Category Archives: Random thoughts

Hope, Random thoughts, Teaching

March Goes Out like a Lamb

This has been my “spring break” from one of my jobs, which has been nice. I’ve gotten to sleep in a bit, and a few students have missed so I’ve caught up on some admin tasks and other things I needed to do.

Over the weekend, we planned to do a nice long hike because there was excellent weather, but I ended up hurting my lower back and had to scratch that idea. I’ve been getting better, doing yoga videos and taking ibuprofen and such, and I think I’ll just keep doing some of the yoga going forward because it has been a lot of fun and feels good.

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We did go over to some friends for dinner Sunday night and enjoyed outdoor time with people not from our household, which…was missed. I miss seeing people, and really can’t wait. I’ll get my second shot in less than one week though, so it is only a little bit longer until I’m fully vaccinated.

I’ve been working on some things for my studio, some policies changes for fall that I am working on and will announce to them probably at the beginning of May, and figuring out a “return to in-person lessons” plan. After Louie and I are both fully vaccinated, in late April, it seems like it might be time to start trying to get back to it, if we wear masks and take reasonable precautions. If the kids can be in school, I think they can come to their lessons, if they and their parents want…after my household is fully vaccinated. I hope also that the kids’ parents will be vaccinated, but it shouldn’t matter too much if we are wearing masks, if I run a good air filter, and maybe even leave the windows open (at least a bit), and limit the number of students at one time.

So that’s all exciting, but strange. I assume I’ll have a mix of in-person and online students for a bit, so I’ll have to work on the logistics, but I think it’ll be wonderful to start returning to normalcy. That might mean that within a month I’ll have to start wearing real pants to teach with!

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I thought the sky yesterday looked really cool in my neighborhood.

I got a few more plants and things yesterday at Home Depot. I am trying to grow a few things in pots as well and spruce up the front of our house. It’s a little tricky, I realized, because we don’t get much sun in the front of the house, but lots in the back. There’s a lot to growing things and gardening, but I have been enjoying just trying my hand at it. I have some brainstorming ideas as well, such as making a wildflower area in our yard to attract bees and tearing down the horrible back porch we have (it is just awful, needs to be redone, but we don’t know if we want to redo it in the same way, so my latest idea is to demo it FIRST and then see what we miss about it, which I suspect will be, a way to get out the back door upstairs and nothing else.)

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The front of our house is in need of some TLC, some paint mostly, but a bit of concrete work, but I thought flowers would cover it up and make people think we care a little bit. That white splotching is where the red paint has worn off, and there’s some white paint peeling in the front, maybe these are things to look at this summer? Home ownership can be a constant time suck, I’ve realized, if you let yourself get bogged down by all the small things that are wrong. I really don’t want to spend all of my free time doing things around the house and would prefer to read, but I suppose a few things are okay.

Books!

Recently read:

Super Host by Kate Russo: I enjoyed this book quite a lot, though there was a gratuitous (in my opinion) sexual assault scene that happened to one of the characters (spoiler alert, simply for that, it isn’t graphic, but it just seemed unnecessary). Otherwise I thought it was well done, a unique novel set up, and felt modern.

Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins: nonfiction, a Black woman tracks down her family history and roots, a great read, very interesting and thought provoking, highly recommend.

(forgive me if I already told you the following, but I couldn’t find where I did)

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad: I cried a lot during this book, so just a warning, but it’s good. It’s a book about the author, the story of her getting sick, dealing with it and the aftermath. I felt a personal connection to the story of difficulties Suleika was going through because I met Louie shortly after his wife died of cancer, and it made me see a bit more how that might have felt, from a different point of view. I think that’s partly why I cried so much, but it was a good cry.

Between Sisters by Kristin Hannah: good! This was a bit longer ago so I forget exactly, but I liked it quite a lot.

Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende: good in a different way. I need to read more Isabel Allende.

How about you? Any books to recommend? Thoughts on protocols for returning to in-person lessons?

