Random thoughts

How is it not Thanksgiving already?

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This week is going by so slowly…probably because it is the last week before Thanksgiving? I’m ready for a break, but then I’m like, oh my goodness Christmas is really soon after that and I start worrying about all the stuff to do…then I look at it and realize, no, it’s still plenty of time if I just organize it.

Thanksgiving will be low key: we are going out to a buffet at the Whittemore House with Louie’s family. We also have some plans with friends over the break, hiking and going to the garden glow, that should be a lot of fun. I also want to get the house decorated, or at least everything except the real tree. Since we are hosting, we want a real tree this year and I think it’s better to wait on those?

Louie’s dad visited from Philadelphia over the weekend. I had a fair amount of things going on, but we did get some time to hang out in front of the fire and also had a nice dinner all together (well, no cats) at Esca.

I made some fruitcakes about a week ago. I used this recipe from King Arthur, which I’d used a few years ago. It should be really delicious, though only time will tell. I’ve been “feeding” it with brandy and some other things, and will do so weekly until Christmas.

It was a busy week, as usual. I am glad to have all the student performances behind me, for sure. The only thing left for that is a few juries at the end of the semester (which is shockingly close). I’m trying to squeeze in some makeup lessons this week, and I’m just sooooo ready for some time off next week.

Life is fine…if you ignore the news things don’t seem so bad, even though they really are. I try to focus on what’s around me and tell myself that maybe it’ll be fine, even with all the talk of mass roundups and deportations is around us, the cabinet posts being filled with men who are known rapists and pedophiles…it’s just a lot. Back in 2016, I thought, somebody will save us, and I know that it isn’t true. The ACLU is doing a lot already though, and the main thing that I read that seems logical is don’t give up, don’t roll over ahead of time. That it’s the actions of everybody that matter. So I do what I can in my little world, and you can do what you can, and we can take the time we need right now, and be ready to fight, and donate, and volunteer, and (ugh) make calls and such. The other thing I found encouraging was a reminder that (and I’m not a huge Star Wars person) bad things happened again after Return of the Jedi. Like, we have to keep fighting, and fiction is fiction but it’s based on human truths. One thing that upsets me is all the people who said, oh the democrats say every election is so important, it might be the last one, etc, like they are saying it’s the boy who cried wolf. But yeah, every election is so important, and you should always vote like it might be the last one. That’s how it works. And all the people who didn’t show up, who didn’t vote, they are also to blame.

An interesting painting in the women’s room at a recent wedding venue.

But anyway, it’s easy to get bogged down in despair, but I’m not letting it happen to me. Anxiety meds help, of course, but also focusing on positive stuff. Planning Christmas, planning vacations in the future, reading books, having conversations with friends, taking walks, watching and petting cats, playing music, teaching children to play music, etc. All fun stuff!

Hope

Life goes on

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This week has been a little more settled than previous weeks. Despite the stress coming from the election news and the constant nagging worries, it was a relaxing enough weekend. I didn’t have as much work as usual: Saturday I had the morning off so I slept in a bit. I had a studio recital at a nearby church in the afternoon, with 23 students performing. It’s always a little bit stressful, though I’ve gotten more used to running them over the years. It went well enough, and the location was perfect.

The weather was rainy all day: it was a great day to just stay in and watch movies, cuddle up under a blanket, maybe eat popcorn. But we had tickets for the symphony that night, so we braved the rain (but not the metrolink–the blue line, the one that goes by our house, didn’t go downtown this weekend and transferring would have added about 20-30 minutes each way, so we drove) and went to see them play Mozart’s Requiem. It was a lovely concert, though I had to laugh when Stefane Deneve (the conductor) said that they were celebrating Mozart this week and next–that guy just never gets any love, does he?

Sunday was another student recital, this one at Wash U and all I had to do was show up. I also taught a makeup lesson and then had the rest of the day off! Louie and I had plans to go over to the old house and do some things, but I think the depression of the last week set in and we ended up deciding just to relax, cook dinner, and then watch “Will and Harper” for our movie club this week.

And this week is back to “normal”. Teaching, some rehearsals, and Louie’s dad is visiting this weekend. Nothing too terribly stressful except if you accidentally read a news article about the national politics and all the horrible things they are planning/already doing, plus all the gaslighting going on “they never said that/they won’t do that/January 6 wasn’t an insurrection/he didn’t rape those women/etc.”. But otherwise, life goes on, and as some pointed out, hey look at our investments, going way up. Because as we all know, lower income people who can’t afford groceries always have a lot of investments, right?

