Teaching

Mumbo Jumbo

This whole week has been full of gorgeous, beautiful, 60 and 70 degree days.  And yet, have I managed to run outside?  No.  In fact, I’ve barely managed to run at all, due to my schedule, a bit of laziness, and a stomachache one day.  Hopefully tomorrow I can get outside!

So what have I been up to?  It’s been almost one week since I got engaged—the week has flown by!

I’ve done quite a bit of wedding research already, and have determined that very little can actually be decided at this point.  We need to wait until Chris finishes a few auditions before deciding when to get married…probably in May we can set the date.  I’d love to get married here in St. Louis, but if we were to end up moving, then there wouldn’t be any point.  We’ve also realized we do want a nice wedding with lots of family and friends there to celebrate with us.  Other than that, I don’t really know.

I made an account with theknot.com and they gave me a “handy” checklist of items I need to do.  For instance, right now I should be doing the following:

That’s not even all the tasks on the checklist that I should be doing right NOW, just some of them.  Should I be putting a wedding announcement in my hometown paper?  Getting engagement photos taken?  I am definitely “envisioning” my wedding dress though, I do love a good dress-shopping occasion.  I am beginning to realize that wedding planning can be a full time job—even though I am a wedding vendor myself, I don’t think I realized quite how much CAN go into wedding planning.

I love planning things.  Before the cruise last summer I spent weeks planning our excursions and researching the various options, printed out an elaborate itinerary with each day planned out with what to wear and bring and where to meet tours.  It was great!  I really enjoyed the process.  I want to plan my wedding in the same way.  The different would likely be that it is all in one day and involves many more people, both in the planning stages and of course at the event.  I want to consider simply what Chris and I want but need to take other people into account as well.

Okay, enough wedding mumbo-jumbo:  What else has been going on?

I finished Ed Kreitman’s new book, Teaching with an Open Heart.  Wow!  It’s a great book.  Really inspiring and beautifully written.  I can’t say that I agree with all the new age energy talk, but do love so many of his teaching ideas.  I have never seen him teach at an institute and I should change that. Not this summer though—I may go to Kansas to do Book Five with Susan Kempter but nothing else.  I know her course would be great, and the Kansas Institute pricing is really quite reasonable.

I taught a bunch of students, as usual.  Some of the students are doing just great, and a few have Solo and Ensemble competition coming up in a little over a week.  Some are disappointing me in their lack of practice and focus…I keep trying to inspire them, but sometimes it just gets too exhausting.  I know every teacher has thousands of inspirational ideas to get students to practice, but sometimes I just feel like giving up—how hard do I really have to work for each student?  I’m talking about students who are old enough to know they need to practice in order to get better and just don’t.  Why do I have to make all the effort and get absolutely nothing back?  This is why I am making some changes next school year…I am tired of making all this effort for very little return.  I can definitely relate to school teachers—you can’t make a child learn.  And yet you are made to feel incredibly guilty or like a failure when the child doesn’t learn, when perhaps the failing ISN’T on your end.  And maybe it’s not a failing of the child either, but the circumstances.  Just a little vent Smile

This weekend I am playing La Traviata with Winter Opera St. Louis.  I’m also teaching a group class at the St. Louis School of Music tomorrow afternoon, and I’m planning to run 8 miles, plus my spinning class on Sunday.  I am excited that Monday is a school holiday, particularly as I work through the weekend.  I think it’ll be a fun weekend though—Chris has off work Saturday night so we might go out to dinner.

Oh, and fun fact:  the owner of Franco, where we went after we got engaged, also works out at my gym with a trainer.  Mike evidently talked to him about that earlier in the week, and I saw him today, but was shy and didn’t talk to him.  Perhaps I shall work up the nerve another time.

What are your weekend plans?

Cat

Keeping my feet warm

I had a long day of teaching today, though I did have a couple no-shows and a few kids sick.  I finally sat down on the couch and put up my feet and turned on last week’s “Parenthood.”  And what landed on my foot pillow?

172977_10150140720211550_697061549_8504139_2380107_o171624_10150140716356550_697061549_8504005_312783_o

As you can see she barely fits in the frame. (Ignore the mess in the back room!)

(Aww, you know I love my cat!)

176113_10150140724386550_697061549_8504221_2269630_o

I could NOT get her to turn around and look at me!  Somebody was mad at all the violin playing today, I guess.

Brief follow-up to a couple previous issues:  The snow and ice all melted.  And my wrist is feeling better…not 100 percent, but improving. 

