth in front of us.

I love the infinite variety of zebra patterning

I like the way the smallest giraffe is craning his neck to get a good look at us.

Giraffe are so elegant and serene, with such a smooth, pacing gait

I could watch groups of elephants for hours.

Photographs reveal details not spotted at the time – like the birds perched on the rhino's back.

Impala in the forest, in the beautiful light just before sunset

 

Luck

 

Yesterday's luck wasn't all bad.  I got my post up earlier than usual*, noticing in a distant, detached way** that it was sheeting with rain and going back to the cottage was going to be interesting.***  I was standing at the sink doing the last washing-up and watching the solid wall of water sliding down the kitchen window when . . . the lights went out.  About a second later there was an almighty crack of thunder and lighting in Jehovan, Greater-Trump mood.  Gleep.   I was in the process of working out where the nearest torch† was—you may have noticed the way ordinary reality takes on strange whorls and slipstreams in sudden near-absolute dark—when the lights came back on again.††   My first thought had been for the hellhounds—especially the part about tripping over them in the blackness while I'm still deaf from the thunder††† and cannot hear the click of claws on lino.  But hellhounds don't mind thunder, lightning or fireworks all that much, although Chaos has been known to try and chase the funny lights/shadows of the local Guy Fawkes celebration which teems in the windows at the mews.  Last night they remained crashed out in the dog bed.

            My second thought was for my computer.  I Have Perhaps Mentioned that I am about to buy a new workhorse laptop because this one is dying.  It has been stalwart and uncomplaining for several years and in laptop terms it's about 200 years old and it has withstood an awful lot of keyboard-bashing when Word, Outlook or broadband is being particularly grotesque, which is often.‡  But the breaking point‡‡ was a few days ago when I unplugged it to put it into my briefcase-equivalent to take back to the cottage, and a little orange light started blinking in a subdued but urgent fashion.  Now I could spend £65 or so on a new battery . . . or I could recognise the handwriting on the wall. ‡‡‡  I'm trying to remember the last time the power went out.  But the day I say 'yes' to the specs proffered by Raphael § . . . the power goes out. 

            Twice.  The second time the bang was louder.  The lights came on again a few minutes later, and the laptop is still functioning. §§  Not so, however, the router, which was fried to a cinder.  Fortunately—which is where we came in—I got my blog post up earlier than usual last night. . . . 

* * *

 I was moaning to Oisin about SHADOWS which, as I keep saying, would be going very well if it was due in August§§§.  For the end of January, not so much.  I have a great idea! said Oisin.  You can cut it in half (January is halfway, right?) and end it on a cliffhanger!# 

* * *

 Second check:  I was a few minutes late## to bell practise and as I scuttled down the road to the tower I wondered why I wasn't hearing anyone ringing up.###  I panted up the ladder and discovered Penelope lounging on a bench in a ringing chamber magnificently devoid of bell ropes.  We have not worked on our telekinetic skills to the extent perhaps we should have, and our ability to ring bells without ropes is poor.  There were murmurs and thumps from upstairs.  Vicky came down a few minutes later to say grimly that Felix had been supposed to put the ropes back on on Wednesday~ but had . . . clearly failed to do so.  Roger, Niall and Leo were up in the belfry being manly, and we were more than happy to let them get on with it.~~    Rehanging ropes is always a ratbag:  having crippled yourselves and got covered with cobwebs, the ropes are never the right length.  The two was so short we had to climb on each other's shoulders to reach it, and the four is now long enough for Rapunzel's prince to climb up it.~~~  However, the ropes did get hung in time for us to ring a little.  There was a certain quality of whoa, what is this thing%, since our bells have been out of action for one reason or another the last three weeks and at least for the hoi polloi (ahem) one loses one's edge rather quickly.%%  And after Christmas our bells will be taken away for months.  Whimper.

            Uh-oh.  It's raining again. . . . 

* * *

 * No, I still got to bed at dawn, which is easier again since the clocks went back.  Personally I'd rather have the afternoon hurtle in daylight, but cranky letters to the Time Authority^ have no more influence than cranky letters to the Story Council. 

^ And so, okay, you might decide that they've just come down officially on the mucking-us-about-twice-a-year side but I'm sure there's a unilaterality to the weeping and gnashing of teeth over the Time Authority's inexplicable refusal to give us a few more hours in the day. 

And what does any bureaucracy live for but to muck us about? 