Sigh.

Hope

Grief

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I never thought it was for certain than Kamala could win, but I did have some hope. However, I also knew that this country was full of the sort of people who thought it was more important to own guns than to protect elementary school children from being shot, and that misogyny runs very deep…so here we are.

I titled the post Grief, but really I pre-grieved. I spent a day being sad, and a day being angry, and now I’m just, I don’t know. We’ve been keeping busy. It’s hard, feeling like you are surrounded by people who hate you, and blame you for everything. And yet, I have so much gratitude. Gratitude for my job, that I am surrounded by children and kind adults. Gratitude for my “bubble” where I am surrounded by people who want to make the world better AS WE ARE IN THIS LIFE and who support progressive policies and think that women are as or more capable than men in every way (with the possible exception of opening jars, but there are tools for that.) And fully support people who are different, who are LGBTQIA+, who support people who want children and who don’t want children. And read newspapers, and magazines, and listen to a variety of news, and study history and read literature. And I am so grateful to my partner Louie and my family for being the same way. If you voted the other way and all of those things are also true for you, I apologize for making you feel less than, but know that when your vice presidential candidate said that women without children didn’t deserve to vote it did far worse than making me feel less than.

Louie and I have decided, of course, that the best medicine is to attempt to continue to live our best lives, which of course means completely overscheduling ourselves and over working, as usual. So that means that on Tuesday we got up very early to vote, then worked all day. Miles (the cat) had a check up at the vet: he’s lost one pound since last year but this is good news not bad news. And he didn’t care for the experience and was very happy to get back into his crate to go home, thank you very much. The vet did say that he was perfect though, but we already knew that.

Wednesday I wanted absolutely nothing more than to sleep in and wallow, but I teach Wednesday mornings so I had to get up and get at it. I am not always sure of my student’s families political beliefs so I didn’t talk about politics for several hours and it was actually quite lovely. I know that all of my families are kind and lovely and treat me with respect–that may seem like a disconnect from what I wrote earlier in the post, but that’s really what it’s about. I live in an urban environment so most people are used to being around all sorts of people. And teaching violin to kids is just such a positive thing and my Wednesday morning students are some of my favorites.

So that was okay, and then I had the afternoon off because a college student canceled her lesson (I think she just couldn’t deal) and I grocery shopped and talked with my sister Leslie and just wallowed a bit. Then more teaching until late.

Thursday: day 2 of grief. Haha. I had to get up quite early to play for a wedding (yes, really!) which was very sweet and was small. Then I had teaching at the college (where a colleague I ran into joked that she assumed I was wearing black because I was in mourning…), a nice lunch with a friend where we talked about politics but also not politics, because it’s just too stressed to worry about things that haven’t happened yet and who knows what will actually happen: it will likely be both worse than we could imagine and also not as bad in other ways.

Then more teaching, and capping off with a little recording session in the evening which was a lot of fun: I did a recording where I played two different violin parts, plus a viola part, and we recorded 4 takes of each with some different mic setups, ending up with an entire string ensemble which was…all me. I joked to Louie that I’m not used to playing with musicians of such a high caliber, so easy to blend with 😉

Today I got to sleep in a little bit more, which was greatly needed as yesterday I had a migraine all day long. Usually getting more sleep helps a bit, and today was no exception. I have teaching and a wedding–I got annoyed because I had my schedule all set up for the wedding and then yesterday they moved it one hour earlier, which surely somebody knew before yesterday…so I had to cancel a student which I hate doing last minute. And I will have to make that up and I wasn’t able to get my schedule to end any earlier so it’s still the same amount of working hours…annoying. I could have backed out of the wedding of course, but I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch.

This weekend I have my student recital (so much fun!) as well a recital at Wash U (only one student playing on that one.) We were going to be attended a neighborhood event tomorrow but it was canceled due to a variety of factors including the predicted all day rain. It’ll be a fairly relaxing weekend I think. Life goes on, and we will do what we can when we can and need to.

Random thoughts

Holiday Plans

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I’m hosting Christmas this year for my parents and sisters (my brother is unable to attend, though still welcome), and that means making plans in advance. Now, you may be saying, what, so soon? (If you are a super last minute person, nobody who has ever hosting Christmas is saying that). Or perhaps you are saying, but it’s Halloween season right now?

