Perhaps you were hoping for another Vermont story, but not today.

What’s been going on in my day to day life? Well, the usual, for the most part. Teaching ENTIRELY too many students. This is my most crazy year yet, I have 13 students at the college and a whole bunch at home. I did the math at the beginning of the semester and came up with something like 32-33 actual hours of teaching, which is entirely too many, considering how much other work I do and how much work outside of teaching I do. Things to keep in mind for the future. But hey, we are already something like 5 weeks in, so basically 1/3 of the way through and I’m still breathing!

I had a nice weekend. Friday I finished work at 4 (4!!) and then got to relax a bit before we went out to dinner. After dinner Louie and I came back and watched several episodes of Mr. Robot, our current show. It’s a pretty good one, with four seasons, and I’m told by the internet that they whole show wraps up very well by the end, so that will be very satisfying I imagine. Saturday I got to relax in the morning and then played two weddings. It was another exciting evening of dinner and tv (I know, I know, the late 40’s are just TOO exciting, I know.)

Sunday we went for a bike ride on the Katy Trail with Louie’s brother Julian–we biked from Defiance to Augusta and back, about 16 miles, and then had pizza at the Good News Brewery Company before heading back. It was entirely too hot though, what is with the 85 or more degree weather? We had such lovely fall weather in late August, and now in late September we are having heat…I would love to trade back, is it too late for that?

Louie spent a lot of the weekend figuring out the internet, the wifi had been acting up so he was trying a new router and redoing some things. I did a bunch of laundry. We both had zoom calls with family: mine just to catch up (everybody but my youngest sister attended–she was in Germany and the time zone didn’t seem to work out?) and his to plan a trip in mid-December.

Annoying homeowner things: we realized our roof was leaking, which is probably tornado related, luckily we did manage to get some roofer appointments in the next few weeks for estimates. We have a slate roof, which limits the companies we can use, but they are beyond busy, which means that they may come for an estimate but when they will do the work is anybody’s guess. We are hoping it is a small repair, obviously.

I am distracting myself from the world by planning vacations, haha. We are thinking about next summer already, getting ideas (Japan is what we are thinking, Louie’s idea and after doing a little research, I’m super onboard). And I’m going on a solo trip in December while Louie is teaching a course over winter break. Well, solo but with a small group. I’m taking a trip to Morocco with a small group tour, so I’ve been spending time reading up on Morocco and learning about it. I have wanted to go for several years and last year while he was teaching and I was hanging out at home for nearly two weeks after Christmas doing nothing, I thought, next year I’m doing something on my own. So we talked and I decided to do this on my own. I’m excited! It’s getting closer now, and I have my plane ticket and final payment is soon.

I’ve never done anything quite like this, though I’ve done plenty of music camps and stuff like that where I’ve shown up somewhere I didn’t know anyone before, so I’m not too worried about that, but never to a foreign county, haha. If you’ve been to Morocco and have any tips or suggestions, let me know! I’ve done a lot of research, and I will be on a set tour, but obviously personal suggestions are still good. One thing I’m pretty unsure of is how to pack for the weather: it seems like it’ll be cold in some places and not cold in others, and I’m worried about that. Layers, I guess, as they say. Plenty to worry about, lucky me! You wouldn’t want to run out of things to worry about, would you?

Other things we’ve done recently here: we went to see a play at the St Louis Repertory Theatre, the Cottage. It was very funny and very well done, terrific acting, some wonderful physical comedy, and we just really loved it. We saw the Arianna Quartet perform at UMSL–they had a new second violinist and she blended quite well. They did the Ravel Quartet which is one of my favorites, so I was quite excited that I was free to attend. And we went to see Andrea Gonzalez Caballero play a Guitar Concert at COCA, which is within walking distance of us. She played a terrific program of Spanish favorites one afternoon, and it was absolutely delightful. We ran into friends at both concerts of course, as the classical music scene is small and we know everybody, haha.

I will leave you with this one photo of the cats, Muriel and Miles. They spent most of one morning sleeping on a pair of Louie’s shorts he had left on the bed.

