This is the real “back to school” week, as my new job started this morning. I have to get used to getting up at something like 6 am weekdays, which is early for me! (It’s early for anybody, I think.) I naturally woke up earlier than that because I was stressed. In any case, we had some technical glitches this morning, not due to anything I did, and only half my class showed up but it went well for what we had. Mondays are one of my busiest days with 7 hours of teaching! I have one new college student this week and several returning students, and it should be a fun week.

This past week was kind of crazy: I had three different playing jobs which was so weird! I was actually kind of stressed about it, because I have gotten used to only teaching and not having to worry about what to wear and when to be places other than, in front of my computer. But I did a recording for a church service, played at a retirement community (outside) and then played an orchestra concert, outside, in a park, with Leonard Slatkin! Which was awesome—it was with the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis, which is a group I play with quite often. The conductor of MOSL, Wendy Lea, set up a whole program and really went above and beyond. I don’t know if we were safe playing together, but we followed the best practices we could: everybody was on their own stage, spread out six feet or so, we were outdoors, and everybody who could play their instrument wearing a mask did so. The flute players had these weird caps on their flute heads that blocked their breath from going too far.

The audience may or may have been safe, I can’t be concerned about everybody. It looked like maybe only about half were wearing masks, which is concerning, and makes me NOT want to go back to St Charles (that’s where we played, at Frontier Park in St Charles) but they were pretty well distanced from one another. I don’t know if I would agree to do another large event like this one during the pandemic, but getting to play Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 with Leonard Slatkin was pretty much well worth it!

The masked violinist!

It was really nice to see some colleagues…I hadn’t seen any of those people in six months or longer. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been doing this isolation thing for so long, yet it feels like forever, doesn’t it?

Other weekend happenings: baking zucchini muffins with the last of the garden zucchini! I made a recipe that made over three dozen muffins, but since I only have two muffin pans, rather than do in two batches I decided to make 24 muffins and a small loaf with the rest. I added some coconut and chocolate chips to the recipe because I had them on hand and wanted to use up the chips.

I think the next time I’m baking quick bread it’ll be pumpkin time! I can’t believe it’s almost fall and we are still in this pandemic with no end in sight. I read an opinion article recently talking about how we are in the risk mitigation part of the pandemic: we can’t stay at home all the time and avoid risk completely, but we have to make decisions about what to do and how to live our lives in the least risky way possible. Louie is off to the classroom today, but he is hopeful that the safety protocols the University has implemented will work for him (I think if he and those in the classroom follow the rules they will work).

Miles joined this little stuffed cat for a catnap in the kitten hammock. He barely fits but he makes it work.

I was excited to see two of the reviews of sheet music that I had written in the past year were in this month’s American String Teacher Journal.

We moved this green chair to make room for something else and Muriel immediately started sitting on it. She loves when furniture is in a different place.

I have done some serious meal planning this week, hoping to stay on top of things. We don’t have the option of running out for a quick meal out after a long day (whether or not we technically do, my risk assessment says no) so that means lots of cooking. I prefer to cook dinner after work and then have leftovers for lunches, so that means we often eat late, but it’s been working well. I have thought about cooking and doing dinner leftovers but it’s just not as fun. Louie and I tend to do our best chatting about the day while cooking so it is a good bonding experience as well.

I’m reading two books right now, switching back and forth between them. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson, and The Broken Heart of America by Walter Johnson. Both are good reads but heavy.

How was your weekend? Reading any good books?

This has been a far less busy fall than usual, but I’ve managed to fill my days enough that writing blog posts has fallen by the wayside. Partly because I don’t actually think anyone is reading, but if you are, I am going to write more about Yellowstone soon, I promise.

I can’t believe we’ve been back a month! So much has happened, yet so little. I applied for, interviewed for, and accepted a new teaching position. It’s just in addition to my other positions but in the early morning. And it’s online for now, so it doesn’t seem terribly real, but it pays decently, I’m excited (it starts next week) and I figured in today’s world it wasn’t a good idea to turn down jobs because they are too early (7:15 am). It’s a before school strings position.

I have often said I don’t love teaching groups, but I haven’t tried it in awhile so I have probably grown enough to be fine with it. I have taken the attitude towards my career that when things fall into my lap I should take advantage of them, and it has mostly worked out well. Worse case I end up being entirely too busy and have to quit something at the end of the school year, but since performing isn’t really on the table, and I’m not even sure I want to return to the level of performing I was doing before, taking on more teaching makes sense.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I don’t actually miss performing that much. I do miss the warm feeling afterwards, but I don’t miss the stress before, worries about getting places (even a wedding can be quite stressful, would you believe) and being in the right place at the right time. Rarely was I able to perform with people where I felt I was having a transcendental musical experience….my true performing love is playing with a full orchestra, and since I’ve only done that about three times in the last 10 years, I have already said good-bye to it and made my peace (mostly) with not having orchestra in my life anymore. (The wash of sound around you and the feeling of contributing to something so much bigger than you are, in addition to the amazing repertoire.) So leaving more performing wouldn’t be a big deal at all. I attempted to fill the orchestra void with chamber music, since so many others seem to love that more, but my experiences have never been the same as those people. I do enjoy playing in the pit because it’s a fun time (and the stress of actually performing is a bit lower, with the camaraderie bumped up) and will continue to play Broadway shows when I am able and when they come back, but I’m just not sure about the rest.