Let’s take a minute and be old people and grump about Halloween season anyway. What’s the deal with that? And do you have to do a new costume for each party/festive occasion? Does Trunk or Treat have the dumbest name or what? Back in my day, we had one costume and we wore it trick or treating around the neighborhood, and we were told just to watch out for apples with razor blades in them, as if we wouldn’t just toss an apple out rather than continue carrying it around! Who eats apples for Halloween anyway? And the walking we did around the neighborhood probably negated a lot of the candy calories anyway, but if not, eating too much candy and then throwing up would have done the same.

But I digress. Oh! In further digression, have I told you about Trunksgiving before? You get your cars, you meet your friends in a large parking lot somewhere and each person has one side dish for Thanksgiving in their trunk and you eat them outside, tailgate style.

In the spirit of a random blog post: we aren’t doing much for Thanksgiving. We need some time off and some days to catch up on house stuff and other related stuff, so we will do a small Thanksgiving with Louie’s family, possibly at the Whittemore House so we can save our cooking chops for Christmas. Last year was a big deal for Thanksgiving even if it got derailed by COVID, and I feel like it happened too recently to do it again. We had debated traveling for the holiday, but Louie vetoed and wanted to stay in instead.

So back to Christmas. As much as Leslie and I have been joking about making things in advance (such as salads, it’s a family joke about how in advance you can prepare things because my mother is the queen of advance preparation and is where we learned all of our planning skills), I did make some holiday things this past weekend.

First off, it’s important to note two things: I had the entire afternoon and evening off on Sunday. And Louie was out of town for a work thing. I work so many hours that an afternoon and evening off TO MYSELF looked like the most decadent thing I could even imagine, so what did I do? Well, after finishing my makeup lessons and a family zoom call, I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients to make Alton Brown’s Aged Eggnog and Food in Jars’s Pickled Cranberries. And made them both in a matter of a few hours. I had lost some of my canning skills but I brought them back quickly enough.

Some of those jars are just the brine, or really, shrub, from the recipe. I made the pickled cranberries a few years ago during my canning heyday, and while we didn’t actually love the cranberries (they are totally fine, but not amazing), Louie absolutely loved the brine in mixed drinks. I actually haven’t tried it, but I figured it would be great to offer people, as well as supposedly excellent to mix with sparkling water as well for a holiday drink.

And the eggnog, I also went through an eggnog phase a few years back, and I haven’t made aged eggnog since. I am only having it age about two months in this case, slightly less, but it should be a nice treat for the adults who wish to try it.

Other holiday plans: having some time off after Christmas. And Louie is teaching a winter term class so I have some days off where he is working. On the one hand, I’m sad he isn’t off too because we could do something fun. On the other hand, I could just lounge around and catch up on my reading. It’ll probably be somewhere in between and I am also looking at a short getaway for us after his class is over, maybe somewhere with a hot tub where we can just get away from it all for a few days before the semester starts again.

So that’s my random holiday thought dump! How about you, what are you doing for the holidays? And an important question: how far in advance do you and your family start planning events?

Performing

Freelance Work

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Musicians probably already know this, but the rest of you may not. Sometimes (rarely) I get questions, like how do people know to call you? Or another question I got recently (okay, in response to a prompt, but still: how do I organize my time?)

Okay, so let’s start with my system. Currently I use google calendar for my everything, and I use My Music Staff to organize my private teaching studio. My Music Staff syncs with my google calendar so it’s all on there, but it makes it easier to keep track of attendance and for students to do their own canceling and rescheduling, plus it sends them reminders via text and email.

I get asked to play for things all the time! I’ll have days where I get asked for a half dozen things at once, and then perhaps a week where nothing happens. Sometimes I try to track these things, but it’s hard to stay on top of, and honestly, it’s pretty much throughout the year. So when I get asked to play something, it could be via text, email, phone, whatever. I try to respond as quickly as possible, and if the answer is, not sure, let me check, I’ll let them know that as well. I want to be the person people ask because they know I’ll respond right away.

How do I decide whether to take a job? Mostly the question is, am I free, and does it pay reasonably for effort? And, if it doesn’t pay well, is it something I want to do for another reason (usually that reason would be, because it is a chamber music opportunity to play something that isn’t commercial but really feeds my soul). I also play things that pay a little lower if I know it keeps me on the radar for other things.