** FRELL. FRELL FRELL FRELL.  

*** More frelling. 

† flashlight 

†† And my printer went mad.  CHUNTER CHUNTER CHUNTER WHACK WHACK WHACK CLICK.  Repeat.  Repeat again.  Repeat several more times, till unplugged. 

††† It was nearly that loud. 

‡ 'Most of the time' is probably more accurate. 

‡‡ Speaking of breaking points, and the fact that a car must start:  Diane in MN suggested I ask-a-mechanic on www.cartalk.com about Wolfgang's ominous erratic fault.  Has anyone out there ever done this?  They want you to pay for the privilege, which is reasonable if they've got real mechanics on call, but they want your credit card #—not PayPal—and I've never heard of Just Answer, and yes, I am extremely twitchy about brandishing my credit card on the internet. 

‡‡‡ 'Buy a new computer, stupid.' 

§ Hard drive bigger than god, crumbs-and-tea proof^ keyboard, sufficient muscle to recharge the iPad and an electromagnetic clamp for hanging grimly on to wonky broadband signal.  

^ The drip-prone filling of Green & Black's mint is not mentioned.  I should ask. 

§§ Note to self:  buy new surge protectors. 

§§§ to wit^, a year from when I started it. 

^ There's a joke here . . . but I'm too tired. 

# No jury would convict me.  

## Hellhounds and I were very comfortable on the sofa.             

### At least they had finally got the alarm in the bank on the corner turned off.  It has been going all day.  It was going last night when hellhounds and I finally got back to the cottage, and at rmmph o'clock in the morning, in the dark, with no one around but you and the floodwater sluicing down the road the moooop moooop moooop noise sounds like an announcement of the end of the world.  And fortunately it's cool enough to have the windows closed on that side of the house, and my bedroom is on the other side anyway.  But by the time hellhounds and I hurtled past the bank, the corner and the alarm in daylight it had outstayed its welcome.  

~ Apparently there had been one more day after the one more day after the one more day before the forces of imposed order finally declared the job done. 

~~ This is an occasion where being larger and stronger is a boon, but since I'm taller than either Niall or Roger . . . I will plead ME.^ 

