Out talented kid

All our kids are talented, of course, all in various ways (Ned is currently showing amazing talent in "taking care of mom and dad").  But occasionally one shines briefly, and yesterday it was Jeri's turn.

Every year for at least the past five years, Jeri and her friend pianist David McGrory have given a concert at Berklee.  I can't remember if in the past Jeri has only played the clarinet or not.  I know that it's a mix of music by other composers, and music that Jeri has written herself.

This year she decided to use all of her instruments -- saxophone, flute and clarinet.

She had written some of the pieces, including "Song for Lacie" (Lacie will turn 7 today and this was her birthday present), in which she played all three instruments, sometimes hanging the saxophone around her neck while she played another instrument.

For the past five years, they have had the same woman turning pages for David.  Jeri told me she's actually an accomplished flautist herself so Jeri wrote a piece that is a duet for the two of them and in its she left gaps so that the woman could turn around and turn David's page.  Very clever.

In the end they all took a happy bow for a concert well played.

The concert is streamed on the Berklee web site so if you are curious about how it all went, you should be able to see it here:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/berklee-colvin

It's always so nice to have talented children ... that they are all also nice, caring people is just the frosting on the cake.

The Enforcer

Wow.  2:30 p.m. and I'm just starting this entry--and it's the one for today, not for tomorrow.  Usually if I'm writing FTW at 2:30 it's the one to be posted for tomorrow.

Last night was one of those insomnia-horrible nights.  Finally at 6 a.m., after a night of crying for being so sleepy and so unable to get to sleep I decided to go into the couch, even though I wasn't sure I could get off the couch, but figured it was late enough that if I got paralyzed on the couch, as I have before, it wasn't that long before Walt would be up.

So, Linus-like, I trailed my blanket along behind me so I could cocoon under it and finally sleep, sat on the couch, punched my pillow into a nice soft lump, laid my head on it, and realized there was no way I could lift my legs to the couch.  I tried several things, but they resolutely refused to budge.  I thought of sleeping with just half my body on the couch but realized my muscles would really rebel at that when I woke up, so I got up and went back to the recliner again and, finally, slept for about an hour.

When I woke up, though, I realized I had to finish a review and get it to the paper by noon.  Walt was going to take me to the lab to get my blood test, but I told him I would have to finish the review first.  It was a good review and I had fun writing it, but it was 11:30 before I got it sent off to the paper.

Ned was coming to pick Walt up to take him to his Urology appointment in Vacaville (we are all appointments, all the time around here!) and I had this feeling that the lab at Kaiser in Davis closed over lunch time so thought it was too late to go and I had it in my head that his appointment was at 2 and knew that if we waited until afternoon, he would not be home in time to meet Ned, so I suggested that we either went when he got home from his appointment or go tomorrow morning -- I just have to have a weekly blood test and a day or two late isn't going to make that much difference.

But back to yesterday, Ned, the enforcer, arrived around 10 or 11 or so.  He had been to the senior center where, we heard, you could borrow walkers.  Turns out this is where people take their equipment of old age when they are no longer needed and they have such a surplus that when Ned asked how long he could keep something, they told hi forever.  So I now have two free walkers, one the metal kind that you put tennis balls on and one the kind with a seat on it.

He informed me that he had brought my spa bag and that we would take the walker, go to Atria to visit my mother and to get me a shower.  He said that he would not take me to the side door, but to the front so that I would have to walk the entire hallway because I needed the exercise.

I found out that it was MUCH easier to walk the hall with the wheeled walker and I didn't have to stop at all.  My mother was in her room, sound asleep, flat on her back, which was unusual for her.  She usually sleeps under covers, curled up.  She looked like she was laid out, but she was breathing.  

While she slept, Ned set e up in the bathroom for a shower, and left me to my own devices.  more difficult this time than last time because last time my legs worked.  But the job got done and the aide who came in to empty the garbage was definitely surprised to find me there dressing.  It was good, though, because she was able to help me get my legs in my pants.  I swear, I'm going to move in with my mother any day now!

It was a relatively good day for her, meaning she woke up and was alert and talkative, if making no sense, but she smiled and reacted appropriately and we had a good time with her.

When we got home, Walt's brother was here visiting, but he and Ned left soon because we all hoped to catch Jeri's live streaming concert from Berklee College of Music.  I thought this was her personal concert, which she does with a pianist friend of hers, but it was her musical theater students doing a concert version of Jekyll and Hyde, with Jeri the orchestra conductor

Ever the mom, I sat at my computer hitting "print screen" from time to time when the conductor showed.  I was tickled to get this shot.

As a critic, I was mentally comparing the performances with the full show we had seen here in Davis recently.  The kids did a good job and one can certainly see how much emotion they put into their performances.

So the day ended.  As "night" arrives these days, I hate it, knowing that I have several hours of trying to sleep ahead of me.  Maybe tonight will be better....

In the meantime, The Enforcer is going to make sure that I get my exercises done, that I have the equipment to make life easier, and I hate him for it because I'm, at heart, lazy , but love him for it because if I'm ever going to get over this "whatever it is it will be because Ned is so diligent and so loving.

Streaming Video

I love streaming video.  You can be a proud parent and not embarrass your kid while doing it!

Jeri gives a yearly concert at Berklee.  It's apparently what you do at Berklee, if you want to.  This was a concert of original pieces, accompanied by piano. 