Random thoughts

Getting things done

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The other day I needed to go to the DMV because I need a real ID and my license is expiring soon. Errands are tough these days, right? I gathered all my documents and more (piece of advice for the DMV, always bring 2 to 3 more documents than you think because they won’t like a few of them and then you can try again). This errand took about 45 minutes, and then I realized I had some time and could check off some more errands. I haven’t done a good errand running morning since BEFORE, because of things being closed, or too crowded, or worries about getting sick, or all of those things.  So I went to get passport photos at a place, but it wasn’t open yet (too early in the morning) and then I drove around the block and saw that I could quickly get an oil change…it was a very productive morning and the only thing I have left to do with all of that now is mail in my passport, which means I should go to the Post Office to send it priority.

It’s funny how NORMAL I felt driving around doing things. It made me feel alive and hopeful that someday soon we can truly be back to normal, where if you need something at a shop you just head out and get it, or you make a list of 3-5 errands to run in a morning and get started, without worrying, do they have proper distancing procedures, will they even be open, will millions of people already be there?

There is hope! And light at the end of the tunnel, and all of the analogies one can make.

I had been putting off some other plans as well, waiting to decide what to do for my studio’s May Recital. And then it hit me: rent a pavilion at Tower Grove Park. I thought, oh they might already all be booked, what a great place to hang out in these times. But I was able to get one for the day I wanted (hopefully a day that will work for students) and I think it’ll be really fun. We’ll do an outdoor recital, we’ll hope for good enough weather, and the students will get to have interaction with the other students. I’ll figure out the mask rules later, and whether we can do a reception, and other details, but it’s long enough away that for now I just sent out a “Save the date” and I hope that most families will feel comfortable attending. I think many of the parents will be vaccinated by then so it should be a relatively safe, and in my opinion, very “worth it” activity.

So it’s been a productive week for me, and it feels good. It might be the typical spring feeling, of the weather warming up and wanting to come out of hibernation, but it might also be the feeling of hope and feeling like yes, we are going to make it, we just have to stick it out for another month or two and then we can live our lives again.

I’ve figured out my plans for how to do this whole career thing too, to keep teaching a bunch but not take every gig. I will take some though, but just more thoughtfully. It’s tempting to want to fill every blank space on the calendar, but I’ve definitely learned that blank space is good.

There you have it. Happy Friday to you all, can you believe it is another Friday already?

Quarantine, Random thoughts

Getting to that One Year Mark

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One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is anxiety and worrying. We all know worrying doesn’t help, right? But being worried in order to prepare can. I’ve mentioned my timehop app here before, when I read what I posted or took pictures of 1 year ago on the day, 2 years, etc. 1 year ago yesterday I posted about how I was preparing for the pandemic, buying canned goods, toilet paper, etc. Turned out it was a pretty good idea.

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But not everything I bought was useful. I bought some jugs of water, and I didn’t need them, but I would have in Texas the other week, so I have no regrets about my water purchases. And we’ve done well, we have been fortunate enough to stay well, though at great personal sacrifice. We haven’t seen family inside or my family in person since late summer (and not much before that, but in late summer with most of us being careful it seemed a good risk.) We haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since March. Since my sister and her kids left in late summer, I haven’t been inside unmasked with anyone except Louie. I can’t remember the last time we did something social, because it got too cold to want to be outside and it felt like an unnecessary risk. I don’t quite know how we will reenter the world.

I’m thankful we have stayed well though, and I hope we continue to until we are able to get vaccinated. I don’t know what happens then. I don’t know how to be social anymore, and I don’t know how to have conversations with people that aren’t about teaching or COVID. It’ll be a strange re-entry when it happens.

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I was thinking about other times I’d been stressed about something that seemed silly. One time was on a hike in Zion a few years ago. We hiked up to Observation Point and it was a beautiful hike, scary in parts. When we got to the top we ate our lunch and took a few pictures, but the sky looked a little scary so we headed down. It seemed silly to be so worried about the weather, but then towards the end of the hike the skies opened up and it poured rain. We got on the shuttle back to our campground and it was a deluge. Rain, hail, thunder and lighting. We got to the campground and made a run for our car. I recall sitting in the car, listening to the clunk, clunk, thump of the hail on the windshield, the roof, the hood.

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The view from Observation Point.

