Another year is almost behind us all! I remember when I was a little kid it seemed like it took FOREVER to get through December, but I am certain the rest of this year will fly by for me. Since Thanksgiving fell early this year, it seems to me that this past week was a sort of “bonus week” in the holiday rush, and now we are getting down to brasstacks.

I was supposed to have three students today followed by a rehearsal, but I’ve had two cancel, so it’ll be one student, practice time, then a rehearsal. I find some of my college students get a bit overwhelmed at the end of the semester and can’t always make their lessons. I try to be strict, as it’s for credit, but also understanding, because I know how it is to be totally overwhelmed. It’s different if they are a music major or even a music minor—I feel like their lessons are more integral to their degree in those cases. I also try to be accommodating, and end up teaching some make up lessons during reading and finals week.

I do plan to do some Christmas decorating this weekend. Last year I bought a few Nutcracker figurines in an after-Christmas sale, and I put them up on the mantel this week (I had stored them in a different place than my regular decorations). One of my students last night told me she thought they were creepy and felt like they were staring at her! I thought this one was particularly cute.

I thought I’d get a post up earlier, but I just haven’t had the time. I rarely sit down with my computer these days. I do most of my emailing even at my phone, or I do a quick email if I want to use a keyboard. But here we are!

Thanksgiving went by quickly. I had one actual day off, and my parents came up for a quick visit and to see Aladdin. I had double performances on all the other days around Thanksgiving, and this was the third week of the show, so I’d been pretty busy! I love playing these shows, but it’s 8 shows a week on top of my regular 45 ish student teaching schedule…life gets very busy. This was my last one this season, so the spring will be much less busy, though I always have extra gigs and such.

Anyway! It ended up being a gorgeous day on Thanksgiving, so first my Mom and I made pies (apple crisp, pecan pie, pumpkin pie), then we went to Laumeier Sculpture Park to walk around. Louie’s mom was hosting us for Thanksgiving and we were grateful not to have too much to do.

We found a large eyeball. Any giants missing one?

We went and walked around Washington University as well. We thought of getting four bikes to rent, but didn’t have enough phones with the app on it to rent them (you needed one phone for each bike rental). Dad is the more experienced biker so he did the riding.

It was good to see my parents, even for a short visit, so I’m glad they made it up. If we’d have the snow storm from the week before they might not have come! I didn’t take any pictures of Thanksgiving dinner, but it was delicious. Then I was back to work the next day, and finished the show on Sunday.

It’s nice that college teaching is winding down. The semester is an odd thing: you work really hard for like 15 weeks and then you have a month off, or more in the summer. I have a few students doing various performances but mostly people are simply winding down and focusing on their other classes and projects. Lessons are only 1 credit mostly, so it isn’t a huge commitment unless they are a performance major.

I’m hoping to put up my (fake)Christmas tree this weekend. I thought I’d put it up and see how the cats react, and then if things seem okay add the ornaments a little later? It’s been suggested to put only soft ornaments down low that they can be “naughty” with and think they are getting away with something. I don’t know how much cats think like that, but it’s probably a good idea either way.

Louie and I have a few festive activities planned for December, including a few concerts, a house tour, and we are hoping to finally hit up the Garden Glow at the Botanical Gardens (we’ve never been) this season. I was thinking to myself that I didn’t have many gigs in December, but I added things up and I do have 12 different gigs in December, so that probably is enough!

How was your Thanksgiving? What holiday activities are you planning to do this December?

I’m overly busy, and I’ve had so much going on, not all good. But I’m here, and I’m getting through it, and Thanksgiving will be lovely!

I’ll write more later, but I just wanted to pop in in case you are a loyal reader and wondered what happened to me. Louie and I went on a lovely hike one day at Buford Mountain, that I’ll share with you more later, but then I found out less than two days later that my grandmother passed away and that just threw everything into a whirlwind mess of figuring out how to get to Ohio and how to cancel or reschedule things. Then I came back and now I’m playing three weeks of a show at the Fox Theater here and things are just crazy. Oddly (for a musician especially) December looks way better, and I’m planning some fun holiday activities for us to relax and enjoy ourselves more. It’s been a bit too much, honestly.

