Yesterday afternoon my dad called to see if I wanted to do the organ and piano duet with him again. I didn’t have the music, so we met at the church so he could give me a copy and then we could run through it. Then I came back home and likely drove Richard crazy by playing my part over and over, and doing a lot of swearing under my breath every time I made a mistake. My dad has noted that this isn’t so much a duet as it is a piano piece with organ accompaniment; this is merely yet one more reason for me to learn how to play the organ so that the next time we do this, *I* can have the easier part. We played it this morning for the offertory and I managed to get through it with a minimum of (noticeable) mistakes.

We had great plans for getting things accomplished this afternoon – like purchasing and installing a new garbage disposal. Our old one died a week or so ago, and no amount of resetting, turning the blades backwards, or any of the other usual tricks would make it run again. We got it to run very briefly – just long enough for me to run some icky gunk down the drain, but then it died again and even the repair service of Dad and other Dad agreed that it just needed to be replaced.

But instead we came home and took naps, and then Richard ran off to the hardware store to at least purchase the new disposal and I stayed home to wait for his parents, who were coming up to take us out for my birthday dinner. They brought me lovely presents – a box of books and a DVD of Noises Off, which is one of my very favorite movies because if you are not laughing by the end of it there is something very, very wrong with you – and took us out for a delicious dinner.

However, prior to opening presents and going to dinner, Richard was still off getting the new disposal when they arrived, so in order to entertain them, we headed out into the backyard because it’s fun to occasionally see how far all the little fledgling plants have come since last time they were up here. For one thing, the blue star thyme creepers are finally starting to take hold around the path stones that surround the raised flowerbed we built, which means at least parts of that little walkway are starting to look a bit overgrown and pretty – just how I’d hoped. The thyme is literally covered in tiny pale blue flowers, and where it’s grown the most vigorously, it’s starting to creep over the edges of some of the stones, and is doing its job to hold some of the larger and more wobbly ones in place.

Just as we were about to go back inside, however, I noticed something extremely exciting! The pomegranate tree! Has flowers!

The pomegranate tree has, until now, been rather a bit of a disappointment. For one thing, it looks not so much like a tree as like a rather unruly and overgrown bush. And last year it had two little flowers, which promptly fell off and produced not a single pomegranate, and I was starting to get a little antsy. But this year it seems to be making up for the lack of fruit the year before. The whole tree is covered in gorgeous bright red flowers, which I find amazing simply because the outer petals of the flower are thick and leathery, and feel just like the outer shell of the pomegranate fruit itself. Plus, not only were there lots of flowers showing all their color, there were dozens more dark red buds, just waiting to open up and surprise me.

It’s rather fun to watch all the little trees slowly coming into their own, now that they’ve had over a year to establish. The walnut tree is tall and gangly, sort of like an awkward thirteen year old boy who can’t figure out what to do with his arms and legs. I have a feeling that I am going to have to go out at some point and give it a rather severe pruning, because experience (in the form of the walnut tree in my parents’ backyard) has taught that if I am not willing to prune, it will do its best to try to take over the yard (and then eventually the neighbors’ yards, I would imagine). But for now I am leaving it be because I think it is going to give me double the number of walnuts it gave last year – so we might be up to six of them by the end of the summer. We shall see.

I had to cull the white peach tree again this spring because even though we propped it up rather strongly, I still think if I let it produce all the peaches it wanted to produce, most of its tiny little branches would fall off from the weight. But still, this year I’ve left about a dozen of them on, instead of just a handful, because I think it can handle at least that much. The little tangelo tree won’t bloom for another few months, if I remember from last year, and the red grapefruit tree is so very tiny that I will not be surprised if this summer it does not bloom at all. But that’s okay – I can be patient for my grapefruit. I think I’m going to have more than enough pomegranates and peaches to keep me happy this summer and fall.

