I haven’t been writing here in awhile, but thought I’d take a little time to catch you up. There’s a bit of guilt as I still need to finish telling you about my trip to Morocco, so I feel like, oh, if I’m going to blog I should be doing that, but you know what they say about shoulds.

Life! It’s so stressful, especially with all of the horrible things being perpetrated by the government. And I’m partway through my taxes (most of the way) and will have to send money, and for what, to bomb schools of children in other countries and to buy warehouses for concentration camps. It’s nauseating. And worrying about gas shortages and what will happen next. I know there’s no point in worrying, but knowing and doing…

In my own life, my schedule for the next few weeks is a little too much. This is my fault, for overscheduling myself…I took on a few too many gigs, and I know exactly which ones I should have said no to, but it’s too late now. Hopefully I can remember this for the future. I’ve also been thinking about NOT taking any new students this summer or fall and letting my schedule get a little more open, so that when I need to reschedule for a rehearsal there is somewhere to move people without giving away my entire weekend and working for 6 weeks straight.

I did have a nice few weeks of “spring break”–one easier week when Wash U was off but I was still teaching at home, and then an even easier week not teaching most of my home students. It was lovely to have some evenings free early, though I had taken on a fair number of gigs.

Things I’ve played recently or am playing soon: an anime concert with screens, an all baroque concert, an all Bach Concert, two concerts with a group that plays a lot of baroque music, Swan Lake, a quartet pop concert, a short quartet concert, a candlelight concert, and coming up soon: a full week of Holy week services. That’s about a months work of stuff I’m talking about.

Oh, and recently I had the worst thing happen, a musician’s nightmare. I was getting ready for a 10 am rehearsal and at 9 am I got a phone call asking, was I coming to rehearsal? I was like, yes, isn’t it at 10 am? No! The rehearsal started at 9 and I had failed to update my calendar. I ran out the door and arrived 20 minutes late. The conductor was very understanding and it was okay, but I was so embarrassed!

Louie and I have managed to get out for a couple of hikes though, and then weather has been…decent. Up and down like crazy, but not too rainy. We have a 5 day Inn to Inn type of walk in Japan coming up in May, and we want to be ready. I’ve also been walking and exercising regularly, so hopefully this will be a fun thing and not a slog! We’ve got a few concerts we are attending this weekend as well, so it’s not all work. There are 5 weeks left (counting this week) at the college and then it’s SUMMER there…

We had an evening of snacks and wine on the front porch and opened up the window so the cats could visit.

How’s your spring going? Are you worried this is like the pre-pandemic times and everything is about to get completely destroyed? Are you busier than ever or are you managing to keep things under control?