^ It does have its uses.  You'd just far rather find your excuses somewhere else. 

~~~ There would be a problem when he got to the arrow-slit window however. 

% Clearly not the Staypuft Marshmallow Man. 

%%  Grandsire?  Why don't you just call him Granddad or Gramps like a normal person?

Grumble grumble mutter mutter

 

Fate, sometimes, having got you round the ankle, enjoys shaking you up and down like a yoyo for a while.  I had been supposed to go to a concert with Fiona last night, in reward for our labours, and then at more or less the last minute I found myself in one of the typical communication crosswirings of the long married, which is that Peter arranged to play bridge last night as well, which would leave no one at (either) home to keep an eye on and, critically, feed hellhounds.  Dog lady not available on no notice*, it's never a good idea to play too fast and loose with hellhound eating schedules anyway and I'm still metaphorically leaping at small noises about Darkness.  So I had to stay home.  Sigh.**  Then I thought, okay, maybe I'll go bell-ringing at Forza, that's only about two hours away rather than four, and hellhounds are used to supper after bell practise.

            Then I remembered that I had just enough petrol left to get me to a petrol station to tank up.   Which was not going to happen at 7 pm.***  So I really was staying home. 

            Okay, I had photos for the blog, so that meant a short(er) post.  I could spend a little longer on SHADOWS and still get to bed early.†  Whereupon I became hideously embroiled in an argy-bargy with thrice-damned and quadrupally-frelling  WordPress, that rat's-ass of a programme, which didn't want to let me use Blogmom's photo-post template, which she created for me so I didn't have to get into argy-bargies with WordPress about PHOTOS.

            I did not get to bed early.††

            Today hellhounds and I drove out to Warm Upford to our old petrol station and mechanic, and when Blaze came out to pump diesel I asked him about Wolfgang's Erratic Fault, which is that he occasionally . . . doesn't start.  This is not allowed.  And I can't even think about buying a new, or even a new-er, car right now††† so some detente must be reached.  Erratic Faults are, of course, the quadrupally-frelling ratbags of all technology, and Wolfgang's symptoms are not helpful:  I have to have recently turned him off—just time enough, for example, to park, bring out the latest specially-ordered gigantic bags of dog kibble from the pet shop, sling them in the boot, and try, and fail, to drive away—so it's not about being cold;  and his butt has to be lower than his front end—so parked on a slope, but uphill.  Blaze looked puzzled.  And then he spoke the phrase:  you'll have to wait till the symptoms get worse, so we can try to reproduce them here. . . . ‡

            Peter's daughter is staying at the mews for a couple of nights, so I hit the piano early, while she's still at work.  It's taking me longer to sing myself 'in' and produce anything even remotely resembling a singing timbre—and simply to fill in the time, because exercises, without Nadia there to say 'do a little bit of this, now do a little bit of that', get boring and frustrating pretty soon because I don't know how to make them better, I've gone back to some old songs and am fascinated to discover that I'm singing them differently.  I'm going to hope this is progress.  I may test this theory by taking them to Nadia next week.  But the point today was to get me cranked up into singing mode, so I could go to Muddlehampton practise tonight.

            I didn't go (again).  I'm hoarse.  What the bleeding frangledab is going on?  At this rate I'm going to die of old age before my throat recovers from its megrims.  It wasn't even a serious head/upper respiratory cold.  But it won't frelling go away. 

            Meanwhile . . . this afternoon's handbells got cancelled yesterday.   Colin is on holiday, and Gemma pulled out at the last minute,‡‡ which only left Niall and me.  But that wasn't quite utterly tragic because Niall had invited me to ring at his house on Tuesday with a bob major band.  So I was going to have a second shot at learning to ring touches of bob major.‡‡‡  I was pretty excited.

            Niall rang me back this evening to say that next Tuesday's conductor has decided he wants to ring a full peal of minor with Niall and Caitlin.  Which means I've just been de-invited.   

            Whimper.

            I think I'll go doodle something. 

* * *

* The woman has a life.  Who does she think she is?

** Fiona says it was a lovely concert.  Sigh.      

*** I don't know what it is about the English and their petrol stations.   They close at 5, 5:30 pm, like dentists or accountants.  And even dentists usually have the occasional late evening.  It used to fascinate me, twenty years ago^, that even in London you couldn't find a chemist or ironmonger's^^ open in the evening—there'd be an emergency chemist, probably on the opposite side of London, if your doctor wanted to prescribe something to get you through the night, but in terms of walking down your local high street?  Forget it. 

            By the time we stopped going regularly to London this had begun to change.  Not in quaint old-fashioned village Hampshire however.

^ I have now lived in England for twenty years.  The anniversary went past without my even noticing, a few days before Halloween—I've even forgotten what day it was, although I could look it up.+ 

+ Well, sort of I could look it up.  It would involve looking in boxes of old paper files.  

^^ drugstore.  Hardware store.  

† HAHAHAHAHAHA.  Why do I ever think these outrageous things? 