Today I finally gave up. I decided that when the sinus pressure gets so bad that I am not only throwing up at work, but then am incapable of keeping anything (even water) down afterwards, maybe it might be time to go see the doctor and beg for pills. I called and got an appointment, then went home early from work and crawled into bed and prayed for my head to stop trying to implode. The doctor, a friendly and earnest young intern, went through the usual spiel about nasal sprays (no thank you – the last time they put me on those I got these really nifty heart palpitations that took days to go away after I stopped the meds) and decongestants (pseudophedrine is my friend, yes indeed, but it only goes so far), before finally agreeing that antibiotics were the way to go. He noted that the last time I was in for my special brand of sinus infection hell was in December of 2003 – wow, it’s been a while. This only serves to confirm the fact that the allergy shots *are* helping, overall. Yes, I’m sick again, but hey, nothing is perfect, and maybe by this time next year it’ll be even better.

So now I have a bottle of horse pills to take twice a day for the next ten days. If things go as they usually do, I should start feeling better by the weekend (all fingers and toes crossed – well, except for one toe, that is). Richard’s got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, at which he will hopefully be given giant horse pills of antibiotics as well, since he’s in far worse shape than I am. I have a very selfish reason for wanting us both to be healthy by the weekend – we’ve made tentative plans to go to the San Francisco zoo on Monday for my birthday and I’d really like to be healthy enough to go.

Richard’s little sister got a job with a local Gaslighter theater, playing a part in the matinee melodrama for the summer. So after a few false starts and rearrangement of plans, we finally made it down there this afternoon.

Because traffic in the Bay Area is unpredictable and timing a trip down to his parents is next to impossible to get just right, we ended up arriving a little early. The theater, however, is located quite conveniently next to a large store that sells, among other things, stone dragons and gargoyles, as well as a rather impressive selection of Devil Ducks (rubber ducks with horns. Don’t ask). And even more conveniently, we had just enough time to peruse the selection, pick out a little coiled dragon who looked like he would fit in perfectly perched on the wall of the raised flower bed in the back yard, and also rummage through their collection of ducks to pick out all the colors and patterns we did not yet have. I think, after today, we may very well have found them all. Richard is showing signs of wanting to expand into pirate ducks as well, though, and I’m not sure the tub in the master bathroom is big enough for that many rubber ducks. I sense shelf installation in the near future.

The melodrama was cute and a little haphazard, but that’s typical for this sort of thing. We booed the villain, who sported cape and mustache and leering grin, and cheered the hero even though he was quite obviously dumber than a rock, and we flung popcorn randomly at everyone (they encourage this sort of thing) and it was quite fun. Later, the group did a short variety show, with singing and dancing and the ugliest creature in the world (old joke, but this is was a kid’s show, so it still got laughs), and we all decided that Richard’s little sister would actually look quite cute with short dark hair (like the wigs they all had to wear). We went out for dinner and caught up on life, and chatted about Desperate Housewives and Lost and other trivial things, and Richard and I did our best to pretend that we were not really all that sick and we could actually breathe like normal people, and it was such a nice day that it almost worked.

I suppose it was too good to last, this avoidance of colds and sinus infections and all the joy that comes therein. With the way the weather has been swinging from cold to hot and then back again these past few weeks, the unseasonably late rain storms, and the resulting rapid growth and release of all manner of new pollens and allergens in the air to assault those of us sensitive to them, it was probably only a matter of time. Monday I woke up with an odd sore throat that felt almost as if I’d been swallowing too hard. By Tuesday I was exhausted and achy – all the signs of having a fever – and my nose was stuffed up. Wednesday I went in to work for a few hours, hoping that the cold meds might keep this thing at bay long enough for me to get through the day, but then gave up and went home. Yesterday I didn’t even try to go in; instead I decided to just stay home and see if this thing might finally go away. These past few days I’ve mainly spent alternately napping, or shuffling listlessly around the house, counting down until I could take the next dose of over-the-counter cold meds and make all the annoying symptoms go away.

