And I don’t mean the weather. I mean, mostly, finally getting my schedule finalized, and not having to send a million (exact, not approximate) emails about lesson scheduling every day. Finally my students are simply showing up for their scheduled times, learning violin, and being sent home with practice assignments. I feel like I have a handle on my email inbox, and have mostly returned emails and phone calls, and it feels GREAT.

So that just means practice, rehearse, teach, run, and make attempts to clean and continue to unpack from my move. Yes, there is still a lot to do, but I’m having a great September.

The weekend was a lot of fun. In fact the past two weekends have been, and during the week too. Sometimes I pinch myself (not literally) and can’t believe how good I have it right now. *knocks on wood* I couldn’t have predicted my life today a year ago, and going through all the pain and heartache I’ve been through only makes it better now.

I don’t have too long to blog though, because for all my “free time” I’m really buckling down on practicing. Just over a month until my recital, and then fall doesn’t settle down performance wise NOR can I only work on that repertoire now…I’m also really trying to analyze my teaching methods, my organization for teaching, and try to improve. I have some students that are making good progress and others that aren’t as much, mostly due to lack of practicing, but I have to take some blame (and perhaps it is my fault they aren’t properly motivated to practice) so I’m working on some ideas to improve my teaching. I figure I’ve been teaching off and on for about 20 years, and for about 13 mostly full-time, and I still have another 30 or so to go, hopefully, so I don’t want to get bored OR boring. Plenty of room to grow and learn, and really be a top notch teacher, right?

The following pictures are out of character for my blog, but let’s face it, cats don’t swim. I went to the Maplewood Dog Swim over the weekend. Mackenzie, technically my dog now, had a wonderful time. It was actually quite fun watching all the dogs swim. I imagine a cat swim would be far less entertaining…or not…might be pretty violent at least?

Afterwards there was an opportunity for ice cream due to Eliana celebrating a birthday.

A vanilla malt. DELICIOUS.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but it’s important to note that at the Fountain on Locust they blow bubbles at you on your birthday.

I stole this picture from Eliana’s facebook because it is the greatest picture of me ever. I haven’t even approved it for my timeline yet, so you are seeing it here first. But let’s focus on the fun that was had and how delicious the ice cream was. Louie and I couldn’t eat too much though as we had dinner plans with his family, so we had to share the vanilla malt 🙁

That’s enough updating for me today. I think I need to write more often because I feel out of practice on 1) sharing my life and 2) forming complete sentences. Certainly there is no cohesiveness in this post, but that’s life, isn’t it? If life isn’t random, what is?

Ask me questions in the comments! I’ve been getting a ton of spam comments on old posts lately, and I miss real commenters. Tell me what you want to read about on my next post!