Plastic Fantastic: or "It's Brass, Jim, but not as we know it"

So, I bought the ZO Next Generation ABS Trumpet, ("Screaming green"), and it arrived in the mail yesterday. I really like it, which is potentially a problem.

You see, I secretly harbour a desire to own an entire brass band (well, the instruments, not the people), but have been kept from doing so because it's really quite expensive to buy actual brass instruments and I'm pretty rubbish at playing them.

Plastic "brass", on the other hand...

The first brass instrument I ever bought was a fifth-hand cornet, which I taught myself to play. When I joined a band programme to get "proper" lessons, the guy told me I'm not suited to higher brass and issued me a baritone horn. 

The barry is a nice sounding instrument (a baritone is to a euphonium what a trumpet is to a cornet – a "brighter" instrument in the same register), but if you are the kind of person who struggles to keep time, it's one of the worst instruments to play in a brass band, simply because it's almost always grace notes and filler. I've previously described Second Baritone as being the fourth finger on the left hand of a piano player. I can't handle a six-bar-and-three-quaver rest and then coming in for a few notes of harmony. It just doesn't work – especially when practicing on my own at home.

So after some tooing and frowing, I realised playing in a band was not for me.

In a fit of "I have too many instruments I don't play", I sold my cornet. But I missed having brass in my life, so I bought a third-hand alto/tenor horn. Which sounds just lovely. I think, honestly, of all the brass band instruments, the Eb alto/tenor horn has the most beautiful sound (closely followed by it's higher saxhorn sibling, the flugelhorn). There's something utterly gorgeous about instruments in that register. Think of it as being like an F French horn, only you play it like a trumpet (and it's ever-so-slightly deeper).

But it's not something I can just leave lying around. You can't just leave a brass instrument "out", because it's not good for it. When I'm not playing it, I have to put it away. In a bag, in a cupboard. Which means it largely doesn't exist. It's a rare and special event when I both remember I have this instrument and have the urge to pull it out and play it.

A little while ago, as part of an experiment, I bought a jHorn. This is a bizarre plastic monstrosity that is smaller and lighter than a trumpet but the same pitch as a barry or a euphonium (and you can change it from Bb to C, if you so desire).

Nuvo's jHorn comes in several colours that will get dirty far too quickly, and black.

The jHorn is an interesting bindingle of a thing, in that it's kind of like playing the bagpipes, but in "brass" form. If you've ever tried playing the bagpipes, you'll know what I mean – it's a blunt instrument that requires a lot of control to play well.

The mouthpiece it comes with gives you three options, all of which are terrible, and the horn itself makes you work to keep your note steady. It's marketed for children because it's actually compact, light, hard to damage and pretty quiet. I can play the jHorn in my living room at night-time without a mute and have no fear about disturbing the neighbours, which is why I bought it.

However, it's a real challenge to play "not horribly". As someone who plays at the standard of a fifth-grader who just started learning to play a few months ago, I expect most children would really struggle with it.

But, it works. I can leave it lying around my living room, pick it up whenever I feel like it, have a bit of a play, feel I'm actually improving (by virtue of practicing more often, I guess – who knew?) and feel completely relaxed about the whole thing. So I play this godawful contraption far more often than I ever practiced my actual brass instruments.

After much umming and ahhing, I decided to give the ZO instruments a try. I've been eyeing off the plastic euphonium* for some time, but I've been hesitant to spend too much money on something that might be, well, crap. The jHorn only cost me $250, so I don't mind that it's a bit terrible. Yes, $700 is considerably cheaper than the $3000-ish it would cost me to by a real euphonium, but it's also not money I want to spend on something I'll never use because I hate it.

Well, I found a place that was selling the ZO trumpet for a little over $200 and thought it was as good a chance as any to see what the ZO ABS instruments were like. And... I like it. I feel like the biggest problem with the instrument is the person playing it, which is a really good thing.

But it's also a really bad thing, because ZO has all of the concert brass instruments in the Next Generation series. None of the Eb jobbies you get in a brass band, just the Bb numbers you'd find in a concert band, including a double French Horn. And they are significantly cheaper than buying the brass versions of these instruments...

If these people come out with a sousaphone, I don't think I'll be able to stop myself.

*If I ever go back in time and start a garage band in the 90s, I'm going to call it Plastic Euphonium.

