And here we are, already into December, again. Wasn’t it just December? Won’t it be December again soon?

I left off with the great disappointment of not having the Thanksgiving I was planning. They say life is what happens while you are busy making plans, but the truth is, you make plans, sometimes they work out really well, and other times you have to adjust. I was sad that my parents couldn’t visit, but Louie and I made the best of the situation. We raked leaves to the curb, revealing our yard for the first time in months. We did various house projects. We slept in, we read, we relaxed. It was wonderful. Oh, and I cooked and baked. And on Saturday he tested negative and his family decided to risk it and come over for the meal we were planning to have on Thursday. (As of today nobody has gotten sick from this meal to our knowledge, so that’s good.)

Louie took the picture, so he wasn’t in it. We also got a new tree for the downstairs, pre lit, and it’s a lot of fun.

Oh, there’s Louie! With his mom, stepdad, and brother.

A closeup of some of the food. Most of it was vegan, but not the turkey or gravy.

We had a nice dinner, and LOTS of leftovers! Louie and sent some with his family, and we ate leftovers for days. I thought the turkey turned out amazing (I dry brined it, which means I rubbed salt all over it, along with some lemon zest and spices, and then let the skin dry out, then cooked it to just under 165 all over and pulled it out and let it rest for awhile) and we enjoyed those leftovers for a long time. I made broth in the crockpot from the carcass and that’s in the freezer.

So that brings us to December holidays. We did a little decorating before the dinner, and then I did a lot of decorated the next day. It’s been fun decorating a new house! I had purchased some things on clearance last year after the holidays, knowing I would have more space to use, so I was excited to pull them out. We have a variety of things that have lights on timers that come on at night, and all of our Christmas tree lights (TWO TREES) are voice activated. And so far the cats haven’t done too much destruction, though they do enjoy watching the lights and wrestling on the white tree skirt.

It may seem a little extra to have two trees, but I wanted something downstairs AND in my teaching room. The tree in the teaching room is pretty old and the cats have done some damage over the years, but it works well in the corner. The other tree is new and I hope will last for many more years. We have the storage space now (the basement is roomy) so it made sense. I also put (battery operated, on a timer) candles in our front facing windows so I am sort of decorating the street. I may leave those up into January as well, to help with the winter gloomies.

My friend April sent me this picture of her house. Their neighborhood is having a contest and doesn’t her house look amazing!!!???!!!

And of course, some cat shenanigans. I know many of you are only here for that.

This week is a marathon: it’s open house week for my morning school, which means the students perform for their parents each morning (starting at 7:30 am, we arrive much before that!) plus I have four performances this weekend: Friday night a choir concert at Missouri Baptist University including Vivaldi’s Gloria, Sunday morning the Perseid Quartet is at Third Baptist, Sunday afternoon I play with the Cor Jesu choir, and Sunday night the Masterworks Chorale plays Handel’s Messiah. In addition to the concerts, there are rehearsals, so many lessons (last week of Wash U classes!) and a neighborhood party on Saturday afternoon.

None of the concerts will be particularly stressful or difficult, other than I hope to not be too tired to manage. I think the key will be getting to sleep as early as a can and not wasting too much time scrolling. This is definitely the “worst” week for scheduling: the following week starts crazy, but tapers off and ends up with some wonderful days to do some baking.

And with that, I’m off for chores and fun. I only have one student today and the rest of the day will be filled with home chores (laundry mostly) , hopefully a nice walk outside, and I’m not sure what else. We were going to go out to dinner with a friend but they might be sick so either we will go out alone or just cook at home. What are you up to this week? Is your December really busy so far? If you aren’t a musician, do you go to concerts in December?

Sigh.

It’s so easy to start forgetting about COVID, isn’t it?

So I was really excited about hosting Thanksgiving and having my parents visit for the week!

Louie had a cold over the weekend: he was feeling a little under the weather on Thursday or Friday, but just a cold feeling. He took two at home COVID tests as well, both negative and by Monday he was feeling back to normal. Then, he woke up Tuesday morning feeling sick again, and figured he’d better test again, since that was strange. Yep. COVID.

My parents had already headed out, so I called them, and they made the decision (best decision for them) to turn around, since he was sick, I was exposed, and we were supposed to be hanging out all week. It was the worst feeling. I just felt so sad to miss their visit (still do!) and guilty that they had to spend the day driving and wished Louie had taken a test first thing in the morning rather than waiting a little thinking he might just be reacting to the dry air in the house (he started feeling worse over the course of the day, to be fair.)