You can read my original blog post about this experience here, but here’s what you should know. I was thinking about this hike yesterday, and remembering being stressed on the way down about the weather, and thinking, oh, that was silly, why do I overreact? And truthfully, I should have just enjoyed the walk anyway, but I was stressed because we were hurrying to get down, and the truth was it was a great idea! It was a terrible storm, and I didn’t hear of anybody getting hurt during it, but it was terrible and dangerous and we were glad to have not been outside in much of it. My anxiety was well-placed!

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Of course, there’s a nice expression about not borrowing tomorrow’s problems or whatever, but it’s really nice sometimes to know that your worrying simply meant you prepared. In the hiking case, we didn’t prepare, but we hurried down. In the case of the lead up to the terrible COVID pandemic it meant we had a lot of groceries and such on hand and didn’t have to make a run to the store.

But how do I balance feeling too worried and stressed with actually just being prepared in life? I worry (ha!) that staying home so much has made me more stressed about going out into the world! Then again, being concerned about getting COVID has done that more.

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In any case! The other one year mark coming up will be the anniversary of my cat Miles returning home. We got him back the same day we got home from our last trip, after our last meals out…how should we celebrate an anniversary of a cat’s homecoming?

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Have you changed much of your life over the past year, or have things stayed the same for you? If (like most people) many things have changed, do you think it will be difficult to get back into the world? Do you think that an appropriate level of anxiety is necessary to be responsible?

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Random thoughts, Teaching

Winter Was Here

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It’s been quite the week of cold and snow, but nothing like many in Texas and other places are going through.

Monday was already off my public school job, but it was snowing all day and my college class also got canceled. Since all my private students are online I taught them as usual, except one who was having internet issues, for about 2 hours of students. I got a lot of other stuff done on this day!

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Tuesday was a snow day from my morning job, but the rest of the day was still on, with the exception of two students who had to cancel for weather related issues. Tuesdays are a busy day this semester, with 3 hours of college teaching on top of an already long private teaching afternoon and evening (6 hours, which is a long time to teach from one chair.) It was nice having the early morning off.

Wednesday was still very cold, but school was on. I took Louie’s Subaru into my morning job and that ended up being a great decision on my drive home, when it was snowing again. Not a lot of accumulation thankfully but the roads were awful for my return home commute. Wednesdays aren’t so bad, and I just had a morning class I’m taking, 1 college student, and about 3 1/2 hours of students.

Thursday wasn’t as cold as the other days, but it’s thankfully the day I don’t have to go into school at all, so I taught my morning class virtually (I wouldn’t mind going in, but I do get a little more sleep not doing so, and I don’t have to go out in the single digit morning temps!). I have one morning student on Thursday but got a workout and shower in beforehand, and then the afternoon had 1 college student and about 4 1/2 hours of private teaching.

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Friday ended up also being fairly easy, with only 3 hours of private teaching and 1 hour of college teaching. One student on Friday I let move to Saturday due to big tuning problems (the problem with virtual teaching is that it is hard to help them and even those that have gotten pretty good at it still have trouble with the extreme temps).

Saturday was my busiest Saturday in months. I had a morning student, my usual improvisation class, and then I had a recording session (I had been oddly stressed about it, but it ended up being easy) and then a quartet rehearsal for an upcoming streaming concert we are playing on.

So that was my week. I had probably a few more cancellations than normal, due to the snow and some serious tuning issues. It was a pretty decent week…I often feel as if I just work and each day is a slog to the end, but there are wonderful moments within. I think it’ll be easier when things get back to “in-person” teaching, hopefully by fall.

As far as playing with people again, it was nice to play with the quartet and it was a fun rehearsal. I don’t know what it means though, but I wasn’t that excited. I see my friends on social media and a few in person saying that they are so desperate to play together again, that they are missing their whole life and their whole identity, not playing with others, and I’m sitting here figuring out my studio policies for the fall and working on a slight change going to a flat rate policy and planning to say no to gigs likely until people stop asking, and feeling okay with that. I don’t miss it. I miss having colleagues and seeing people and chatting, and that will never be as nice, working from home and having a private studio, but I do have colleagues at my school jobs and get to chat sometimes, so that’s nice. I miss playing Mahler Symphonies, but I wasn’t doing that pre-pandemic anyway.

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Fun stuff this week:

We got a box from Purple Carrot, a vegan meal kit place. I have enjoyed the Purple Carrot boxes and I find them to be easier to make and slightly less involved than Blue Apron. Blue Apron meals do tend to be delicious though.