I have to say, this month has been the busiest in awhile. I think I say that every month, so I don’t even know anymore. I do know that I have 7 more mornings to wake up for class and then it’s SUMMMMMMMMMMMERRRRR!!!!

Last weekend was full. It started early with a Thursday night mini golf evening with Louie and a friend at nearby Magic Mini Golf. We were going to get dinner there, but the kitchen was closed (at 7:30pm?) so we went to Nudo House first and enjoyed dinner there instead. The weather was crazy, with heavy rainstorms all night long, and we definitely got a bit soaked going back and forth but we had a fun night with quite a few hole in ones. Holes in one?

I had two concerts Friday evening so I was busy working! I wasn’t super happy with my performance on either concert, but I suppose they were okay. I was really focused on getting my students ready for Festival the same weekend and hadn’t been able to practice as much as I might have, plus the constant weather changes were negatively affecting the way my violin sounded and bow felt, so I was a bit out of sorts.

Saturday was festival day #1 with 5 students playing, and afterwards we walked up to the Thurteen Carnival for a bit (before it was shut down), and then went to the Symphony concert that night. It was a nice concert with better seats than we usually buy because we got the tickets from some friends 🙂 They played a lot of Sibelius which was fun (and was getting us more excited to visit Finland this summer.)

Sunday morning I was at the festival all day, proctoring and grading theory tests. I didn’t get back until late afternoon (it was an easy job, but I just needed to be there for a long time.) I had 3 students perform that morning as well. After that we wanted to just do nothing, but Louie and I had made plans to do some work at our old house (someday this thing will go on the market but not yet) and then grab dinner nearby. We started watching Killing Eve that night as well, which is a fun show with Sandra Oh on Netflix with four seasons (at this time?).

Monday was back to work except that night we went to Louie’s mom’s for a Passover Seder, so it was another late night. It was just the four of us and we had a nice time.

And then the rest of the week just flew by: teaching, getting juries ready, getting performances lined for students, getting some things ready for four gigs this weekend, and keeping the house running (laundry and groceries are my main jobs). This is the last week of classes at Wash U: next week is juries and a few makeup lessons. I have 3 more weeks of private teaching but only 2 until the recital, and we are hard at work getting the school (my before school program) kids ready for their spring concert. I also have one student playing a concerto with his college orchestra (not Wash U, a local community college), and another playing with her school orchestra the same night as my own school that I hope to attend afterwards (she is sure it will be a longer concert and she is near the end, fingers crossed!). This weekend is mostly full of work for me: a wedding, a mass, a memorial service, and a concert, plus the Great Artists Series on Sunday night. If I can make it to May 13 things settle down tremendously after that.

It is not to say that I have been running around only working, but simply that I have been working enough that I haven’t had much bandwidth beyond that. I read a fun book this week: The 7 1/2 Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle (not to be confused with the 7 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I am pretty sure I did for awhile). I’ve gotten in some nice walks and exercise, and listened to lots of podcasts. I have NOT done much cooking, but that’s fine, and I have done more practicing this week than last, as I didn’t care for the feeling of not playing as well as I would like last weekend. It makes me grumpy 🙂

How has your week been going? Any fun plans for the weekend?

I won’t say I always did this, but in recent memory I take Labor Day entirely off and it’s wonderful. Yesterday had that amazing feeling of, it’s Sunday but we have another day off! Maybe someday I will only teach four days a week and make Monday a second day off (or a day off, in the case of gigs.) In any case I’m looking forward to my day, though I have a few errand type things to do this morning (including grocery shopping).

The past two weeks have been good but busy. Work is ramping up, and there have been ups, downs, stressors, and relaxing/fun activities. Stressors include playing viola on a chamber music concert and feeling inadequate about it, some other performance things, and of course generally worrying about having overextended myself this semester with my teaching schedule. Ups include getting to teach the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn Concertos both TWICE last week, having a fun wine dinner with friends at the Whittemore House Friday house (this would doublecount as a relaxing/fun activities), feeling valued by being asked to teach more students than every at Wash U, finding out both of my students who auditioned for orchestras at the Community Music School got in, and more.

