Time…it just marches by so quickly, doesn’t it?

Well, August is here and I’m excited. We’ve got our big trip soon…today is my last day of teaching before it and it’s time to do the actual packing. Laundry first, I think.

I’m not dreading the fall starting, in fact, I’m looking forward to it, which means I have made some good decisions about my jobs, I think. I’m happy to not be leaving the house at 6:40 am and I’m happy to have some amazing private students to work with. I also have organized my teaching schedule to allow for book and movie club meetings, and I have some fun gigs and concerts booked for the fall, and it should all be pretty nice.

But first, of course, Sweden and Finland. It will be glorious to be out of this oppressive heat! We went out to see some jazz music last night at 9:30 and the humidity was just awful. Still awful when we came home after 11! I can’t wait to have a little cooler weather and spend my days walking around seeing new stuff, sightseeing, kayaking, riding ferries, and eating strange foods.

With all this, it will mean the summer is over. I’ve been spending the last two weeks putting my summer schedule together and communicating this with the parents I work with, and it’s been like herding cats into a house of cards, as usual. I am trying not to stress over it: either things will work as they stand or they won’t, but I’m doing my best, there are limited hours in a week, and if people choose not to open emails I mark “important, please read and respond” and then they miss out on something, it’s not my fault. (I am always aware that current students might be reading this: if you see yourself in it, be aware you are not the only one and I’m probably not even talking about you, but I’m just venting anyway, and if you know you read your emails, I am eternally grateful to you for saving me hours of time.) I know this time of year is hard for parents with scheduling and school starting and there are so many moving pieces, but it’s also hard for those of us that work with kids! I may be a childfree cat lady, but I sure do a lot for this nation’s children.

I haven’t taken as many pictures lately: the past week has been a lot around the house, getting things organized to travel, finishing up summer work, prepping for fall, etc. Lots of emails, lots of reading, some practicing, and making sure the itinerary for our trip is in order. I have some great stuff planned, and lots of time to spend walking around exploring.

How is the end of your summer going? Any end of summer trips? Or maybe you have a life where summer is no different than other times of year except it’s hotter? That must be really strange in some ways, haha.

This summer we’ve been having a bike ride every weekend, for the most part. Today was a high of 80 degrees and overcast, which for those of you following at home, is insanely cool for July in St Louis. We loaded up the bikes and biked Grant’s Trail, which isn’t terribly shady but didn’t matter today: I didn’t even need my sunglasses! It was a lovely ride and I forgot to take even a single picture. My legs are getting stronger but my rear end was still sore by the end. We did about 16 miles round trip.

Right at the end we learned that Biden had dropped out of the race, and while I had been apprehensive about it and thought Biden was being railroaded, this gave me hope, and I hope you all feel that as well. We need some hope!

After that we got lunch and stopped by our old house to set out some things for bulk pickup. We are still in the process of clearing it out and fixing a few things up to put it on the market. Louie has been working on some trouble sections in the walls.

I’ve been playing Fiddler on the Roof and yesterday also had a lovely wedding out in Weldon Spring.

This is the onstage fiddle for the Fiddler on the Roof. It doesn’t make a sound but the actor actually does know how to play the violin!

I have a bunch of performances this week plus Gateway Festival Orchestra on the weekend as well as one wedding to play. Student wise it’s probably my lightest week of the summer: only 21 students! Things are winding down and soon we will be in Sweden! I’m sure I’ve mentioned, but we are going to Sweden, Finland, and Estonia soon, just Louie and I. I am super excited and looking forward to eating seafood and potatoes, along with who knows what else. I think it will be a lot of fun and really interesting.

Have any readers been to that part of the world? Have you done any biking recently or seen Fiddler on the Roof?

I haven’t felt as drawn to type here…the world is a mess right now, and things are feeling really scary.

But here we are! The summer…I have to say, since I am not returning to my early morning school job in the fall, I am not dreading the fall in the same way I was the last two years or so. Summer has ended up being quite busy with work anyway, with 30-40 students a week plus some gigs. Not as many wedding gigs at this time, but plenty of musical theater gigs, and it’s been a lot of fun.

We’ve had time for some bike rides and plenty of evening events. Last week after getting home from visiting my family in Chautauqua, we went to several jazz shows, a musical, a wine dinner, and an opera.

It was a lot of busy nights! Sunday then Louie and I loaded up the bikes and biked from Augusta to Defiance, ate lunch in Defiance, and biked back.