Stank

 I walked through a puddle during a downpour in my gym shoes the other day. My gym shoes, which I not only use to exercise in, I also wear them to and from the climbing gym, where I have (until extremely recently) been changing into the rental shoes and back again, and I'm too lazy to change my socks. So the socks that were in the rental shoes go into my gym shoes in all their sweaty and stinky glory.

I've washed the shoes a few times in the past, and I hit them with tea-tree oil regularly, but they've got a bit of a stank to them that will probably outlast human civilisation.

And then I walked through a massive puddle and soaked them through to the bone (my bones – my feet were well drenched).

And it has been so very humid at the moment, so where I put them to dry was really just a warm cupboard masquerading as my laundry.

Having been wet and warm, they are now the stinkiest shoes in all of Christendom (or so it seems to me, having been in the same car as them on the way to work this morning), and I'm going to wear them tonight.

I'm wondering how to go about apologising to all the other people who will be exposed to the stank.

Pig Face

Carpobrotus sp. - Ice plant,
by Linda De Volder,
CC BY-NC-ND

I am not a terribly competitive person, and I attribute that in a big way to my mother. She was a single parent and I was an only child, so we played a lot of board games with only two people. Most board games that are designed “for 2-X players” are really designed for four people. That seems to be the sweet spot where it takes a good amount of time to play without feeling like it was over too quickly or took too long.

We always just took our time with the games – winning be damned. We played every game until you could no longer play it. There were no more cards to pick up, no more pieces to place, no more matches to make.

Where most people treated board games as a competition, we treated them as a cooperative puzzle, working together to “solve” it as far as it could be solved.

But there were a few games that leant themselves to a bit of competitive argy bargy. Mostly card games like Skip-Bo (which I recently learned was developed from a game called “Spite and Malice”) and the like. In order to play the game and get rid of your cards, you sometimes have to get in the way of the other person getting rid of their cards.

When we were playing these more competitive games, my mother and I came up with comically ludicrous insults to call each other when someone thwarted the other person’s move. My mother’s favourite to use was “pig face”.

What neither of us knew at the time, was that pigface is actually a flower. It’s a native Australian groundcover that does quite well in salty, coastal environments – particularly in northern New South Wales, but around that subtropical area of the coast is its sweet spot. I’m a bit far north, but I’m thinking of buying some for my garden.

It can be so hard to adequately insult people. You never know when you’re accidentally calling them a charming little flower.

Unexpected injuries

So, I think I hurt my arm getting a tattoo a couple of weeks ago.

Not the actual tattoo site, but my elbow – specifically the end of at least one of the extensor muscles right where it attaches to the elbow. I think I gave myself some sort of elbow injury by getting a tattoo.

The tattoo itself is above my elbow, and was a fine-line piece with a lot of intricate details. It look five hours, give or take, and the vast majority of that time was spent with my arm fully extended, rotated at a slight angle, and with a person leaning on it.

I noticed the elbow was sore afterwards, but assumed it would go away. This is not the first time I've sat in the same position for a prolonged period of time and felt sore and sorry for myself afterwards.

But it's still sore. And it flares up when I rotate my arm or grip something after having it still for a while (which happens a lot when you work on a computer). It seems to be getting better for a while, but then it flares up again and hurts like the dickens. It's actually woken me up in the night a few times.

Yes, I should see a doctor or a physio about that. I'm doing my patented "It will either go away or I'll get used to it" approach to health. I might see someone about it next year. Then again, I still haven't seen someone about the foot injury I gave myself dancing an impromptu jig last year, and that hasn't completely healed, so maybe I won't.

Ah, the 40s, when one mysteriously acquires unexpected injuries, but is too resigned to everything hurting so one doesn't do anything useful about any of them.

Juggling for fitness and pleasure

My workplace recently engaged in a "steps" challenge, where different departments competed to see who could rack up the most steps across the team. My team came an admirable second in both the overall steps category and the average steps category.

We were defeated in the overall steps category by a team with significantly higher numbers than us (so they were able to step more steps than we stepped) and a team that had significantly smaller numbers than us, but a lot of enthusiasm (so they stepped more steps per steppers).

