Arm and the Man

Isn't there a book with a title like that? I like allusions when I can cram them into my writing. Being me, I looked it up - it is an anti-war play by George Bernard Shaw. Yay, my brain still works. Having my mom to spend a lot of time with, and reading on Memory People, the Facebook support group I belong to, I get afraid that I might be catching Alzheimer's. Phew!

The reason I bring up "arm" is because, as those of you who have known me for a while might recall, my right are was not functioning especially well for months. It felt like it was partially dislocated. I did see my Chiropractor, Puja (what a great name) about it - who told me it was only muscle issues and would work itself out. Which it did. Eventually. Yay! All (mostly) better!

I can lift and pull and stuff again, which makes working at the Smith less painful. Yippee! Raising and lowering drops, lugging stuff, climbing into the rarefied heights to do lighting all are not painful anymore! All of which I did yesterday during the marathon day working on Peter and The Wolf.

It started at 10:30 in the morning with trying to fix the speakers we use for our sound system. The tweeters on all four speakers were not happy. We got two of them apart and replaced them with bigger, stronger replacement parts only to find out that one of them still didn't work. Sigh. Then it turned out that the two smaller speakers also had unhappy tweeters. (No, the speakers aren't users of social media...) Well, poop. This all necessitated me driving out to Phelps and us renting speakers for the production. The four almost didn't fit in my teeny sedan of a Yaris, but they did. I got them back and set up in time for the rehearsal that evening. Yahoo! (Not the search engine.)

Next, I started working on lights, which entailed climbing up into the trees on either side of the auditorium and yelling "Me Tarzan!" Ok, there was no yelling. Just focusing and gelling.

Later in the evening, much, much later, around 10:30 at night, I did a boo boo. Not a horrendous one, it was actually kinda funny. I brought the main rag (The main curtain) onto the stage, only to discover that I had actually brought in the main valance by mistake. Sigh. And without my gloves. Ow. My hands are still a little sore.

All in all, a good day of work at the Smith Opera House. If you are in the area (ha) coming to see SPA's production of Peter and the Wolf wouldn't be a terrible way to spend some time and money! Yippee for supporting the arts!

Ear Broken - Two

Adventure of the neti pot! When I got my ear candles at Harmony Farms in Raleigh - cool place, btw - I also splurged and got a neti pot. One of my favorite people, with whom I have lost touch sadly, Mark Sanford, extoled the virtues of the neti pot years back. I had heard of them, just never experienced them. So, with my ear being broken and me knowing that ears and the nose are somehow intertwined, I decided to take the plunge. My largest fear was of drowning. That's right. Drowning. I have had way too many near death experiences with water and I wasn't relishing another one. Today I took that brave step forward. Into the shower I went, neti pot and saline packet in hand (or near by). I put some water in the neti pot - warm, not hot or cold! - and mixed in what I thought was a small amount of the saline powder recommended by the experts at Harmony Farms. Into my nose went the neti pot - I tilted my head to the side and started pouring. I poured about three seconds worth and it started coming out my other nostril, just like it said it would! Yippee! I decided to try the other nostril. Eeeek! It burns! I guess I hadn't stirred the solution enough or something - and my head wasn't tilted enough. Not a pretty picture. True, I didn't drown, but I also wasn't as pleased with this nostril's experience. My ear, sadly, is still broken. And I will neti again - perhaps in my very next shower. We shall see. What to try next? Acupuncture or back to Chiropractic. I am leaning towards acupuncture first.