Ups and Downs

This week has been one of many emotions.  Some very positive and others much less so.  I was ecstatic over the fact that I had actually put pen to paper (so to speak) resulting in last week's post.  I had requested at the behest of my doctor to cut back on my hours.  She had told me I needed to slow down.  So the boss modified my Tuesday schedule cutting off 6 hours.  But then they added 3 hours on my Saturday off, so in essence, it was only a net cut of 3 hours with an additional work day.  I don't know if that qualifies as actually slowing down or not.  But I don't see a way to cut any more until we fix the short handed challenge, again.  If we are short handed, I am usually the one to cover everyone Else's ass whereas the reverse is seldom true.  However that is the price of being as good professionally as I am.  And I am a really tough act to follow for the average employee, so it is what it is.  

On Wednesday I had my quarterly checkup at the VA.  I was as pleased with my check up as the doctor was with my numbers.  The only area of real concern was my blood pressure, which is no longer in the high range, but rather looming toward the low end of the spectrum.  So I have been monitoring  my pressure with the home machine they had provided me.  Since my doctor's visit, I have only taken the lisinopril once as my pressure has been low enough not to warrant lowing it further. When I checked it last night, it was only 104 over 50, a sure sign I did not need to lower it any further.  Dr Varimi also asked me to call if it went under 110, so I will be reporting that to here on Monday.  She may remove  the lisinopril from my regimen which is a good thing. I take 10 pills before I go to bed so one less is a good thing.  

Wednesday also provided the downer of the week.  When I arrived at work that night, my good friend climbed into my car to relate the latest results of his testing.  He is fighting his second round with cancer with chemo therapy.  Unfortunately his cancer has metastasized into multiple place in his body.  He is going to be unable to endure the step up in chemo therapy required to fight alone. So he is moving to California to be with his kids and let hes family care for him during the fight.  It is particularly challenging as he is also HIV positive.  They are going to have to rebuild his immune system in order to then get sicker as his body becomes more able to fight the cancer.  That has occupied a lot of my thoughts the last few days.  When I visited him last night, I could tell the toll it was taking on him.  I am sure he will continue to occupy some space in my thoughts and prayers as he fights the good fight of which he is totally capable.

I survived the rest of my work week with relative ease but slightly preoccupied with thoughts for my friend.  However I am taking a break form my thoughts today with a ticket to the Sunday Concert at Bass Hall.  The FWSO is doing the world premier of composer Victor Agudelo's new work La madre de Agua. Then they a moving to Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto and the finale is the Saint-Saens Symphony #3, the Organ Symphony.  The orchestra will repeat the Organ Symphony on Tuesday night in a free performance at Broadway Baptist Church which features the magnificent Van Cliburn  Pipe Organ.  That should sweep me a way for a few hours so I can begin my week anew.  

Tomorrow is also my biweekly visit with my threapist at Stay the Course.  My therapist is more my friend, although our relationship did start out strictly professional.  Over the course of the last 14 months she and I  have discovered more about me and how to deal with my issues than I would have ever hoped possible.  I really look forward to our time together and I always feel so much better after talking with her.  I am sure she will get an earful with the gamut of emotions I have experienced this week.    

Now for your listening pleasure, I put together a play list containing the Dvorak Concerto and the Saint-Saens Symphony.  I could not include the La madre de Agua. as it has yet to be recorded (duh, lol).  Mstislav Rostropovich plays this work under the baton of Miguel Ángel Gómez Martínez with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Radiotelevisión Española in a performance recorded at Teatro REal in Madrid in December of 1983.  The Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, was completed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886 at what was probably the artistic zenith of his career. It is also popularly known as the "Organ Symphony", even though it is not a true symphony for organ, but simply an orchestral symphony where two sections out of four use the pipe organ. The French title of the work is more accurate: Symphonie No. 3 "avec orgue" (with organ).

Of composing the work Saint-Saëns said "I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again."[1] The composer seemed to know it would be his last attempt at the symphonic form, and he wrote the work almost as a type of "history" of his own career: virtuoso piano passages, brilliant orchestral writing characteristic of the Romantic period, and the sound of a cathedral-sized pipe organ.

The symphony was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society in England, and the first performance was given in London on 19 May 1886, at St James's Hall, conducted by the composer. After the death of his friend Franz Liszt on 31 July 1886, Saint-Saëns dedicated the work to Liszt's memory. The composer also conducted the French premiere in January 1887.  This performance features Organist: Michael Murray  on a Cavaillé-Coll organ with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Conductor Eugene Ormandy and recorded at St. Francis de Sales Church in Philadelphia in February of 1980.  

That will wrap it up for this week, so enjoy the music and we will once again commune next week.  Thanks for the visit, do come again and as always, Enjoy!