I just found out about Statigram.  It tells you about your stats on instagram (follow me @hannahviolin, or don’t, because I totally post my "best" work here on the blog).  I think this photo pretty much sums up everything about me.

Yep. One sarcastic text convo with Sarah, two pictures of my cat, my dad on a bike, and me in my wedding dress, laughing.  What else is there?

Statigram actually suggested I should open the email this was sent in on my iPhone and then instagram the photo.  That may have been the greatest suggestion ever.  Here’s the result of that.

Now it looks OLD and even more awesome!  You’re welcome.

That’s a line that Don Draper said in tonight’s Mad Men.  Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to give you any spoilers.  But I sat there, and I thought, what would I do?  Perhaps I haven’t been as happy lately as I’d like.  What would change that?  I thought about a whole bunch of different things, things that I enjoy, things that I think I’d enjoy…

(From our concert Friday night.  I’m the one holding my head ridiculously high on the far left.  I am guessing I was leading the bow?)

I thought, well, it’s the violin.  It’s always the darned violin.  Nothing beats playing the violin.

Well, let me be most specific.  Nothing beats playing Mahler.  Mahler Symphony no. 3.  If I could do anything, that’s what I’d do.  Or Mahler Symphony no. 2.  But I’d prefer 3, thanks.

Edited to add:  Just found out my wedding was blogged about on another blog called "Time to Drink Champagne".

Blogging is a funny thing.  I started blogging many years ago, because I like to write, and I like to write about myself, and I don’t mind people reading it (to an extent).  I blogged on a variety of platforms, and finally have ended up here.  Who knows where this will take me, but the past couple years of blogging have been fun, and I’ve met some neat people through it.

I read a lot of blogs as well, and my favorite bloggers are the ones who share quite a bit of their lives and seem to do it in an authentic and real manner.  But which blogs are my favorite changes over time.  Sometimes it’s because a blogger seems to have "sold out" and is only writing about stuff to increase page views. Other times it’s because a blogger is still writing about her life but I no longer have enough in common to care.  As a blogger myself, I struggle with what to write, how much to share (particularly about other people in my life), and how not to be that interested in how many people are reading my blog.

That’s the thing, though.  I really do want people to read my blog.  I love writing it, I love my life, I love writing about my life, I love attention, ergo, of course I want people to read my blog.  That being said, I don’t really want them to talk to me about my blog…that makes me feel uncomfortable.  A simple acknowledgement is fine, or an email, tweet, something NOT in person, about myblog, but when a friend, or worse, acquaintance, says, oh I really enjoyed your blog post the other day and then wants to discuss it further…sometimes that makes me want to crawl under a rock.  I mean, after all, isn’t blogging about myself one of the most overindulgent, selfish activities possible?  Let’s just talk about ME.  I may love doing it, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still have a little shame.  Hence the rock crawling. 

I do try to be fairly authentic in my writing.  I can assure you that the dry sense of humor (oh, yes, much of what I say is sarcastic) is truly ME and that I possess as much of that in real life as I do on the blog, if not more.  But there is definitely some hyperbole, exaggeration, understatement, overstatement, and naturally I do not tell you everything that I do in life.  That would be just crazy.  Chris gets annoyed enough at me for what I say about him, and I get enough phone calls from my mother concerned about this or that…of course I censor.  You have to. 

Here’s a little confession, though, readers.  I do care who reads this.  I like to know who is reading it…to an extent.  And I secretly (no longer secret) want more people to comment on my blog!  So, if you are reading…take a minute…leave a comment HERE on the blog…and tell me what you think.  How ridiculous am I that I write about myself and my life and expect people to be entertained by me?  Or alternately, what do you think about blogging?  Or HI, INTRODUCE YOURSELF IF YOU HAVEN’T BEFORE.

(note:  I wanted to break up the writing so I inserted pictures of me drinking on our honeymoon in between the paragraphs.  Related?  Yes and no.)

