"The Elephant Diet" Day # 145 The Blossoms After The Limbs

"If you're going to climb, you've got to grab the branches, not the blossoms". 

Blossoms outside the WORD Music building in Nashville, TN

I've been climbing for over a year.  Eating elephants one bite at a time.  

I've really enjoyed some blossoms along the way - they've kept me going when the climb got hard.  But this past week proved to be one of the most challenging by far.  It's as if someone walked up to me and threatened to chop the whole tree down - blossoms and all.

I'm listening to the 4th reference CD for the project.  After some odd noises appeared on one of the tracks, we had to re-do it.  Then my producer wanted one of the songs re-mixed so I jumped in and requested that something be adjusted in another track while we were at it.

The new CD came and new noises appeared on TWO tracks.

The mastering guru said he had not encountered anything like this in a very long time.  To spare the details, I'll just summarize by saying that I began wondering if I would ever see a finished project in time for Christmas.  I had pictured an easy finish to this journey.  The blossoms after the limbs so to speak.  I called a friend and asked her to pray with me that this would get resolved.

I haven't been able to blog about it because I couldn't get into the blog for some reason that I still don't understand and it took me all week to get it remedied.

Today, I went to the hospital for a procedure to try and discover why I have trouble swallowing food. This has gone on for years and I finally decided to have it looked into.  They looked into it alright. Apparently my esophagus is so small that they couldn't put a regular scope down.  They had to go with the size they use on babies.  That's comforting....NOT.  In the process they tore my esophagus.  

I had pictured the blossoms after the limbs.......Tom and I going out for breakfast (since I had to go without food since early the night before).  But, the last thing I wanted to do when I came out from the procedure was eat.  In fact, I can only have liquids for 2 days and light food for a week - like yogurt, pudding, jello - that kind of stuff.  Even the liquids are painful at this point.  No singing for a while.

Down the road I'll have to go on to a specialist to have my esophagus stretched.  Apparently my esophagus has an unwanted lid on it that stretches halfway across the opening that shouldn't be there, along with having shrunk for some reason.

So I sit here with my cup of chicken bouillon listening to the final ref CD (for the second time tonight) which now seems to be ok. They identified the problem.  The artwork is already at the manufacturers and they are waiting on the music.

I'm really ready to sit at the top of the tree, with no elephants at the bottom trying to get me and enjoy the blossoms.....with a steak dinner.