I had just picked up the turkey, making the final arrangements for a Thanksgiving dinner for 9.

So, now I have some days off stretching ahead of me, but it doesn’t seem fun at all, just disappointing. We are going to see if we can postpone the dinner until Saturday and maybe take that chance if Louie texts negative and I’m not symptomatic. Either way, the plan is to have the dinner ready on Saturday, and then either have the dinner or have takeout boxes for everybody to share.

I had planned the meal for several days of leftovers with my parents as well, so I may leave off one or two dishes. Some of the groceries will last longer than others, so things could be postponed. It’s also possible, though I think less possible, just because I had it much more recently than Louie, that I’ll get COVID too. Who knows, maybe I already had it asymptomatically and gave it to Louie!

Truthfully, I’ve been around quite a few people who were recovering from “colds”. And maybe they were, or maybe that “cold” isn’t what they think it is. And for many people, getting COVID isn’t a huge concern, but for some people it definitely still is. And then getting it certainly disrupts your life! So it’s still here, 3 years later, and still ruining holidays.

Sigh. It’s not the worst thing, but it’s really disappointing.

My college students show up each week for their lessons and sigh and tell me how tired and busy they are, and I feel empathy for them, and I think, yeah, me too! I know you are tired of hearing it, but it’s been a crazy semester. The good news is, it’s going by quickly. (Also the bad news, because who wants life to just fly by like it’s nothing?!)

I don’t think I mentioned that my friend April visited for a few days. It was wonderful to see her, even though we were both working and didn’t get to hang out as much as we would have liked!

While she was here we went to Corner 17 and to Schlafly Bottleworks. We also chatted a lot and enjoyed the lovely weather we had during that time! I miss her and wish she still lived here, but she has an awesome life in Atlanta now and I’m happy for her.

There are just a few days left until Thanksgiving. I am hosting dinner for 9, it looks like, and I’m excited and stressed out. The key, as always, is planning. And yelling at Louie for not planning, while he judges me for being “controlling”. (half kidding!) Here are the plans to make Thanksgiving happen and to finish this week.

Today: attend student recital at Wash U this morning, attend Symphony concert in afternoon, play concert with Metropolitan Orchestra this evening.

Monday: teach class in morning, do big grocery shopping trip, workout, catch up on at home business type errands (I always do my finances on Mondays, that sort of thing, and sometimes wait to send important emails until I have time on Mondays and Thursdays ), teach private lessons in afternoon and evening.

Tuesday: teach last class of week in the morning, pick up the turkey (I have a fresh one on order from Whole Foods). Teach last day of students at Wash U (last day before Thanksgiving break, that is, not last day of semester. Teach last private student. Cook: thinking of doing pie crusts, baking the cornbread for the stuffing, possible making the gravy ahead of time (this is a thing people on the internet tell you is possible).

Wednesday: house cleaning (we outsource this every two weeks, thankfully, and yes, I love the word outsourcing!), pick up rolls at Union Loafers (it’s so unnecessary but they only do rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I love them so much) make pies, make green bean casserole (I am attempting a vegan recipe: I don’t always do green bean casserole, but I thought it would be a fun addition this year), assemble salad ingredients (shaved brussels sprout salad), toast stuffing cubes (dry them out, whatever is needed) and assemble stuffing, pre chop whatever I can (Louie has much better knife skills than me, so I may ask his help or even just have him do a lot of chopping on Thursday). My parents arrive this day at some point, and I’ll probably ask my mom to help out.

Thursday: I’m a workaholic/freelance musician so I’m playing at a church service this morning. Did you know people have church on Thanksgiving morning?? Our guests don’t arrive until 5 pm, so while I’m doing that, Louie will prepare the turkey and put it in the oven. I’ll get back and we’ll finish the rest of everything: potatoes, butternut squash, and getting everything cooked. We have a sizeable toaster oven and a small side oven which could also help.

Friday: Relax! Eat leftovers!

And that’s the week. When I retype my food plans it sounds like a lot, but I think it’ll be a lot of fun, and I won’t be doing this all by myself, it’s just that I am the on in charge. I will share the entire menu later, most likely.