We’ve been biking every week: it gets awfully hot here for hiking and Louie was pushing me to bike with him, so I’ve been plotting out various trails (mostly on the Katy Trail) for us to try together. We’ve enjoyed biking and eating lunch either at the end at a nearby restaurant or at the halfway point. Both have their pros and cons.

This week has been busy with teaching and getting ready to play Fiddler on the Roof at the Muny. I’ve been having so much fun playing with the group this summer: I’m sure they won’t need me as much next year if they have an audition, and while I’ll take the audition, who knows how it will go, so I’m trying to enjoy it now.

The rain yesterday was pretty crazy: we had some flash flooding and were super surprised by how much rain was falling. I had to get groceries in the middle of it: in retrospect I probably should have waited for the rain to stop, but my weather app said it would, so I headed out and then instead of stopping it got worse! I did make it home safely but there were a few sketchy moments. Good thing climate change isn’t a real thing and instead it’s just really strange that now we keep getting all this extreme weather, huh? I’ve also realized that the weather apps are simply unreliable and are fairly useless for anything except perhaps telling the temperature. They pretend to know when it will stop and start raining, but it sort of feels like gaslighting since it is practically always wrong. Why tell me it will stop raining in 7 minutes when that is just wrong?

But I digress. As I nearly always do! Cat time!

We have a great cat sitter who always takes tons of pictures of the cats interacting with various toys she brings. I’m always sad to leave the cats, but I know they are in good hands and probably enjoy having the house to themselves for awhile too, as long as their basic needs are met. They have each other too! I’m sad to think of leaving them while we are in Europe too, but I’m sure they will be fine…

What have you been up to this summer?

I know I’ve been a bit MIA here on the blog, I am still here! We took a trip to NY and Philadelphia and I will tell you more about that later, but now we are back.

We got back a few days ago and are doing the usual catch up. I don’t teach again until Monday, so it’s been really easy to get things done here…or easier. We took a long bike ride yesterday, on the Katy Trail. We went from Augusta to Dutzow and then back. We stopped halfway, in Dutzow, and had lunch at a restaurant right by the trailhead, which I would totally recommend. It was a nice day: not humid to speak of, not too hot, and the cicadas were a nice added touch, haha. The way back we did have a bit of wind to bike into which made it more challenging but we still made good time.

After that we did yard work, and then went out to dinner and relaxed. Today I am actually going to a wedding, as a guest, not as a violinist! And tomorrow is back to work in the evening with an outdoor concert as part of the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis.

We had a most excellent cat sitter while we were gone and she sent a variety of pictures: we would be doing something and then get a few texts about how the cats were doing and what they were up to with 5 to 10 (or more) pictures. It was always fun to receive! Are they the most photogenic cats or what??

The cat sitter would bring toys along to interact with the cats. They really seem to enjoy it, though when we are home, they don’t enjoy toys as much, and just want to cuddle with Louie.

Some other things going on: I resigned from my morning job. I learned a lot and really enjoyed many aspects of it, but I couldn’t do the hours anymore: I can get up early, but it’s really hard to get up early AND stay up working late, so after a lot of thought, I decided to drop the early morning thing. I’ll miss working with those kids though! I am starting my summer teaching schedule this week, as well as playing a couple of gigs with the Pop Pop Pop Orchestra, and then after that things start up at the Muny, which I am excited about (I was lucky enough to be asked to play for three of the shows this year, though I’m not a regular player). I don’t have too many weddings this summer (strange, IMHO), but I have a lot of other things going on, and perhaps weddings will fill in more. So that’s the work side of things. Taking some time off is SO nice, but I know getting back to seeing everybody soon will be fun as well.

I finished my early morning job! I still have to submit grades, but I’m going to do that right after I finish this post.

We had a very successful studio recital this past weekend. 21 students played, and I was proud of them all. There was a weird thing where there were three young boys running around making noise, climbing trees, and it seemed that they weren’t anybody’s there, but simply kids from the neighborhood (? which, if I had been smart and gotten a picture I would try to get them in trouble, because I found out afterwards that in addition to me, three other adults talked to them and asked them to please go further away). But it wasn’t terribly disruptive, and it definitely didn’t affect anyone’s enjoyment or performance.

Louie and I got out for a nice bike ride on Sunday. We drove out to the new Chain of Rocks park, and biked across the bridge there, the next bridge, and then on the levee for a bit and then headed back. It was windy and sunny, but not too hot yet, so an enjoyable afternoon.

