Another weekend is almost gone, and unlike in my “normal” life, since I actually don’t officially work on weekends, I’m back to that feeling of sadness that it’s almost Monday and back to work. Then I remember that I don’t have anywhere to go, I have basically two more weeks of college classes, and the true sadness isn’t that it’ll be Monday again, but that it will be the sixth week of quarantine during a pandemic and our government doesn’t have an actual plan for getting us out of this and into the other end that doesn’t seem to involve shady numbers, profiteering, and simply wishing for the best.

So yeah. We had a decent weekend. Mexican takeout, where no one was wearing masks except us. A few nice walks in the neighborhood. Some gardening. Some baking (double chocolate zucchini bread and jammy baked oatmeal) and some cooking. We ordered frozen pizzas from Katie’s Pizza and Pasta and made one of them last night with a salad packed with chickpeas, grape tomatoes, and more.

We’ve been eating better than ever—in case you’re wondering how, the answer is, I think about food constantly and spend a lot of time figuring out what to buy, and as I’ve said before, Imperfect Foods has helped with tons of produce, Blue Apron every few weeks to break the rut, and just buying a ton of staples so that I can look at what produce we have on hand (since you can sort of order but it’s often a surprise exactly how much you’ll get) and put together a meal from it. I’ve been improvising much more than before but it’s still going really well. We’ve been lucky, I think, and there’s only two of us, and neither of us are terribly picky with our food preferences other than we try not to eat meat.  (I hear it’s been hard to get meat sometimes, so I imagine this also is helping us…)

I’m also lucky in that I’ve picked up a few new students in the past week, and that really helps out. I attribute this to good luck and perseverance. I’m not too proud to post on every social media platform and message people I know to let them know I’m looking. This has often been my rule with my business: I let people know I’m looking for work and often that means they contact me for work. Often it seems in the music world this sort of thing gets a bad rep, but let me tell you, it has always worked for me. The BEST place to get more students is from the ones you already have—always let them know if you want more, as people with children generally know more people with children! Of course, trying to be the best musician and teacher you can is always a good idea. Oh, and the other best place to get students is from other teachers. Now is a little different, because people who might ordinarily not be looking for more students likely are, but normally letting your colleagues know you are wanting students is a great idea as often established teachers only have a few openings every year and those will go quickly and they’ll want more names of good people to recommend.

We just finished our weekly “roll call” Zoom chat with my siblings, parents, and niece/nephew. This is something positive that has come out of the quarantine, that we all have enough time and not things to do that a weekly date for a Zoom meeting actually works. We started this a few weeks ago and now it’s just a standing event, which will go I guess until we are all free to leave the house again and concerts start up. Who knows when that will be. Each week we have less interesting things to talk about though, since nobody goes anywhere.

I finished watching The Stranger on Netflix and now am watching the latest season of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. What should I watch next?

I often think I should record myself playing violin on Sunday rather than Monday morning but I haven’t showered yet today and if I do, I certainly won’t be doing my hair or anything, and as a result, I’ll look bad on video. I suppose plenty of women don’t wear makeup or do their hair and look fine, but not me. If I’m posting a video of myself playing violin online, I definitely need to look like I made an effort with my appearance, even if it’s just in a casual outfit. Does that make me shallow? I don’t care if others do, but it’s just my own preferences.

I am going to practice a bit now, and then figure out what to cook for dinner. Something with mushrooms, as we have a bag of them that should get eaten, and maybe with broccoli as well. I’ll figure that out in a bit (yes, I’ll add a grain and likely some sort of protein.)