Other things that have been going on that likely deserve more attention here but aren’t getting it today: squirrels in the basement, having a company come and remove a squirrel nest from the chimney, leaf pickup drama, and lots of good books read. I am planning a blog post at some point about books, and some of my favorites over the years.

Books, lately: I’ve gotten into the books of Katherine Center for easy and fun reads (How to Walk Away is my favorite so far), and the best book I’ve read recently not by her was Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I’ve also gotten into books by Ben H. Winters including the Last Policeman Series, and I read Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See and enjoyed that quite a lot. Looking back through my Libby app (the best way I know to keep track of what books I read on the kindle), if I haven’t mentioned The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, I am doing so now because that’s another good one. I tend to like fiction that spans several generations and goes into great detail, and takes place in another country so I can feel like I’m learning something about a different culture, but there also has to be a good story with it. I haven’t read as many mysteries later, more into the “character learns something important about herself while making a major life change AND falling in love” genre, which makes sense since I’ve been so busy and stressed.

You might ask when I find the time to read: sometimes I’ll have a spare 30 minutes to an hour midday, and I’ll just cozy up for a bit and read. I read if I’m eating a meal alone, I read before bed, and pretty much whenever I have time. I know I’m always happier if I read a book rather than scroll, though I do both of course.

We had a cold snap, but today is supposed to get up to 77 or 79 degrees (depending on which weather predicting service you look at.) So, it looks like fall, but it’s really practically still summer.

I haven’t been this busy since pre-pandemic or perhaps, since before I moved to St Louis. This month is flying by, I think I blinked and October was gone, and things are generally just a bit crazy. I do have a little downtime now, so I’ll fill you in quickly.

Halloween was fun: it was a cold night for trick or treaters. Louie and I made a fire in our fire pit and sat outside so we didn’t have to continually open the door. I was hopeful for more visitors and we ended up with a fair amount of leftover candy, so I made a bunch of bags for my college students, who were happy to get it!

Teaching has been crazy: I had the fall recital yesterday for my private students. 18 students played and it went really well! I rented a space at Wash U and it was really nice and easy to do, so I will likely do that again.

For college students, some recitals are coming up, the end of the semester is closer than we realize. For my 4th graders, I am not super happy about the progress of one class and gave them a lecture/pep talk today. We’ll see what happens. Let’s see if my talk inspired some of them to work a little bit harder or it’s going to be a long year.

Gig and concert wise, it’s been pretty crazy. I’ve played a bunch of weddings, a fun concert at a retirement home, and this week I have rehearsals for two different concerts: one a piece called the Suffragette Cantata with the St Louis Women’s Chorale, and the other the fall concert for the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis. I’ve also had a few church gigs, and there’s a pops concert on Sunday, so yeah…things are busy! Not so busy that I don’t get jealous of what other people are doing (yes, I’m insane) but busy enough that I can quickly remind myself that I am..well, a little more stretched but having a great time.

The time change was nice, that extra hour was lovely. My friend April is currently in town and staying with us and it’s fabulous to see her. Louie and I saw Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer play a concert on Friday night.

We attended the neighborhood chili cook-off on Saturday and got to feed and pet alpacas, llamas, sheep, and more! I made a corn casserole for the dinner and it was very popular. When I went back to get a second helping 5 minutes later and the pan was empty! I also attended a neighborhood book club evening and really enjoyed it–I plan to attend again in the future when I am able.

The cats love the radiators. That is, when the heat is on which it isn’t today. And yes, Miles is usually very friendly and cuddly. Sometimes with Muriel, often with Louie, less often with me.

Anyway, even though my program here tells me I have no key focus phrase and some of my sentences are too long, I’m publishing anyway. You’re really here for the cat pictures anyway, I know.

I have been trying to fit it all in this month, and I realized that is not possible. By all I mean: work (ALLLL the work), exercise, fun things, seeing friends, etc. And honestly, it almost works, but I also have realized that lately playing music (work) has been really fun and great, and that means at least that the gigs I’m doing and the people I’m getting to play with has been enjoyable. I feel satisfied by my career right now, and my biggest concern is that I have too many students.

I keep thinking of how I should cut back on evening hour teaching, and really: I need to do one or the other: I can’t get up as early as I need to and teach as late as I do…cutting down on late teaching (I’m talking even ending at 6:30, some nights now I go till 7:45) would give me those nights for relaxing and then also for gigs when they pop up. The other option is end the early mornings, which depends on some factors (I’m trying to get a raise, so it will probably end up being contingent on that for next year.)

