I was thinking the other day how I often feel like I’m just counting down the days…counting down the activities each day until the end of the day. Is this normal? How do we live in the moment when the moments are all the same and feel unending but we know that it’s because we are living through a bad time? Am I just depressed?

Anyway, it was a normal week. Cats, a little recording of Christmas music, lots of students. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving Break and having some time off…it’s funny how weekends aren’t enough for me anyway. To be fair, I’m doing an online workshop for 10 hours this weekend so I’m pretty busy. We aren’t 100 percent sure on what we are doing for Thanksgiving (well, it’s mostly because I know what I want to do which is just eat at home, but Louie is waffling a bit and feels like we should try to eat with his parents who live in town, but I feel like that’s needlessly risky) but otherwise we are hoping for decent weather (unlike today, which is raining) so we can get in some good outdoor activities. I also want to do a little baking and make some cranberry things, and then decorate for Christmas. I don’t plan to decorate as fully as last year when I had company, but I’d like to make the place a little festive. That will happen AFTER Thanksgiving

A selfie while waiting to record two Christmas songs for an upcoming Opera Edwardsville video performance. I wore a festive holiday, as you can see. I am excited to see the video for that and also really excited to hear the recording of A Winter’s Tale that I did with the students at St Louis University.

These guys took my seat when I had a short break from teaching. It was a bit of a challenge shooing them out of there! Kind of like herding cats.

I had a dream the other night that I overbought bananas, that we had 5 bunches of them in the fruit bowl, but that I also kept finding a bunch of them in nearly every basket and on every end table throughout the house! This was the same night I also had a dream that I was visiting a friend who said that they don’t wear masks but that it’s okay because as they are talking they move their hand up and down really fast to dissipate any virus in the air. Weird night.

I can’t decide if my early morning job is giving me a nice structure to my day or making me absolutely miserable with exhaustion. I think it’s somewhere in between. Last night I slept from 10:30 to 7:30, and only got up one time, and woke up to a nice rain, and I feel great. I know parents do this kind of thing all the time, but there are a variety of reasons one chooses not to be a parent, and while sleep wasn’t the main one for me, it is something I get to have for myself. I also haven’t been sleeping well for the past four years, especially lately, so it was nice to get a solid 9 hours rather than tossing and turning and maybe getting 5 to 6. I do enjoy doing the classes for students, and that age group (4th and 5th graders) is an age group that tends to really enjoy my sense of humor, so that’s good.

Thanksgiving dilemma: do I order dinner for 4 (for 2) to have leftovers and it’s NOT twice as much as dinner for 2? Or just dinner for 2 to be reasonable? I might still supplement with some bread from another place and a home baked pie and homemade cranberry sauce or relish. What would you do?