Usually I have lots to share in the progress of my hobbies. But my energy and mood are low.
No amount of busy will help. I know that. So, I’m going through.
On the plus side, I did find one of the ‘hard’ Sudokus in my ‘easy’ book actually easy. But the rest were hard.
Is it the weather or grief raising my pain levels, making me tired? Losing the last of our fur family trio has affected me more than I expected.
So I’m going to sit in the mood and learn what I can.
Which question shall I start with? Shall it be last night’s answer to the prompt when I read it?
We lost Kali over a year ago. Why does it seem like less than a month ago? Kali’s Death
Shortly after that, Teddy left us. Could I miss anyone as much as I missed them? (Teddy’s story is easily researched here.)
So, the third question is the one I’m answering first, and the answer is plain: Rosey outlasted the rest of the furry trio. Yikes. I already am speaking in the past tense. I hadn’t planned to do that last night.
What is Rosey’s story? Well, when we moved to Reno, we had only had Panda, a tuxedo sweetie. Then, our friend Kieu brought us a little Teddy. It wasn’t long until Panda was playing and, we think, had a heart attack as he was gone. Sadly, we were at our writers’ meeting, so we didn’t get to say goodbye. My brother and Son-in-Love were home to take care of the felines.
Teddy and Chris were heartbroken, so we didn’t wait long to grieve. As much as we needed a new friend, we also realized that there had to be furry friends looking for us, so we went to the shelter. Chris, my brother, and I wandered the shelter for a couple hours. As many animals were adorable, nothing seemed to call out for us. Then, just as we were leaving, I felt something off to the other side of the call to me. I walked over, and there was this black cat wanting all my attention. Without waiting, I reached into her cage and picked her up. The attendant was surprised at how easily I held her. She asked us to a visiting room to see how we all got along. David and I sat on the floor, expecting the kitty to come right to us. Nope. She walked right by us straight up to Chris on the bench at the back of the room. She jumped in his lap and started licking his face. He giggled like a little kid. His face was red with happiness. And so it was when Rosey was 12 years old she adopted my husband. I sometimes felt a slight jealousy of the way they clicked together. But I was happy they were both happy.
Teddy seemed to like Rosey, so we had a good thing. Teddy would choose me, so we each had a cat on our laps. They loved riding in the car.
But when Kali came into the picture, Teddy divorced me. I tried to let him know I still loved him, but it took him a while to get over feeling replaced. Towards his end, he chose me again and Kali.
When Kali joined us, Rosey was already 14 years old or older. She already felt like a bit of a grump around the more energetic Teddy and Kali, but we could tell she missed them when they were gone.
As of last night, we had been on a bit of a vigil for about a week. She refused food and soon refused drink. Again, the horrid choice, take the hour-and-a-half drive or just try to make her as comfortable as we could. She was 22. We dosed her with bone broth and water as that was all she’d tolerate. Although alert and loving, we knew it wasn’t long for her. Every night, we wondered if she’d be with us in the morning. Even on her last days, she walked/crawled the hallway to our room, looking for Chris to hold her.
This morning, we woke early. David found her in the livingroom end of the hallway. She was still breathing. He lifted her up, and within a few moments, she stopped breathing. After our goodbyes, David buried her with her special bed. She loved it so much we couldn’t think of her without it, or it without her.
How quiet can a house get? She wasn’t noisy but… How lonely are we going to be without her?
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “recipe.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
There was a me in days of raising for kiddos, that recipes were important. My favorite was No Excuse Bread. I would make it a couple nights a week. Pop up early (another non-Dar thing to do) and bake the loaves. Nothing is yummier than fresh bread with honey!
I can’t find my La Leche League cookbook at the moment but you can find the recipe here. Enjoy!
Yay! I can actually report one finished project.
My other socks took a sideline as I finished the slippers. So I’ll take pics next week.