†† And even after I went to bed, I had to play through several soothing levels of Rosecliff, which is one of these hidden objects games http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/5217/escape-rosecliff-island/index.html  and doesn't require as much swearing as Montezuma.^ 

^ Yes, I've completed it.  Yes, I'm playing it again.  Your point would be?  

††† And have I mentioned that my workhorse laptop is dying and I am going to have to buy a new one?  It would be nice if this would have some positive impact on my connectivity problems, but I'm sure that's much too easy. 

‡  Hellhounds and I did have a very pleasant hurtle at this point.  Due to various exigencies we haven't been on a proper country hurtle in over a week, and since our favourite field near New Arcadia has had its footpath fenced off from the rest of the space, hellhounds haven't had a sensible off-lead careen in that long.  Today they promptly took off . . .  straight over the horizon.  GAAAAAAH.  Usually they do laps, roughly speaking around me, which is a little easier to oversee.  They were persuaded, with some difficulty, to recall to mind that they're supposed to wait at all hedgerows and gates—the idea being that I go through first and make sure we aren't about to hurtle straight into the local hunt pretending to follow a drag trail, or Lady Featheringstonehaugh out walking her twenty-three long-haired Chihuahuas.  Hellhounds were off-lead for about twenty minutes (till we came to a road), and I was exhausted. 

‡‡ Sigh.  I am not feeling sanguine about Gemma's future as a handbell ringer.  You have to be kind of a geek, and I think she may be too normal and well-adjusted.  She has sensible priorities, you know?  This doesn't work if you want to learn to ring, especially handbells. 

‡‡‡ And the Mean Man is not a part of Niall's peripatetic Tuesday evening group, so he would not be there.

Doodle update

 

Fiona was here today, so the first wodge of auction stuff has finally been shipped out.  Everything takes longer than it's supposed to.  The wodge that was posted today was much smaller than it should have been, for a variety of reasons, chief among them that I'm trying to write a novel in five months, and two of them are already over.  The irony is that one of the reasons the auction finally went live so late is because I was preoccupied with the final throes of this summer's PEG II crisis—and then I hurled myself into SHADOWS, needing to believe this was a story and I could write it—and now of course I'm slowly doodling my way through all your lovely bell-supportive orders—while continuing with this madness of trying to finish* SHADOWS by the end of January.**  I was telling Fiona that most days I keep thinking I can maybe extrude one more paragraph, one more sentence, and then I will certainly do a stint of doodling . . . and what happens is that I hammer away on story-in-progress to the point of collapse, pirouette through about three doodles, and fall off my chair.*** 

[image error]

Roses for ROSE DAUGHTER. Not all the book + doodles are so . . . um . . . um . . . snork.

Also there was a terrible accident with a cup of hot tea about ten days ago which I will leave to your imaginations because it was far too emotionally scarring for me to describe it in all its graphic horror here.  Then Darkness frightened me half to death† with the projectile geysering, and as a result this week my general energy level has resembled an underachieving pancake or a badger-gnawed doormat. 

But EVERYTHING takes longer than it's supposed to.  I wanted to get the first load of books off today, but the auction is finally forcing me to do something I should have done years ago, which is hire a frelling mail box for a return street address that isn't where I live and that has business-hours staff who will sign for parcels that require a signature.††  The nearest mail-box-hire is in Zigguraton, which is not ideal, but it could be a lot worse.  I examined the web site carefully, and nowhere does it say that they need a blood sample, a retina scan and £400,053.27 collateral.  So I sent Fiona in to do it for me, while I kept doodling.  Which, when she got back again, is how I found out about the extra requirements. ARRRGH. 

Fox. With tail. Tails are IMPORTANT.

Fortunately my bank's local branch office is a full-service agency so I obtained a blood sample and a retina scan from the clerk, and then I wrote '£400,053.27' on a piece of paper and he stamped it††† with the bank's seal of authorised fiscal reality‡, and I sent Fiona off again.   About half an hour later I received the critical text on Pooka:  SUCCESS!

Sleeping dragon. You don't want to be downwind.

Meanwhile, however, the day was mostly over.  Fiona has printed off the rest of Blogmom's batched orders and organised as many of them as I'm likely to get through in the next fortnight, when she comes back again for a Special Auction Put-Through Day, which will include an awful lot of book-packaging, and I will keep doodling.  I want to emphasise here that I enjoy the doodling‡‡—including the excuse to doodle—what is turning my eyeballs red and my hair white is the time.  I don't like making all of you wait, although I am making you wait, and the complicated stuff—the doodle-icious books, the knitting, the musical composition—is at the bottom of the pile.  I'm sorry.  But I am a disorganised scatterbrained‡‡‡ dipstick at best, and I do need to keep eating. . . .

But look at what Fiona brought me: 

Hermione the hellbat

Why do I doubt the original pattern called for PINK?

* * *

* Well, 'finish.'  No way in any of the eleven hells^ am I going to finish finish.  But I'm hoping to have it to the final-frantic-yanking phase by the end of January. 

^ According to Damarian cosmology 

