Grrr, Mumbly!

Why does this motherfucking town of London, Ontario suck so much!?!?! GAH! ANGER!

6 freaking pm - why does everything need to close?!?

I suppose I could have gone in the afternoon, but I didn't want to.  Who would think that the liquor store AND the pharmacy would be closed when the sun hasn't even gone down yet!!

WHat if I had an evening of drinking and debauchery planned tonight? I would end up ashamed, sober, and ridden with syphilis and crabs!

Alas, my life is not so exciting as to have such plans.

Nevertheless, I am quite disappointed.  I even rifled through the closet to find the special liquor-bottle bag which is built extra strong for carrying multiple bottles of wines and spirits.

Instead of drinking and debauchery, I was planning on stocking up on wine and getting new deodorant, but those plans have been kaiboshed!

This morning, after teaching, I bought groceries and then made bruschetta when I got home.  I bought a single bulb of garlic and I was shocked at how cheap it was - only 10 cents!  That means that I only spent 2 cents to have fresh garlic in my bruschetta.

I had dinner tonight with my academic counterpart - the other MMus Composition student.  We bonded over the amount of work left to do on our theses and enjoyed some high-class mexican food.

Earlier today, I read an email from a former academic counterpart who is doing her MMus in Composition at my home university in Manitoba.  I feel much less overwhelmed by the work I have to do because she has so much more to do.  I'm jealous of how much she's gotten to write, but I'm glad I'm not currently in her shoes.

I handed over the score to my pianist today.  I gave her a quick walk-through and demonstration of some of the stuff in the new movements.  In previous experiences, I've learned that being stressed out about something in the presence of the performer is NOT a good idea.  Today I was relaxed and collected and I think it helped.  There is little over a month before the performance, so time is not going to be her friend.  Nevertheless, she is a strong performer and I am confident that she will do my piece justice!

This evening, I've been a little slack - I've done some editing, finished adding the text into the fourth movement and I'm going to head to bed significantly earlier than other days this week.  I don't like being tired when I have to teach at 9:30am, so I won't let that happen tomorrow.

Goodnight!

I'm actually getting to sleep earlier than I thought tonight, at 2 am!

While my thesis doesn't need to be handed in for another  12 days, my pianist needs to start learning it and she can only pick it up tomorrow before 3pm and since I teach tomorrow, that means I need to have it ready before I go to sleep.  

I knew I wouldn't have the whole thing done... obviously, but I wanted to make sure there was enough content for her to learn.

The first and fourth movements are pretty much complete and the hardest and most important parts of the other movements are in good condition for the piano part.  I can't see there being too much new material for her to learn after the final submission, so she can get a really good start now.

In other news, there is still SO much work to do and SO many decisions to be made!

Note to self:

If you play for a ballet class over a period of 6 months and still don't know the names of the students, do not allow them to become aware of this fact.

Reasons:

-Who'da thought... the egos of teenagers are bruised when they discover that you haven't even learned their name, "but I know YOUR name..."

-This gives them many tangents on which to go off and talk about during the class and any hopes at discipline during said class are ruined.

-They all suddenly and loudly tell you their names, expecting that this is the magical day when you will finally figure out their names.

In conclusion,  traditional ballet pianists sit behind the piano and only occasionally draw attention to themselves - they are happy to never be noticed so that they can read their favourite magazines between exercises.  While I've avoided that so far, maybe there is rhyme and reason to that approach...

I guess I should update on what I mentioned the other day:

I was able to be super detailed with carb counting and post-prandials for part of a day a few days ago and the results were inconclusive, however I couldn't focus any longer on it.  I've been consistent and accurate with my carb counting since and I've been having unexplained rises during the late morning.  I'm not sure if this is the dawn phenomena getting stronger or what, so I will fast tomorrow and see what happens.

Or, from my last post, this could be attributable to stress.  For those of you who are diabetics on a pump out there, do you change basals for a period of stress?  It's effected me differently on different days, so I'm a little weary, but I'm thinking I can't let it keep hiking my sugars for much longer.

