Whew! We made it!

I have to say, this fall was absolutely over the top busy. I am not sure how I survived. (The usual way, organization, lots of screaming, no friends, etc.)

But it’s my week off, and it is GLORIOUS. Today was my second day in a row of sleeping with no alarm set, and I am better at it than I thought I would be.

Okay, what happened in the meantime? Well, I hosted a cookie exchange party with about 15 people, and it was really fun! It was a school night, so it had a finite end time, but we had a lovely time drinking Wassail Punch, eating spinach artichoke dip, taste testing a few cookies, filling some tins with a large variety, and catching up (of course!). I ended up with a large tin full of terrific cookies, and gave a few away. Some are still frozen, so they will be doled out over the next few weeks. I will try to open up my guest list next year to non musician friends as well, but I wanted to keep things simple and have everybody already know each other!

The next day I finished up at my before school class, and though I still have to submit my grades, it has been really glorious not getting up so early. Except for Christmas Eve, when I decided to pile on and take entirely too many gigs! It was a festive and memorable day though, with five church services at 3 churches, a lovely dinner at Louie’s mom’s house, and more Christmas music than you could shake a stick at. Unless you have a lot of sticks.

Another enjoyable gig was playing with Mannheim Steamroller. Interestingly, my parents had just seen the show in Shipshewana, Indiana, and then I got to play with the show here! I chatted with the traveling violinist a bit and she had nice things to say about Shipshewana, of course.

The thing about playing a bunch of concerts is that it is utterly exhausting BUT it is also quite fun to see colleagues and chat at each gig. So it ends up being more social than you might think. Teaching from home is great, but I don’t get as much interaction with adults and certainly not from adults who are not paying for my time, haha! So although it was an exhausting month/months, there wasn’t much I would change.

I do have a few thoughts though, which are 1) I need to be more cautious about taking jobs that conflict with teaching. I ended up doing a lot of rescheduling and then having to turn down other jobs that conflicted but might have had less teaching conflicts and 2) if I am hosting Christmas next year I will likely only want to play one Christmas Eve service. The last one I played was at Ladue Chapel, which is one of my favorite churches to play at: the musician director is amazing, and the people are so warm and friendly, and it always ends up being a wonderful musical experience. Plus it reminds me of my home church(in South Carolina) more than any other places I play at, which makes it feel extra special. The rest, it was fabulous, and I can’t wait to see what the new year brings!

I will be enjoying my week “off” though: I used quotations because I made a rough schedule/to-do list for the week, but it’s really a week off because I don’t have gigs or teaching! I do have some household chores to take care of and some practicing to do–January is of course busier than ever, and I’m playing four different chamber music programs during January and February (only 1 in February) in addition to a show at the Fox where I double violin/viola (Funny Girl) and we only just got the music. So there’s work to be done, but it’s all very manageable and hopefully fun. (I say that now, we’ll see, hahahahahah!)

We are in no rush to take down the holiday decorations: I think it’ll get done after I return from Phoenix (I’m taking a trip over New Year’s.) It was great having two trees, though that means extra decorations to take down, less fun. We have plenty of storage space though.

My mom sent this violin snow globe as a gift. It also plays music.

Christmas Day was pretty low key. Louie and I don’t really exchange gifts, but he brought me a few things from his trip, and I gave him a “Birds of the National Parks” Calendar for his office. I made cranberry rolls with orange icing, and we watched Christmas episodes of the Great British Baking Show for a bit. Later in the day we went out for Chinese food with his family, and then we ended the night still chipping away at Suits, hoping to finish the show at SOME POINT. There are SO many seasons!

Anyway, that’s it for now. It was a low key holiday after too many performances: 16 different performances/church services in December, not counting rehearsals!