It was a nice and relaxing weekend, honestly. Sunday was my first day off since Spring Break! I didn’t have anything going on other than the studio recital, so once that was done I was really relaxed. We watched “The Descendants” for our movie club, finished Killing Eve (that was actually before the weekend) and started on Shogun. We got a few things done around the house, though not as much as we probably should have (story of adulting, right?)

We missed all of the aurora stuff: the first night I didn’t know that you were supposed to go outside and take a picture even if you didn’t see anything–I had assumed that being in city we would have too much light pollution, and I supposed we might have, but who knows. The second night we tried a little but no luck, and no, we didn’t stay up late. I’m recovering from my early morning job so staying up past 11 is a real accomplishment.

But, we did see this lovely sunset on Sunday evening:

It may not be the northern lights, but a regular sunset can also be a pretty gorgeous event.

Thursday mornings are usually my day to sleep in a bit and catch up on things around the house. I only have two more days of early mornings before summer so it doesn’t feel quite as pressing to me today, and I also didn’t really sleep in at all…

This has been an exhausting week! It followed a busy weekend, so that’s not surprising.

Last week: Thursday night we went to see a colleague and friend play at Jack’s Joint at O’Connell’s Pub. It was a fun show and they did two sets, but a lot of people left at the break (not because they didn’t enjoy it, but I think because they were exhausted!). We stayed to the end, and overall really enjoyed ourselves.

Friday night we went to the Symphony and heard Yo-Yo Ma play the Elgar Cello Concerto. This was a lot of fun, but the concert was sold out and the audience was LOUD and poorly behaved. He played softly, and the audience did not sit quietly and try not to make a lot of noise. But we definitely enjoyed the concert anyway.

Saturday morning I had a gig with the Bach Society and then had to teach a few makeup lessons at Wash U (I’m finally done!!).

Saturday night we had a really neat experience in our neighborhood: we attended a progressive dinner. Our first stop was for appetizers, and we met many neighbors we had never met before and enjoyed some hummus and pigs in a blanket. Then it was time for dinner. We had a bit of a mishap finding the house first as we went to the address listed and found that there was no house there at all, it was an address between two houses. I did a little bit of research and realized they had transposed the numbers, so we were just a little ways away from the correct house. We had a wonderful dinner of chicken piccata, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, and homemade bread, and enjoyed conversing with some really interesting people and drinking some nice white wine.

We had been a little nervous about the event, but we really enjoyed the dinner company, and then we headed to dessert at a third house (the most gorgeous place of the night, though all the houses were lovely) and enjoyed more conversation and lots of dessert options. We ran into some of the same people at two of the three courses, but overall met quite a lot of people. I didn’t take a single photo, I was just living in the moment! We ended the night at a fourth house which we were invited to by a couple at the dessert, and finally walked home and slept well. We will definitely do the progressive dinner again next year if we are able!

Sunday morning I had a gig with the quartet and then in the afternoon I attended a concert. I have a student who attends a local community college and he was playing a solo with the orchestra. I didn’t know until I got there that the orchestra was also playing a piece he had written! The evening was for relaxing and having a zoom call with my family.

So, Monday hit hard but the middle of the day was taken up with a hair appointment. I got a cut and color and ended up talking with my stylist about trying a more center part to modernize my “do”. I realized that having a side part definitely dated me in the same way that Princess Diana’s hair and that style dated people of that age. It’s been fun having a different look, though it’s probably quite subtle.

Tuesday morning I woke up extra early because of the tornado sirens. I couldn’t get back to sleep afterwards and there wasn’t enough time anyway, so I just had an early start to the day. Sigh. That made teaching extra exhausting, but I managed, and did grab a short nap around lunchtime.

Wednesday was a frustrating day in several ways, but I made it. I had plenty of teaching, and a school concert that night. I was meant to go from one concert to another but the second concert got postponed due to the weather (I am not sure I am onboard with the idea of canceling things due to potential thunderstorms, when perhaps delays are a better idea) which makes today longer than I wanted. Oh well. It’s concert season, my students are doing interesting and cool things, and I am trying to attend when I can and support them to pay forward all the support I received from my teachers when I was younger (and because I am a sucker, haha.)

So that brings us back to Thursday, which is where I started. I have lunch plans with a friend followed by teaching and said concert. Wish me luck!