It seems like it’s always Friday. The weeks just go by, and then it’s Friday and it doesn’t matter.

I woke up too early this morning. A storm came through and then I couldn’t get back to sleep. I feel like I have too much sinus pressure on my head and it hurts just enough that I couldn’t sleep. So instead I finally got up and had breakfast, and now I’m blogging.

I got a new computer the other day, as an early birthday gift, actually. My old laptop was getting slower and slower, and one of the hinges was broken. My new computer is great, except now I’m using a new blogging program, which has the tiniest text ever and I can’t read it! I did find if I zoomed in I could make the screen bigger, so we’ll see if this publishes the way it should.

I feel like everything in our country is terrible right now and that’s just how it will be forever because enough of my fellow countrymen are apparently absolutely fine with this. I just stay at home, do nothing, work from home, get asked to play shows and concerts in the fall that we all know aren’t actually going to happen, but by all means, let’s get our haircut and open the restaurants back up. Where’s my freedom? Where’s my ability to earn a living by playing live music like I’ve been doing my whole life? How about instead of making people go back to work making cars we help them afford to not do that, so more people don’t die? It is outrageous to me how the government has handled this pandemic and how, for the most part, we all just spent two months at home for absolutely no good reason if we are just expected to return to life as before. It won’t be like before, because most of us still aren’t planning to go anywhere, but plenty of people have no choice, because they need the money.

This isn’t very eloquent, or well written, but it’s thoughts like that that get me up in the morning. I try to focus on the positive, but some days, there just isn’t much. Yesterday I got called to play a show in the fall at the Fox Theater, which is one of the things that I love doing. It’s fun, it requires a high level of concentration, and it pays well. And most likely it’ll get canceled. I don’t know how much longer my students will want to keep taking online lessons and I don’t know if they will start pressuring me to teach in person again. I’m certainly not comfortable at this point having them come into my house. If I can’t visit my family, how can I have people come to my house for violin lessons? It’s absolutely ludicrous to think of it. It’s also ludicrous to think that opening businesses is something that should happen before people can visit their friends and family.

I know many people haven’t taken the lockdown as seriously. I know some people continue to socialize, and see friends and family. I know people don’t think they need to wear masks, and that they aren’t at risk and therefore none of this applies to them. I’m lucky that my boyfriend’s employer has been taking the pandemic seriously from the get-go and therefore he has been able to work from home and will continue to do so until his employer thinks it is safe to do otherwise, and that is truly what will help make our decisions. They don’t think it’s safe to go eat in restaurants or see friends and family. They don’t even think it’s safe to go to the office if there are other people around yet.

I don’t know. I’m just tired. I need a vacation. I need to play music with other people. I need to do something other than play violin at a screen. What’s the point of a weekend if you can’t go to a concert or a show, if you can’t go out for a nice relaxing dinner with your friends, if you can’t go to a movie? I miss my old life, where things were hectic and overscheduled, but I was full of LIFE and experiences and getting paid to play the violin. I got to see friends and colleagues, I got to make plans and visit family (all my family is out of town)…there is nothing to look forward to anymore except finishing teaching for the day and watching tv.

I know I’m mostly just ranting, but ughhhhh I don’t know how much more I can take. And yet, I will, because I don’t see that “opening up” is the safe thing to do. So I will persevere, and I will hopefully sleep better tonight than I did last night.

Have we been staying at home for months? Years? The weeks blend together. I always know what day it is but not necessarily what month. My students are sometimes shocked that it’s May, and so am I. The cooler weather certainly doesn’t help!

The other evening I finished teaching and it was still light out. I thought to myself, weird that’s so light after 8 when it’s fall. Then I remembered it was late spring.

Usually this time of year is fun and festive. College classes are done and grades are in. The weather is getting warmer and friends are having backyard gatherings. Restaurants have their patios open. We are often looking forward to seeing family from out of town and looking forward to traveling after having worked for months straight.

I have been somewhat enjoying my weekends, but I will be happy to trade it all back. Weekends just make life blend together. I would rather work a month straight and then have a week off to do something really fun, instead of just puttering around the house for two days. Then again, this is hardly a true representation of what people do on their weekends, I suppose.

I’ve been doing my weekly live concerts on Mondays. I might take off for Memorial Day, but it is pushing me to keep practicing, which is good for me. It is too easy to get complacent and lazy! (I know people say this is the time to be lazy, but I’m getting enough of that as well. Life is to be lived.) I’ve had fun learning some new pieces and pushing myself to do something that is pretty scary! Check it out if you have a few minutes.