Random thoughts

Wedding planning

1 Comment

Today I stopped by a bookstore on my way home from teaching and ended up picking up a few wedding magazines and a wedding book.  I was a little embarrassed to buy them, but it ended up being okay…as I am wearing an engagement ring.  After all, NOW is the time I actually can legitimately buy these things and not feel weird or creepy.

I haven’t spent much time thinking about my wedding in the past—I have never been one of those women who dreamed of her perfect wedding.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I have thought about my wedding, but primarily I have thought about it while I was playing at other ceremonies and thinking about what I didn’t like about those ceremonies.  So I have lots of ideas of things that I definitely don’t want (and I won’t say here as I don’t want to insult people who might love those things!) but not as many ideas of things that I DO want.  Hence the books and magazines…I need to brainstorm. 

image

That’s me tonight…

By the way, evidently Friday’s performance of La Traviata is sold out, but Sunday is still available.  It’s going to be a great show!

Random thoughts

Tired

I’m tired.  I’m definitely going to bed early tonight.

I had an exhausting (though very exciting) weekend.  For those of you who are behind on my blog (or living under a rock), I got engaged!

I’ve had 9 hours of opera rehearsal so far.  La Traviata is going well.  The St. Louis Woman’s Club is a lovely venue.  Perhaps a good place to get married? 

I didn’t do too many (none, actually) workouts over the weekend so it was great to get back to the gym today and run then workout with Mike.  He was girlishly excited that I had gotten engaged.  I feel silly getting so much attention…but I guess it’s nice…and well-deserved?

I made a new recipe tonight—Spicy Sweet Potato Wedges.  They were tasty, but I don’t think I cooked them as long as I should have.  The 500 degree temperature frightened me.  I do like sweet potatoes though.

I had lunch at a new (to me) restaurant today—Nora’s in Dogtown.  It was great—I had a pork/applesauce/brie sandwich (“For Pete’s Sake”)with tomato basil bisque soup.  Delicious.

Now to watch a show or two on tv and then rest up for a long day of teaching and more opera tomorrow. 

(Last note:  the students loved their Valentine’s cookies yesterday.)

Grand Ideas, Teaching

Happy Valentines Day!

1 Comment

Valentine’s Day is such a tough holiday.  It’s a holiday supposedly celebrating “love” but really just seems to celebrate “spending money to buy gifts for your girlfriend so she doesn’t hate you” or “making single people feel bad about themselves.”

image

In elementary school Valentine’s Day was fun because you gave valentines to everybody in the class and received them from everybody.  No picking and choosing.  I remember really enjoying that!  Of course you would always try to give some people more special valentines, but nonetheless the number remained the same.

As we got older that changed, and in high school they sold carnations that boys would buy for the girls.  Of course, just certain girls…not everybody.  And they would deliver them during school.  Really obnoxious, in my opinion.

College was better—nobody really cared.  I have had wonderful Valentine’s Days hanging out with a bunch of girlfriends as well.

I am celebrating Valentine’s Day in my classes for everybody, so I can show my love for my students, even though they annoy me sometimes.  Today is an exciting day for my students—I have planned a small party for each of my classes, with homemade cookies and candy.  They are in for a treat.

Is this the best Valentine’s Day yet? This one is AWESOME, of course…knowing that people can finally understand and validate my relationship with Chris is priceless…

Some people say “Oh, but I show my love for my boyfriend/husband everyday.”  Well, DUH.  Don’t we all?  That doesn’t make you superior—I don’t think?  Don’t all of us do that, not only for our significant others but for our friends and family (and pets) as well?  If not every day, certainly very often.  (We are all allowed to have bad days, where we can be cranky and not demonstrate our love per se.)

What are you doing to celebrate Valentine’s Day?

image

Performing

La Traviata

Any opera lovers out there?  I am playing in Winter Opera Saint Louis’s upcoming production of “La Traviata” this weekend.  The performances are Friday night and Sunday afternoon.  Visit the website for more details.  They are calling it the original “Pretty Woman.”  I don’t know how I feel about that.  But it should be a great performance—the singers sound fantastic and of course the orchestra is great.

We had six hours of rehearsal today…whew!  I’m completely exhausted.  This week is pretty busy with rehearsals on top of my regular teaching schedule (with a few adjustments due to all the rehearsals…). 

And really, I just want to sit around and stare at my shiny new ring.  How do other people handle this dilemma? 

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.