Busy, busy, busy....

It's that time of the month. For two weeks I get cranky and irritable. I feel somewhat "out of control". I get headaches and I fatigue easily. I have painful joints, backache, heart palpitations and weight gain. Emotionally, I'm anxious, depressed, tense, and generally out of sorts. My moods can change at the drop of a dime. You all know what I'm getting at here--it's concert time again!

We're performing Mahler's 2nd Symphony next Saturday. It calls for a HUGE orchestra. I'm pulling in musicians from all over the state. Those of you in the more populous parts of the country (which should be most of you!) probably don't realize how hard it is to find 2 harpists who can play. I know that bigger cities usually have dozens to choose from. Around here, there's probably not more than 10 in a 500-mile radius. Then finding 2 contrabassoonists, when there's only three instruments in the entire state, let alone players. Etc., etc. But I've found everything I need. Right now, my headache is how to house all of them over the last two days of rehearsals without spending money. Shouldn't be a problem. Just more work on my end. We started rehearsals tonight. It's going to be a great concert, with over 200 singers/musicians on stage. That's a whole lot of stinky people in close quarters, but that's some of the fun! To add to the pressure/confusion, this concert will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Helena Symphony, so we expect a packed house, and alot of pretentiousness going on. Gotta love culture!

The original plan for this post was to be an update about my chops. There's good news and bad news. The good news--it appears as though I can play with a minimum amount of pain. Externally, my lips are literally bruised (which is a weird thing), and a little tender yet on the inside--sorta like canker sores. The little scabs that formed on the outside seem to have fallen away on their own. Lips seem to heal pretty quickly. So I played OK tonight without any real problems. The bad news--the gash on my upper lip seems to have actually separated the small muscles in my embouchure (that's the muscles around the lips) where I was hit. It's like a permanent indentation. I'm not sure what that's going to do to my long-term playing, but I can't imagine that it'll be good. It might not be a problem, but I'm a little bit concerned.

My blogging and surfing time might be somewhat affected by all this time away. I'll try to keep up. Now it's time for some much needed sleep.....