Cure for Dudgeon revealed

See I can do clickbait titles with the best of them..

Lately I have for various reasons been in a state of fairly low spirits and high dudgeon, partly because my aging bod is resisting doing as much as I like to do, and fighting back with some pain to the point where I have to choose what to do, rather than plunge in and do it all. And I have to time it, too, so as not to be all froze up at the wrong time.

One of my biggest grievances was the fear that I might not be able to get back to painting my own walls, a very therapeutic and satisfying sort of job, but hard on the very joints that are kicking and fussing.

However, I decided, heck, let's at least give it a shot and do the laundry area which has been annoying me for years.  So I emptied the shelf, chucked away some containers with a quarter inch of material in them, why do we do this, instead of just finishing it at a go, anyway, I did that.  And sorted out the painting stuff I'll need.

And realized that in fact it's not half as bad as I thought.  I must have painted it more recently than I realized. The upper half is pristine, no need to do anything with it.  All the bits I don't like are the bottom half.

So I had a rush of brains to the head and taped up where I will paint down from, nice peach color paint that I found I'd put up on the shelf for this very purpose.  Chucked a cloth over the appliances. And now it's all ready for me to work on tomorrow. And it's not half as big a job as I thought.  So this will be a test of whether I can do this.

I also retired the curtain that had been hanging across this opening (you can't have folding doors and cats), and have ordered a very pretty replacement with a design of green plants and things on it, fits right in with the plant-ridden upstairs.

Then, bloated with pride, I retired to my other vice, recorder playing.  I can now do this again, shoulder being at least willing to allow that, as long as I don't play the bass recorder, that being a bit heavy for my hands, and requiring some angles my fingers don't like doing.

So I practiced some Handel, largely because he's full of the blasted high notes that my playing partner and I are determined to master in this life.  I realize that it's not everyone who considers Handel a good fingering exercise, but he won't know.  And he puts a lot of notes in the C6 register, that's two octaves above Middle C., for them as cares about this.

And I sorted my lovely Elizabethan and late medieval music, the recorder being at home in this era, as I am.  So my Morley and Machaut and others are now organized in a way that means we can just play instead of fumbling about on the floor sorting pages. This happens when you play, you get into another sort of mindset that cares nothing for organizing bits of paper, then later you realize what a mess it is.

Oh, what a great day, such joy playing music. Woodwind is particularly good for your spirits because it involves using a lot of oxygen and breath control, and anyway it's just fun.  

You see here the three instruments I can still handle, well, there's a fourth, the sopranino, but its range is so high most people don't compose for it.  You know the Magic Flute? those high runs? that's sopranino territory.  

Anyway these here are the component parts of the soprano, alto and tenor recorders, the alto being what I was mainly playing today, the tenor being in two bits there.

And now I am going back to continue reading Donna Leon's essays on Venice, and checking various musical references on youtube to catch what melodies she's referring to.She would be horrified that I use Handel merely as fingering work, since she's a total Handelian oratorio nut, but she won't know either.