Mumbly mumbly mumbly GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to try to not swear, cause I typed enough to other people already.

I shouldn't complain because things are going pretty well, but I'm stressed and pissy and gah mumbly!

There is so much work left on my thesis, and I need to get the pianist's copy to her on Wednesday and it won't be anywhere near finished, and it's going to be a race to the finish line to get things finished for the conductor's deadline of the 16'th, but there's no moving that deadline so it's just going to happen.

  It's just pissing me off because I know what I want to happen, and I even have most of the musical material to make it happen, but I'm having major issues making it actually happen.

Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean!

I need to just stay focused.

I need to stop blogging, this is taking away valuable productivity time!

And with that said, I'm going out for dinner with a friend - yay for counterproductive time use!

That's what I love about procrastination; even though you know it's for the worst and it won't help you whatsoever, it is entirely appealing!

Nevertheless, I will probably accomplish more before dinner than I have over the last few hours!

I've been pretty much married to my computer lately.  The thesis has been coming along quite well.  I'm constantly shifting between moments of feeling that things are moving along on target, then a few minutes later I feel like I'm so far behind and there's just so much work left to do.  I try and ignore both of these feelings, and just take the positive influence they have on me - either reinforcing or scaring me into productivity!

My sugars have been really wonky the last few days.  At first I thought I might need some basal adjustments, but it is a possibility that I've been too lax in my carb counting and calculations.  I'm going to be really organized today and write things down if they continue to go astray so that I can look for patterns.

I did the tally the other day of how much water I drank.

Generally, you're supposed to drink about 8 cups of water a day, as a guideline.

I had about 11 glasses of water, but each of those averaged about 1 and a third cups, so I drank about 14 or 15 cups of water.

I didn't tally the number of times I went tinkle, I'll save that for another day.

[Yes, I do use the work 'tinkle' even though I'm a grown man]

Generally, the pump is working well.  Nevertheless, it changes day to day; I'm assuming that stress causes a huge variation in my insulin needs.  I don't think it's the pump, because my sugars are responding properly, it just takes a lot more insulin, so maybe it's absorption.  For example, the last 2 infusion sets worked as follows:

Infusion set 1 worked great for almost two days, then it seemed like I needed SO much insulin.  I sucked it up for the remaining day and a bit, expecting the next infusion set would set things straight.  The new site didn't fix it, in fact it got a little worse.  After a whole day of sucking, my sugars started to plummet back to the happy place, but I spent the next half day over-treating highs and lows.  I'm hesitant to change basals or even carb ratios because it seems to change at the drop of a hat.

I'm currently basking in my daily 3pm sunshine.  Ok, so it's only been yesterday and today, but all day today was bleak until 3pm - and for this last half hour, it's been delightfully warm on my face.  I generally don't like the light of the sun, but the way I'm facing, I'm not blinded - only warmed by the sunshine!

I finished writing the piano solo, or cadenza of my concerto's third movement and now I'm editing it and adding dynamics.  This is the central and most important material in the movement, so I'm glad to have it finished-ish.

It's not really a cadenza though... I'm starting to re-think whether or not this is even a concerto.  It does feature the opposition of piano (soloist) and orchestra, but 'concerto' is such a loaded term - it might be for the best to change the name, especially thinking ahead to my thesis defense.  

I just had an epiphany :

I spend the majority of my time creating things that largely go unnoticed.

Blogging - I might have a few readers, at most...

Composing - Even if I become successful, the classical music world is quite small.

Even in diabetes, it is such an invisible thing.  The rest of the world can't tell if my sugars are perfect, if they're through the roof, or if they're plummeting.  

This epiphany won't change anything, at least not at the moment.  I will continue to do exactly what I do.  Perhaps when I have more time, I'll put more thought into whether that means that the world can do without the things I do, or whether I need to put more effort into getting them noticed.

Are they even worth being noticed?  Blogging - probably not.  Composing - I would hope so.

Diabetes - I hope it never becomes noticeable.

