Why was this past week crazy, you might ask? Well, remember that yeast infection Sandy had in his ears? We've been treating it with ear cleaner, followed up about a half hour later with some ointment to kill the fungus. I've been working that into my schedule twice a day as I was doing other things. We had an appointment on Friday with the vet for a recheck. The whole family goes for these appointments, so there we were, the four of us, in the vet's examining room. Good news! Sandy's ears looked good, but the vet wanted to do a cytology (lab) check, just to be sure. While we were talking about that, I asked if a yeast infection could be passed from one dog to another, as Dusty had been scratching at his ears for the last couple of days. I had been careful to wash my hands each time I treated Sandy's ears, just in case I could accidentally spread it from one dog to another. The vet didn't think it was likely for one dog to catch the infection from another dog, but he had a look at Dusty's ears. Sandy found it very interesting to see Dusty get his ears checked, too. Dusty's on the wellness plan, which covers office visits, dental, and heartworm/flea/tick prevention, along with a discount on tests and medications. (The young woman in grey is a new technician who is shadowing the team, learning the ropes.)
When the cytology check was done, Sandy was proclaimed cured, but now Dusty had it. (Sigh!) We left the office with a new tube of ointment. I had already picked up a new bottle of the cleaning solution a couple of days before. So I was in for another two weeks of treating the ears twice a day, this time with Dusty.
The rehearsals for the Summer Choir intensified with a session not only on Monday, the usual time, but also on Wednesday, and both rehearsals were extended until 9:00 PM.
Our instrumentalists joined us for Monday's rehearsal, and all of them came again on Wednesday, except for the percussionist, who had a conflict. I still didn't feel ready, in spite of all the extra help we were getting from our director, Christian. He had given us a playlist on YouTube, which was very helpful.
I resolved to spend a lot of extra time working on the passages that were giving me trouble. Then our internet went down. Not only did it go down, but it was down for several hours. I could audiate (or imagine the music in my head) while looking at the music, but I'm not skillful enough to be sure I have it right, so it was distressing not to have access to the practice music during our final week before the concert on Saturday. The next day, the internet went down again. I called our provider and learned that they expected to have it back up by "noon tomorrow." It didn't actually take that long. It came back in the early evening, but it was still several hours of no access to the recordings just when I needed them most. We are speculating that the outages have something to do with the new construction taking place on the other side of the trail near us. We think someone accidentally cut a cable. Twice. I managed to get in some good practice sessions with the time I had. We were expecting company from out-of-town on Saturday before the concert, and I was still working to get the tidying, dusting and scrubbing done, so Charlie could vacuum the whole house. I listened to the playlist on my phone while I worked.
Our friends, John and Kathy, who were fellow expats with us in Indonesia in the '90s, arrived about lunchtime on Saturday, and we had a quick lunch and a long chat to catch up. When it was time to drop me off at the library for the concert, we all piled into our car and took off. They were all staying for the concert, of course. We hadn't been to the new library yet, although we had driven by it. One of the parking areas is covered with solar panels, presumably staff parking, and that was where Charlie dropped me off, after turning down the wrong street. I had to hustle to get to the door, which was on the other side of the huge building and then had to find the large multipurpose meeting room, where risers and chairs had been set up for our concert. I was almost five minutes late. One of the first things I saw when I entered was this amazing sculpture, "Juniper," by John Grade.
I didn't have time before the concert to look around, but we did later. I thought it was fascinating that they had windows looking into the book return area, so we could watch books being conveyed and sorted using a conveyer belt. Two young children were standing with their noses pressed to the glass, watching it happen. I gathered they had just returned some books, because there were children's books on the conveyer belt. (This photo is from an article about the opening of the new library that appeared in the Bend Source.)
The concert went well. We had a standing-room-only crowd in the huge magnificent "meeting room," and the acoustics were amazing.
Christian told us we had sung the pieces better than he had ever heard us do, and the praise seemed genuine.
(Last two photos from Central Oregon Mastersingers' FB page.)
While getting ready to receive our friends on Saturday, I thought about the fact that they had been away from home with their trailer for 11 days, and suggested that they might like to have a shower and do some laundry, which they appreciated. During the week, somehow, the cleaning had all gotten done, and I had managed to make a batch of my Corn Salad to have with the salmon Charlie bought a couple of days before our friends arrived. Saturday night we had a late but nice dinner. We had a dry riesling and a purchased cheesecake for dessert. We talked until late into the night.
Also this past week, the manuscript came back from Alexa (no, not that Alexa; this one is a real person and an excellent editor), who was doing the proofreading/editing and pre-publishing preview for the new book. After making the changes she recommended, I had to work around the internet outages to be able to upload it to BookBaby, which cost me an extra day. However, I got it submitted and received no "uh-oh" email back, so the proof copy is now in production. I hope it gets shipped out today. Here's a look at the front cover.
I find I'm more excited about this book than I have been for any of the others.
While the internet was up and available, I made a quick check of social media. I had to laugh at what Facebook's Meta AI app thought would be a good subject for turning into a comic strip: a picture I took of one of our Finnish hand-painted sunflower dishes. (I didn't bother to have the comic strip produced.) Sometimes AI comes up with things that make me not trust it for anything important.
Also during the week, while all of the above was going on, I received an email and a text from my credit union, telling me they had put a hold on my credit card due to a couple of charges they suspected could be fraudulent. I checked them out, and they were companies I had never heard about and certainly didn't buy anything from, so I followed the recommendation of my credit union and regretfully cancelled my card, which wasn't even two years old yet! That necessitated contacting every place I had subscriptions or regular scheduled charges. I estimate that it cost me another half a day, and I'm still not done. Every time I buy something online for the foreseeable future, I'll have to put in my new card and delete the old one.
Sunday we had to hook up the trailer and back it into its space in the backyard, because the landscaper is coming today to start work on the xeriscaping of our front yard.
As if the week wasn't crazy enough, I got the news that our granddaughter Daphne was going into the hospital. She isn't expected to be there long and is doing well, but phone calls and texts were involved, our daughter keeping family informed, including one phone conversation while we were driving to the vet. It was just one more thing during an overloaded week. Did I mention that we had a Madroña pop-up meeting? No? Well, it was a nice break, and we always have to tell everyone what we were grateful for this week. I had a long list of all the crazy during the week and how grateful I was that most of the issues had already been resolved.
One more thing to be happy about: The new official trailer of LAIKA's "Wildwood" is out, and it's getting rave reviews, including this one from Gizmodo! (In case you're new to my weekly blog or hadn't read about our connection to LAIKA, our younger son, Peter is a technical director for special effects (not his official title, I don't think), and has been with them since the beginning of "Coraline." October 23rd the movie comes out, and I can't wait!
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What's in The Doll's Storybook: The Writer is sick, and the dolls worry about how they will get the next story out. And who will clean the house? They work it out, of course, in Working Together.
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