Whew! We made it!

I have to say, this fall was absolutely over the top busy. I am not sure how I survived. (The usual way, organization, lots of screaming, no friends, etc.)

But it’s my week off, and it is GLORIOUS. Today was my second day in a row of sleeping with no alarm set, and I am better at it than I thought I would be.

Okay, what happened in the meantime? Well, I hosted a cookie exchange party with about 15 people, and it was really fun! It was a school night, so it had a finite end time, but we had a lovely time drinking Wassail Punch, eating spinach artichoke dip, taste testing a few cookies, filling some tins with a large variety, and catching up (of course!). I ended up with a large tin full of terrific cookies, and gave a few away. Some are still frozen, so they will be doled out over the next few weeks. I will try to open up my guest list next year to non musician friends as well, but I wanted to keep things simple and have everybody already know each other!

The next day I finished up at my before school class, and though I still have to submit my grades, it has been really glorious not getting up so early. Except for Christmas Eve, when I decided to pile on and take entirely too many gigs! It was a festive and memorable day though, with five church services at 3 churches, a lovely dinner at Louie’s mom’s house, and more Christmas music than you could shake a stick at. Unless you have a lot of sticks.

Another enjoyable gig was playing with Mannheim Steamroller. Interestingly, my parents had just seen the show in Shipshewana, Indiana, and then I got to play with the show here! I chatted with the traveling violinist a bit and she had nice things to say about Shipshewana, of course.

The thing about playing a bunch of concerts is that it is utterly exhausting BUT it is also quite fun to see colleagues and chat at each gig. So it ends up being more social than you might think. Teaching from home is great, but I don’t get as much interaction with adults and certainly not from adults who are not paying for my time, haha! So although it was an exhausting month/months, there wasn’t much I would change.

I do have a few thoughts though, which are 1) I need to be more cautious about taking jobs that conflict with teaching. I ended up doing a lot of rescheduling and then having to turn down other jobs that conflicted but might have had less teaching conflicts and 2) if I am hosting Christmas next year I will likely only want to play one Christmas Eve service. The last one I played was at Ladue Chapel, which is one of my favorite churches to play at: the musician director is amazing, and the people are so warm and friendly, and it always ends up being a wonderful musical experience. Plus it reminds me of my home church(in South Carolina) more than any other places I play at, which makes it feel extra special. The rest, it was fabulous, and I can’t wait to see what the new year brings!

I will be enjoying my week “off” though: I used quotations because I made a rough schedule/to-do list for the week, but it’s really a week off because I don’t have gigs or teaching! I do have some household chores to take care of and some practicing to do–January is of course busier than ever, and I’m playing four different chamber music programs during January and February (only 1 in February) in addition to a show at the Fox where I double violin/viola (Funny Girl) and we only just got the music. So there’s work to be done, but it’s all very manageable and hopefully fun. (I say that now, we’ll see, hahahahahah!)

We are in no rush to take down the holiday decorations: I think it’ll get done after I return from Phoenix (I’m taking a trip over New Year’s.) It was great having two trees, though that means extra decorations to take down, less fun. We have plenty of storage space though.

My mom sent this violin snow globe as a gift. It also plays music.

Christmas Day was pretty low key. Louie and I don’t really exchange gifts, but he brought me a few things from his trip, and I gave him a “Birds of the National Parks” Calendar for his office. I made cranberry rolls with orange icing, and we watched Christmas episodes of the Great British Baking Show for a bit. Later in the day we went out for Chinese food with his family, and then we ended the night still chipping away at Suits, hoping to finish the show at SOME POINT. There are SO many seasons!

Anyway, that’s it for now. It was a low key holiday after too many performances: 16 different performances/church services in December, not counting rehearsals!

This has been the busiest December I can recall. Certainly since before the pandemic, so that’s something. I’m averaging 55-60 hour work weeks, which is insane and unsustainable…thankfully things are coming to a close soon and I’ll get some breathing time.

We haven’t been doing a whole lots of social activities here, as you can imagine. In a way some of my concerts are social as often there is downtime to chat with colleagues, so that’s been nice. I’m doing a cookie party in a few days, and I’m looking forward to getting a massage later this week. I’m finishing up teaching at Wash U on Tuesday, at my morning school on Wednesday, and at home on Thursday. And then I get a break for a few weeks, and I can’t wait!

I read some blogs and see people doing parties, and cookie decorating, and seeing concerts and shows, and I’m so happy for you all! I’m the one playing for all of those things (well, not cookie decorating.). I’ve played Messiah with two choirs, played with the 442’s (a local band), played at a variety of churches, played with backup tracks for a solo gig at a corporate event, even did a wedding (no Christmas music at all, crazy!). We did manage to celebrate Hanukkah and had a nice time with that, and I even accomplished a completely insane week where I added up approximately 70 hours of work. December pays for some other months, really, though it’s gotten to the point that I wonder which months that is. It’s possible I need to cut back, but I’m also having a good time, other than being tired.