We have been watching Dr. Who. I knew we were behind a few seasons, and thought I’d figured out which seasons we hadn’t seen, but it turns out that I was totally wrong and had completely forgotten two entire seasons. We are watching them again and have mostly forgotten things but not entirely. We’ll get back to where we need to be soon.

I spent a good amount of time this week reading. I have been working through a lot of cozy mystery series’ by Dianna Xarissa through an Amazon Kindle Unlimited membership. I’m not sure if I mentioned a few other recent reads, so I’ll just do it again: The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner and The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. I think I did mention them, as I type this…but either way both are good, with a preference to the Book of Lost Names. That reminds me of another great book I enjoyed this year by Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways, which I loved, and you should also read the American Royals by Katharine McGee.

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The house across the street from me is for sale, so if you want to be my neighbor that’s an option. Our neighbor said the market is really hot right now so he is selling and plans to rent for awhile and then buy again when things settle down. Sometimes I think I must know nothing about money, because I’m happy to just stay in this little house that needs some work because it’s home and it’s nice enough, and I don’t want to move again…but then again there’s no mortgage on it and the electric bill is only about $75 a month average and that’s being pretty comfortable year-round. I don’t know…it would be nice to have a house that wasn’t kind of weirdly set up and needed some work done (the kitchen here is particularly awful) but I’ve spent so much time here over the past year that I just don’t even know any better! I’m not sure where I was going with that beginning though, except to say that, I would worry if I sold my house and got out of the market that it would just keep going up. I’m not sure why the market is going up, but imagine if you lived in California in the 90’s and figured you’d buy again when the prices dropped.

Nonetheless no one wins the comparison trap, and thankfully I never worry too much about my house: I know I will never win any interior decorating awards, and it is easier just to know that if you invite someone over it is likely their house is nicer, but perhaps my cooking is better. My cats are probably cuter too Smile But really, how better to be a friend that let your friends feel better about their own houses? At least, this is what I tell myself.

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Louie’s office: he set up a place on top of the filing cabinet for the cats to hang out. This is  a room that is very functional and useful but ugly: wood paneling and a mini-blind! The room also doesn’t have good heating and cooling because it was an additional at one time, so he sweats in the summer and runs a space heater in the winter (it gets very toasty and warm!). It overlooks the backyard and gets lots of natural light though, and he has all of his computer equipment set up and works from home many hours a day.

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After Louie finishes his doctorate we have some longer term house goals. This is looking like the end of Summer 2022. It was supposed to be earlier, but COVID and all the online teaching work has pushed it back. But the longer term goal is to remodel the garage in the back yard into a studio/guest house. We’re thinking pull out couch, full bath, and then I can mostly use it for my teaching, but when we have guests they can stay there as well. It seems far away, but I’ll still have a good 20 years left of my teaching career so that seems well worth it, even if it takes a few more years. I think once we start the project, if we really work at it, we can get it done in a summer. So maybe that means 2023 is garage summer, but gosh that seems far away! Maybe we’ll be able to start working on it a bit this summer, at least the big task of clearing it out.

Truly clutter is still our biggest issue. Both Louie and I are clutter people, in different ways, and while neither of us wants to be minimalists, we do have too many random things. I’m also realizing we probably just need two or three big bookcases to replace a few shorter ones and that could help a bit as well. (If you are local and getting rid of a large bookcase, let me know, as I’m not quite ready to look in the marketplace yet.)

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In any case, I think that’s enough randomness today! I had grand “week in the life” plans for this blog post, but then I started overanalyzing my house, and feeling bad about it. I think I’ll do a little cleaning and tidying now and then I’ll read Smile

Random thoughts

MORE SNOW

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We have been having quite the week of winter weather! Nothing deep, but lots of little bits of snow and ice. Sadly, there have been no snow days for me. I would have thought the best part of being a public school teacher (I’m doing a part time class) would be not driving in the bad weather, but NO they keep making us come!

It’s been an exhausting week, but I slept great last night and feel terrific today. It’s only Wednesday, but as I’ve finished my “driving to school” classes for the week, Wednesdays feel like the week is nearly behind me. That’s a fallacy though, there are many many more students left to teach.