I guess, today I just feel small.

I think I must have a less than ideal infusion site right now.  It's amazing how the amount of insulin I use daily can change so dramatically.  The other possibility is that I'm not keeping track of my stress eating...  The cookies I bought recently do seem to be disappearing faster than they should.

Ok, I've decided that tomorrow I'm going to try to keep a tally of how many glasses of water I drink and then calculate how many liters that amounts to.  I figure you can't drink too much water, but my bladder and water bill (which we don't actually have to pay) probably wouldn't agree.

Today at work, I had to be far more alert than I normally do to accompany ballet classes.  The reason was that I actually had to TEACH ballet class!  My boss was swamped with paperwork today, so she asked if I would be willing to do some music classes for the last few hours of the work day.  I accepted and the children were stuck with me!

To be honest, I was kind of blind sided; having no prior notice, I had to figure out what to do on the spot.  It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.....

Think back to when you were 6-10 years old and you had a substitute teacher at school - remember how the entire class was on its 'best behavior'?  I pulled out some of my best disciplinarian tactics, but they were still little devils!

On the plus side - I came up with a really great creative movement exercise:

We talked about High and Low, as well as Fast and Slow pairings and how they existed in both music and dance.  [If you ever want to hear the most delightful noise in the world... simply ask a class of fifteen eight-year-old girls to make a really loud high sound, ie shrieking!]  They really enjoyed this exercise and responded really well to what I was playing for them.  I also added another layer of volume, but there was a little confusion and at that point they were just excited to flail about the room, vaguely listening to the piano....

Anyway, the teaching was fun and I hope to do it again, particularly with some of the older groups - the relationship of dance and music has been my expertise for the last few years and I see that they are missing a few of the key connections with their musicality - something I really want to address.

Productivity has been slowing down.

Bad Michael, Bad!

There was the most delightful argument on the street in front of my apartment a little while ago.  There are about three separate bus stops within a stone's throw and there is an awkward little quasi loading zone in between some of them.  It's not marked 'no parking' or 'loading zone' so you can pretty much do what you desire there.  Many people use it to pick up their Indian Food from the restaurant below me.  Anyway, a bus was within inches of the bumper of the car which I can only assume had quickly stopped in that area.  The bus driver must have been quite angry, having expected to have just pulled up to the spot.  Being that close to the bumper, the bus would have had to have backed up, but I think he expected the car to move for him.  There was honking first and then swearing and yelling and people standing around until the car's driver told off the bus driver and squealed his tires as he pulled away.

I love living downtown!

I went through and deleted about 35 friends from my facebook account.  I kept the people that 1) I like and want to keep in touch with or b) are valuable networking commodities.  It was odd, kind of like I was telling each person I deleted that I didn't like them and that they weren't even worth anything to my career.  There were also some people who I didn't even remember - which isn't completely odd with a memory like mine, but I suppose with nearly 500 'friends', it's hard to keep track of everyone.

Even as I was going through, there were a lot of London, Ontario people who I pre-selected to delete, but not today.  When I leave London, I will clear my list of those people as well!

It's sick that friendship/acquaintanceship can be given such a tangibility in the online world.

In the real world, I would have and indeed HAVE forgotten about many of these people - their disappearance from my consciousness took no effort whatsoever, but online one must turn it into a conscious decision.

I've always been taught to never burn my bridges, so it was actually difficult to set so many fires today, but I think it was worth it.

The thesis is really coming together these days.  I have the feeling that things are falling into place.  I'm not a big fate-person, but I'm getting lots of hints that things are meant to be a certain way.  Either that, or I have way under-credited my subconscious.

Forgive the technicality of what I'm about to write, but hopefully it will be clearish.

Basically the first thing I did with the concerto was to decide on two contrasting pitch groups.  There are 12 pitches in an octave, so 2 groups of 6 were chosen.  At some point before starting the other movements, I decided I needed some kind of large-scale pitch organization; I decided that with 4 movements, there should be 4 equal distances between the movements - therefore (12/4=3) I would transpose the pitch sets up 3 semi-tones with each movement.