Now, it’s ME so I’ve also done some baking, with more planned. I’m still getting used to my “new”oven. I finally ordered an oven thermometer and plan to use it later today to see what’s really going on: the oven definitely runs hot, but the other issue is that it’s not totally consistent through the space. Our old house had a wonderful convection oven, which we have been tempted on more than one occasion to bring over here (the old house isn’t sold, though a friend is currently living there.) I have had various successes and failures with baking, some due to my errors, some due to oven errors (and probably me too), and one due to misreading and putting the dish in a smaller pan than asked for AND overbaking it. Sigh.

These cookies didn’t spread at all, but they are delicious and fudgy and I love them. I did have some spreading issues, which makes me think that either my baking soda/powder isn’t working anymore (getting new of both to be sure) or I’m adding too much flour (though the dough has felt okay for some of the recipes) or who knows. I’m also thinking the oven being weird doesn’t help, but hopefully I can figure out what to do with that. Nonetheless the above cookies were delicious and some are still left…(actually many.)

Miles and Muriel really love the radiators when the heat is on. They are going to be so disappointed when spring comes! They spend most of their time going from one radiator to the next, together or separately. There’s no specific rhyme or reason to it, but I’m sure it makes sense to them.

I have a church service to play for this morning (Vaughan-Williams at Ladue Chapel), some lessons to teach, and a concert this evening at another church. Last weekend I had four different performances with rehearsals, which was a bit much. Seriously, this December has been crazy. I’ve said no to a ton of stuff too, which I always hate doing, but I’m happy to be so busy! In a way. Louie has been crazy as well, with finishing up classes, getting ready to teach a winter break class, and getting a paper ready to submit. We are both workaholics, which is a fundamental part of our relationship, I suppose. We talk about what is sustainable about this, and what might work for the future to slow down, but he has no intention of retiring early, and he seemed surprised when I suggested that I planned to retire at 65. I guess one can never tell the future, but sometimes I look at this and say, hmm, 20 more years and then I’m done!

We’ll see! How is your December going? Do you find this is the first year that things are REALLY back in full swing with events and parties and concerts? Are you leaning into the holiday craziness or stepping back and trying to focus on just a few things?

One more thing: I’ve been listening to various podcasts about life balance, organization and such, and I’m thinking about my goals for 2024. I haven’t been setting specific goals or intentions for a few years (pandemic mind) but there are some things I would like to accomplish in the near future, and maybe writing them down and actually, you know, working towards them, would be a good idea. Perhaps I’ll do a goals blog post, with the ones that I would feel comfortable sharing publicly.

I think it would likely make more sense to have more time off BEFORE Christmas, i.e. swap Christmas and New Years, to get ready for the holiday. In fact, that should go for all holidays. What ends up happening is that we get so busy and stressed out leading up to the holiday that by the time it gets here we are just so tired, and perhaps don’t enjoy it as much as we’d want.

That being said, I’m enjoying everything, I’m just ready for a break. I hear the Senate is off, but the rest of us are still working. There’s two more days of school, and I’m working until Christmas Eve as usual. I do have Christmas Eve Eve off though! I’m playing with Mannheim Steamroller tomorrow, and I have two more early morning classes this year.

The weekend has been fun. We went out to Nixta on Friday night, which was nice. We’ve watched entirely too much Yellowstone (for us that’s like 4 episodes over two nights, binge tv watchers we are not), and we watched two sets at Jazz at the Bistro last night. We had bought tickets because Sean Jones was playing, and then it turned out that a friend of my sister Carrie’s, a fabulous pianist named Aaron Diehl was playing as well. We loved the performance and had a great time.

This morning I’m getting ready for friends to come over for a little brunch. It’s basically my quartet, except the personnel has changed a bit since Eliana had her baby and we also haven’t been meeting anymore. But we have a concert with the St Louis Chamber Chorus this afternoon and we thought it would be great fun to get together beforehand. I made an egg casserole with spinach, mushrooms, and goat cheese, and the others are bringing things. (I’m also setting out a few other things, a small cheese ball that was in the freezer from cheese ball making last weekend, and some dilly snack mix I made for sharing and snacking, plus probably fruitcake cookies.)

Tonight we are meeting friends to walk down Candy Cane Lane, which we have never done. And this week we are having dinner with Louie’s family, hanging out with my friend April (woo hoo!!!!) and of course, getting ready for the holidays. We are traveling south, and I’m excited.

Since the holidays are coming up and you might have more time to read, a few recommendations:

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo. I almost put this one down after starting because I found the writing style annoying. I’m glad I didn’t because I ended up really enjoying it. So many characters, so different than myself, such a great read. Really really good.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult. It’s a novel set during the beginning of the pandemic, which is…maybe too soon right now, but it’s really good.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Light, fun, unique, a little sci fi.