At one point I was chatting with some colleagues about the challenge and I mentioned that I sometimes juggle to get my steps up if I'm running short but don't want to go anywhere. Apparently, these particular colleagues were unaware that I juggle. Most of my other colleagues know this about me, because I keep a set of juggling balls at my desk and often have a "juggling break" to flex my shoulders if I'm getting too stiff from sitting too long.

But not everyone has walked into the office area while I was in the middle of a (particularly messy) Mills Mess,* so occasionally someone I know discovers I juggle as new and "exciting" information. I have to let them down by telling them I just do it for fitness and movement. Quite often, this startles people almost more than discovering that I juggle at all.

Juggling for fitness?

Yes, it's a thing.

I first came across the idea of juggling for fitness in my early 20s, and found it utterly freeing. I taught myself how to juggle in high school, but (like most things that involved physical dexterity) I realised that I'd never be able to do it to performance standard. I have the physical grace and natural elegance of a walrus on land.

If I practiced really hard, I would get better at it – but I'd still never get to performance standard.

"What was the point of learning how to do something that's for performance if you know you'll never perform?" my teenaged self thought.

But! Then I discovered that there are people all over the world who... just juggle. They don't do it for audiences, they to it to move. Like riding a bike or running even though you have no intention of ever competing, you can juggle just for the fun of juggling even if you have no intention of ever performing.

Oh, and you can actually juggle competitively. 

I have no intention of doing that, either.

In the grand scheme of things it's a bit like using a skipping rope. You have a small, inexpensive piece of equipment that allows you to essentially travel without moving. 

You can just have a light juggle, and get as much exercise in as you would if you were going for a light walk, or you can ramp it up and make it more involved and intense with bigger or faster movements and more points of body contact.

Between a set of three juggling balls and a footbag (hacky sack) I have a "gym" I can (and do) take with me wherever I go.

Does this mean I juggle all the time and I'm very good at it? No. And, also, no. But I could. 

Sometimes I get on a bit of a streak and I'll start juggling regularly for a few weeks, sometimes I'll go months without picking up a ball.

Sometimes I'll pull my travelling balls out of my bag and juggle in the hotel a few times while I'm on holidays. Sometimes they'll never leave my bag for the whole trip.

But, I enjoy it whenever I do it, and I don't worry about how often I drop the balls (picking them up is part of the movement) or failing to get a certain trick again (given my walrusness, I'm doing well just to juggle at all – and no one is watching, so who cares?).

If you're looking for a low-impact exercise that you can do in the comfort of your own home that costs very little, I thoroughly recommend juggling. It's good for your brain, good for your joints, and a half-decent cardio workout.

Way more fun than a treadmill, and decidedly better value for money.

*I'm not very good at Mills Mess

Mellow Yellow, Or: No one said you have to progress

A bouldering route at my gym.
Pick the yellow or the blue climb.

A few months ago (getting close to a year now, I think) I started going to a bouldering gym.

I'm really enjoying it, I'm getting a lot out of it and I think it's doing wonders for both my physical and mental health.

I am still on the bottom rung of the ladder, and I have no real intention of trying to go much higher than that.

The gym I go to indicates the difficulty of the climb with colour. The basic, beginner level is yellow, then blue, purple, green... and a range of other colours I don't care about because I'm probably never going to climb them. To be honest, I'm probably never going to climb the green ones. The purples are a distant maybe.

As I may have mentioned in the past, I'm not the most physically adept person in the world. My fine motor skills aren't particularly fine. My gross motor skills are kind of gross. The more I try to hone and refine my technique on... well, anything, the worse I get. It's like the worst thing I can do is actually put thought and effort into what I'm doing.

I went to get evaluated for dyspraxia a little while ago. The results were inconclusive. They said I may have mild dyspraxia, or I may just be rubbish at everything. It was suggested that I go in for more tests, but I haven't done it. There's a limit to how much time and money I want to spend on having people say "there's nothing actually wrong with you, you're just crap."

So, while my basic strength levels are all improving and I'm developing muscles (which is nice), my coordination and balance remain unimpressive. 

Now, when I say "my coordination and balance are unimpressive", I'm fully aware of the fact that some people would disagree with me. Those people are comparing me with someone who does nothing. If you don't climb or juggle or do yoga, the fact that I do makes me instantly more "impressive" by comparison. However, if you compared me to someone who has been doing any of those things for the same length of time that I have, you would realise I fall neatly into the category of "could be better".

