I’ll take a break from (not very quickly) writing trip reports to writing about my day to day life as is. And technically yesterday was the first day of school, but today is the first day for some people.

The last few weeks before school started went by quickly, and I didn’t get very much done. I had some high hopes for a few home projects, but I found myself just wanting to catch up on my reading and podcast listening.

One thing Louie and I both did that has been fun is we joined a gym. We have been debating this for a little while, and we decided to join the Wash U gym, which is a great deal. You have to be careful about when you go because it gets horribly busy, but the first few weeks were great. Yesterday the students were back, but I found mid morning still wasn’t too bad. When we toured the gym the student made sure to inform us of all the pickleball options and also pointed out that most faculty show up early, around 6 am to get their workouts done before the work day. We are not most faculty, I guess!

Other fun things: Leslie stayed for two nights en route from New York to Arizona. We had food, chatted, and took a long bike ride on the Katy Trail.

Her cats lived in our music room for the time. My cats were upset by this, as you would expect.

I went to an art class at Bowood Farms.

Muriel enjoying the couch on another day.

We’ve also been to an opera and out for dinner for friends, and I’ve met up with a variety of friends for lunches and brunch. So, it’s not that I haven’t done anything at the end of my break, it’s just that my constant guilt of say, not having completely finished decorating the house kicked in.

I am looking forward to a good year! I am limiting my new students, in fact, not taking any new students at home for now. My schedule is pretty good and I have plenty of students, and the nice thing is that I only teach past 8 on one night instead of 3, so that’s better for getting to bed early, plus it’s better for the nights I have to reschedule for rehearsal: less students to reschedule. So either I get free time/more sleep, or simply less stress. And when I reschedule, it doesn’t always work out so I often lose that teaching income, so my hope is that having slightly less students still works out well.

Performance wise, there’s nothing terribly exciting in the immediate future, but more fun stuff later in the year. Maybe I’ll keep you posted!

The other fun thing later is that I finally caved and got an apple watch. This fits in with my gym going: I’m working on improving my fitness so we can do a bigger hike in Europe next summer, in addition to healing my feet, ha! So having a watch is a great way to monitor my heart rate and activities, but I learned yesterday that it picks up violin playing and counts it as steps, oops! So from here on when I play unless I want it to appear that I have walked extra miles, I have to turn off fitness tracking for it. I wish there were another way, but that’s what the internet tells me is the best solution: do you have any better ones? And putting it on another wrist isn’t an option, and I’d rather not just take it off.

It’s a stormy day in St Louis and so that brings to mind the tornado from last year, the day before we left for vacation. Oh, wait, that’s today too…here’s hoping no tornados and that our flight gets underway tomorrow morning with no problems.

Things have finally been settling down: I wrapped up teaching for the semester on Thursday, and had my last concert of the spring yesterday. I even had a full day off on Friday, it was GLORIOUS (I got a lot done, but also got out for a lot of nice walks and had time to read), and today is a day off too. Before that I hadn’t had a day off since March 8–there’s something about having nothing to do on the calendar, isn’t there? And it was a particularly busy spring, though perhaps a bit less busy than the fall had been.

In any case, today is packing and errands, folding laundry, and getting ready for Japan! We are headed out to Japan, flying into Tokyo and visiting many other places including Kyoto, Nagoya, Takayama, and Matsumoto. And don’t worry, I’ll tell you about it when we return.

Last night after my concert I met some friends at Sakatanoya Revolving Sushi & Ramen Bar on the Loop. There is a sushi train that goes around and you can choose things from that (different prices based on different plate colors) or you can order from the menu, which is a tablet, and then they bring your food via robot. It was a lot of fun, though a little distracting, haha!

Last weekend my parents visited for a few days and we had a nice brunch with Louie’s parents and then went to the Botanical Gardens. We also went to Noodle Story for dinner with them, and that was nice. Not my favorite noodle place on the Loop (sorry that’s Corner 17) but it was a nice time. You order from a tablet there too, and I recommend ordering dishes less spicy unless you really love spice. Or I’m just getting to be an old white lady who can’t handle spice?

Louie and I tried out Zhanglala Beef Noodles recently as well, and really enjoyed it. I had the pickled beef soup and it was great. We also went to Katie’s Pizza with a mutual college student who had just graduated, and enjoyed some morels there, though the morels portions were super skimpy!

TV wise we’ve been watching together: Ted Lasso (finally started, way behind the curve), Our Friends and Neighbors, Widow’s Bay, and Big Mistakes. I didn’t love Big Mistakes, it was okay but there was a lot of characters just yelling at each other. The other three are recommended, though Widow’s Bay is not all out yet, which we wish we had realized before starting, so now we have to wait!

Reading wise: I got into the Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson. I also recently read Kin by Tayari Jones, The Keeper by Tana French, and A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst. While none of these are must reads, I enjoyed all of them. Looking back more, since I don’t think I said, in March I read Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, and Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and then in February read Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, Breast and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, and The Black Wolf by Louise Penny.

I really enjoyed the Louise Penny (Inspector Gamache is a great series) and the rest: nothing super sticks out though Butter was probably the most unique of the books. I was trying to read books by Japanese authors and thoroughly enjoyed doing so. If you don’t read Tana French, start with In the Woods which is so good and then you’ll keep trying to get that magic back, but her other works are worth reading.

I have some books loaded onto my kindle for the plane as well as podcasts and such. It will be the longest flight I’ve ever taken! Follow me on Instagram for pictures along the way, or watch this space.

