July 6, 2009

Happy Belated Birthday, USA!!

Jamie didn't have to work on the 4th, but we didn't do anything at all. We just stayed home and watched the race at Daytona. Whew! What an ending! Congrats to Tony Stewart and horray for pushing Kyle Busch out of the way.

Several weeks ago a friend from college sent me an email asking if I'd like to play at her church on July 5th. She said her choir and handbells took the summer months off and she was lining up special music for the season. I love to play! For anybody! Anywhere! So, of course, I said yes. I picked out my pieces to play and diligently practiced them. I'm a lazy violinist and sometimes won't practice for weeks on end, especially if I don't have an upcoming gig.

The morning of July 5th came. I remembered to set my alarm the day before. I had packed my violin the day before. I got up. I got dressed. I put on MAKEUP (yes, MAKEUP). I kissed Jamie goodbye and waved to him as I set off on my merry way.

In 30 minutes I was in High Point, NC, a place I'd only been once before, but never to this particular part of town. I arrived at the church with plenty of time to spare. The pianist and I introduced ourselves and I proceeded to open my violin case. Where I discovered that I was missing BOTH of my bows. About that time, my friend came into the sanctuary carrying a music stand for me. "Shelley! I left my bows at home!!" I exclaimed. She laughed at me and I had to laugh at myself. That was the dumbest thing I'd ever done. There was no way I could head allllllll the way back home and then alllllll the way back to the church before the service started, much less in time to practice the pieces beforehand. The pianist called someone to see if they could bring a bow, but they'd already left their house for the morning. Shelley said not to worry and I could redeem myself later in the summer. Good to her word, she sent me an email asking if I could play August 2nd and I quickly replied that I would and that one bow would be forever GLUED to my violin case.

Needless to say, I came right home and put both bows back in my violin case. Earlier in the week I had messed around with both bows and instead of laying them in the open case with my violin (I usually leave the case open if I'm going to practice a lot) I put both bows on the music stand. When I packed up my violin, I completely forgot about the bows on the stand. Ironically, I had gone in that room that morning to get a safety pin from the closet and didn't even notice the bows laying on the music stand. I am a dingleberry.

Also, we apparently had a shrew pay us a visit. Jamie said he'd been hearing things on and off in the main living area of our apartment (the open kitchen/dining room) and last night finally found the source of the noise. A shrew poked his head out from under the dryer. This afternoon Jamie managed to see how the critter was coming in and out. There was a gap at the bottom of the molding that goes around our sliding door. After he was sure the shrew got back out, he sealed the gap with some caulk. Maybe that'll keep out the spiders and other multi-legged things.