The concerts are streamed.  The last time she had something streamed, it was her class performing numbers from Chicago they had arranged in her class.  But it was a terrible disappointment because the reception was not good.  This time, however, it was perfect and we were able to watch the whole thing.

I don't know if you can read the top left corner, though.  It says "3 watching."  Two of them were Walt on his laptop and me on my desktop.  I don't know who the third person was, but it might have been Walt's sister, who also wanted to watch.  (oooo...it's now up to FIVE!)

After Jeri played her 3 pieces, accompanied by the pianist, they played a 3-movement piece that he wrote.

Then there was a piece a girl had written for trumpet and piano but decided it worked better for clarinet (I don't know how much it was revised for clarinet, but I sure couldn't imagine the trumpet playing it). 



Before the last number, Jeri explained how she happened to write it for her friend Sarah, who had had surgery and was bedridden and not supposed to move for several weeks.  She explained that she had asked Sarah to give her three words, the last of which was "gregarious" and how she had looked up the meaning for the word "gregarious" and how she came to write this piece, using all three words, ending with "gregarious."  It was a loving gift to Sarah.

All in all very nice concert lasting a little over an hour, and I didn't have to step over any parents to get good photos, thanks to streaming, "Print screen," and Photoshop!

[NOTE LATER--Found out my sister-in-law was watching on two different computers and her husband tuned in from work for a bit, so apparently all the watchers were in the Sykes family]

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I went to Atria earlier in the day.  She was in the community room at a sing-along  She now greets me as if I am along lost relative whom she has not seen years.  She usually gives a gasp and then says "When did YOU get here?  I didn't know you were coming."  I think in that moment she thinks I'm one of her sisters, but as we talk she finally seems to know I'm her daughter (though at one point she asked me "What am I?  Your sister? your brother? your mother?"
 
She complimented me on the shirt I was wearing, which has a design with zebras on it.  When I pointed that out she looked confused and when I said they were horses with stripes, she told me I was the smart one and she didn't know about things like that.

She went to the bathroom while I was there and got lost coming out of the room, taking the wrong door and ending up in the hallway, barefoot.  One of the aides brought her back, surprised to find me there. My mother had already forgotten that I was waiting for her.

But I stayed an hour and, all things considered, it was a decent visit  It's been a long time since she's had either an anxiety attack or has fainted and I'm very pleased about that.

Bonk

I am so angry about this photo.  It took a lot of Photoshopping to get it this clear, but it's still blurry.  My cell phone camera is so crappy.  It was on a tripod and I have a shutter release that isn't even connected to the camera, so absolutely NOTHING moved.  This was the 4th and best of four photos, but as I said, it took a lot of fiddling to get it this good.  One of these days Walt will have time to go with me to get a new phone (since Verizon won't let me get it without him there, since he's the account holder) and then I can have one of those newer, better cell phone cameras too.

But anyway, the reason for this photo is to show my lethal cupboard door.  For about a year, I was having stabbing pains in my head.  It didn't seem bad enough to see a doctor about.  One reason I had my head shaved a couple of years ago was to see if there was some sort of abnormality on my scalp, but the scalp looked fine.  One day, I bonked my head on the door again and the thought passed through my mind that just maybe the pain had something to do with how often I bumped my head on the sharp corner of this cabinet.  Being an Aquarian, I rarely remembered to close it when working in the kitchen.

So I made a conscious effort to keep the cupboard door closed at all times.  And whaddya know?  In a couple of months, I wasn't having shooting pains any more.  I envisioned my scalp, under the skin, looking like a pond of ice just before break-up.  Lots of cracks going everywhere.

Since my new leaf, I have been pain free, and I have worked hard at remembering to always close the door. Until yesterday.  I banged it good and almost saw stars.  Since then I have been having shooting pains on the other side of my head from the side where I usually hit it, since this time I was facing the other way when I hit it.

This morning I was supposed to give blood, but I just didn't want to go driving around with sharp pains coming into my scalp so often.  I sat at home with a cold compress on it and by afternoon it wasn't quite so bad, so i was able to go to Atria. I had thought of going for lunch, but now that Atria staff take her to lunch and are working on getting her to accept a walker, I decided to visit her after lunch rather than for lunch.  I don't think she knows the difference. 

I got there at 1:15 and she was still in bed, sound asleep.  Her breakfast was still on a tray in the kitchen and the curtains were still closed.  I checked to make sure she was breathing, and she was, so I left her clean laundry and came home.  I told Walt I have the feeling she is slowly fading away  I can't remember the last time I got to the apartment and she was NOT sleeping, either in her bed or on the couch.  But later someone from Atria called me to tell me about a problem in her apartment they are going to take care of tomorrow, and she says that actually now that she's on assisted living, she seems more lively, so what do I know??  It would be nice if she were right.  One can only hope.

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I had a very fun experience this afternoon.  Jeri was giving her annual clarinet recital, and it was being streamed live by Berklee, so I got to not only listen, but watch the whole thing.

The concert started with a piece by Poulenc (1962).  The Allegro (3rd movement) was particularly fun.

Then there was a Suite for Clarinet and Piano, written by the pianist there, David McGrory.

And then Jeri gave an introduction to her own new piece, Haikus for Clarinet and Piano.  Jeri is a great one for writing haikus, and I'm not enough of a musician to understand how these three pieces were musical haikus, but they were fun to listen to

The livestream camera cut off before the very end, but I saw about 99% of it and loved it that you can watch your kid's concert, even though you are 3,000 miles away.