I was supposed to have today off as part of the new flex work program in our company, but after being gone so much earlier this week, and knowing how much work was piling up in my absence, I decided since I was feeling a little better I really should go in. Okay, and one of the main reasons I went to work today was because after sitting at home so long I was starting to go a little stir-crazy.

It’s frustrating, being exhausted and sick at home. There are a million and one little chores that I could be doing with all that free time, but simply shuffling downstairs to feed the cats wore me out. Yesterday I had a little more energy, so I camped out on the sofa downstairs and knit. I picked something fairly easy – an open mesh bag meant for farmer’s markets and other types of shopping – which had the added benefit of using up some yarn that’s been in my stash for quite some time. So I suppose that was at least vaguely productive.

It hasn’t been all hacking and wheezing this week, though. Tuesday (which was before the worst of it hit) Richard and I met a lawyer in Davis and finally got the ball rolling on setting up wills and durable powers of attorney and advanced directives, establishing who would be the executor of our estate, and who is given responsibility for assessing whatever cats we might have at the time we both kick off to figure out who can be adopted and who should probably be put to sleep (that may sound harsh unless you knew some of our cats, since Zucchini, for example, is so terrified of everything and everyone that to try to put him in a shelter or another home would be cruel). We left with a bit of homework to do in terms of names and lists and that sort of thing, and it exhausted me completely, but I wasn’t willing to give up the appointment just for being sick. It’s something we’ve needed to do for quite some time, and even though it still isn’t done, at least we’re a lot closer than we were before.

I came home from work early today – but then so did everyone else in the office because I’m not the only one who’s lately been sick – and I can feel this settling in my sinuses. I am popping decongestants in the hope that I can stave off my yearly trip to the doctor for antibiotics, but I’m beginning to think this, too, is inevitable. I am doomed to suffer from a nasty bout of winter ick at least once a year, even if it had to wait until it wasn’t technically winter anymore to hit.

The latest offering of the Davis Musical Theater Company (which we saw Mother’s Day weekend) was “Don Quixote”. It’s a play I’ve never seen before, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, since it’s been a few years since I read the book. Unlike most plays, all the action takes place in exactly one set, so for a change they’d actually created quite a nice one (lately their sets have been a little sparse and uninspiring). The play requires a number of good singers, and for the most part, they succeeded. The guy they had playing Don Quixote was marvelous, and the woman who played Aldonza/Dulcinea was marvelous. She usually ends up playing the ditzy blonds (and quite well, too), so it was nice to see her get a chance to play someone a little less blond and a lot more intense.

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This past week Richard mentioned in passing the name of a restaurant in Davis that neither of us had been to in a very long time. I’m not sure why we never think to go there – maybe because it’s tucked away in the not-so-nice part of town next to an abandoned grocery store. But for whatever reason, we both immediately thought of it when we decided to go out for dinner Saturday night. So off we headed for some Greek food at a place called the Symposium.

As I said, it’s been years since either of us has been there, and in that time someone decided to paint the entire little run-down shopping center in a palette of extremely unfortunate shades of orange. The grocery store is still abandoned, but the little ethnic food store (where I used to occasionally go to get huge samosas when I lived in Davis) is still there, although some of the other stores have been replaced by a series of second hand shops. The restaurant is at the very end of the little strip, looking rather unrestauranty in its sheer orangeness, but once we opened the door and walked inside, everything looked just as it should again.

They were very nice and gave me a chair on which to prop up my stupid possibly-broken toe. We ordered an appetizer which was a wedge of some kind of vaguely parmesan-like cheese lightly breaded, spritzed with lemon, and then set on fire because when the waitress described it I knew I had to give it a try. It was divine (although how could anything involving lightly breaded flaming cheese *not* be?) – in fact everything was wonderful. We ate far too much and couldn’t finish our dinners, yet still ordered desserts (pear torte and Kailua cheesecake) which we couldn’t finish either, but had to at least try.

