All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Christmas

Happy Holidays!

Okay everybody, I’m sorry, but I fell down a not blogging hole. December was terrific, but it was busy with all sorts of other things! I’m sitting on the couch this morning catching up on emails and things, and appreciating the quiet house, but what a wonderful week we had!

I looked back and I last blogged on December 1. Since then I had 21 rehearsals and performances, plenty of students, juries, several parties including my own cookie exchange party, a couple of outings with friends, and insane amounts of cooking and baking.

I hosted Christmas for my parents and two sisters, which was 10 people total and then Louie’s family attended as well, so 13 of us. We did Christmas Eve for 11, Christmas Brunch for 10 and then Christmas Dinner for 13. I spent about 3 solid days cooking as well as plenty in the lead up: the refrigerator was completely full, the downstairs freezer was full as well at one point, and we used another small fridge in the basement for drinks which I realized I never saw but I think it was full too. We did so many dishes as well as cooking!

It’s been too much time to do a full recap, and besides, nobody wants to hear that, so I’ll just share some pictures.

The first night my sister Leslie and her family were here we ventured out to the loop for dinner. Ended up at Blueberry Hill and my nephew particularly enjoyed the pretzel bites with cheese.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care! We did stockings for ten.

Christmas Eve buffet table spread: cookies from the cookie exchange: highlights included my own date and nut roll ups, Buche de noel cookies, toffee brown butter crunch, cranberry bliss bars. I also made these cake batter chocolate chip cookies which the kids absolutely loved. And these vegan molasses cookies which are really delicious. My brother-in-law Peter made baked potatoes with melted brick cheese which is a family tradition of his and we stuffed ourselves with the potatoes, cheese, and cookies.

We tested how many could fit on a couch: the answer seemed to be 6. My mom, sister and nephew, me, my dad, and my niece.

Some of us went to a candlelight church service then: me for playing and others for enjoying. We got back and my sister Carrie and her boyfriend Miles had arrived, so we were all in town. Some were staying with me and others at the Moonrise Hotel nearby, so they headed out so that Santa could show up.

The next morning we did Santa gifts, then opened stockings, then had brunch.

The stockings were so full they had to be laid on the ground!

The whole gang (Louie took the picture): Dad, Miles, Carrie, Mom, Leslie, nephew, niece, Peter, and me. We enjoyed opening Christmas Crackers (Louie had never done them before so I thought it would be fun) and ate cheese grits, egg casserole and cinnamon rolls.

Then we opened some more gifts (mostly for the kids) and then it was turkey time. We were making turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and a variety of veggies for Christmas Dinner. We’d already made the Cranberry salads, pies, and date pudding the day before (seriously, my feet hurt because of all the standing in the kitchen). It was terrific fun! Louie’s family came for dinner and a white elephant gift exchange afterwards.

Table for 13! We had to add a card table on the end and squeeze in.

Louie carving the turkey: we don’t eat a lot of meat but I made a delicious turkey if I do say so myself.

The next day we went to the Zoo with some family members and had a Swedish Christmas party at Louie’s mom’s house. She made meatballs, Jansson’s temptations, and Princess Cakes!

The 27th was my parents’ wedding anniversary (56 years!) so we went to the Arch and then later Katie’s Pizza for a big dinner out (notice a theme, that is, eating)

Mom had given them matching shirts at a previous Christmas so they decided to wear them in her honor.

They got married in 1968 so that’s 56 years, if I’m doing math and numbers correct (if I messed up, can somebody correct me?)

On Saturday my parents left first as they were driving home and needed two days. Some of us went skating at Steinberg (I didn’t skate due to fear of falling and breaking something) and then later my sister Carrie and Miles left. The rest of us got a babysitter for the kids and went to have a dinner at Esca.

The next day we went to Corner 17, a playground, and finally made the gingerbread house I’d bought to make, haha! Their flight left that night, but was delayed for several hours. I think they made it home very late last night.

Overall, it was a terrific visit. There were so many priceless moments, and the sense that this was a once in a lifetime moment (of course it was, with so much family together, and a 5 year boy who is growing up so fast!) I loved seeing what good friends my niece and nephew have become–she is so protective of him and even tried to lose a group game because she didn’t want him to be upset, and he loves playing with her all the time. I feel like I blinked and my siblings and I got old, somehow, and my parents went from being middle aged (which I suppose I am now) and now they are elderly…who knows how many more Christmases together we will have, but hopefully some more!

I’m really glad I hosted everybody, and now the house feels so quiet. On a deep thought: I loved hanging out with my niece and nephew, and kids are just so wonderful when they hug you, but I don’t overall regret not having kids. So much of my life would be utterly impossible with kids that it would just be a completely different life! And regardless, the kids grow up, and that is something so bittersweet, isn’t it?