This week I dedicated my concert to my friend April and her dog Olive. Olive passed away a few days ago, and was the sweetest dog. I’m so glad we got to visit them shortly before the pandemic (really it was right as it began) and I’m so sorry for April to have lost Olive.

Olive had a great life, and was well loved, and she was a real sweetie. We used to dog sit for her when April lived here and when we had Mackenzie. Olive was so small in comparison to Mackenzie but held her own. In fact she was a little aggressive, particularly in regards to this one toy that was a stuffed pumpkin with a squeaker in it. Mackenzie was a reasonable dog though, and realized that Olive was a bit insane and smartly left her alone and let her have the toy!

My niece was visiting us a few years ago and was walking around with a small bit of granola bar in her hand. This made her very popular. You can see Mackenzie was also keeping an eye on Olive in addition to hoping Athena would drop her snack.

RIP Olive.

Pets really are the best.

It’s hard to believe Miles has been back with us for almost two months! It’s even harder to believe he was missing for almost a year and came back. In fact, pretty much everything over the past few months has been unbelievable, so then again…

It’s been a minute since I blogged, and honestly, it doesn’t feel like it. I feel like time is suspended and none of this is real. Nothing changes from day to day, be it in our government (still no plan, no reason to think that all our social distancing will pay off in any distinct way and that we aren’t simply postponing a time with millions of deaths) or in life. I teach. I work out. I go for walks with Louie. We cook, we read, we watch tv. We order takeout on Friday nights, and on weekends I don’t bother doing my hair or makeup or putting on real clothes. And that’s it.

I started doing a weekly livestream on Facebook. Mondays at 12:30 pm Central. This week I had a weird color problem, but went ahead with it. Last week I didn’t have issues with the color…I swear I did nothing different! Help? (and why do I mess with my hair so much, haha? Each week is a learning experience.)

I am still planning a camping vacation at the end of July to Yellowstone and such. I’m still assuming it actually won’t happen (or won’t be safe) but you just never know. I do love planning trips, and it’s a fun hobby. Louie and I do love road trips, and we love Yellowstone and bison, and wouldn’t it be fun to get away? I suppose it’s possible, isn’t it? Camping and hiking don’t require huge amounts of interaction…but I won’t be sad or disappointed if things fall through, because at this point, that is all we know. We are all used to disappointment and constant feelings of disorientation and sadness. We adapt though, and move forward, and maybe that’s why I was yellow (or green, depending on what you see) in my livestream today…that’s just how I look now.

I’m not going to pretend there are lessons that we have learned during this. I think mostly the bad outweighs any good, and any good we find is simply because one cannot be negative all the time and we must, it is human, to come up with ways to cope and be positive. It is no good wallowing in despair. But we are all on the edge of desperation, waiting for something to change, someone in charge to do something good, waiting for live as we know it start having some semblance of normalcy. And so we wait.

That’s why I’m trying to make music still. I know some musician aren’t feeling up to it, or are too busy with other things. I am always busy, of course, but I don’t want to go 3 months,  6 months, more without practicing and having a reason. It’s been fun preparing for videos and livestreams, and while I am just using my iPhone to create this stuff, it’s fun, it gives me a goal and a sense of accomplishment, I could use the extra cash, and I feel good about it. Though quarantine isn’t about winning or losing, I do want to feel that I continued to make the most of myself, and while it’s absolutely okay that you are relaxing, or struggling, or just barely getting by and you don’t need to do a damned thing, I want to make music for me and I want to make music for you. I am worried if I sit around and don’t perform for six months I will never want to perform again, so I am sticking with it. That’s me.

I taught a student today for the last time, and another last Friday. Both are college students I’ve taught since I started my college jobs, and both are graduating and I’m so proud of them and how much they’ve grown, but I’m sad. I’m sad that we had to finish our semester online, and I’m sad that I won’t get to see them again, and I’m sad that this is happening to everybody.

We are starting to get a storm. I love spring storms though I hope it passes through before my next video lesson…I’m really enjoying teaching these days, for what it’s worth. And the rain will be great for my garden. Positive thoughts, right?

We’ve been getting takeout every other week from our favorite Mexican Restaurant. It’s been good and a semblance of normalcy. There isn’t a lot of mask wearing there and it’s not as careful as we might like, but we wear masks and use a lot of sanitizer, and hope for the best. So far we’ve been fine. I think that honestly in April, I went places 4 times, and took some neighborhood walks. So that’s not much.

How are you doing? Do you feel like I do: sometimes good, other times bad, with not much in between and changing rather quickly, or am I starting to crack up?

