All posts by hannahviolin

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

Life keeps going

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We are still looking for Miles. We still have signs up, and we may put out more fliers by the weekend. At this point, we just have to assume that either he’s coming home or not, and it might just be up to him. But I want to make sure everybody around knows he’s still missing in case they see him, or if they think he’s a stray and can take him in so that they would know he’s ours. I haven’t heard any bad news, so…

I was very sad for days, but I’m moving forward. I still hope he comes back, and if he does you will hear about it, and the whole world will, because I will be so happy, but honestly, I’m not counting on that. I’ve grieved his loss. I’ve cried many tears (including a bit right now) but I just don’t know. Whatever happens, we’ll see. We’ll welcome him back so gladly, but Muriel is thankfully doing okay without him, and life goes on. This household deals with a lot of things happening and keeps on, and that’s just what we do.

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Loss is just a part of life, and a part of being a pet owner as well. And it really sucks. When this first happened, I had a breakdown one night, because I just felt so strongly all the pet losses I’d had over the past few years and I thought I had longer before the next one. But you know, that’s how things go. You can’t bring a cat into your life, a little delightful furry creature, and expect it to last forever.

Who knows though. Somebody’s eating the food—maybe it’s the raccoon, maybe not. We’ve had a few potential sightings, but who knows with black cats (and our neighbor on one side has an indoor/outdoor black cat, and not everybody knows that and can tell the difference). So we’ll keep up with the posters. One of my adult students yesterday was telling me that she’s had loads of indoor/outdoor cats and sometimes they disappear for a  long time, and then they come back. Maybe Miles is loving the outdoors right now, and the lovely temperatures and the birds. I hope he’s not scared and lost.

Anyway! This was supposed to be a relaxing last week of finishing up college classes and lessons. Instead it ended up being pretty well scheduled, with the added cat missing stress and a bit more rain than we’d wanted. I’m still trying to schedule one more student lesson, and then after Monday all that’s left are a few grades and BOOM done for the semester. It’ll be officially summer, or summer enough. The kind of fun thing about college teaching is that you mostly finish in the beginning of May, but then you get one more paycheck! (On a less fun note, I mostly funnel the majority of my college teaching into my retirement savings…though I enjoy watching balances grow and the idea that someday I will be off such a busy schedule.)

The back yard is really growing up after all the sewer work the other month—it’s only been about 5 weeks!

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All the rain we’ve been getting is really helping. And those stairs probably need some work…the back porch is a bit old.

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Cat pun cards from my friend Rose. My students get a real kick out of them!

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I just thought this was pretty weird.

I’m off for a run. Ideally if I go sweat around the neighborhood Miles will smell me and decide to follow me home? I personally wouldn’t do that, but one thing is for sure: I am not a cat.

Cat

Missing Miles

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It’s been a tough week-if you follow me on anything social media you already know that Miles got out Saturday night and is missing.

At first I was mad, because this happened while I was gone, and it was Louie’s fault, but I’ve forgiven him. This did not come easily, and I was very mad for at least 12 hours, but I thought it was important to do, and not just conditionally. I mention this, because it’s just part of the story. No matter whether Miles comes back, I couldn’t have that hanging over us. I don’t know if he’s forgiven himself yet, but I hope he does. Though it was a bit of a mistake on his part, Miles is a cat, and cats do things sometimes that end up with them running off, and he is a great cat, but he is a cat.

I’m incredibly sad. It’s been horrible, and the grief comes in waves, as it does. And there’s hope, and then more disappointment and sadness. I tend to get overly attached to my pets…one of my students the other day said, “oh, I’d be a wreck if I were you!” and of course, while I was able to hold it together to do my teaching, of course I’m a wreck.

We’ve done a bunch of things, flyers all over (and we are doing new flyers tonight since it’s been raining), litter box and food out, one of the cat trees, going around the neighborhood over and over, searching, talking to people, facebook posts, next door posts, craiglist posts. He has a microchip, but wasn’t wearing a collar, so if he got scanned at a shelter or something we’d be notified. I haven’t visited shelters, but I’ve followed online. We’ve had a couple possible sightings, but who knows.

I am trying to stay positive, and if nothing else, to remember how much fun with had with Miles during the time he was here. Everybody has a story of how their cat disappeared, even for weeks, and then came back, but I know that happy endings aren’t always there.