So the important New Year questions: am I making resolutions or goals? What will the new year bring? I feel like I should do a wrap up post, so maybe you’ll see me again tomorrow haha, but today I’m done, and I’m going to workout and sweat a bit before hitting a few more items on my to do list.

How was your Christmas (or Hanukkah!) if you celebrate? We’ve also been lighting Hanukkah candles at night and are probably frying up some latkes tonight for dinner, if I get to the store.

Random thoughts

End of Break

It has been a LOVELY week. I should have vacation every week!

I’ve slept in, I’ve woken up early without an alarm, I’ve stayed up late and gone to bed early. I’ve read, watched tv, organized, cleaned, hung out with friends, watched a movie, snuggled with Louie and the cats, decorated for Christmas (more to do), baked bread, planned baking for Christmas, hiked in the woods, eaten lots of great food, enjoyed the snow, and just plain old relaxed.

It’s been fabulous. And today is the last day, sad!

But, that’s okay. Three weeks more of work and then I get to spend Christmas hosting my family, and then I get more vacation after that, and really, life isn’t bad at all. (If you ignore the news, easier said than done.)

We enjoyed a rainy night at Garden Glow
This card with the cats playing violin and random instruments should be my Christmas cards!
Me, Julian (Louie’s brother) and Louie waiting in line for the Thanskgiving Buffet at the Whittemore House. The line moved very quickly so we only got one chance at the photo.

Thanksgiving dinner was lovely. We met Louie’s family and some of their friends at the Whittemore House for a buffet, and enjoyed several hours of eating and conversation. It was a little sad not to have leftovers, but I think Christmas will be enough of that.

The upstairs tree. No ornaments yet but there will be, of course.
Louie and I hiking at Pere Marquette Park.

We met our friends Michael and Heather at Pere Marquette. It was sunny but very cold. We hiked about 3.5 miles and then went to the Old Bakery Beer Company for lunch.

Snowy night outside of our house!

I snapped this picture of the house getting home from a wedding yesterday (I did play one gig over the “break”). While we were eating dinner some young girls stopped by to ask if we needing our snow shoveled so we paid them a little to do so. One shoveled off the porch edges which wasn’t necessary at all but we don’t like to micromanage 🙂

Anyway, I’m doing laundry and probably going to pickle some cranberries now. Later we are hitting up the old house and then eating dinner out somewhere in the old neighborhood, and then back to work tomorrow. How has your Thanksgiving been?

Random thoughts

Thanksgiving Week

It’s finally here! I work today and then I’m off until Saturday!!

I woke up with a headache though, which was annoying. I am blaming the weather change, but maybe I’m dehydrated as well? I realized that the sparkling water that I love was maybe making me have a bit of acid reflux or similar, so I’ve been cutting back, but have I been replacing it with regular water? Of course not, because that wouldn’t be as fun. So we watched Cobra Kai for several episodes last night and instead of my usual sparkling water I drank absolutely nothing. And woke up with a headache, hmm.

The weekend was fun and we took full advantage of the offerings at Wash U (a short walk away!). Friday night we saw Nicole Mitchell play at the 560 Center as well as some of our local favorites like Kendrick Smith. It was through New Music Circle, but was really jazz, in my opinion, because it felt so improvised and had a drummer. What does definite these different genres, really? Kendrick is a terrific jazz musician, and plays the saxophone, so that seemed like jazz. But nonetheless Louie and I enjoyed the concert.

Saturday night we went to see a play at the Performing Arts Department of Wash U. It was The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse, and we really enjoyed it. The acting was terrific, the play was hilarious and really thought-provoking. I found this New York Times article about it just now. I have to remind myself that we have so much to do here in St Louis when we look for it, and usually I am too busy to do it anyway!

Otherwise, the weekend was the normal work, a wedding, a Sunday afternoon concert, etc. I would have enjoyed having even more downtime but I don’t regret the events we went to. Always the choice!

But now, just one more day. We have some fun events planned for Thanksgiving besides dinner: Garden Glow, lunch at Florentin, a hike at Pere Marquette with friends, a girls’ night, and more! And I’d love to get the Christmas decorations up (and will) — we started yesterday late afternoon with outdoor wreaths which I am super thrilled with. We also set up a chest freezer in the basement that I am eager to fill with baked goods for the holidays.

What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Are you traveling? I’m kind of sad I’m not, but I’m also really happy with the things we have planned and look forward to just relaxing at home as well.

Random thoughts

How is it not Thanksgiving already?

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

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.