Things are moving along: the house is painted, the floors are waxed, and the moving truck is coming on Thursday! I’m finishing up teaching, packing like a crazy person, and just trying to keep my head above water. I ordered two couches and both are being shipped as we speak.
Once we are done moving, the unpacking will commence, but hopefully also the “normal life” again, of doing things other than working or preparing to move/working on the house. May I recommend NOT moving during the school year, if you are an overbooked and overworked teacher?
Miles isn’t sure what to make of any of this. I know once he settles in he will love the new house!On top of everything, I’m playing for the New Works Collective with Opera Theatre THIS WEEK. It’s absolutely adding to my stress, but I couldn’t turn the opportunity down, and it is a lot of fun!
We made it through our second household bout with COVID well: I was unscathed and Louie recovered quickly. We’ve been busy busy with the house, life, work, etc. I’ve been spending all my free time at the new house, or browsing the internet for ideas for decor, closet design, etc. We have our moving date set (ONE MONTH) and in between still lots to do: you might think this is taking a long time, but really, it’s moving as fast as we can. The paint is looking great, and the plaster cracks are getting fixed and will be basically nonexistent soon. We are getting the floors waxed and cleaned soon.
Basically I sound and feel like a crazy overwhelmed person! In between I’m teaching, playing entirely too many concerts, and oh, did I mention our washing machine at the “old” house broke so I can only currently do laundry at the new house?
But, it will all be WELL worth it in the end, when we move, when we get to live in this glorious space. The bedroom color is gorgeous, the couches are ordered and will be delivered at some point in the spring, and I’ve picked up a few new (to me) things on facebook marketplace.
This is the sunroom. It was all yellow with an ancient yellow wall to wall carpet, and look at it now: still some yellow, but that FLOOR was hidden!The entrance foyer: the wood and spindles took a long time to paint, but not as long as the rest of the main floor wood trim.The entrance foyer, a little ways in. Eventually we will remodel the kitchen (and not like old house eventually, actual soonish, in the new few years.)The bedroom blue doesn’t show up quite right in this photo, but it’s gorgeous.View from the second floor down into the sunroom.
Anyway, I’ve posted a fair amount on Instagram over the past month, so look for me there as well for more house stuff.
This week has been crazy in its own way. Monday Louie tested positive for COVID and that means I had to mask and be stressed about whether I would get it or not. I let my students know and a lot have been virtual or I’ve been wearing a mask (CDC guidelines). I haven’t tested positive nor do I feel sick but I don’t know if I will over the next few days. We are not making a particular effort to isolate as we might have in 2020 or 2021. Thankfully his illness has been quite mild, more like a cold (which I was convinced was what he had, not covid!) and he is on the mend already (fingers crossed it doesn’t backslide). I have a concert Friday evening and I am still hopeful I can play rather than suddenly having to stay home from it. I did turn down a church job this weekend out of the fear that I would end up positive and need a last minute replacement: better to have somebody else do it when there were several days left to plan it (it was already a last minute job). Sigh. Better to be sick at home than in a foreign country, right?
The other thing was that we had a snow day yesterday…oh wow it was so lovely to sleep in yesterday and then again today (Thursday is a morning off every week.) The snow was a sort of bust: they were predicting 4-7 or 5-11 inches, and we got around 1, but it was still pretty.
The only picture I took of the snow, a bush covered in snow.
I should have gone over to the new house for snow pictures, but that will wait. I ended up mostly teaching online yesterday with a few brave souls coming for lessons in person.
I think we are getting close to setting our moving date. Painting is still happening (I haven’t been to the house in a few days, so I’m excited to stop by this morning, and then more work this weekend from our ends), and then we have the flooring guys booked for a few weeks from now. It’s looking like the move will happen over Spring Break, probably Wash U Spring Break, which should work really well.
Yes, we bought the house. Things have been crazy. I learned how to caulk holes and cracks. We’ve been working on the walls, getting things ready for painting, choosing paint colors, all kinds of craziness. And the semester is in full swing with so many lessons and so many students, and some rehearsals.
Muriel and Miles love cuddling…sometimes!
Anyway, life is busy and hectic, and good. It’s Sunday night, I worked all weekend, either at gigs or on the house, and I’m exhausted! I’m going to bed early because tomorrow morning will be here soon. But I wanted to say, I’m still here, I’m just busy and tired!
Grey and white walls
I love the way the dining room turned out! I never knew I could get so excited about grey, but here we are. Sherwin Williams On the Rocks with Pure White, if you are curious. We are using that a fair amount throughout the house, as one does as a boring 40 something couple.
I find myself reading design blogs, using pinterest, and generally spending a lot of time brainstorming decor ideas. It’s great fun, but it takes up so much time! So I’m off now, to bed or to the internet, or who knows, but I’ll be back with more. How is your January going?
I’ve been on vacation for a few days here (glorious!) but there is a ton to do. I have to say: you can get a lot more done without having to work!