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I’d say that Muriel is despondent, but she’s a cat. She’s fine. I imagine she’d be happy if he came back though! I thought he was more attached than she was…we have taken her out back to get her smell around more too, in the hopes it would bring him home. I hope he’s not off hurt somewhere. I hope that he is doing okay. Maybe he’s having a fun time. But maybe he’s scared. Maybe there are too many cats outside here to let him come home (he ran because he got out, and then got spooked by another cat). I don’t know.

So anyway, I’m pretty consumed by all of this. We’ve been hanging out in the backyard at night (the weather has been lovely for this), we’ve been walking all over the neighborhood. I went for a few runs around the likely places he might be as well, thinking if I got extra sweaty and smelly that would send my smell further. I saw a cat the other night eating the food, but I went to get a closer look and scared him off. I thought it might have been Miles, but there’s been a gray cat hanging around and it might have been that one.

It sucks.

Deep Thoughts, Paris, Teaching

Festival and the Notre Dame

Grr, every day I think my cold is getting better and in fact it gets worse. This one is a linger-er and it’s annoying me. I thought at first it was a mild cold and I was lucky, and instead it’s a nasty one that is lasting too long. Oh well. I’ll be better soon!

Saturday was the NFMC Festival for my students. This was my fourth year in it, and as usual, I was fairly stressed out, but it does get easier each year. I had 9 participate, which was my highest yet. I’d had ten sign up but one broke her arm, so that made 9. They did well, and there were only a few tears.

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I’d like more students to participate, as I think doing stuff like this really makes kids work hard and it’s scary. Recitals are scary too, and wonderful for them. It’s so important for students to do scary things and live through them—this is one of the most important aspects of music lessons. It’s a valuable life lesson, and hopefully builds confidence across the board. Plus, trophies and ribbons!

I can’t believe next week is the last week of classes at Wash U. Some of my students are playing on a recital there, so I’m looking forward to that immensely, and then the following week is the last week of classses at Lindenwood, with a string ensemble concert to attend. Between Holy Week, all of that, some juries, and a few weddings, it’s a busy time. I’m thrilled though, because late winter was less busy, so it’s so good to feel needed and busy. I don’t know if that sounds strange, but it’s true. I may complain about my busy schedule here a lot (I’m a complainer, I know) but I do actually love it.

Except when I’m sick. Today is no good. I’m glad today was already a light day, and I’m trying to decide what I can handle today.

Random thought: hearing about the fire at the Notre Dame reminded me of visiting Paris, of course. (It seems that all of my friends felt the same, and social media was full of people’s pictures and memories.) I’m glad no one was hurt…fire is such a force, isn’t it? As a child I thought that firefighters could put out any fire, but then watching the 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park taught me that that wasn’t the case. (Though sometimes in those cases, they don’t try to just put them out, so it’s not exactly the same thing).

Many are upset because when bad things happen in Paris so many pay attention, yet when bad things happen in other places, so many ignore them. It’s hard to always do the right thing and have exactly the right reaction, and it’s hard to always care enough about everything and not be curled up in a ball in the corner of the room, sobbing. I think for many of us who have visiting Paris, it is just such a special city, and our memories are so vivid, that’s it’s hard to ignore those memories when they come flooding back. It’s not great, but it’s human nature to care more about things that you personally relate to.

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A pre digital age photo of the Notre Dame. This was in the summer of 1996 and evidently it was undergoing some work. It will be again.

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Late Summer 2012. Too big to fit in the picture. My eye for photography is unparalleled, really.

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I find it hard to believe that men made this to begin with! When people work together for a common goal, anything is possible. Let’s take that idea forward and continue believing in the power of collective action.

At heart, all we have are our memories, right? We live in the moment, plan for the future, and remember the past. That’s it. I remember when I was getting married, people said, you aren’t planning a wedding, you’re planning a memory of a wedding. That’s true in everything we do. We are planning our memories, and trying to make them as interesting and vivid as we can. I write this blog for several reasons, but one is to assist my memories. I take pictures to help me remember moments, both the mundane and the very special. It’s all part of the “why” of life.

Deep thoughts, brought to you by Sudafed, most likely.

Hiking, Running, Teaching

If it’s nearly holy week I might be getting sick

Louie had a cold last week and over the weekend, and I woke up with a bit of a sore throat. I’m hopeful it’s not happening though, and I’m drinking lots of water. I tend to get sick around Easter for unknown reasons (seriously, my timehop app can prove it) but this time I’m determined not to. (It is completely out of my control.)