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. Strange and different. Cloning is bad?

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty. Makes you feel glad your family is less dysfunctional. Communication is important!

That’s it for now! I’d better finish getting the house ready for guests and bake an egg casserole.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! We had a lovely day off work and today we are going to do some outdoor activities and visit a museum briefly before holing up inside again.

I didn’t blog earlier because I got into “holiday” mood which meant after I finished teaching I didn’t want to do anything on the computer. The whole month of December felt like just treading water getting to the end of the semester, and while no, things weren’t as busy as normal years, I was so tired of teaching online and really needed a break. I’m glad to be here, and I’m also glad I had a few Christmas gigs to play, either recorded or livestreaming in front of no congregation at the church.

December flew by, didn’t it? I was extra busy with some things at work, an online class and a writing gig I picked up. I also did a lot of baking, as you know, and then put a bunch of goodies into boxes for my parents, my siblings, and my aunt Connie who has been coming to our weekly zoom calls.

The postal service was destroyed by DeJoy though, and this meant that I couldn’t send “de Joy” before Christmas to my aunt or my brother, since they live too near Philadelphia. My parents, in small town South Carolina got their box in 5 days, my sister Carrie in New York in 1 week, and my sister Leslie in Phoenix in 9 days. The other two are “delayed” and sitting in processing centers. Priority mail flat-rate, y’all, and I worry this Christmas will be the final nail in the coffin as an excuse for the GOP to destroy the USPS for good. Just ask yourselves, why didn’t they hire more workers? They still could. They hired 50,000 extra seasonal workers, but why not more? There are millions upon millions out of work who might have loved a seasonal job for the USPS. Obviously that wasn’t enough people to do the work. I only hope my packages arrive in the next week or so, but I don’t know. I was pleased that the ones that were delivered arrived in good shape, however.

We finished celebrating Hanukkah and made latkes from scratch twice. I teach late, usually until 8 or 8:30 each night, and it gets dark here at 4:30-4:45 in December, which meant that we didn’t light the candles until I was done working. It was a nice ending to the night, and I also lit an electric menorah in the front since our candlelighting wasn’t able to be in a good window due to the house setup and the cats.

I kept teaching until the 22nd, mostly because 1) my school job went until then and 2) I have jury duty starting Jan 4 and wanted to start back teaching on the 6th and give two weeks vacation. Nobody was going anywhere really, though more students were traveling and seeing family than I would feel comfortable doing, but what can you do? Also I have my worries about jury duty and it was already canceled before and I feel like it has more reason to be canceled in January than ever, but I also don’t have a good doctor’s excuse to cancel it and I really just want to get it over with.

I played a livestream service on Christmas Eve and then had a late dinner of appetizers with Louie.

Shrimp cocktail and a cheese ball. I enjoyed this cheese ball but wished it were more cheddar-y, so I probably won’t make this exact recipe again. We also had some homemade (with alcohol) eggnog I’d made the night before. I fell into the aged eggnog rabbit hole on the internet and may be trying that next year…anybody do aged eggnog?

Louie and I decided not to exchange Christmas gifts (this is our general tradition) so that meant Christmas Day we had literally nothing to do… and it was glorious! We had a late brunch of bagels, smoked salmon, and french omelets, then watched TV all day while Louie worked on putting together a 3D printer for the house. We watched a few Christmas shows first, Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life, then watched a few episodes of the Great British Baking Show. We also talked with some family members and sent a lot of text messages.

I made a nice Christmas dinner for us of a Ground Beef Wellington, except with Impossible Beef, creamed spinach, a roasted vegetable salad, and a cranberry mostada. It all turned out really well except the spinach was super bland, which was disappointing as the recipe had looked really promising to me.

Then back to 3D printer assembling and I started watching Schitt’s Creek, which Louie had seen some of but I had only watched one episode. I think I must have watched 8 more episodes before going to bed! Somewhere in there we had dessert.

I don’t know what led to this, but Louie and I had been talking about fruitcake at some point, and I had been searching the internet and found there was this supposedly delicious fruitcake made by trappist monks in Missouri. So I bought one and it had been waiting until this moment.

You may have an idea of fruitcake being really bad or bricklike…this fruitcake wouldn’t have appealed to me as a kid, but it was delicious! Full of nuts, fruit, moist cake, and the aroma of rum or brandy or some combination. I thoroughly enjoyed my piece, and there will be more eaten in the future. Perhaps this is a new Christmas tradition.

Anyway, the next week stretches ahead. There isn’t much to do, is there, due to the pandemic. I have a few things I want to do around the house, and of course take down the Christmas decorations before school starts up, but I think I’ll leave them up through the New Year now, and continue enjoying the lights and such. I did do a little needlepoint yesterday and will likely do some of that again.

Happy Christmas to you, if you celebrate. Do you have some days off of work? What are you doing over the break? Did you celebrate the holidays in unusual ways this year?