Music stands

Music stands are a part of my daily life...as such, they tend to be the thing that injures me the most! Today, I am very thankful that I wasn't injured more severely. Here's the story...
I don't have anything between 11:15 and Wind Ensemble rehearsal which starts at 1:15 on tuesdays and thursdays. The faculty of music is not connected via the tunnel system, and so this semester, as my Race and Immigration History class is in a building quite far from the FOM, I have taken to just heading over to the building where Wind Ensemble (all the way across the campus from the FOM) is held. There I study, read, eat lunch, whatever. It means that I'm one of the first there for rehearsal, and so I generally end up doing a lot of set up. Today, as I was carrying two stands to put in the back brass row, I managed to give myself a very hard whack on my left upper lip. I was a bit concerned for a while, but my teeth are quite fine thank goodness, and the swelling and cut inside wasn't so bad that I couldn't play during the two and a half hour rehearsal. I may have looked pretty silly sitting there with my ancient fuschia ice pack from my lunch box(I've had it since grade two) on my lip, but it may have helped. I was even able to laugh a bit to myself about that-during the summer at the day care, I probably gave out at least five ice packs on an average day to kids with 'boo-boos'. So, I guess I took a bit of my own care-giver medicine.

I am very thankful that I wasn't more seriously injured...a heavy metal music stand could easily have knocked out a tooth or two and seriously messed up my embouchure for days, weeks or even months. I may have a little bit of soreness when playing for a day or two, but it won't last long. Let's just say that I will be a bit more careful though on thursday (although I don't know what I did wrong today). Then again, I said the same thing that time in grade nine when I dropped one on my un-shoe-covered foot...

Tomorrow I meet again with both the nurse practitioner with the ED program at the women's health clinic and the dietician there. I have a feeling I might be mildly anemic as I seem to be needing more sleep than normal, so finding out my blood test results will be a good thing. And then speaking with the dietician to at least get an idea of what is right for someone who is DEFINITELY not average height (I'm MUCH shorter...4 foot 9) will probably relax me a bit. The 'Understanding your eating disorder' group starts up on thursday evening and I'm pretty nervous, but I figure it can't be worse than what I went through with the hospital CBT group. So far, the clinic has been much more responsive to ME and what I need, and they actually LISTEN. No one is the same in the eating disorder world, and they can't expect that one size will fit all, and shutting someone down when they actually have a relevation about their eating disorder or keeping on saying "but she's dying" (and very forcefully) is NOT HELPFUL.

I've been meeting with a counsellor at the women's health clinic since sometime in October, mostly for working through my mom's illness and death and all that has meant to me since October/November last year. I really WANT to be just a normal music student again, but I am not sure if I'm ready to be back to the 12.5 credit hours and more practicing and things like that. At the same time, I'm terrified that if I don't carry this courseload and get back to a normal routine that the longer I wait, the harder it will be. Problem is, I've only had two classes of Race and Immigration History and I'm already behind on the readings! Fortunately, I did not need that great of in-depth analysis for today's class. The problem is getting caught up on it. I guess I'll see over the next couple of weeks how I'm managing to stay on top of things, and get back into practicing and all that.