Well, after that literary start, welcome to today’s post. I thought I’d blogged about the weekend already, but that must have just been instagram. My weekend was pretty busy—this month is full of gigs and makeup lessons, so I had some of that over the weekend. We also had a dinner party at a friend’s house, dinner with Louie’s family, and best of all, a recital by Gil Shaham as part of the Great Artists Series at Washington University. As nice as it is to go to the symphony, it’s really awesome to see solo performances by world class musicians—it’s a different artistic experience entirely. I wish there was a monthly concert by some great string player! I guess you have to live in New York for that sort of thing.

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We also got to enjoy the amazing weather a bit. Louie and I took a hike in Broemmelsiek Park. This was in the book I use, but it turned out that the park had been changed quite a bit since the book was published. We still had a nice time hiking.

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This reminded Louie of Horseshoe Bend in Colorado.

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There are always lots of nice bridges in local parks.

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It was a muddy path, but nice to wander through the prairie and woods.

I also decided to go for a run…it had been quite some time. Last spring I’d hurt my knee a bit, and then I just stopped running. In any case, I thought it might be a good day to get back at it, and as a sign, when I opened Runkeeper there was a new program to follow to get back into running. So I’ve done two of the days, and it’s been a challenge, but fun. I seem to recall there was a period of time I enjoyed running, and maybe that would be a thing I could do again. I’ve been doing Walk At Home videos by Leslie Sansone, and Blogilates Videos with Cassey Ho, and I’m ready to run too.  I’ve made out a schedule, and especially towards summer I have more time.

I know people say you have to make time, but sometimes the time just isn’t there, or sometimes I just need to get some sleep more. I do occasionally work from early in the morning until late at night, and if there’s more than one or two days of that, I really start to value my sleep. Don’t we all? I know I’m hardly the busiest person in the world, but some days it does seem like it! Other days are like today, where I have the morning off to get caught up on work, practice, and work out AND I’m done teaching by 7:15, in time for an “early” dinner and an evening to relax a bit.

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The students have their annual Music Club Festival this weekend. I’ve got 9 performing, and we’ve been working hard to get ready. I’m hopeful that they will be successful! I also have two doing Solo and Ensemble this weekend, but that’s through their schools so at least I don’t have to do anything more. Sometimes it seems like more trouble than it’s worth to do these events, but I do think the kids learn a lot and it’s a good goal to work towards. I don’t do group lessons and only a few of the students have orchestra at their schools (not many in the city have that opportunity), so it’s hard to keep them motivated.

Between that, various church services, two concerts Friday (noon and evening), teaching, and a band gig at the Schlafly Tap Room Saturday night, I’m definitely hoping I’m not getting sick, as this is a busy two weeks with excellent health. But I’ll manage either way: I always do! The weather is gorgeous, spring is definitely here, and there is less than a month left until college classes are done! (To me, that means summer is here Smile )

Cat

So much voting!

There was another election today, so I went and voted. This time I took Louie with me and told him how to vote (no seriously I did. He and I share similar political views but he hadn’t done any research at all so I told him what I knew and suggested who to vote for and why.) We do a lot of voting here! (Last month was the primary for some of today’s elections. I’m hopeful that we don’t have to vote again for a little while…)

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like maybe I do know what I’m doing with this whole teaching things. For one of my jobs I have to be observed every two years and the observation went quite well. I think I’m getting better at teaching college age students and started having some new ideas for how to push them more and how to work with my music majors and making a 4 year plan for them rather than working piece by piece. I didn’t have my bullet journal with me for brainstorming, and in fact, haven’t used it in awhile. I think I’d better dust it off and get to it, as that is a good way to have ideas.

I go through phases with planning. I’m always gungho at the beginning of years and semesters but then I taper off. As I’m nearing the last month of the semester I’m thinking ahead to next fall and what worked and what can be improved. As always, more relaxing and telling myself that yes, I know how to do this, and no, music lesson scheduling may be a challenge but no one will die if they don’t get a lesson in. I struggle to find the balance between pushing students to perfect pieces, and pushing them to learn the gist of a piece and move on. That’s one of the things I want to focus on…I love getting students to perfect and polish music, because they generally don’t want to, but that is where the real learning comes in. Yet, there is a benefit to playing more pieces than you perfect and gaining a wider repertoire of pieces that you kind of know and can return to.