Recently, I decided that I wanted to quote a famous piano concerto, and which better than the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto!  I've been meaning to get the score from the library, but haven't gotten around to it; today I realized that I have a copy on my computer.  The part I want to quote is in D-flat major. 

  The part I want to quote ties into the opening theme of my concerto - while it is not tonal, it fits close enough to an E-major scheme.  The quotation will happen in the fourth movement...

Movement 1 - E Major

Movement 2 - G Major

Movement 3 - B-flat Major

Movement 4 - can you guess...?!?

D-flat Major!  It must be a sign from the gods!

In another way, that feels more directly connected to me, I feel that the material of my concerto is bringing itself together.  I gave myself the challenge of using as few materials as possible for this concerto:

-2 pitch collections, each with a theme attached

-the rhythm and contour of the text and the structure of the poem.

That's basically it - all the musical material in it has been created using only those little seedlings.  I was prepared to and really thought that I was going to need to add things in and create new material left and right, but so far I haven't.  This quotation will be the first 'new' material, and even at that, it fits one of the pitch groups!

Ok, now to do the opposite - dinner, where I will take many many ingredients and turn them into some clump of dinner that tastes rather unexciting!

Toronto fun times.

So far, this has been a great trip to Toronto.

My meeting with my adviser was great and he made the offer that if I get a lot done and want another meeting before heading home, I just need to call.  I haven't written too much since then, but I still have a few days and who knows what productivity I will accomplish.

Friday night I went for drinks with some friends from Winnipeg.  We drank so much and stayed at the pub for so long - it was entirely delightful!  I spent far too much money, but oh well - it was well worth it.

I managed to make it to a piano recital today by the pianist who is playing my concerto.  I didn't think I was going to be able to make it, but I did; it is wonderful when things in life just come together in the right way.

Speaking of performances, there is a show tomorrow night with one of the improv faculty from the program I did last summer.  I plan on meeting a Toronto friend and seeing the show while catching up.

In diabetes-land, I did the new infusion site in my other arm today; it went SO much better.  I would actually say it was a perfect site change.  My sugars were good before, so they didn't skyrocket as soon as I changed and then absorption today has been good.

I bought huge manuscript paper yesterday from the downtown music store.  London doesn't keep the manuscript stacks in stock, so I couldn't physically hold them and compare.  I spent at least 10 minutes looking and comparing the larger types.  I am testing out one of them right now - lots of room on the manuscript paper is great for sketching things.

Metal pokey things don't like me today.

2 separate things that didn't go so well today:

1) I have an endocrinologist appointment next week, so I went to get blood taken today.  The lab tech poked around inside my left arm for a fair while, almost enough to make me mildly queasy, but it didn't bother me.  Eventually she gave up and asked if I had ever had it taken from my hand.  This took me back to the olden days!  Up until I was about 18, they took the blood from the back of my hand with a butterfly needle.  It filled me with warm fuzzies.  But no!  Rather than the back part of my hand where they were always successful, she shot the needle right above my index knuckle - it's dark and a little bit bruisy.

2)I had been wanting to try a new infusion site for a while - the arm!  I couldn't up until now because the tubing seemed just not quite long enough - it could reach from my arm to my pocket, but not if I reached for anything...  In my latest shipment of medical supplies, I got the longer tubing set - not just a bit longer, but nearly twice as long... I'm dangling a fair bit!

Anyway, some things are difficult to do with one hand - clapping, tying shoes, etc.  Well, inserting an infusion set is DEFINITELY one of those things!  It doesn't help that I was using the more difficult of the two infusion sets - with the Silhouette, you can't remove the adhesive backing before using the insertion device like you can with the Quick-set.  If you try, the stickiness gets stuck to the device and that's hard to fix even with both hands!

I got it all set up and the insertion went fine, but then I had trouble removing the set from the device.  Trying to remove it was a terrible mess, I was accidentally moving the needle all around inside my arm...  I got frustrated and pulled it out and reinserted it by hand.  Much better, BUT then I was having trouble taking the adhesive backing off with only one hand - all of this is taking place on the back of my left arm.  The tugging at the set to get the backing off was, once again, not appreciated by my arm.