Oh, and it’s always important to consider the location of things: you have to factor in, is there enough time to drive there and not be stressed out about arriving on time? And on time means early for musicians, with different (often unspoken) arrival times expected depending on what the gig is. So I always put the address into google calendar so I know that too, as well as putting important information in the “notes” part of the event.

The question as to if I am free can be a little tricky something. Let’s say I’m not technically “free” but I need to move two students to do something that pays decently–I’ll do that. Unless I look and see that I’m moving those same two students several weeks in a row, maybe, or if I notice that it’s the week before a big performance for them. I might know they are students that aren’t flexible, or perhaps I know they ARE more flexible. So a lot of things go into consideration with that.

Let’s say it’s a several week long show, and yet it conflicts with a small gig or two that I already have (for instance, a wedding)–if it’s a lot of money for one larger job and it’s a decent amount of time away, I might ask the contractor for the one-off job about finding a sub instead. This is where things can get tricky: you want to be seen as reliable and not constantly chasing something higher paying or better, but yet there are obvious times where one job is worth finding a sub for. You have to weigh these options as well.

How far in advance are things booked? Well, I already have some things on the calendar for May, but nothing past that at this time. I’m sure wedding contractors have weddings on the books already for next summer but haven’t asked people yet. That usually starts happening after the new year. Easter and Christmas Eve usually book up 9-12 months early for me, and jobs in December will come up at any time from February on, with some early and others late. People definitely hire musicians last minute, but they also hire them early! I’ll get last minute gigs that fill in a gap sometimes, but other times everything on my calendar will have been there for months.

How do people know to find me? Word of mouth, internet, I don’t know! The more you play out, the more people you meet. My goals are to arrive early, be responsible and organized, be friendly and polite, and of course, to do a terrific job on my instrument. I never want to play a job and have somebody feel doubtful about hiring me again based on my skills or how I do the job. And I always try to give my best effort, regardless of what’s going on around me.

What kinds of things do I play? Everything! Weddings, funerals, church services, small orchestras for choirs, string quartet concerts, other chamber music, pit orchestras, regular orchestras, recording sessions, baroque ensembles (this is a new things to me!), background music for touring artists, and more! One thing I love about being a freelancer is the variety of stuff I do, though a LOT of it is weddings, the wedding business is booming apparently.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is practicing: I usually don’t worry too much about getting music learned. Generally for difficult things you’ll get the music far enough in advance to learn it, and otherwise I’ll fit things into my schedule as needed. I make time to practice when I can, though it’s never as much as I “should” or as much as I used to when I was younger. Sometimes it would be nice to have more time to practice, but that’s really hard to make happen. I’m also a really skilled sight-reader and I have decades of experience behind me with repertoire, so often what I’m playing I’ve played in the past. So for a less experienced musician, this might be more of a concern, but I don’t worry too much: I figure I’ll make it happen, and I pretty much do. Occasionally I’ll have a performance where I wished I had been able to put a little more time in (usually some difficult chamber music piece) but I do have to treat this whole “thing” as a job, and sometimes that means you take the gig when you get it.

So, let me know if you have more questions! I never feel like an expert (being a classical musician means constantly questioning your skills) but as I get older I realize, maybe I am in some senses.

Biking, Camping

MO70 Pedal and Paddle Adventure

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Back in early summer, I saw an advertisement for an event run by Terrain Magazine called the MO70, a Two-Day Pedal and Paddle Adventure. Louie had just been talking about how he wanted to bike more and we had also been talking about how we didn’t have any camping planned, so signing up seemed like a great idea.

Now, I’m a musician, as you know. So taking a weekend away can be tricky: I had to turn down a variety of things, but I really wanted to do this event so it was worth it. We started doing longer rides in the summer, with our longest topping out at 25 miles. We would have liked to have done more, but if you recall, my September was the busiest ever (I don’t know if I’m exaggerating or not, but seriously, everybody is saying that, what is going on) and biking long distances was not possible. We got one more longer ride in the weekend before the trip and that was it.

So, we loaded up the car the day before: light camping gear, bikes, overnight bags, etc, and bright and early on Saturday morning we drove an hour to Washington, Missouri to meet the tour. The plan was to bike on the Katy Trail (mostly) from Washington to Hermann, to camp overnight in Hermann, and then get into canoes from Big Muddy Adventures and canoe back down river to Washington on Sunday.

