So, back to real life – but with this lovely weather! One weird thing though is that there’s a brief window at the beginning of fall (before the heat turns on mid-October) and mid-spring (when the heat turns off again) where it’s the coldest in the apartment it ever gets. So it’s now, not February, when it’s time to put the flannel sheets on the bed. Also, we’ve had a comforter/duvet issue the last couple of years (the duvet doesn’t really fit the comforter, it’s too big, and the comforter gets bunched up inside) and I need to buy a new duvet before I can put the comforter back on the bed for winter. So I dug around in the linen closet, which I hadn’t bothered to inventory yet, and found this old horse-blanket-like thing to put on top of the bedspread as another layer for now. I can also wear a sweatsuit to bed if I get really chilly.
Should I point out that it’s especially chilly because I’m the only one in there? Naw, too obvious.
I had a weird flashback yesterday. I moved to NYC on my birthday in 1994, which means it’s now been 28 years here. And my first job was at the Grace Building north of Bryant Park. I’d take the A train or the 1 train down from Inwood, get out at Times Square and walk over on 42nd street, pick up a bagel (at a place and building which no longer exists), and go to my rather-hideous law firm job. But it was exciting, nonetheless, and those first few months were buzzing with possibility and excitement. (and then I met C in January and things got even better)
But yesterday I got out of the F/7 stop at 42nd and 6th to walk up to my office on 45th, and saw the Grace Building right there, and what with that and the weather feeling exactly like those first days – and suddenly being alone again, it felt like 28 years had been erased. And not in a good way. I know that’s complete bullshit, nothing’s been erased, but how weird to think I was just starting out this very new life… and now I’ve had this amazing relationship which is now over and in some ways, am again starting fresh.
I was thinking again yesterday, in my gloominess, that my reflections on Charles’s passing are consistently a braided strand of ‘oh gosh I miss him I’ll never have this [fill in memory] any more’ and ‘oh gosh, I had this [fill in memory] and wasn’t it amazing and weren’t we both lucky to have that together’? So there’s that.
Orchestra was fun last night! I’d been worried because two weeks ago I had felt underprepared, and then of course I didn’t touch my horn for over a week since because of the travel, and getting in just one warmup session once I got back. But the four pieces we did last night were not difficult for me, and I got through it fine. The toughest stuff was 3rd horn on the Brahms Haydn variations, but I got to redeem myself on the variation I’d screwed up so badly last time because I’d missed the transposition change. (I had the right glasses last night, that helped.)
I’m now at the point with this repertoire (halfway through the rehearsal period, basically) where I do need to do a serious warmup and woodshedding most days of the week, and solve some very specific problems, like a moment that calls for open horn, then stopped horn with no break, and the stopped section is too low to just do it with hand, you need the stopping mute.
Now that I have the Ruddigore gig (and am still waiting to hear about another one, which would make me twice as busy with the show prep), I suspect this will be my last horn concert for a while. It’s a good one, though, very cool.
I need to plot out the next week or so, and then the next weeks or so, and the next months or so. My dad is coming into town next week for a visit, that’ll be fun, and my buddy Carol will be here a week or so after that. I have various dinners to set up with people. Apartment things I’d been putting off because it was so hot and sticky can now be re-addressed. Again, I need to up my food game at home, particularly since I’m trying to low-carb and the ‘throw a sandwich together’ option isn’t one. And I have more shots to get (booster, shingles) and I must follow up with the sports doctor my GP referred me too, because this thing with the legs and the knees over vacation scared me. I know it’s probably just arthritis and the solution will be to lose weight and take some pain pills and maybe use knee braces and eventually, god forbid, get knee replacements, but I need some expert to look at this and tell me what to do. I’d always assumed I’d be able to bike ride and ice-skate for exercise, it will suck mightily if I can’t.
Anyway, let’s get back to it.
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