Truthfully I haven’t been able to fit in too many social and fun activities, but there’s been enough, and then I feel like some of my work is social (it is, for musicians this totally counts) so it works out. Today is a beautiful fall day as well, and it’s nice to have the house cooling down and be sitting here with a blanket over my legs.

I have been trying to blog more often, you might not have noticed this. I haven’t been taking as many pictures as lately for a few reasons: one, nothing terribly interesting is happening (ha!) and two, the cats continue to be adorable and precious but in ways that tend to resemble the previous 100000 pictures I’ve taken so I’ve been less likely to try to take pictures of them. But I’ve checked my phone and I do have a few you might like.

I do feel like there is slightly too much on my plate, but I’m managing to stay on top of things. Friday was a completely busy day with activity after activity and I got home at night and went straight to bed. Louie had gone to a wine dinner at the Whittemore House without me, so he had fun, and I was sorry to miss it. I was supposed to do two weddings on Saturday, but my contractor accidentally doublebooked one so I had the afternoon off. Louie and I took a nice fall walk through Forest Park and got caught up on everything. Then I played another gig and we went to Mi Ranchito for a later dinner. Today I have some things to do as well as an afternoon concert, but I’m looking forward to relaxing this evening (and likely folding laundry, as I’m working on that.)

Things that we aren’t getting done: yardwork (maybe next weekend) or anything at the old house. We know we need to do something about that and it’s a huge thing hanging around our necks, but it just isn’t a priority right now. We are lucky enough that it isn’t a financial necessity at the moment, but we need to figure it out…but I think we are doing pretty well with everything at the moment and I’m not going to stress out about it.

I read a few good books recently: Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb (didn’t enjoy as much as the Violin Conspiracy, but still a fun and quick paced read), The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (very good, covers many generations of a family, learned a lot about India) and the latest Harry Hole book, Killing Moon by Jo Nesbo. I started reading the Harry Hole books because they take place in Norway, and in this book two of the characters go to Lorry, a restaurant that was near our Airbnb in Oslo and that we ate at twice!

I realized I didn’t have any travel on my calendar, and while I’m sure we will do plenty of fun stuff next summer, I decided it would be a good idea to take some time at the end of the calendar year to visit my sister Leslie (it’s the darn kids, don’t want to miss watching them grow!). I bought a plane ticket to visit right after Christmas. Thanksgiving we are planning to spend here and I think maybe my parents will visit. Oh, and did I mention I’m excited about Halloween as well? While we haven’t done any decorating, I’m told that our neighborhood is a big Halloween place, so I am planning to buy a bunch of candy to give out.

What’s new with you? Do you have fall weather where you are living? Read any books lately that you would like to share?

Fall is such a shock to the system after summer! September was a blur, and now it’s October, and it’s still hot…

We had a lovely concert last weekend: I played viola, Louie and I hosted a small chamber orchestra at our house for an after-concert party, and my parents ended up being in town for both. It was a lot of stress, but a lot of fun. I won’t deny I was relieved when it was over though! This past weekend was much more relaxing: we got in a hike at Greensfelder Park, had dinner with friends, I went to a friend’s birthday brunch party, and attended a concert as well.

The weeks have been hectic: teaching, insane amounts of bus duty as the buses are routinely 20-30 minutes late, more teaching, followed by teaching. My college students have been so much fun this semester, my private students as well, the school kids I’m still getting to know, and everybody, especially high school and up, seems overwhelming and exhausted. It’s going to be a rough year, but I think so far most people are managing. This may be a quasi-post-pandemic return to the normalcy of being completely overscheduled.

I’m not totally overscheduled, but Mondays are tiring, that alarm comes early. I am used to the long days by now to some extent, but I definitely wish for more days off. I can’t articulate what I would give up for that though, so I suppose it’s a good thing. Maybe Louie and I don’t have enough hobbies to work less anyway. (This is mostly sarcasm, as we have a lot of things we ignore, but we get there.)

Mostly I’m just complaining about my schedule. Boring, right? I finished Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water and really enjoyed that. We are watching Suits (currently on season 3, no spoilers please!) and find it a diversion…I wouldn’t describe it as GOOD exactly, but it’s mostly enjoyable and the characters do stupid things that we yell at them about. It’s fun!

How’s your week going?