We had our tent, two sleeping bags/pads/pillows, and each a backpack with items to wear, toiletries, and headlamps. We got new bags for the bag of our bikes which you can see in the photo above, and that was useful for keeping important stuff we would want for the day: OTC meds such as advil and pepto bismal, sunscreen, wallets, etc. We debated rain gear but there was a 0 percent chance across the weekend so we decided to risk it and that was fine.

Our gear was loaded onto a shuttle and we would see it later that day. Otherwise, they had beer and snacks and other cold drinks for us along the way, and some people started on the beer right away (fun for them I suppose but I cannot drink in the morning and function over the day).

We set off as a group then: it was a few miles on roads to get from Washington to the Katy Trail, first up to a bridge over the Missouri and then a bit on a gravel road that was a little less fun, and then to the Katy. The group stopped a few times along the way to let everybody catch up.

The ride was pretty easy at first, of course. The bridge was fun to bike over, and it was really nice once we got to the Katy. I had been thinking we were biking a part of the trail we had never been on, but then we stopped for our first break in Dutzow, where we had been before.

They had various drinks to choose from (the shuttle brought coolers along) and I enjoyed a cold gatorade and a snack. We continued on then, mostly in a large group, though a bit spread out.

Our next stop was Marthasville, for another quick snack/bathroom break as needed. And then at Peers, and then finally lunch at Treloar.

They brought sandwiches we had preordered (from a few choices) from the Gramophone, and we enjoyed those with cold drinks, chips, and cookies. It was a nice break! We felt like the ride was easy so far with all the stops and it was a nice day.

The rest of the day was much harder, as you might imagine! First off, there weren’t any more planned stops between Treloar and McKittrick, and I had overhead them saying it was about 10 miles, but no, it was about 15. We got much more spread out and it got hotter (almost 90!) though thankfully minus the summer humidity.

But we persevered and just made a few stops along the way. We chatted with some other people, had a nice time, struggled a bit, and finally got to McKittrick where I had been dreaming of a nice cold beverage from the cooler…only to find out that the coolers were gone because the shuttle had had to go pick somebody up. NOOOOOOOO!!

So we had to continue a few more miles from McKittrick into Hermann. This meant getting off the Katy again and going a few miles on a highway, over a bridge, and then downhill mostly into the campground. This was hard, especially the bridge. I was exhausted and there was a big uphill to get to it (or it felt like a big uphill, who knows), but once we crested that, it was fine. We were riding with a small group still, and we were so happy to see the shuttles when we got into the Hermann City campground.

They were out of gatorade, sadly, but I had a sprite and a cold water and it was glorious! According to my phone app, we had biked 38 miles that day.

So then we grabbed our camping gear and set up our tent in the middle of a field. We took showers, and then just hung out the rest of the day. They provided a nice dinner of bratwursts, sauerkraut, potato salad, etc. (notice an Oktoberfest theme?) as well as plenty of drinks (and I did enjoy a couple of beers in the evening).

For some reason I didn’t get a picture of our tent! I usually do that every time we camp, but I didn’t do it this trip.

We enjoyed hanging around the fire and chatting with a variety of people. And then by around 9 I was utterly exhausted and turned in early!

You’d think I would have slept well, but no. I woke up a bunch, and tossed and turned all night. So did most people we talked to. I suppose it was the new place, the fact that we were just sleeping on thermarests, it was a little warm at first, and then the camping area was really light, tons of streetlights around.

So when morning came, it was both too soon and also a relief, ha! We packed up quickly and then enjoyed some coffee (though a dangerously small amount for the group) and breakfast burritos. Then we all biked to the riverfront to board the canoes.

It was a lovely morning: not too warm, just comfortable for me in leggins and short sleeves, and you can see we had large canoes. We paddled for several hours and then stopped at the Paddlestop Brewery in New Haven for a barbecue lunch. Louie and I split a beer there as well: it was a fun little place!

And then we continued paddling after lunch until we finally got back to the waterfront park in Washington where we started. We did enjoy the canoe, but we were pretty tired of paddling by the end–I think the morning was more fun than the afternoon, but the scenery was lovely, and it wasn’t too hard to be with a big group like that.

We got the canoes out of the water, retrieved our gear and bikes, loaded up the car and said our goodbyes. It was a super fun trip and we would be happy to do it again! It was well organized and well run, and we enjoyed the food. We always felt safe and well taken care of, and we enjoyed meeting new people and chatting with them.

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.