** If I'd been in any shape to think, I should have slammed the auction into action (Blogmom did keep asking me when I was going to provide her with x or y so she could get on with building the thing) as early as possible.  But although blaming myself for being a purblind git is one of my favourite leisure-time activities, it's hard to get around the fact that when you're in the middle of a book crisis, one of the symptoms of its being a crisis is that you can't think.  

*** I should never attempt to pirouette.  

† No, three-quarters 

†† Curses! snarl the carrier companies.  We'll have to think of something else! 

††† Sucking on his sore finger 

‡ Which is at least as reliable as anything else in the in the global financial market these days 

‡‡ Although I reserve the right to laugh hysterically at some of the special requests.  More about these in future blog posts. 

‡‡‡ —brain?

Don G, continued

 

Another unnnnh day.  I go, and take Peter, whether he wants to or not, to Tabitha, my Bowen-massage* lady, once a month.  Today was that day.  Hellhounds and I had a lovely hurtle while she was unhinging Peter—she lives on the edge of a village on the far side of Mauncester, so in bad weather you can turn right and walk on pavement, and in good weather you can turn left and hurtle across countryside—and then it was my turn.   Between SHADOWS and the exigencies of doodling** I have no brain left and my limbs are like rubber . . . but I can turn my head without screaming as white-hot pain lances up through my trapezius and bores through my skull, which is an improvement on the last ten days or so.***  Sigh.  When I get this post done† I'm going to find out if any of this has loosened my throat any. 

glanalaw

And then Nadia made me sing leaning—lightly, but leaning—against the door. And my voice just frelling opened.

My teacher makes me do this, too. As she explains it, this helps your body get back into its proper alignment, not the posture which we *think* is correct (which usually ends up having a lot of tension because we try to hold head or shoulders or whatever into a certain position). It is amazing what a difference standing against a door can make to your voice!

I don't have a door†† convenient to the piano—I will have to give myself my note and then rush across the room to lean against the kitchen door which may be just the tiniest bit counterproductive. . . .  But what you say certainly sounds right.  I think about 90% of what Nadia does with me is about lowering various inappropriate tension levels.  She's also a rider, so she uses a lot of dressage metaphors because she knows I'll understand them.  If you set your horse up well enough, it can only do what you want it to do.  I don't have a lot of voice to let free of its bondage, but I do feel a bit sorry for it, a twelve-hand pony trying to drag a 5000-pound double-Clydesdale sledge.  Here, have a carrot.

Also, I think I need to come up with a creative internet name for my voice teacher. She is good enough to deserve one! 

Definitely.  And any time you want to write a guest post about singing, doooooo feel free.

blondviolinist

Because I can't resist, here's an English translation of the Frauenliebe und -leben poems. Whatever the last poem says about a woman's life practically ending when her husband dies, Clara Schumann had quite an active and productive life after Robert died, thank you very much.  

Yes.  The more I know about Robert the less I like him.  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.  He was married to Clara and he wrote this awful twaddle?  Can we say 'masculine insecurity'?   Can we say 'fool of a man'?  I keep trying to remind myself that it was different then and that even today if two first-rate musicians were married to each other and one of them had to drop out due to injury, it would be very hard on whichever one it was, and in the second half of the nineteenth century it was very hard on the husband—he would have been within his 'rights' to demand she stay at home and stick to cooking and cleaning and raising their forty-two children.  She both performed and composed a lot less than she might have if she didn't have (eight) children to look after while the great man composed.  And while it is a very sad and painful and depressing story I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who (probably) went mad and died of syphilis.  You don't get syphilis by staying at home and sublimating. 

            Don't get me started on that nasty little creep Brahms. . . . ††† 

AnguaLupin

I agree completely that the portrayal of Giovanni as a total prick is much better than the portrayal of Giovanni as "one of those lads"; Kwiecien managed to pull off strangely seductive pond scum with flair. The ending, I thought, was brilliant — when the Met pulls someone down into hell, they don't mess around. You were left with the feeling that Giovanni actually was !@#&ed, which isn't usual. Normally it's more like, "oh, Giovanni ended up in hell, I guess Mozart had to make it a morality play in the end". Not this time. Giovanni got his comeuppance. 

I assume all you opera goers know that there's been a fashion for leaving off the final scene/chorus, where the rest of the characters rush back on stage and (effectively) shake their fingers at the audience and say 'this is what happens if you're a bad guy'?   I can no longer remember this for sure, but I think it was the first Giovanni I ever saw that cut the ending and it felt totally wrong and unfinished—although since I'd grown up with recordings of the whole thing I may have just been doing a Pavlov's dog.  Still.  I think messing with Mozart is stupid—and unbelievably arrogant.  You think you know better than Mozart?  What?  Although it may not have been till I saw it with the proper ending—I mean saw rather than heard only on a recording—that the penny dropped for me.  That last chorus to me isn't about turning it into a morality play—it's about the fact that nothing has changed.  Giovanni is in hell, where he belongs, but Elvira is still nuts, Zerlina is still married to a thug, and Anna is still disdaining Ottavio (and the Commendatore is still dead).  This suddenly—I emphasise this is only my reaction—makes the entire opera more psychologically interesting. 