Check out my Facebook page if you are interested. It’ll only be about 15 minutes. I’m playing just a few selections during my lunch hour. I am just me, no partner who plays music (though Louie does possess some guitars and is probably better at the ukulele than I am), so it’s just violin. It’ll be fun though, I hope, or perhaps take you away from your day to day for a few minutes. (As always, tips appreciated! And you’d think it would be free to put these things on, but there is some licensing involved for a few pieces I’m planning, plus, there’s me, I deserve to be paid )

My lunch hour becomes much longer after next week-it’s the last week of college teaching. Then I’m just doing my private students…nothing else until concerts and events start up again. I’m hoping my students are enjoying their online lessons enough. I’m planning a recital next month (online) and will just keep at it online until we can have in person lessons again. I have literally no idea when that will be…it will be quite sometime before I am comfortable having a parade of people coming into my house.

(Remember, I am accepting new online students!)

It probably won’t happen, but I’m planning a hypothetical summer vacation back to Yellowstone. We decided that would be great, to get out, camp, see some bison. I’m not expecting that it will happen, but we do have (refundable) camping reservations. Haha! I’d also really like to visit my sister and her family in Chautauqua this summer—they spend their summers there for a job and just bought a house, and we were planning to visit them. They are still hoping to go to and we are still hoping to visit, but only if it’s safe.

Today is a rainy day. I’ve done laundry, worked out, made burritos to freeze for later, made granola, attended a zoom birthday party, watched a facebook livestream concert, and practiced. Somehow it’s almost time to start cooking dinner and I don’t even remember how life functioned {before}. We wait until evening to have a drink, and I don’t wear real clothes anymore.

Tomorrow might be nicer. It’s possible a squirrel has eaten all the seeds from my garden, so my hope is to plant more seeds and maybe do another plot (it’s partly ready). It might be too wet for that but we’ll see.

How is it the date is it? Time is so slow…yet so fast. How long do we go on like this, and yet, how do we NOT go on like this?

I definitely feel like my life has gotten smaller. I am happy to watch things online, and Louie and I have enjoyed especially watching my sisters and brother-in-law play various concerts and stuff online too. But we are just here all the time, no events to attend, no colleagues to have random conversations with, few people we observe to tell somebody about later. No musicians to play WITH, no audience to play for. Just here. In my house, listening to the front storm door rattle against the wind. It feels busy here though, with two cats, plenty to do…so much media to interact with, but yet it’s a different kind of busy. There’s nowhere to go, did I mention that?

People ask each other, what do you miss most? I mean, I don’t even know. Everything. Being able to just go and do things, to run an errand, to go to work, to say, sure, see you tomorrow night, or sure, can’t wait for you to come visit in June! It’s the big things, like planning holidays and visiting friends and family. It’s the small things, like going for a run without worrying about how busy the sidewalks will be, or going to the store for milk only, or getting a hair cut. What will I do first when the world reopens? Nothing really…there isn’t going to be a reopen date. Gradually things will become more open, and we’ll venture out more…maybe this summer there even will be travel, with mask and sanitizer, who knows, maybe?! and then things will again flare up and we still won’t reliably be able to find toilet paper in the store and the pasta selection will be limited and we’ll be told, there are no shortages. I miss being able to go the store (I call the grocery store the store) and buy everything on the list, and if there isn’t something on the list, to just go on over to another store and have a huge change of finding it there, and not worrying about whether you are going to be getting or spreading a horrible virus to everybody around you.

But yet, we tell our friends, no, things are fine. Because in a way, yes, there are. If you have your health, if you are safe, if you are lucky enough to still be making some money, well, there are others who are not okay, and that is not me. I am okay enough. I am scrappy, I am used to working from home, and I am used to working hard. And I’m lucky that I have an amazing quarantine partner and we enjoy enough of the same TV shows to get along, and we have been having a decent time hanging out together every evening and cooking a lot of meals together. He is (as always) crazy busy with work and with his doctoral degree research so nobody here is bored. There may be occasional twinges of boredom, but there are too many books to read to actually be bored…I always say that adults can’t be bored, only children, and I am sticking with that even if it’s unpopular It’s also overwhelming at times, and while oddly, no I haven’t even really cried, that’s partly because this sort of thing is what anxious people like me thrive on. I am in my element with this. I am still worrying a lot, of course, but THIS is worth worrying about and therefore, I am handling it all pretty well.

So yeah. Check out my livestream on Monday if you can (and it’ll be up afterwards for later watching) and how are you? Are you hanging in there? Do you need anything that I can help with?