I feel better about my piano. We have love/hate moments. I do learn a lot with each sit down. I play not practice. I do work on problem areas. I work on my concentration. I see my playing as meditation. Here’s a thought. Check. Don’t dive in. A slight thought given attention can bring about a mistake tornado. Distraction of any kind can throw off the fun.
Take for instance, today I wanted to analyze the few pieces I shared last week. By thinking about key signatures my fingers lost their groove.
I’m much happier about the ukulele now. Being able to sing while playing makes this instrument far more fun than piano or recorders.
Recorders seem to be helping my breath control. Note recognition between the soprano and the alto instruments is getting better. I still have goals of playing duets with myself. I need to learn how to record like that.
That’s about it for now. Time to get to Duo, and the recorders and uke.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “move.” Use it as a verb or a noun; write the first thing that comes to mind. Have fun!
Moving was the title I gave to the memoir I wrote a couple of NaNoWriMos ago. The name started revealing itself to me right away. At first, it was that even though I was in two houses for my first twenty-one years, they kept building schools for our grade level, and we were the newbies to settle each new school. After marriage, my husband’s job moved us around the state.
My story then ran in how my mental attitude moved from one thinking to another. Music played a part in the many mental states I phased through. And since I have been reentering the music world for a while, movement is a prominent word in that realm.
Ah, but yesterday, before I even saw the prompt of the day, I saw the word movement on the top of most of the pieces I worked on.
Each piece was a movement from one symphony or another. As a music major whose professor was the conductor of the college orchestra, I sat in on a lot of concerts. But I couldn’t sit still. My teacher saw that I needed to be a part of the music, so she made sure I had the orchestral score to follow along with. My aim in music in college was voice, not piano. There was too much psychology attached to that big, beautiful machine.
In the next few days, I plan to break it all down. Needless to say, I need to move from the depth of stagefright that even played a part in yesterday’s practices to phone calls or being with more than people I know very, very well.
Now I need to move, to Duo, then uke, then recorder, then bed. Get up and MOVE!
Remember way back when I mentioned I might start a podcast? I can’t remember what I thought I’d call it, but a new title comes to mind as I started day # 3 of piano reawakening. “Warts and All”
We are so used to seeing the end result of endless practice. That makes sitting in front or with your art impossible. “I’ll never be that good. Why try?” So many negative things we tell ourselves, and because of that, we will never know what enjoyment we might bring ourselves or others while waiting for perfection. Follow your passions. God, muses, whatever you may call it, gets the credit for your curiosity drive. Do we dare let our defeatism lead the way? So I’m taking you on the ride. I took piano lessons since I was 5. I rebelled my way out around 16. After marriage at 21, I had to wait a while to get my old piano. My second son was teething when I got my piano back. I was rusty but could still enjoy the below pieces and much more, nearly totally memorized. I would play so hyperfocused that that piano had teething marks as the poor baby begged for my attention. So, I had to keep the practice to light bits.
When we moved to my first desert, Antelope Valley, the house was so small I had to keep the piano in a chicken coop. It was an old upright grand. It looked quite at home there. I would get up and go out in my heavy coat and gloves, scarf, and cap. As I did the scales and warm-ups, layers were released. I was starting to fall in love with my kidnapper. Stockholm Syndrome? There was a lot of angst from the psychological damage that practicing piano imposed on me.
A few decades later, after letting myself enjoy other music, singing, playing the recorder, and playing the ukulele, I felt like I wanted to try to bring it all back. Three days ago, I figured out a time of the day I could schedule my piano time. My first day was a lot of cleaning my baby. We get a lot of dust out here. And the darned mice. Lots of cleaning. But hey, that old piano in the chicken coop was pretty bad, too. And I love this piano. How I got it is another story. So cleaning it was, is now, a work of love. I did start playing that day for a few minutes. It went well. I kept it to 15 minutes. For some reason, yesterday’s practice made me want to cry. Today I decided to start recording myself and sharing the mess and progress with you. You are not required to listen to these as if they were elevator music. It is merely how it is when you try.
Enough of music. I’ll share the uke and recorder progress later.
Passion is imperfect.
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