I did spent a little time this morning responding to emails, but mostly I haven’t even had to do that. And since my lesson scheduling is fairly automated, I don’t need to worry about sending out reminders when lessons start up again: the program will take care of that. (Though I did send a fair amount of reminders about vacation…maybe they were unnecessary, but I had gotten a lot of questions, so things aren’t as automated as I’d like!)
In any case, I’ve packed a fair amount of boxes. We close on the new house next week, and while we aren’t moving immediately (getting some things done on the house first, painting inside and a few other small things) I realized we should move some boxes. I was getting overwhelmed figuring out HOW to pack, as in, the house is crowded here already and how would we pack and where would we put the boxes? And it occurred to me, pack some, and take those boxes to the new house and put them out of the way, and then we will have room in the house to continue packing. So that’s the current plan, to pack as much as we can now with stuff we don’t need for at least a month or maybe more, and then make more room to continue packing. Ultimately we are hiring movers (I am really hoping to get that date set soon or our options will be more limited) but we are still trying to figure out if we are getting something done with the floors, and we now have to wait until we close to get any more quotes.
Sigh. I would love to just have it figured out, but I think it’ll be fine. We can be flexible with our moving dates and February isn’t a prime moving time so the companies shouldn’t be super booked up. I’m assuming it’ll be in February.
I’ve also been working on picking paint colors, and I think we have our decisions made, at least as far as we need to be now–the next step is putting some samples on the walls to see in the space, and that will also have to wait.
Anyway, home buying is exciting but stressful! And January isn’t totally empty of work: I start back Thursday with some teaching and sort of ease into things: first a makeup week so not everybody is coming, then a full week and college starts up too. There are a couple of chamber music concerts coming up in the next few months (St Louis Chamber Soloists and Perseid Quartet) and I’ve been easing back into practicing as well.
I used to get email notifications of comments on this blog, but haven’t been lately, so if you’ve been commenting I’m sorry I haven’t been responding! One question awhile back had been about the catio and if we would have a catio in the new house, and the answer is: maybe! We’d love to but haven’t figured that out yet. There is also a sun room there so probably in nice weather we can open up the windows and the cats will really enjoy that, though not a specific space only for them.
Can you believe we are saying goodbye to 2022 already?
It’s been a decent year overall. Some ups, some downs, but mostly good. If you have had a worse year, then I hope your next year is better!
It has been nice to have some downtime over the past few days. I went to SC to visit my family: everybody but my brother was there (and Louie, he had to work.) It was a nice time. I drove all the way to SC and back by myself, which nobody seemed to think I would be able to do, but I did manage.
I’m thinking back on the year: there were a lot of good times! Visiting Norway, Austin, New Orleans, and more, playing with the Beach Boys, seeing Augustin Hadelich play (and I get to do that again this spring), playing some good chamber music with friends, reading so many books, almost buying a house (we close soon!), seeing family, seeing friends, seeing many concerts and some plays, taking a canoe trip on the Mississippi…it’s been a fun year.
Looking ahead to 2023: the plans are to move, to fix up the new house and decorate, buy a few new things, repurpose what we already own to make the house our home. Travel wise we are planning a trip to New Mexico and Colorado in the summer. I’ve got some concerts on the books already, but we’ll see what the year brings in that regard. Work wise, I really need to find a better balance so I don’t feel so burned out all the time.
I’ll share some pictures of the week in South Carolina with captions: enjoy!
Family Christmas Brunch. Carrie and I were a day late so we missed some things, but we did a nice celebration anyway. My nephew Luca and I. I asked him to come closer for a picture and he said “I’m in the picture.”Luca does enjoy posing though! This was a new toy of his.We went to Musgrove Mill State Historic Site. Athena picked up some ice there.Getting organized for a family picture at the WaterfallNot terrible?We switched out photographers and included my sister Carrie’s boyfriend Brian instead of me.The waterfall. It was very nice to see.We made dinner one night for my parents’ wedding anniversary. It was hard to just get my mom to sit down and relax!Luca helped by making Mom read books over and over to him. Yes, he did wear that rainbow sweater the whole time.My dad and Athena on the tandem bike.All the men got the same shirt. Louie has one as well.Ringing the bell at Presbyterian College.The dome house at twilight.
Tonight we are having dinner with Louie’s family and then likely heading home before midnight. Louie is in the middle of a very intense period at work where he has to teach every morning for 12 days, so we opted not to do anything more social and instead just see family and relax. I have been packing today, collecting boxes, and choosing paint colors. I can’t believe we are buying a house soon!
If you are reading this and the holidays are hard for you, I hope you are hanging in there! While things are going okay for me, of course nothing is ever as good as it seems online, and things are always more difficult in the moment than they seem looking back at it. I know the year had some difficult moments such as health concerns for me and for family members, as well as the major stress of getting COVID while in a foreign country…but looking back it all seems okay. Funny how that works, hmm?
