Aventures in Volunteer Work
Or, my crazy finger, let me tell you it. About it. Whatever.
One of my coworkers is a very involved drama-mom, and her child is in a local high school production of "Les Mis." When she mentioned she is the costume director for this show, I asked if she needed any help. She was thrilled, and so was I, and over the last month or so I've been working with some of the costuming. I made a ballgown skirt (170 inches of fabric into a 24 inch waistband - I pleated the front 16 inches or so in normal inward-facing pleats, then cartridge-pleated the remaining fabric on each side (about 5 feet each, hand gathered on 3 gather lines)) for one of the cast members for the wedding scene.
I also made Eponine's 3 blouses, with minimal instructions, measurements, access to the actress, and no pattern. It was a rather stressful project, but turned out quite nicely overall. I ended up staying up til 2:30am this past Sunday night to get them done, after 5 or 6 hours of actual sewing work. (Add several more hours of attempted pattern making and frustrating phone-tutorial with my mother to get a more accurate account of the day.)
Anyway, when I got up on Monday I felt like crap, all achy and irritable. My hands, I noticed, were really sore, but I attributed these symptoms to lack of sleep. I spent the week trying and failing to catch up on sleep, and it's been a rather rough one anyway. My hands still felt oddly sore on Tuesday, and Wednesday my left index finger continued to really bother me. It felt fat (but not hot), and I couldn't straighten or bend it all the way.
Nurse Mom was in town (to move my little sister back down to AZ), and when she looked at it on Wednesday, she suggested it was sprained and I should immobilize it for a few days. I wore a finger-splint that night, and all Thursday and Friday. She seemed surprised when I mentioned soreness even though it was splinted.
This morning when I took off the splint to shower, I reflected that it was fatter than ever, and still hurt, and I still couldn't bend/straighten it. I went to the clinic up the street, since they do walk-ins on Saturdays, and had a fun time waiting all morning to see a doctor.
He said I had probably stabbed my finger with a pin while sewing (a very common practice), and that it had become infected. I hadn't thought of this because it wasn't red anywhere, and there wasn't a specific spot it was more tender than the rest - the whole middle segment pretty much, especially the knuckle - and because it wasn't hot. But he said a pinprick wouldn't necessarily leave a red mark. So he wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic. I hope it works.
In the meantime, since I'm also a new patient (I haven't been to see a doctor, barring a couple of car accidents, since I was about eleven), he wanted to do some blood tests. Because I become dizzy and faint when I bleed or even hear stories about blood and medical things, naturally, I was thrilled by this. But it was important, and I wanted to be an adult, so I sat in the chair and carefully didn't watch the nurse stab my vein. She prodded my arm with her finger for a minute, then pulled the needle out. "Did you get what you need?" I asked, trying not to be sick. "No. Actually, I didn't get anything. Did you drink anything today?" Then I remembered that that's important. All I'd had to eat/drink at that point was an apple and a pouch of fruit snacks. Awesome. That's about the point where stars appeared across my closed-eyed vision and I felt like passing out. The nurse switched with another one, who made me hang my head between my knees and then drink some Tang, and told me to lie down in the next room, and then she tried my other arm. Nothing. I did better the second time, I think, but it was still Not Fun.
They sent me away with holes in both arms and instructions to go to the hospital lab to get my blood drawn on Monday. I think I'll wait til after work, since I doubt my ability to drive 40 minutes afterwards, and also because I'll have been thoroughly hydrated by then. I'm so much better about drinking water when I'm at work; weekends totally throw me off, since I'm not sitting in one place for hours, trying to stay awake.
I ended up at my roommate's bridal shower halfway through, but it was okay because after signing in at the clinic, I ran to the grocery store across the street for my share of the shower food responsibility, then ran it home so it would be there even if I wasn't.
I've started taking the antibiotics, but my finger has hurt more today than it did all week. I really hope it gets better soon, because the doctor implied that it could turn rather serious.
So what about the costumes? I finished them and gave them to my coworker on Monday. She said she'd give me a couple of comp tickets, and I chose Saturday night to go. I took my brother (who's moving away next week), and we showed up at the school tonight and picked up the tickets from Will Call. One of the parent volunteers wrote numbers on our tickets to represent our standing in line. "What's this for?" I asked. She said, "It's so that if they end up doing the show tonight, this is where you are in line. We didn't want to make people stand in line for nothing." "Wait, what?" I said.
It was later explained in full, with the announcement that they would not be performing tonight. After the matinee show, a water main had burst on the third floor of the school, and poured itself into the boys' changing room. "We're talking thousands of gallons," they said. "Four inches of water down the halls, backstage, in the girls' changing room. Costumes soaked." The stage was fine, the theater was fine, but backstage was Not Fine. Also, all the sound equipment was sitting in it, so even if they did go on with the show, there was no way they could use the sound - even safely turn it on. My coworker said they didn't even know if there could be school on Monday. We were instructed to stay in touch with the students to find out when we could come see it.
Everyone was disappointed, especially the students; the cast all gathered on the balcony overlooking the masses, and sang "Do You Hear the People Sing?" and "One Day More". My brother was even more disappointed after that, because they were really good, and he won't be able to see the show at all now. (We went to see "Source Code" instead, which was really cool.)
Add to this stuff the fact that my company laid off 25 people this week (none from my team, thankfully) due to restructuring, and you can see it's been really crazy. I've been really off balance. :( I'm grateful for making it through, though. Next week will be so much better, starting with me getting way more sleep than I did this week. Also, "Les Mis," take two. And there's Easter tastiness to look forward to, too. So, yeah.