But I’m still here. Things are okay!

Hello! Maybe you thought I forgot about this blog. I didn’t. I was just doing a million other things. September was a rough month: I knew it would be rough, I had a wonderful time being extremely busy and working the equivalent of two full time jobs, and now it’s done and behind me, and I have money in the bank, and finally a bit of free time. Now I’m only working 1 1/2 full time jobs so I feel like I have these decadent hours of free time here and there, and I even got done working today at 6:30, which was insane!

So here we are. I finally managed to change the strings on my violin, and I cooked myself a dinner, and I am now relaxing in front of the computer (Louie is off at a conference so I’m on my own this week.).

It was a crazy month. I played 30 shows of Evita at the Repertory Theater of St Louis, and the truth is, I had a great time. I also taught as many of my students each week as I could…I have, by my current count, 43 students. I actually thought it was less than that, so I’m not sure what that means. I remember there was a point last year where I realized I had 45 students, and then I’ve lost a few, but somehow I’m still at 43, and I feel like my teaching schedule is light. You get used to what you get used to, I guess! I also am teaching a chamber music class and not counting those students, and in September I also played a few extra gigs and did a quartet concert.

Oddly I found I had enough time to FINALLY put some stuff up on the walls in my house, and I began reorganizing my music collection. I’ve bought a few frames and things like that in order to put up pictures and I am super happy with what I’ve done so far. But that was all in September. Now I’m in October, and I’m getting lazy again already…I’m just kidding. I did skip an online workshop I was considering doing in order to have lunch with a friend, and that was so worth it. Seeing friends is definitely something that I put by the wayside this semester, at least so far, and while I haven’t missed it too much (I still have Louie, and perhaps at this time of my life that has to be enough), PLUS I had fantastic colleagues for Evita that I saw constantly…I forget the beginning of this sentence (how do people write long sentences? Editors, I suppose?).

I had some fun with selfies during the show. I just went back through my photos to see if there was anything worth sharing for those of you who don’t follow me on instagram (I didn’t give up on doing social during the month, just blogging and having friends!).

I think this was early in the show’s run.

Just a note: because I needed to wear headphones that meant I had to wear my hair up and take off my earrings.

One of my favorite tops.

One of my colleagues made us some Eva Peron signs to hold up. I should mention, the pit was completely under the stand so the audience really couldn’t see us, so we got to wear whatever we wanted and be a little sillier than usual.

Why don’t they just share the hedge?

What else have I been up to? Browsing etsy for various décor has become a good pastime. I’ve also started planning a summer road trip for next summer (so far away, but I have big plans—Yellowstone, Glacier, and Banff- and it diverts my mind from the current political awfulness that is going on). And I’ve been reading, and doing a little practicing, and watching Ozark and Tin Star. And I got back into running, a little bit.

Plans for October: continue decluttering house. Continue adding wall decorations, both at home at and at my office at Wash U (I’m there only twice a week this year, but I am only sharing with one other person so I wanted to personalize it more), run 2 to 3 times a week, do blogilates 2-3 times a week, try to eat more vegetables and less snacks, see a few more friends, and facetime with Athena my niece more often! And teach those 43 students, keep up on my October gigs, and rest up for a three week run of Aladdin in November.

I might also finish blogging about the trip in August, if only to do a summary and tell you some fun things and remind myself for the future!

You guys. Transitions are HARD. Remember a few months ago when I was all, oh hey, it’s summer, isn’t this great, but why isn’t anybody calling me for stuff? Now I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m so tired and I’m running around and everybody is calling and emailing me except for the people I’m waiting to hear from, and I’ve had rehearsal every night till 10…it’s pretty invigorating though!

I’m trying to stay organized and up on things, and while I’ve let a few things slip unintentionally, I think I’m getting a grip on everything that I need to do. There is definitely something to the idea that the more you have to do, the more scheduled and organized you have to be, the more you get done. I’ve practiced more this past week that I did any one week during the summer, and that’s definitely not because I have more time: it’s because I have less time and I know it needs to get done.

