Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

A mystery solved and a crochet hook.

Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008
11:53 a.m.
My mom called yesterday afternoon, after I got back from my rehearsal with my accompanist. She had found my glasses.

One of her acts of cleaning up was to gather old eyeglasses and put them in a bag so they could be taken to an optometrist who prepares them for shipment to third-world countries. She had a bag of these salvaged spectacles hanging from the vestibule doorknob, and I had looked in there already, not finding them. But when I asked her where she had found them, she said in a case, in a bag of glasses headed to the third world. When I was in the living room talking to my brother on the cordless phone, she had no doubt picked them up, thinking to herself that here was another pair for charity, and put them in a case and thence the bag, which means there must have been two bags, and I only inspected one of them.

So, that mystery is solved. I instructed her where to put them so that I would find them on a subsequent visit (she did that as I waited). Unfortunately, I neglected to ask her if she’d spoken to her doctor.

I got a response from my email to my older brother, the one in Israel, thanking me for my news and telling me he would be in touch, and he actually telephoned me this morning. If I hear from the other one, I will consider it a minor miracle.

Apart from all this insanity surrounding my mother, life is not too bad. I rehearsed with Ms. Piano yesterday, and it went well. We went through all the opera arias (basically the first part of the concert), but she has mislaid some of the music (the Fauré and a couple of other things) and when I went to make photocopies for her, I saw that the machine in the office had been changed so that only authorized users, i.e. those with a user I.D. number, could access it. I ran downstairs to where Hubby was teaching and got his number, but it still wouldn't work for me, so she ended up reading off my score with me looking over her shoulder for the piece she didn’t have. It was very funny what happened when I discovered this new setback.

I had run into the office, put my music in the automatic feed tray and then saw the flashing instructions to put in my I.D. number and press OK. I blurted out, rather loudly, “What the fuck!?” before realizing that I was not alone. Then our ineffectual chair came out of his office where he had been cloistered with a student and I said to him very brightly, “Hi! Happy New Year! How are you?” He looked at me like I was a crazy woman and answered, “Fine, thanks.” I pursued my inane streak and continued, “Did you have a nice holiday?” to which he replied, “Yes,” all the while looking like he wished I would just disappear in a puff of smoke and go back to the inferno from whence I came. I decided to give him a break and asked about this new photocopier policy and he explained that all the machines on campus had been programmed in this way, ours being the last to be done. Bah, humbug. What a pain in the ass. I’m supposed to be issued a number. Maybe I have to pursue it.

Little Princess found a pattern on the internet for a pair of thumbless, fingerless mittens to wear while playing violin and she asked me if I would teach her how to crochet. I haven’t done any needlework in many years and picking up a crochet hook felt decidedly weird. However, it does come back to you, and I showed her how to make a chain and do single crochet. But I neglected to include a very important step in the process of making the cuff for this garment (you single crochet into the back of the stitch so it comes out looking ribbed, the author of the mittens assuming that people already know what they’re doing), namely making a single chain at the end of every row before turning it and working the next row, and it was becoming pyramidal looking. So last night I ripped it back and reworked it (she was at her BF’s) and when she comes back to it, it will look the way it’s supposed to. Won’t she be surprised?

The weather was extremely mild in T.O. I was wandering around with my coat completely open. It was unseasonably warm here, too, and the river became a raging torrent with all the melting snow (and we had a lot of snow). Last night the wind picked up and howled around the house, and the temperature has dropped to freezing. Hopefully this will avert a flood.

One of Hubby’s composition students came over just a little while ago so I could show him a few tricks with Finale™. He wanted to make custom noteheads. I showed him a thing or two. Now my stomach is rumbling and I realize it’s lunchtime.

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