One of my coworkers is a very involved drama-mom, and her child is in a local high school production of "Les Mis." When she mentioned she is the costume director for this show, I asked if she needed any help. She was thrilled, and so was I, and over the last month or so I've been working with some of the costuming. I made a ballgown skirt (170 inches of fabric into a 24 inch waistband - I pleated the front 16 inches or so in normal inward-facing pleats, then cartridge-pleated the remaining fabric on each side (about 5 feet each, hand gathered on 3 gather lines)) for one of the cast members for the wedding scene.
I also made Eponine's 3 blouses, with minimal instructions, measurements, access to the actress, and no pattern. It was a rather stressful project, but turned out quite nicely overall. I ended up staying up til 2:30am this past Sunday night to get them done, after 5 or 6 hours of actual sewing work. (Add several more hours of attempted pattern making and frustrating phone-tutorial with my mother to get a more accurate account of the day.)
Anyway, when I got up on Monday I felt like crap, all achy and irritable. My hands, I noticed, were really sore, but I attributed these symptoms to lack of sleep. I spent the week trying and failing to catch up on sleep, and it's been a rather rough one anyway. My hands still felt oddly sore on Tuesday, and Wednesday my left index finger continued to really bother me. It felt fat (but not hot), and I couldn't straighten or bend it all the way.
Nurse Mom was in town (to move my little sister back down to AZ), and when she looked at it on Wednesday, she suggested it was sprained and I should immobilize it for a few days. I wore a finger-splint that night, and all Thursday and Friday. She seemed surprised when I mentioned soreness even though it was splinted.
This morning when I took off the splint to shower, I reflected that it was fatter than ever, and still hurt, and I still couldn't bend/straighten it. I went to the clinic up the street, since they do walk-ins on Saturdays, and had a fun time waiting all morning to see a doctor.
He said I had probably stabbed my finger with a pin while sewing (a very common practice), and that it had become infected. I hadn't thought of this because it wasn't red anywhere, and there wasn't a specific spot it was more tender than the rest - the whole middle segment pretty much, especially the knuckle - and because it wasn't hot. But he said a pinprick wouldn't necessarily leave a red mark. So he wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic. I hope it works.
In the meantime, since I'm also a new patient (I haven't been to see a doctor, barring a couple of car accidents, since I was about eleven), he wanted to do some blood tests. Because I become dizzy and faint when I bleed or even hear stories about blood and medical things, naturally, I was thrilled by this. But it was important, and I wanted to be an adult, so I sat in the chair and carefully didn't watch the nurse stab my vein. She prodded my arm with her finger for a minute, then pulled the needle out. "Did you get what you need?" I asked, trying not to be sick. "No. Actually, I didn't get anything. Did you drink anything today?" Then I remembered that that's important. All I'd had to eat/drink at that point was an apple and a pouch of fruit snacks. Awesome. That's about the point where stars appeared across my closed-eyed vision and I felt like passing out. The nurse switched with another one, who made me hang my head between my knees and then drink some Tang, and told me to lie down in the next room, and then she tried my other arm. Nothing. I did better the second time, I think, but it was still Not Fun.
They sent me away with holes in both arms and instructions to go to the hospital lab to get my blood drawn on Monday. I think I'll wait til after work, since I doubt my ability to drive 40 minutes afterwards, and also because I'll have been thoroughly hydrated by then. I'm so much better about drinking water when I'm at work; weekends totally throw me off, since I'm not sitting in one place for hours, trying to stay awake.
I ended up at my roommate's bridal shower halfway through, but it was okay because after signing in at the clinic, I ran to the grocery store across the street for my share of the shower food responsibility, then ran it home so it would be there even if I wasn't.
I've started taking the antibiotics, but my finger has hurt more today than it did all week. I really hope it gets better soon, because the doctor implied that it could turn rather serious.
So what about the costumes? I finished them and gave them to my coworker on Monday. She said she'd give me a couple of comp tickets, and I chose Saturday night to go. I took my brother (who's moving away next week), and we showed up at the school tonight and picked up the tickets from Will Call. One of the parent volunteers wrote numbers on our tickets to represent our standing in line. "What's this for?" I asked. She said, "It's so that if they end up doing the show tonight, this is where you are in line. We didn't want to make people stand in line for nothing." "Wait, what?" I said.
It was later explained in full, with the announcement that they would not be performing tonight. After the matinee show, a water main had burst on the third floor of the school, and poured itself into the boys' changing room. "We're talking thousands of gallons," they said. "Four inches of water down the halls, backstage, in the girls' changing room. Costumes soaked." The stage was fine, the theater was fine, but backstage was Not Fine. Also, all the sound equipment was sitting in it, so even if they did go on with the show, there was no way they could use the sound - even safely turn it on. My coworker said they didn't even know if there could be school on Monday. We were instructed to stay in touch with the students to find out when we could come see it.
Everyone was disappointed, especially the students; the cast all gathered on the balcony overlooking the masses, and sang "Do You Hear the People Sing?" and "One Day More". My brother was even more disappointed after that, because they were really good, and he won't be able to see the show at all now. (We went to see "Source Code" instead, which was really cool.)
Add to this stuff the fact that my company laid off 25 people this week (none from my team, thankfully) due to restructuring, and you can see it's been really crazy. I've been really off balance. :( I'm grateful for making it through, though. Next week will be so much better, starting with me getting way more sleep than I did this week. Also, "Les Mis," take two. And there's Easter tastiness to look forward to, too. So, yeah.