The academic year gives a nice ebb and flow to life though. This was Louie’s first week of classes (he is a lecturer at the college), and he’s been crazy busy getting everything going…but you know there’s only so many weeks (15 or so) of this, and then it’s a break for a bit. It keeps you sane, but keeps life interesting. Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

I’m working pretty much straight through the month of September, and then October will give me a little breather. I’m still not sure how this will all work…this week I’ve been pushing through knowing that I have Sunday and Monday  off (LABOR DABOR) and then that’s it, no more days off for the foreseeable future. You’ll hear about it too, for sure! But I’m loving the Evita show so far, and it’s good to see my students again and I’m getting them ready for festivals and recitals and teaching them vibrato and theory and other things I’d been sort of trying to ignore…basically I’m starting the school year full speed ahead WHILE trying to pace myself. I realize that actually might not make any sense, but it does to me. In other words, I feel energized.

So since I’m not blogging about our trip to SC, I will at least mention the cats. CATS.

(This picture makes me see how much we really should consider redoing the stairs to the basement, but…there are bigger house issues.)

When I got the mail after the trip, there was a notice from the City Health Department/Animal Control. They wanted $50 to register Muriel! It seems that if you give your pet a rabies shot but they aren’t spayed or neutered they want $50 from you. If you have had your pet spayed or neutered you only owe $4 which has already been paid by the vet. It’s a good idea—it encourages people to spay or neuter their pets, BUT it also seems to me that it discourages people who haven’t done so from getting their pets rabies shots. I then found out that Miles had received the same letter at the home he first lived! Even though they received their rabies shots three months or so apart, the city must only check these things every once in awhile. No worries, both little guys are spayed and neutered now.

Muriel DOES fit into my lunch bag. It’s a large lunch bag, so it’s not terribly surprising that she fits. Now there is probably cat fur all over though!

One of the things that Louie and I always say about Muriel is that she is a very stereotypical CAT. All the cat things you think of, she does them. She’s adorable and predictable like that. I think she must have read a book on how to be a cat and followed it to the letter. She is helping Miles better understand how cats are to behave.

In any case: that’s where I am today. I have 2 rehearsals ahead of me, and then tomorrow I’m teaching in the morning and have a wedding/cocktail hour in the afternoon that is a bit of a drive so it takes up a good portion of time. And then two days off—planning on a movie/dinner thing with friends, hopefully a bike ride, and who knows what else…probably watching OITNB and Ozark, house cleaning, some cooking, relaxing, and that’s about it

Hi readers! I’m back home, I survived my two week vacation, and I’m back teaching and trying to get ready for an insane September.

The trip was really neat. It was different than some of our vacations the past few summers but was really fun. I thought about blogging the other day but instead I organized all my photos and ended up ordering a photo book online instead. So I’ll get to that soon. I’ll just tell you the highlights involve staying in a teepee and cheese grits!

Being back home has its advantages, of course. The cats, easy access to a variety of bathrooms…

I’ve been working hard finalized my teaching schedule for my private students and at Lindenwood. Wash U is still a crap shoot—classes start Monday and I know nothing about my students yet, so who knows how that will work. I have a 5 week run of Evita starting on Tuesday night (1 week rehearsing, 4 weeks of performances) and I’m kind of in denial about how busy I’ll be. I think it’ll be okay: things are always worse looking at them in advance than just doing them. And I’m looking forward to playing the show—I think it’ll be loads of fun and I am working with some excellent colleagues (and I’m not just saying that in case they are reading this, haha!).

It was also nice visiting my parents and my hometown of Clinton, South Carolina. People are always shocked that I grew up in the South, probably because I have no discernable accent and I don’t dye my hair blonde. But I grew up in a town of about 8000 people, in rural South Carolina.

Anyway. I’m off to do a few computer tasks, work out, run a couple of errands, practice, and then teach for 3 1/2 hours. Not a bad day!