❤️❤️❤️ Valentine's Day ❤️❤️❤️

 

Sc/een.e from a Balcony 2-14-25 7:30am

A little more interesting color today! Temperature is 18 degrees and the humidity is quite low. Harps need humidity in a 40 - 60% range to avoid advancing the deterioration of the instrument, potentially leading to broken strings and cracked soundboards. We can't be having that! Yet, even with two humidifiers running simultaneously today, it's having a hard time holding strong at about 42%.  

Update onTaxes

They are officially done, submitted and accepted! Load off my mind! Next dragon to slay involves requesting a recalculation of my student loan payment to be in alignment with the expected income decrease; now that I no longer have income from employment, I'll be surviving on less than 50% of what I made last year, so it will be interesting to see how things shake out over the year.

 ❤️❤️❤️  Valentine's Day  ❤️❤️❤️

My friends from Louisiana (who have connections in Pittsburgh) who I met on the Learning the Harp Facebook group a few years back sent this family photo. It's amazing to watch this family grow and blossom. The two children, Miriam and Stanton, are both talented intellectually and musically. Miriam plays the Harp (among many other instruments) and Stanton is a genius and a musician also (I'm serious about the genius part), and Mom ( the genius maker, along with husband and father John) is a music teacher, performer, doing all the things one does when they've got gobs of talent. 

Here is a setting of Carol Kappus' What Wondrous Love is This arranged for Harp, with a piano part added by me and written especially for Miriam and her Mom. 

Miriam releases a new video on her Youtube channel every Wednesday and it's been amazing to follow her progress. She is a mere 12 years young and does wonderful things with hear talents. 

New development in the physical ailment department

Not sure what's goin on, but yesterday, out of the clear blue, my arthritis (or perhaps gout?????) flared up in my left thumb, starting an avalanche of pain throughout the entire area that pulsed and radiated from deep within and even up my arm, triggering pain memories from when I sprained my elbow and wrist in a fall two years ago ..... I didn't sleep a wink last night in spite of the many interventions applied to ease the pain (CBD Creme, sound vibration, massage, Belifu TENS Unit). I sincerely hope this is only a flare, and not something worse like carpal tunnel.

This aging is for the birds! Everyday it seem to be some new problem, and, to be honest, it's hard to maintain a pleasant attitude under the circumstances. One day at a time ....