We had a nice weekend. Friday night we saw the Mark Giuliana Quartet at Jazz at the Bistro with friends. We ate dinner there too since I was pressed for time—they have some decent food—not great, but decent. Saturday night we went to the Symphony to see Karen Gomyo play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (one of my all time favs!) We wanted to do a hike during the day Saturday but it was raining all day and that didn’t sound fun. Sunday I had makeup lessons and a quartet concert. I had a headache and felt tired most of the day so after that I just came home and relaxed.

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We’ve been trying to rewatch all of Game of Thrones before the new season starts, so we worked on seeing a few episodes. (Spoiler: we aren’t going to make it, so then we’ll have to decide whether to wait to watch new episodes until we catch up and try to avoid spoilers, or just confuse ourselves further.) I would say we only end up watching 4 to 7 episodes of television a week, so it is hard to get through too much at once. It’s amazing how much I’d forgotten about the show though, and rewatching it certainly reminds me of small details.

Sunday was also the one year anniversary of the day we got Muriel! What a fun day and a great decision. She and Miles have been hours of entertainment and have really invigorated my instagram account.

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Sometimes I think that Muriel might think it’s the one year anniversary of her being kidnapped, the way she’s always trying to get out the door. But I think she’s got a decent life! We even got her a friend!

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You see that cut on Louie’s cheek? That was from Miles. Do not try to give Miles a zerbert without looking into his eyes. And then trust what you see.

Random thoughts

Another Friday already

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I feel like the time is flying by! How is it Friday already?

This week has been a little less busy because a few students are out of town for their spring breaks. There were three different weeks this month of spring breaks, and so each week a few were missing. It’s been nice, but I’ll be eager to be back to full teaching capacity next week.

I’ve been taking advantage of the slightly less busy days to get other things done. I’ve done all my annual doctor checkups, gotten both of my violin bows rehaired, and changed my strings. I realized I hadn’t gotten a bow rehair since the summer, right before my luthier moved to Bulgaria to retire. So I had to find somebody new. When I first moved to St Louis I let my partner at the time handle those things, but when I got divorced I felt great pride in establishing my own relationship with my luthier here. I think I’d let myself get down and feel like I wasn’t a real performer…I won’t go into that all, but suffice it to say, I’m still dealing with imposter syndrome and wondering how much of my personality is really ME and my wants and needs and all those things one struggles with…but I got my own bows rehaired and will continue to do so. I get to decide things for myself, and I am a good violinist, and I am worth doing things for. (And Louie is always supportive, even when I forget that he might be.)

That paragraph might not even make sense to non-musicians. A luthier is the person who repairs and maintains violins and bows. Things need to be done on a regular basis in order to keep your instrument in tip-top shape!

Since I have this summer’s vacations all planned, naturally I started brainstorming for next summer. I have ideas. Then again, I shouldn’t complain about time going too fast if I can’t stay in the summer I’m in! But I want to go to Europe…I get so inspired (and maybe a tad jealous) by my friends and colleague’s pictures of Europe…they go on vacations and they go on tours and live there…and I want to go back. So I think I shall plan on that for next summer, and Louie and I will save up for something fun there.

Thank you for your comments on my last post, about how to tell people what it is that I do. Just to say: I appreciate your suggestions. I can’t say, yes, I’m in the symphony, because while on rare occasions in the past, I did sub on a few things, I’m not in the symphony, and they no longer call since my ex is a member of the group. (Yes, that’s why, and even though yes, I took the sub audition again, and actually got onto the list by my own merit, they have never called. That’s how it is. That’s the music world for you, I guess! ) And if I tell people I am a professional violinist, they ask am I in the symphony. If I tell them exactly what I do, they still ask, and they still give me that look of pity. I have tried a variety of tactics, and they all seem to fail. I will continue trying, though, and try to have more confidence in my voice as I answer. And the truth is: for some people, my answers are enough, and they just accept it, and I just need to accept that a certain percentage of people will always be rude about my occupation.

So I’d better get my lunch before I have to go teach a few college students.  We went to Union Loafers last night and there are leftovers!

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And, it’s been about one year since we got Muriel!

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I have been watching my timehop app to see the exact date, and I think it is Sunday, but we’ll see for sure!

The weather is warm, the birds are out, things are looking up. I do feel like warmer weather gives me more energy and a more positive attitude, what about you?