Long story short, I got it in and stuck!  It is a little tender, but oh well.

My sugars were a little higher than they should have been before putting in the new set, so of course my sugars sky-rocketed after the first bolus...  The sugars are moving down, giving evidence that the insulin IS working, but not as fast or effectively as I would like.  Nevertheless, I have no ketones and I'm comfortable going to bed with it in. 

After all that hassle, I'm damn well not wasting this one until it has proven itself useless!

I'll be leaving EARLY Friday morning to go into Toronto for business and pleasure.  I have a meeting with my thesis adviser and then I will be visiting with wonderful friends for the rest of the weekend.  I'm not sure how long I will be staying - it will depend on how inspiring and invigorating I find Toronto to be this time around.

The thesis is coming along.  I finished some of those ground-work chunks and I've been doing some of the creative stuff the last few days.  It isn't as immediately rewarding as I had hoped, but it is still getting better.

A Formerly Uncommon Occurrence

The following image might be disturbing, but I think it is delightful!

In case you haven't figured it out, these are three of the fingers from my left hand:

index, middle and ring

You may be wondering, 'oh no, why is Mr. Left Middle-Finger bleeding'?

Don't be worried my friends, he bleeds quite a bit, and he doesn't mind one bit. 

Because of diabetes, my fingers have bled quite a bit more than the average persons' fingers.

Multiple times a day, I have to prick one of my fingers with a lancing device so that I can test my blood sugar.  In an ideal world, every diabetic would cycle through both hands - each finger would bleed only once every 10 tests.  It can be even further varied by changing where on the finger to poke - meaning the right side of Mr. Left Middle-Finger would bleed only once every 20 tests!

  I remember a time when I only tested about 5 times a day - that would mean that Mr. Left Middle-Finger only bled once or twice a week!

  Times have changed and Mr. Left Middle-Finger is one of my favourite fingers to prick.  Also, because of the strict regimen I was on the last few months, I was testing upwards of 15 times a day.  Mr. Left Middle-Finger bled a lot.

The scene you see above used to be quite the special event.  With the smallness of the hole that is made, the blood clots very quickly and within a second, it's healed - Halleluja!  Sometimes, however, it's still hurting on the inside.  There are two basic ways of expressing this inner turmoil:

1) Pictured above is the classic double-bleeder.  One drop of blood forms from the new puncture wound, and another forms from a previous puncture.  Because the punctures are quite small, you need to squeeze the blood out - the blood will find any available exits, even ones which were partially closed.

2)The sprayer - Sometimes, the hole is not big enough, or a previous hole only opens a little, but there is still a fair amount of force trying to get the blood out.  The same force coming out of a little exit causes a fine stream of blood to spatter a fair distance.  On occasion, I don't even notice until I find a spattering of blood on my glasses or white dress shirt...

That's all for now.  I hope you enjoyed the picture.  Today has been a special day filled with fun and excitement..  Laundry and sitting around in my pajamas!  

Yesterday I got some good news - the phone meeting I was had with my pump nurse was to be the last.  She said that things were looking good enough that it isn't necessary to continue sending her sugars.  I have a follow-up appointment with her in March, so I get a one-month vacation, which could not come at a better time.  I'll have to remind myself that this is not just a chance to let everything go to shit, but it will be great to take some of the focus away from diabetes and be a little bit more obsessive with my thesis.

My feelings towards the thesis still haven't changed since yesterday - I've finished another task, but haven't had the chance to take that task and apply it.  There are still too many individual tasks that I need to finish.  Today I have no class and no real plans, so I will just write write write and finish a bunch of tasks.  Oh ya, I have to do laundry, which means I'll have to leave the apartment to buy quarters...

Nothing really to report this weekend.

