SORE
Wow - that was quite a weekend:)! (Oh dear, this is not sounding quite the way I intended....) On Saturday, I got to rehearse with Nancy S., Tom H. and Drew C. for our Mardi Gras "gig" at St. Pete's March 4th. It was a lot of fun, but John's back is not up to a lot of lifting and our adult son was either asleep or at work, so I did a lot of carrying some rather heavy pieces up the basement stairs. Thankfully, the rest of the "band" helped me out at the church, but I was quite sore by the time it was all over. Even with that, I always have so much fun playing music, so it was well worth it! The drums you see pictured above were quite nice. Nicer than any I've had before - and far more drums than I am used to playing! I said to the kind person who gave them to me that it was like driving a Cadillac. When I was 13, I got a bass drum - with pedal, a snare drum, and crash cymbal that attached to the bass drum. Later, they added pieces - a floor tom-tom, a cowbell, a small tom-tom and a hi-hat (those two cymbals that "squish" together to make that sizzly sound when you're playing a jazz beat). I will never forget it - it was a Ludwig, bright red crystal on the outside. A pair of sticks (or two - I was pretty hard on them) a pair of brushes for the more subdued pieces and I was good to go. I played drums in bands we tried to get together in the neighborhood (not much success there), in my high school marching band, in college and of recent years, in the West Laurel Rag Tag Band. But when I got married and had a baby and we were living in a one-bedroom apartment on the 13th floor of an apartment building in Alexandria, VA, and we needed the money, keeping a drum set didn't seem the right thing to do. So I sold them to a young fellow whose dad was in the military for a fair price. I hope they brought him as much joy as they brought me. When I was a kid, I'd play the radio (to WABC of course! I listened to my dad's show every day!) at full volume and play along with the songs. For that reason alone, my stepmonster should have gotten a pass to Heaven when she left this earthly coil last winter. Funny enough, none of our neighbors complained that I knew of. Of course the houses where I lived were all at least two acres apart, so that helped. Anyway, enough of the walk down memory lane, I loved playing drums and when I no longer had drums to play, my kids will tell you that there were times I would use wooden spoons in the kitchen when certain songs played on the radio.
Fast forward to (mumblety mumblety) years later to about two months ago. The father of the drums' owner gave them to me. I have written elsewhere on this blog about his son who died back in 2006. Teddy had a lot of musical and artistic talent. He created movies that were works of art - I've seen some of them. He also composed music of all kinds. His father encouraged these talents in his son and, in fact, shared a lot of the same talents. As a result, his home was full of many different musical instruments. My friend needed room in his home and wanted the drums to go to a "good" home (of course I use the term "good" advisedly!). At first I felt bad about taking them, but then thought why not put them to good use? So, more or less on the spur of the moment, I gratefully accepted them - just barely fitted them into a little Toyota Corolla - and took them home with me.
It wasn't the smartest thing I ever did, but I still think it was the right and the cool thing to do - things that don't always happen at the same time, LOL:). And of COURSE I had some 'splainin to do when I got home and my son helped me put yet another big thing into the basement (after all, we are supposed to be scaling DOWN). But some things are just worth it. So, thanks, Teddy's dad.
It was a good rehearsal Saturday. Good as in we know where we need to work a weeeeee bit harder to get ourselves into danceband shape. Packed the drums into the car with everyone's help and started driving home. Heard something that made my heart sink:
My kids worked at this mall. They hung out with their friends and sometimes even bought things there when they could afford to do so. Hell, I even worked at this mall, as a salesperson for FranklinCovey when they had a little shop there and I was working for a non-profit barely making ends meet. In fact, both John and I were working at least two jobs back then. In the almost twenty years since I worked there and about four since the Ultimate Adult Child worked there, it has truly become quite a haven of ritzy-ness. I go there now only for a specific purpose, to buy a specific thing or to meet with my knitting pals at the Panera. In fact, if not for the rehearsal, I'd have been there knitting on Saturday morning. Panera was on the other side of this very large mall, so I seriously doubt I'd have been in any personal danger and Facebook was rife with reports saying "we're ok!" You hear of these things happening of course all over the place - in Africa, in the States, yet I was and still am, very shocked.
On Sunday, we prayed for all three of the dead: the two victims and the shooter. I don't want to talk about it any more. I don't want to debate it. I don't have answers.
Anyway, after lifting drums and carrying them upstairs and out, and sitting on an unfamiliar seat to play those drums and moving my arms and legs in ways I hadn't done in a while, I was a bit sore by Monday. But happily so.
Knitting has progressed, but there really isn't much to share at this point. Tonight I am not going to EfM. I have what looks exactly like sinus/upper respiratory strep infections I have had in the past. Again, I did today's client visit on the other side of the glass door to the house in which he was residing (he's a baby:)). Tonight, there will be two of my fellow EfM'ers who have recently experienced cardiac and pulmonary incidents. I will not be responsible for making them sick. Luckily, I do not have court tomorrow for some strange reason, so I won't be making my colleagues sick either if I can help it. Hopefully by the evening, I'll be ok to go to choir prax.
Tonight I decided I am going to go up to the yarn room (my equivalent of Terry Bradshaw's character's "Naked Room" in "Failure to Launch" only, trust me, no nudity - I hate to see a grown yarn cry) and I'm going to go through a big honking box of unusual yarns I have purchased on my various travels over the last 5-10 years or so. And just for fun, I'm going to try to figure out how to use it in a project. Wish me luck. I'll take pictures on this trip even if it is just a matter of walking up the stairs.....
FWIW, after hours of trying to wind two skeins of the very thin Karabella ribbon silk and a horrifically knotted skein of Auracania, and after having left another skein of bulky Karabella wool on the yarn room floor, I am completely over playing with yarn tonight. Think I'll just work on a few projects already started, LOL:)!
God be with you 'til we meet again:)+
On Sunday, we prayed for all three of the dead: the two victims and the shooter. I don't want to talk about it any more. I don't want to debate it. I don't have answers.
Anyway, after lifting drums and carrying them upstairs and out, and sitting on an unfamiliar seat to play those drums and moving my arms and legs in ways I hadn't done in a while, I was a bit sore by Monday. But happily so.
Knitting has progressed, but there really isn't much to share at this point. Tonight I am not going to EfM. I have what looks exactly like sinus/upper respiratory strep infections I have had in the past. Again, I did today's client visit on the other side of the glass door to the house in which he was residing (he's a baby:)). Tonight, there will be two of my fellow EfM'ers who have recently experienced cardiac and pulmonary incidents. I will not be responsible for making them sick. Luckily, I do not have court tomorrow for some strange reason, so I won't be making my colleagues sick either if I can help it. Hopefully by the evening, I'll be ok to go to choir prax.
Tonight I decided I am going to go up to the yarn room (my equivalent of Terry Bradshaw's character's "Naked Room" in "Failure to Launch" only, trust me, no nudity - I hate to see a grown yarn cry) and I'm going to go through a big honking box of unusual yarns I have purchased on my various travels over the last 5-10 years or so. And just for fun, I'm going to try to figure out how to use it in a project. Wish me luck. I'll take pictures on this trip even if it is just a matter of walking up the stairs.....
God be with you 'til we meet again:)+
Comments