I have been working on my teaching, as I’ve mentioned, and been really going over everything and reevaluating my methods. I’ve also been taking a lot of online workshops and getting even more ideas. My teaching lately has never been so good (I hope my students are appreciating it, honestly!). Just last night I participated in a wonderful seminar about tension release and the teacher leading it was so wonderful and creative. I have also been learning more about improvising and teaching improvisation and am planning to do a twice monthly online class for my students (and others) starting in October, so yesterday I spent an hour working on those ideas.

It’s a lot to do, actually, even if I just feel like I’ve sitting around. I’ve also been practicing viola to make a recording to do a little bit of online Suzuki teacher training on viola. I don’t have any formal viola training at all, and though occasionally I think of trying to take some lessons I’m not sure with whom (perhaps my sister Carrie, online!) and I also figure I would be better off at the time simply attempting to practice the instrument more and figure things out by practicing. Unlike the kids, I know that learning an instrument isn’t a magical experience and it really does take hard work.

So there’s my brain dump. I do feel like I mostly just think about teaching. We also have had a few socially distanced gatherings with a few friends here and there, and my sister Leslie and her family stopped by for less than 48 hours while they were driving cross country back home to Phoenix from their summer employment home. (Unemployment in this case, since they are musicians, but that’s another story).

I made an excellent zucchini cake with zucchini from the garden. I made black bean burgers, baba ganoush. pasta salad, roasted eggplant and pickled beet sandwiches, and potato salad.   I have become a much better cook during the pandemic though I still mostly follow recipes. I was talking with someone the other day who was saying they get blue apron but don’t really follow the recipes, they just cook using the ingredients. Which seemed weird to me, because while it IS nice having the precise amount of ingredient to use, it is the precise amount for the recipe on the card, so why not follow it? Sure, use your best judgment on how long things should take if the numbers don’t work out, but it makes more sense to attempt to make the actual dish, otherwise you might not have the right amount of ingredients, which defeats the whole purpose.

Books: I never write about what books I’ve read, but I recently have been working hard trying to catch up on my kindle. Lately I’ve read “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi, “Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall, “The Night Watchman” by Louise Erdrich, “Stony the Road” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, and a decent amount of books from the cozy mystery genre that I will list only if somebody asks me to. (Email me or comment below for recommendations, I guess!).

Okay, it’s time for me to get going. Work out next, then get cleaned up and do some teaching.

I feel like our nation has taken a turn, and we are all talking about things we haven’t been talking about, and it seems somehow different. To that note, today is Juneteenth and I really have to admit before a year or two ago I absolutely had never even heard of this holiday, and now people are wanting it to be a federal holiday, and it’s all great. Let’s continue this trend! Let’s continue to learn, to do better, and let’s get the madman out of OUR White House while we are at it.

I was finishing up an Edx course I’ve been taking and thought, I haven’t popped into the blog in awhile. So I thought I’d pop in and say hello. Things have been busy here but fun. I had my sister and her family visiting over the weekend through Tuesday, which was both normal and surreal…we hadn’t hung out with other people in months, and it felt wrong to do so, but yet we decided to go ahead with it. We’d all be doing pretty good at social distancing before the visit and are continuing to do so. I have been to a few more places than in the past, and even had a little gig for playing church music. I will say, it’s harder to play the violin in a mask, and I did take it off for the video, but only because there were only two of us in a giant sanctuary and we were more than six feet apart. Oddly I found it harder to hear in a mask, which makes no sense at all. But I wear the damn mask when I’m out and about, because all the science shows that we should. I wish more would do so, but I guess the American way is to be selfish and inconsiderate.

We plan to visit my sister again in a few weeks. They are in New York state now for a few months (and should be said, they canceled a flight they were planning to take for a few reasons, one of which was that masks were not required in the St Louis airport and therefore they felt less safe there) and it will be easy enough to drive to visit. We are still planning to take a trip out West. On the one hand, the virus. On the other hand, if others can do what they like, why can’t we, if we take precautions such as distancing and mask wearing around people, and mostly spend our time outside? We’ll be driving, and it’s still over a month away and some numbers are climbing while others are dropping…so who knows. Life feels more normal now…it feels normal to do nothing, to see no friends up close, to sign in when you go to a church to facilitate contact tracing (that made me feel safer, because I’ll know), and to be relieved at the grocery store when nearly everyone you see is wearing a mask and to know that THAT is why our numbers in the city are pretty good even while the rest of the state is growing.

I’m just blerghing now though, and you probably want cat pictures. I don’t have them right now! I have been busy catching up on teaching, reading, and just frankly, not taking enough cat pictures. They are adorable, but they keep hanging out in the same places and doing the same things, sorry!

I also don’t have food pictures. I think pet and food pictures are very controversial: people either love or hate to see them. I think, if you hate them, unfollow me or keep scrolling but other people really seem to enjoy complaining. I’ll try to do better this next week!

I’m going to read more about Juneteenth now. I am trying to take advantage of my more relaxed summer schedule to learn different things. In the alternate universe, we were supposed to be at a conference in Vail and then probably doing some sightseeing. Then we were going to be in New York visiting Leslie, which we are still doing, no matter what, and then we were going to be in France for two weeks, one for Louie’s conference and one for sightseeing. I still have the library books I checked out for that trip (are we allowed to return them now, I should look into this!). But instead, we are hoping to do a driving trip and camp, and hike, and do all many of outdoor activities (sitting around the fire, walking, watching wildlife, etc) and I hope it can happen. We may also be headed into another shutdown, so who knows! If so, maybe we’ll stay in New York longer if we get there.