My sister sent me this the other week.  Oh, and sorry, Leslie, I realized this week has gone by and I haven’t called you back.  Maybe today!

But really, we’re talking life and death, and you try ONE time to get out of the freezing water, Mr. DiCaprio?  When I was younger, my cousins and I used to spend many an afternoon playing in my grandparent’s pond.  They had this large intertube, and we spent HOURS trying to get four of us (Nathan, Nick, said sister Leslie, and myself) all in the one intertube without flipping.  It was a delicate procedure, involving lining up just right and precise timing.  Nonetheless, when I watched Titanic the other week with Leslie, we realized that getting on that door was something that we had trained for our entire childhood.

That and the Amazing Race, which we should still totally do someday.  Between my iron stomach and our impressive physical stamina (plus, as super hot sisters we’d totally be fan favorites) we would be unstoppable.  We also are excellent with directions, making fools of ourself, and are really good at having horrific fights and then four minutes later acting like absolutely nothing has happened.  You know, typical sibling stuff, right?

Remnants of the wedding cake…iPhone photo.  You can see the design still!  (I can see your house from up here!)

Oh, and yesterday afternoon I got retweeted by “Talk of the Nation.”  It was one of the highlights of my day!

If I recall, Neal was talking about baseball and just seemed really…EAGER.  I was delighted.

(That and an amazing dinner at Trattoria Marcella that I may blog about later, I LOVE that restaurant.  If it weren’t for dinner last night I totally would have had an excellent low carb diet day and might not have gained five pounds overnight.  Oh well.) Edited to correct the tenses since I wrote the post Thursday night for publishing on Friday.  I’m so tired.

We miss you @duckierose!  Hope your trip is going well.  Get back to the states soon to entertain us with your highly inappropriate jokes, tweets, blog entries, emails, you name it!

Concert tonight:  Friday, 8 pm, Tavern of Fine Arts.  It’s a repeat of the other week’s Chamber Project St Louis concert, so if you missed it, you should come see it tonight!  I think I’m going to wear the polka dot dress again—I wanted to wear it the other week but it was too cold.

I leave you with this as part of my “Kids say the darnedest things feature”:

(Yes, Vanessa is Canadian, why do you ask?)

A friend jokingly accused me of having "baby fever" yesterday.  I don’t, honestly.  I am just super excited for Laura and Jon, since they wanted a baby, and now they have one!  After all, they just grow up and become really sarcastic and eventually go to Oberlin and become vegan, am I right?

(Carrie, don’t get annoyed.  You were a cute baby.)

I do get a lot of comments as a violin teacher, and as a now married woman, about when I’ll be having my own babies.  People say, Oh, you’ll understand when you have your own!  or "You’ll be a better violin teacher after you have your own children" (that made me almost homicidal) or simply ask, when are you having children?  And in my facebook newsfeed it seems that just about everybody I went to college with is now a mother or is pregnant (as in, in the last week I swear at least a dozen people have announced pregnancies).  I’ve gotten facebook messages saying, congratulations on your wedding, next comes babies!  I’ve had parents (of my students) tell me that I should have 4 boys, that it is the greatest. 

Chris with our baby

The thing about baby pressure is this:  it will never end.  It will absolutely never end.  Once I got married, people no longer ask me when I am getting married.  Once you have a baby, people don’t stop.  They just keep bugging you "when are you going to have a brother or sister for your child to play with?"  Plus, I consider asking a woman when she is going to get pregnant fairly insensitive.  What if the woman has been trying with no luck, or has perhaps had a miscarriage or two that people just don’t know about?

But I do the same thing to my friends!  I’m such a hypocrite. Right after I got married I found myself "joking" to people in serious relationships about whether they’d be next.  At the gym there is a day care room, and if Mike starts waving or smiling at one of the kids I tell him I can hear his biological clock ticking. 

The other question we could visit is why this bothers me.  Why do I care whether people think I want a baby or not?  But we’ll leave that one for the therapists!