Downs are things like: worrying about a friend’s upcoming surgery, feeling inadequate at the viola and sort of missing out on playing the violin on the concert instead, sometimes feeling left out in social settings (though I’ve been working on it), feeling overly tired some days and not giving students my best (I was BRAINDEAD by Friday evening.)

Relaxing and fun activities: Other than the Whittemore house wine dinner, we had dinner at a new to us restaurant called Diego’s Cantina. It was fine but not my favorite, but we sat outside and the weather was lovely…but then the table next to us started playing music on their phone, I kid you not, even though there was already music playing over the speakers. It was infuriating and ridiculous. In any case, we ate and left and then went home to relax and watch Suits, which Netflix finally convinced us to start watching.

We’ve also hosted some friends for brunch AND dinner recently, as well as having gone out to eat with various other friends and Louie’s family-the end of August was a flurry of social activities and I hope to continue hosting people and seeing friends. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of the fall season (this is truly the post-COVID schedule, not that COVID is gone, but that any ill affects COVID put on concert scheduling are gone, and perhaps more people are playing violin than ever) and it’s nice to keep seeing friends and feel like there is slightly more to life than fixing bow holds and telling people when to taper a phrase more.

I know I go back and forth on this blog about what I want to do with my schedule. In June I was thinking I wanted to cut back on teaching a bit, and while I actually haven’t added many new students to my private studio, I am teaching my highest college workload ever. This is a variable thing, and I figured the opportunity might not present itself again (I usually have 4-6 hours and I’m actually at 10) so it was worth doing, especially to get to teach some more advanced students, and I always love my Wash U students. But it’s a lot on top of other things…I will make it work, but I think it’ll be an exhausting fall. I’m a little stressed about my before school job starting and the early morning hours: I feel like right now I have plenty going on but I’m not overwhelmed yet, and I worry it’ll push me over, but I also know I can fit it in because I’ve done it before. This may be my last year there, but I haven’t decided for sure–we’ll see in April or May.

I got up early this morning and went for a little run in the rain. It was probably better than running in the hot sun, but I get nervous about slipping so I didn’t go as fast as I might have otherwise. (Which isn’t very fast). I’m working on run/walk intervals and focusing on my form.

I start PT (as the cool kids say) on my knee next week. This excellent for-profit health care system we have meant that I had to wait three weeks for an appointment, totally logical right, that’s capitalism, for ya. Also I have no idea what it will cost, since again, that’s capitalism. But my doctor said that I should be fine running, and what better time to re-enter the world of running than when you have a knee injury? (This is a joke, but it seems to be working okay anyway.)

July has been fun but busy lately. I had a busy weekend of gigs, and I adored it. I go back and forth so much, do I want more work, do I want less work, but the truth is that I feel great satisfaction from completing things when life is busy and I enjoy performing, and this past weekend had a lot of both. I enjoyed my downtime and my free weekends during the pandemic, but I’ve been feeling more personal satisfaction from keeping my calendar a bit busier. I’ve also done a little more viola lately which has been a fun add-on activity, and I’m enjoying things right now where they are!

This week I’ve been working at a composer’s camp as part of a piano trio: the students are writing pieces for piano trio and we play them for them and give suggestions and advice. Tomorrow (wow, tomorrow is Friday already) we play a concert of all the pieces for the students and their parents. It’s been a really fun week! We also have our third Gateway Festival Orchestra concert this weekend–I’ve been playing Principal second this summer and enjoying that, and otherwise, the weekend is not so full of work. I am okay with that as I need a little recovery time from the past few weeks.

I’m off now to do another trio session at the composer’s camp. I have a full afternoon of teaching after that: teaching this summer has been good overall, and it’s fun to have a different schedule each week as some students are on vacation or have this or that camp. I enjoy the variety, which is probably why I have thrived so much as a freelancer!