I’ve decided to start a weekly online concert series. Concert is a stretch as it’ll just be a few pieces each time, but that will give me more structure and something to look forward to. It’ll be on facebook live and I’ll post it to my page there as well if you’d like to follow me. I am planning for Mondays at 12:30 Central Time, but it will be up after that as well. I’m thinking of calling it Hannah’s Virtual Violin Luncheon, but that is a fluid brainstorming idea.

I don’t know how long it will go, but I would think I will want to continue over the summer at a minimum. I doubt we’ll be able to do much if any travel, and that means I’ll have more time than ever. I hope most of my students continue (and for the record I am still accepting new online students) and I am thinking of having a few extra classes for them as well…but I don’t know what the future will bring. They may want to take a break, or perhaps people will be traveling, or perhaps their financial situations will go downhill and they’ll need to stop lessons because of that. I’m hoping that it doesn’t happen to many students, or any.

And then of course, people may get sick. We don’t know. This is all to help stop that from happening, but as expected, the lower the numbers get, the more people say, oh well, there was no pandemic, and then states are “opening up” again (which is a weird phrase that we have started using “opening up the economy” as if the ruling party hasn’t claimed for years that the economy is the stock market and it’s BEEN open…and yet suddenly the low wage workers and small businesses are the economy? I’d say they can’t have it both ways but they’ve lied and cheated so much that their supporters believe—somehow—that only the liberals are bad, and therefore they seem to be able to have it both ways), and because of the “opening up” places will likely (sadly) have a resurgence. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have the virus not be as big of an issue as scientists, doctors, and such thought, but the way to truly determine that is testing. More testing. Not making low wage workers go back to work or lose their unemployment benefits, while the rich stay hidden away.

Sigh. In a nutshell, the world is terrible. And yes, we are all going to die eventually, but I think most of us don’t actually welcome that and have a lot of things we want to do first!

So, not to be a downer. Ooh, we made nachos last night for dinner. I have never done that before, put chips out, sauteed some peppers, onions, and squash and put that on top, added a can of black beans, some cheese (not enough really, but it seemed like so much that I had to stop), then made a little slaw of red cabbage, rice vinegar, and lime, and added that on top after baking the nachos, and garnished with salsa and plain greek yogurt. It felt decadent but wasn’t too unhealthy, and was delicious!

I’d had a mildly annoying day: three students canceled on me the day of (my policies cover these things so it wasn’t a big deal, but) and then our imperfect foods box contained only the produce I’d ordered but nothing else—one thing we had been looking forward to was a piece of salmon, hence the nachos for dinner. I’m headed to the grocery store shortly to do a shopping trip—I haven’t gone in over two weeks so that seems pretty good. We did have to get milk the other day at the gas station—I’d purchased two gallons of milk the previous visit, and the expiration dates were far in the future, but the second gallon just had a weird taste, so we decided to dump it. I don’t know what went wrong—maybe we just got unlucky.

I have a variety of supplies of toilet paper being shipped to me. We had a fair amount, but once I started using one of the kinds, I realized the rolls are much smaller than I thought and we’re going through a whole roll about every day and a half in the busier bathroom. That made me nervous, and I already had a shipment coming, but maybe not until mid-May…I managed to find something to ship sooner, and we’ll see what the quality of any of those are, but I’m not having to run from store to store and make a bunch of trips in two weeks or so looking desperately for toilet paper. If this pandemic continues through the summer, who knows if the TP supply issues will also continue. It still stands to assume that things can and will get worse, even as we all remain hopeful that they won’t and that school will return as usual in the fall.

Sorry, I’m kind of a downer today. I definitely find my moods go up and down a lot. I get pretty stressed about grocery shopping, but it’s the job I’ve agreed to do in the house, and I have decided I want to do my own grocery shopping rather than get it delivered—with delivery I grow to not expect exactly what I want and that’s fine. If I go on my own I can select exactly what I want, from the choices in front of me.

I’m using too many parentheses and dashes as well, and probably using them incorrectly. Oh well!

We finished the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last night, and will be picking a new TV show tonight. I’m not sure what direction we will go.  I’m looking forward to doing a few more things in the garden this weekend, and as a summer project we may be tearing down our back porch (it is quite rotted in places) and not replacing it, but instead just building a little stairway. That would give a larger patio around instead which could be a place to use the grill or just hang out on in certain kinds of sunlight. If we aren’t doing much travel this summer (or any, though the thought of not getting to see my niece and nephew in person this summer absolutely breaks my heart) that means it’s a good time to do a few more home improvement projects we haven’t had time for.

Here’s to a more positive mindset and a good rest of the week!

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.)