It was a lovely dinner (although with the richness of the food it’s not something we should do very often – alas), and it served as a little reminder to us that we have lately gotten into a bit of a food rut, only going out to the same small circle of places when we’re in the mood to go out to eat. Our usual selection is at least a varied circle of food styles (sushi, Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, and lately Korean because a new place opened in town that’s pretty good), but there are other things to try and places to go. There’s a new little Afghanistani restaurant in Davis that we passed when walking around town recently, for example, yet we continually forget that it is there when having the rather predictable discussion of ‘what do you want to eat? I dunno, what do you want to eat?’

It’s good to expand our horizons every now and then, especially if the opportunities are right out there within driving distance. One never knows what one might find.

It was kind of a crazy day today. It started far too early in the morning, since our recorder group meets at 8:30, and then the instrumental ensemble had to rehearse – a much smaller group than we usually have, but all the parts were represented and so somehow it managed to work. At the very end of the rehearsal one of the clarinetists’ instrument literally started to fall apart in front of him. Poor kid – it looked like he’d managed to lose a screw at some point, and the entire section of keys eventually worked its way loose and fell right off. No one had any extra screws, nor could we find the missing one, so he wasn’t able to play after all, which made our little ensemble that much smaller.

We all had to be back at the church by 4 to get ready for the concert. Usually this is when things get really tense and we have to do a million and one things and by the time the concert is actually to take place we are all already too tired and cranky to care. This time, however, it was nice and relaxed. We ran through a few trouble spots, reviewed the entrances and exits, and then had actual time to relax.

Richard’s mom and little sister came up to hear us sing, so we ate dinner with them and my parents (both of whom became instrumentalists for the concert at the very last moment) and even had time to just catch up and chat. Then it was time to head upstairs, change into our concert attire, gather together for a few final moments, and then go downstairs and sing.

It felt…well…wonderful. I think this is the best concert we’ve ever done. The songs transitioned smoothly; we all (mostly) remembered when we were supposed to move and where we were supposed to go. And best of all, the audience really seemed to like it – even the really bizarre song we did that sounded kind of like some strange aboriginal instrument and is the type of music that would usually make me want to gouge out my own eardrums if I was forced to endure it very long. The choir director had a few guest instrumentalists, including a cellist and a professional oboe player who sounded so lovely I wanted to just close my eyes and forget about singing so I could just listen to her play.

So it is finally over and we are exhausted and completely drained, but still too wired from the experience to want to go to sleep. Most years I have dreaded the concert because of all the stress and tension, but this year I actually looked forward to it. I think all of us did. And I think it made all the difference.

Now that it’s May, that means things have kicked into high gear with the church choir. Back when our choir director first came on board, he started a yearly tradition of having a spring concert, and this year’s is tomorrow. Usually by now we are all very tense and tired and dreading the whole ordeal.

This year, however, has been refreshingly different. Thursday night at rehearsal we ran through the entire concert – something we usually don’t get a chance to do until the day of. This morning we all went to the church to do a more thorough walk through, so we would all know when and where to stand, when to enter and exit, and so on. Again – this is something we’ve not normally been able to do until the day of. And the difference has been amazing. Even though we’re singing more songs than we’ve done in the past, and some of those songs are more difficult than stuff we’ve attempted before, there isn’t that feeling of being rushed and tense and overwhelmed. Such a nice change! Heck, there was even laughing and joking, and the choir director provided all of us with lunch after the little rehearsal and I think we all left feeling actually excited about singing tomorrow night.

Richard and I were supposed to head down to see his little sister perform in a Gaslighter melodrama today, but this afternoon’s performances were postponed. So instead we decided to just take advantage of the lovely weather and the unexpected time off. I stayed home and kept my stupid toe elevated while Richard decided to take his bike for a spin (I feel a little guilty about the fact that it’s probably been at least a year since either of us rode those things).

The cats are scattered all over the house, and the windows are open to take advantage of the breezes. This evening we’ll head over to my parents’ house for dinner and a movie. The Sunday school class is discussing Dogma for the next few weeks, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen it, so we’ll be bringing that with us so they can see it too.