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Boring stuff: I did a lot of paperwork before this in order to get my students signed up for festival. I’m catching up on some of my online observing (I observe recorded classes for the improvisation course I’m taken) and I planned my own improv classes for the week. I will likely finish what I’m doing and take a short reading break before lunch.

I finished two good books over the weekend: The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner and The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. Both are historical fiction, the first during the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and the second during World War 2. I recommend both, but the second I liked better.

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Miles doesn’t always pose well, but he does enjoy attention. We are getting closer and closer to the one year anniversary of having him home, which oddly coincidences with the one year anniversary of being “safer at home.” It will be an odd thing to celebrate, or not to celebrate. I will celebrate my parents having gotten their second vaccine shot, but it’s hard to celebrate much, when so many have lost so much.

I am trying to focus on positive things, and be more in the moment. In the moment, my house is warm, I am currently safe at home, and Miles probably has no memory of being anywhere other than here.

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Random thoughts

The Groundhog was right

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It’s been cold and snowy here, so I guess the groundhog was right! Fingers crossed for a snow day…sometime…

I have to say, I received some positive comments from my post the other day, and I welcome your thoughts. So often we musicians are expected to be thankful no matter what for our work and it’s considered bad form to be negative. And it may also seem that all other musicians you know are genuinely happy to play at any time, and it can feel quite lonely if you are questioning things!

Another thought I was rolling around in my head was a question one of my former classmates posted online: how do you definite success in your career? It may feel like if you aren’t making a living primarily playing music that you have failed your training, but I can tell you that isn’t true! Of course, you could also just say that I’m a failure so why can I give you advice Winking smile

Other random thoughts: my brother said he noticed I mentioned that two of my sisters had gotten their first vaccine shots. Now, this is a weird way to word things as I only have two sisters. So I guess I should clarify that both of my sisters (that I know of) got their first vaccine shots. This is because they live in different states than me. Here in Missouri, we are expected to teach children in the schools without having any vaccinations or testing.

I have been enjoying every aspect of my new teaching position this year except one…getting up really early. My entire life has changed. Since I’m getting up between 5:30 and 6 am I like to go to bed by 10 pm. I don’t know how I can reconcile that with playing any concerts ever again, because I hate being too tired. I guess time will tell!

I should really be taking more cat pictures, but I guess I just feel like they keep doing the same things. Sit in the basket. Sit on the cat tree. Sit on the file cabinet. Sit on the bed. Run around the house at top speed as soon as I go to bed. I’ll try to do better this week!

It’s Festival application time, so if you are a long time reader of my blog, you know that means lots of paperwork and stress for me. I have a group of students that participate in the National Federation of Music Clubs Spring Festival each year. It’s a great incentive to practice for them, but it ends up being a lot of work on my end once a year, in order to get the paperwork going. There is a book and lots of guidelines, and it’s very involved. I think I’ve got a few students this year that should be up for a trophy though, so I hope they do well! The Festival is online this year (again) so that means they are just making videos of themselves, and no live pianists are required. (Or dead pianists.)

I’m also working on observing more Improvisation Classes and learning how to teach Improvisation and Creative Ability Development further. I’m fascinated by how this will play out longer term for the students in my studio, but the ones doing the improvisation have been having fun, and I have been amazed at their creativity and musical ideas. This month is pentatonic scales leading up to some blues improv, and it’s been so much fun to work on.

It’s a busy time, but the school year is like that. I go back and forth between feeling like I’m totally overwhelmed and too busy, and feeling like it’s all absolutely fine and I have plenty of time. I blame the pandemic for the mood swings and worries…I never quite know how I’m going to feel on any given day. For instance, this morning I got up and felt like this job was the worst idea ever, but after my shower I felt just fine and I enjoyed teaching my class, and even felt like I did a pretty good job of getting them to have good technique and maybe they even enjoyed it. The good thing about teaching is that you can have your own goals for your students, and while teaching in a school program means I have to follow their goals, I can still have my own goals. And right now, my goal is to get and keep them playing, and give them a positive musical experience, because that’s all we need for being in a pandemic!

Sorry for all the randomness and odd details, but that’s what’s on my mind on this Monday morning. How are you?