I'll often try a route that requires more coordination than I have, and my hands and feet will simply refuse to move. "Come on, Sharon, you just have to move this foot up here..." Nope. Not happening. "Okay, fingers, you just have to keep holding on to this thing while I move my other hand to--" No. This sequence of movements will not happen.

I may or may not be able to see what I have to do next, puzzle-wise, but I only have two options: stay where I am, or fall off.

It even changes from day-to-day on the same climb. Monday I could send that climb; Thursday I couldn't.

The yellow routes are mostly within my capabilities, though. It may take me a couple of goes to nut out how to do one that requires a movement I'm not au fait with, but that's a nice challenge that I'm actually capable to solving, and then I get to enjoy doing it again a few times before they reset the wall and take that climb away.

So I do the yellows (and the blues I can do) several times in a session. I take what I can do, and make it harder, rather than getting hung up on things that are too hard.

I know the "done thing" is to try to progress to the next level. Well, that's fine, if you can do it. If you can't, but you keep assuming you should, you'll just get completely frustrated and give up, disheartened. Again.

BUT! And this is really important – you don't have to progress. There's no law that says you have to move on from the beginner levels, if you are still getting something valuable out of those levels. 

I have a regular workout at my climbing gym where I pick at least five routes that are within my abilities, and I do them five times each. This converts those climbs into sets of reps, and my goodness it's a workout. By the time I've done five reps of my third climb, I'm dripping with sweat and feeling the burn in my muscles. It's like running up several flights of stairs, only it's a full-body workout.

On the days where I'm just trying routes, I'll see if I can manage a few blues, and sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. When I can, I'll do it a couple of times before moving on to trying another route. If I can't, I'll try it a few times, and then go do a couple of climbs that I can do before trying another new one. It's exactly right for me.

So maybe you are trying an activity where you feel pressured to progress, but you are still at a spot that's working for you and you don't want to move past it yet. Remember, just because you can't do something "well" doesn't mean you shouldn't do it at all. And you don't have to progress, you can just enjoy life in the shallow end of the pool. Anyone who says otherwise is a source of negative energy, and you don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

Touching base

 My mother has recently started noticing when I touch things to steady myself.

I often have a slight balance issue or a few seconds of dizziness, where I just lilt sideways for a moment. It's usually something that happens a few minutes after I get up and start moving around after sitting down for a while or getting up from lying on the couch.

It's normally something that just lasts a second or two, and I just touch the furniture, or the wall, or lean on the door frame for a moment so I don't fall into it. If I can't touch something, I right myself well enough without any worries in a couple of steps – I don't actually fall – I just find it easier to touch something briefly to regain balance and I move on.

The thing is, I've been doing this for as long as I can remember – at least since I was a teenager – but my mother has only recently started to comment on it, like she's suddenly noticed something that's a new development.

I know why: it's because she's having trouble with her balance now, so she's starting to do it herself, so now she recognises it when she sees it happen. But it's still weird. 

You know, I've been tripping over my own feet, bumping into furniture and knocking against walls and doors for decades. For decades, it has gone without comment. Now, suddenly, she's noticed.

To give this a little extra context, my mother has this thing where she always (*always*) assumes something is wrong. She will watch you like an absolute hawk and analyse every unexplained movement or noise to see if something is wrong – which is an absolute blast if you are the kind of person who fidgets, cracks your joints and makes little humming noises to yourself when you let your mind wander.

I'll probably write a whole 'nother post delving into "I'm a natural fidgeter who pulls random facial expressions when I relax, but I get asked to account for every single one of them when I'm with my mother so I feel like I can never fully relax". But that's another ramble. 

The point is, I've spend literal decades of my life begging my mother to stop asking "what's wrong?" every time I twitch to relieve some muscle stiffness ("what's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just stretching." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just cracking my fingers." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just letting my mind wander." "What's wrong?" - "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ASSUMING SOMETHING'S WRONG!") but she's only just started noticing the touching thing.

I get asked "what's wrong?" if I so much as frown slightly (btw., I frown when I'm tired, and I'm always tired), but I've been falling into walls for decades and she's only just noticed?

What did you think was happening before? That I was just a clumsy oaf clown? Can you go back to that, please? It's way better than having someone suddenly ask "are you alright?" all the time (just a variation of "what's wrong?") when I'm just doing something that has been normal for as long as I can remember