Composition is going slowly - I feel like there is just so much ground work to do before I can really get to the creative work.  Nevertheless, I have a clear understanding of what I want the rest of the piece to be like, so the groundwork is focused and efficient.  

I really wish I could work faster on this groundwork, because it isn't that involved, but I'm having difficulty maintaining focus.  With that said, I'm glad that I'm still getting a fair bit done daily - even while I describe it as less than ideal.  Last year, when I was feeling this unproductive, it was because I was getting NOTHING done.  These are definitely steps in the right direction!

Indeed, my sugars have been MUCH better yesterday and today.  It appeared to have been a bad infusion set, but I refused to change it since I had ended the previous one a day early.

I'm going to spend a little time next weekend in Toronto.  I have a meeting with my thesis adviser, I'll hang out with one of my long-time readers, and there's an on-line, yet real-life pharmacy there that sells insulin pump supplies for a remarkable savings.  What costs $205 through the manufacturer only costs $175, or $150 from this pharmacy.  This will bring my diabetes related costs down to the level at which I'm receiving funding for it, which means I won't be spending as much out-of-pocket money on my health.

All things are looking up these days:

I've been productive with writing.

I bought nasal spray, so my nose is feeling much happier.

With the sugars down, I feel less stressed, even though it is still there.

Yep, that's all I got for now.

I'm not really enjoying life today.

My sugars have been really high the last few days, only coming down for brief periods.  I have no keytones, so it's not like my pump isn't working.  They're coming down as we speak - I just plan on not eating for the next few days so that they won't go up again.... Really, if I could do it, I would.

High sugars really make me angry - unbelievably angry!  I want to punch and kick and cry and scream and Argh!  all at the same time!

Other things that add to this feeling are:

Stress - thank you thesis completion month!

Tension - my jaw hates me right now.  Also, on the bus home tonight, I was seriously contemplating the idea of getting an emergency deep-tissue massage tomorrow, but I don't have the time or money for that.

Speaking of, FUCK! due to a smaller than normal paycheque from the dance studio and not getting paid for the extra TAing I did this last month, I have $2.69 to last me the next month.  Thank goodness (and capitalism) for my credit card.

A piece of mine is being performed at a studio recital this weekend.  I went this evening to hear the dress-rehearsal.  Not surprisingly, it was not terribly well-rehearsed, so they were working on staging it and finding notes.  Oh well!  I'm happy with the concept of what they're doing with it, and I'm sure they'll pull it together for Saturday, because I would really really like this recording to turn out well.  The pianist had another obligation halfway through, so I got to sit in at the piano for the second half.  It went well and it reminded me that I want to get back to playing more and accompanying.

In other news - I have the driest fucking nose imaginable!  I never thought that my nose could cause me so much pain, but WOW!  It's constantly bloody, but dried blood which irritates the inside of my painful little nostrils.  Anyway, I bought a humidifier which I've had running yesterday and today.  I haven't noticed a difference yet though.  I want a difference.  I tried moisturizing the inside of my nostrils with a q-tip and some lotion, but then it feels like I have a constant runny nose and then it's hard to not blow out all the lotion into a kleenex.

Anyway, I hate the world just a bit right now, but it's ok, I don't really.

My life indeed has direction!

Since finishing my applications for grad school, which wasn't that long ago, I've been in a bubble of uncertainty - having no guarantees about what might happen.  As small as it may have been, there was a tiny fear in the back of my head, 'what would I do if I didn't get accepted to any of the programs'?

Today I got an email from the dean of one of the schools to which I applied.  It stated that they've recommended me for acceptance into the Doctoral program.  Basically, it means that I'm in.  This Dean wants to talk to me on the phone to ask a few questions and answer any that I may have.

My initial thoughts:

-super happiness

-I'm not even thinking about making decisions because I want to hear from all the schools, but this gives me that comfort feeling!

-This school's application deadline was yesterday and I got the email today; also, he said that they were 'impressed by [my] music' - how awesome does that make me feel!?!

-Damnit, this has distracted me and I have so much work to do today, tomorrow, and for the next 5 weeks!  Eek!