Diane in MN

What's interesting about the plot, though, is that D.G. is a pretty unsuccessful seducer in the course of this opera. Not that this affects his opinion of himself. 

Speaking of the variety of responses that one work of art may arouse in its audience, this fascinates me.  I take his seductiveness as a given—I see no reason not to believe Leporello's little black book, and Giovanni spends the opera being followed around by two of his conquests—not, one feels, because he's destroyed them or their reputations (Ottavio desperately wants to marry Anna, and Elivira seems able to please herself) but because they can't help themselves.  The only reason he fails with Zerlina is because Elvira appears inopportunely—and he seems to be planning to do his dozen peasant girls just before the Commendatore gets in the way.  I could see this however as presaging the arrival of doom:  is the Commendatore the first angry father he's killed?  And is Elvira the first spurned lover who's caught up with him and upset his fun? 

Caryn

Ah. Mariusz. (swoon)

http://www.mariuszkwiecien.com/ (but it's Flash)  

Thank you.  I don't know why I couldn't get this to come up the other night.  Let's blame it on my faltering broadband.

            I'm intrigued by how much of his charm is (to me anyway) only apparent in motion.  None of these still photos—I admit I did not trawl the entire site—does him anything like justice.  You want to see/hear him in action. 

PamAdams

Hmmm…. Looks like my local amateur opera company isn't doing Don Giovanni until Spring- Don Pasquale is next up. 

Oh, yerp.  Are you sure you want to see an amateur production of Don Giovanni?  Don Pasquale, maybe, if they have someone who can pull off Pasquale, but DG is asking an awful lot out of a bunch of amateurs. 

Glanalaw

I saw Don Giovanni in Nashville a few years ago… it was a fabulous production, with good characterization, great sets, period costume, etc — up until the final moments, when they had Giovanni stroll back on stage in a white suit and shades with a blonde on each arm, as if he not only had learned nothing, but was in fact getting exactly what he always wanted – lots of women – in the afterlife. This after a very effective dragging-down-to-hell scene. That one director's choice spoiled the whole production for me! I left saying over and over "but why would you DO that?!?"

That director should be shot. 

* * *

* Firebyrd wrote about my DON GIOVANNI post:

I love posts like this, not because I'm glad anyone suffers like this of course, but because it makes me feel like I'm not actually crazy. I rarely go to things like church, even though I'd like to and I sit at home most of the time, but sitting still (especially in a dress) is completely different from what I do at home. If I do go, I come home exhausted, in pain, and usually have to take a nap, even if I've only gone and sat for an hour. I feel like I'm a big baby, but it definitely helps to know I'm not the only one. 

You are not crazy and you are not the only one.  ME/CFS/fibro and the auto-immune-system-gone-wrong maladies are an epidemic.   I don't know enough to guess how much of this is better diagnosis, as doctors are beginning to accept the fact that this is a real constellation of illness and that the epidemic isn't of malingering and laziness, and how much is that there are more cases per x of the population.  But as I said the other night I'm increasingly distressed by the number of emails and a few tweets I receive about how I cope, especially from people who clearly aren't, who haven't got their heads around it, possibly because of the characteristic brain-fog.  I was already old when I went down with it and so already kind of used to the way life is one damn thing after another—I was also married to a sympathetic husband and did not have a nine to five job.  But it was not a good time, the first few years, learning what worked for me, and I still have (*&^%$£"!!!!! spells, but even the spells, after almost a dozen years, are familiar.  I don't really think about coping any more, I just do it—and keep reading about ME and health generally to see if I'm missing anything that might help. 

                  I'm going to do a how-I-cope blog post one day soon, so it's up there.   And—where we came in—one of the ways I cope is by going to see Tabitha.  

** Fiona comes tomorrow so the first instalment will hit the unsuspecting postal system.  I'm sure their agents of destruction will be up for the standard postal deflection techniques, which include meaningless stickers applied to all available surfaces, especially those with addresses on them, and the resultant accumulation of the undeliverable is donated to NASA for experiments in the decay of vegetable-derived materials under semi-void conditions. 

*** Approximately since Darkness did his spectacular projectile-diarrhoea thing.  And he comes off his pills tomorrow.  

† Blah blah blah blah bliggle glig urp gonzo blah 

†† Or a wall.  As previously observed, none of the three houses in this household has a lot of empty wall space. 

††† I should perhaps stipulate that I like a lot of both Robert Schumann's and Brahms' music, and in terms of wonderful human beings, my great hero Verdi was not.