This has been a rough school year: I have been incredibly busy, with entirely too many students. This is a problem of my own making, because I always think, well, what if this new student ends up being my most favorite student, and I also think, if I don’t teach them, who will, what if they can’t find a teacher. I have to let go of these thoughts for a bit though, because my goal for the next school year is to NOT accept any new students and pare my schedule down a little bit by attrition. I don’t actually think this will cause me to make less money, but it will help me be a little less stressed out. TIME WILL TELL.

Truthfully, being too busy doesn’t really stress me out. It’s if the “busy” stuff is stressful, i.e. difficult performances or things like that. Otherwise, it’s easy to go from thing to thing, but it’s annoying to realize you ate all of your meals in the car or that you haven’t had a night off to relax or a morning to sleep in (not that I can sleep in anyways, but you know, to relax) in weeks. I’m beyond needing a day off, what would I do with a whole day off work anyway, but what about an evening off?

The good news is: summer is near! Unbelievably yesterday was the last day of classes at Wash U, so I just have a few more makeup lessons to teach as well as some juries to listen to, and I’ll be done until late August. That’s about 12 hours of my life that will be free again, which is going to be huge. You might even get the last installments of my Morocco trip on the blog in the next week, if you are lucky.

I love teaching at Wash U–it’s fun, the students are great–but it’ll be great to have some time off. The semester really flies by though: it’s just 14 weeks of lessons, and boom, done. So for the whole year that’s 28 lessons out of 52 weeks. Seems very part time, doesn’t it?

As far as my private students: we had Music Club Festival last weekend and next weekend is the recital, with about 20 students performing. We have another week of lessons after that, a makeup week (I do one makeup lesson for the whole year, though they can rearrange into empty spaces through the year if they want), and then it’s vacation for a bit before summer lessons.

Socially I haven’t been doing much, but Louie and I have gone to a few cultural performances: in the past two weeks we went to two plays (The End of the World Cabaret with Upstream Theater and The Half Life of Marie Curie with the St Louis Actors Studio), and a concert at the Sheldon with Edgar Meyer and Christian McBride. I did manage to get breakfast yesterday morning with a friend and have some lunch dates on the calendar for the next week. I also plan to get my first pedicure of the spring. Things really are tapering off and summer will be here, and then I’ll say to myself, how did I manage that schedule in the spring?

Louie and I are planning to get out for a hike today. We did a short bike ride last weekend on the Riverfront Trail: it was my first time out on the bike in several months, since late summer or early fall I think, and I felt it the next two days every time I sat down! I don’t know if I mentioned but I had hurt my foot somehow in March and have been letting it heal. It’s finally feeling a bit better–I’ve been always wearing supportive shoes and that has helped a bunch–so now I’m trying to get back into building up my walking so that we are ready for our Japan trip.

I know many people have jobs that don’t change seasonally. To me that must be so weird, because my job is SO seasonal and the ebb and flow of the year is such an integral part of it. How does your job work?

I’d been dreading/looking forward to yesterday for some time. I played concertmaster in a small orchestra for a performance of Swan Lake with a visiting ballet company, two rehearsals and a performance all in one day. Dreading: long day, big solos (stress!). Looking forward to: amazing music, big solos (fun!). Yes, I know I put big solos on there twice.

Anyway, today is weird, because it’s like, that’s over, it went really well, I was pleased with my performance and the level of preparation I was able to do with the time I have, and it was really fun. And then, now today is a normal day, and it’s kind of weird. My fingertips hurt though.

On other notes, I can’t believe next week is the last week of classes at my college job. WHAT. And then just over a month until we go to Japan. We have a terrific itinerary planned, and I am just really so excited about it. I am also excited that some of the busy gig time is finally winding down, yesterday pretty much capped off the insanity. And this weekend is the NFMC Festival for my students–only 5 are performing this year, 2 backed out due to not being or not feeling prepared. It’s been a tough year for my students, everybody is so busy and stressed out and I’m not sure I’m doing the best job helping them through it.

But summer is almost here, and with it, always, some regrouping. The summer is pretty low-key work wise, hardly anything outside of teaching right now, though I know more will pop up. We are always traveling more than in the past, and I’m THRILLED about it (obsessively researching as well) but it leaves less time for work. As I near my “late 40s” I am really thinking about what do I want to do the time I have left in my career, as well as simply, the time I have left, whatever that is. I’ve been wanting to travel more, so that’s one thing I’m doing, and I’m thrilled about it, beyond excited about our summer trips, and other plans. I’m also terrified, that fuel shortages will derail it, it wouldn’t be the first time the orange menace ruined our summer plans (COVID), and who knows what will happen.

How is April going for you? Did you survive Tax Day?

It was SLEETING when I left my gig last night! Truly March comes in like a lion, and hopefully out like a lamb. Let this apply to world events as well, please.

I know you are eagerly awaiting the remainder of the story of my Morocco trip, and I plan to finish another post this week, if not two. It’s been a crazy two weeks: I was playing Phantom of the Opera at the Fox Theater, which adds 8 shows a week to my schedule (in addition to the rehearsals at the start), so my life has been, shall we say, a bit full. But we finished last night, and it was a fun experience, and I’d like to say that this week is all full of free time to relax and catch up on everything, but no, I have two concerts this week also. But I have more evenings free, so life will return as normal.

The weather has been typically insane here: one day was like late spring, highs over 70. And then sleeting last night, as I mentioned. It is so important to check the weather before leaving the house, and pack a jacket just in case, probably.

I feel like we all spent a lot of time distracting ourselves from the horrors that the current president is inflicting on the world. It’s hard.