Thanksgiving and Beyond

I have started a Thanksgiving post more than twice, not knowing exactly where to start...

I am thankful for so many things, not the least of which is indoor plumbing. Seriously. Someone had to think of that a long time ago, and throughout the ages the systems have been improved so that now we have all the water we need, and disposal services, in our homes. Am I thankful to some person for these things? Not really. God gets my gratitude because all good things come from God, including really brilliant ideas. I am thankful for wireless internet, and iPods and fun stuff like that. Again, there are a bunch of people who have invented amazing things, who were gifted by God's inspiration.

I think about my life, my family and my job, and I'm overwhelmed with gratitude to my Creator. I was born to a pair of wonderful parents who, though imperfect people, brought me up and trained me to love God. They recognized things in me, how God made me, and encouraged me in my musical development (sometimes against my wishes!). They set me up so perfectly for the life I am living today. I am thankful to them, but even more so to God.

I am thankful for my dear husband, the love we share, and our foundational commitment to each other. Although sometimes the sparks fly, at the end of the day, our relationship is stronger for the struggles. And though we are far from perfect, I see over and over again how God set us up as the perfect mates for each other. We are both better people for having each other's influence over us. We need each other, and so God provided. To fill out our family, God has given us two precious girls. They each contribute their own brands of joy to our lives.

To say that I'm thankful for my job seems to fall so very short of my attitude about it. I am so amazed that I have been providentially placed in this job. God placed desires in my heart, and He put me through situations over the last several years that fanned those flames of desire to a point of desperation, and now He has fulfilled my desires in ways I hadn't even imagined. How does a man feel about a water fountain after days in a dry desert? That's how I feel about my job. I'm thankful to God for satisfying my thirst. He's showing me over and over again that He made me the way He made me not to frustrate me, but to allow me to flourish in His timing. His plan is the best, and sometimes the waiting part is hard, but the wandering in the desert eventually leads to a more satisfying end than anyone could ever imagine.

My family had a lovely Thanksgiving, and I hope yours did as well.

And now for Christmas...

The Lost Art of Audience Etiquette

Tonight I went to Big Girl's first piano recital. She's seven. She played two songs (from the Level 1A books) pretty well for a kid who has only been taking lessons since January. The performers all sat on the front row in program order. One at a time they went up to the piano, played their songs and then sat back down. They did great.

The adults and siblings sitting further back behaved... how shall I say... not as well as the children up front. That's putting it quite nicely.

In the row directly in front of me was a dad, sister (around 7 or 8 years old), another sister (young teenager) and mom, of the girl who performed last. Through the early part of the program the two daughters sitting between the parents were playing tug-o-war with the printed program. The mother would occasionally stick her oar in, not to break it up, but to participate. It didn't help that she was wearing metal bangle bracelets on her left arm, which sounded like a baby rattle every time she moved.

By the part of the program where the music actually got interesting (a Clementi Sonatina, Bach Invention, and a Schubert piece) I couldn't take it anymore. I gently touched the back of the chairs in front of me, a gesture which the mom saw from the corner of her eye, and indicated that they were distracting me, and would they please stop. I didn't even indicate how rude I thought they were being to the performers on stage. They immediately straightened up just a little.

Not long after that, I heard the mom whispering something to the teenage daughter about a woman being a b#$%h. "Yeah, she's talking about me," I thought.

Within 2 minutes, the younger daughter was putting the folded up program on her dad's shoulder and messing with him. I tapped the back of her chair (which was directly in front of me) with my foot, gave her "the look" and mouthed the word STOP when she turned around.

The pianist they were waiting to hear was last on the program. I'm guessing she was another daughter of theirs. She played the most famous Mozart piano sonata ever, the Sonata in C Major, VERY badly. She couldn't keep her tempo steady to save her life. She rushed through the easy parts and S..L..O..W..E..D..... W..A..Y....D..O..W..N when it got harder.

I'm being hard on the kid that wasn't even a part of the problem. Back to the real offense...

After the recital was over, this lady sought me out and confronted me about making her little girl feel bad. "I hope you're happy making a five-year-old kid cry..." She said a bunch of other stuff trying to make me feel guilty. I don't even believe her that the kid was 5. She looked at least as old as my kid who played in the recital. I gave her my blank smile and said that I understood what she was saying, and I thought it was important to teach audience etiquette. She then said "And shouldn't ADULTS model good behavior?" "Yes," I said, as I continued smiling. She wanted to keep going, and all I said after that was that I understood what she was saying. I didn't give her the satisfaction of an apology, and I suppressed the urge to call her out on her poor parenting and general rudeness.

She totally missed the point. HER behavior contributed to the problem. Maybe if she had stayed on top of her kids and made them feel bad herself instead of being the "cool mom", she wouldn't have been embarrassed by having a stranger call her kids out. And what kind of behavior is she modeling by calling me a you-know-what to her older kid? That says WAY more about her than it does about me.

All-Region Choir

Wow... I'm falling behind around here. So sorry. I said I wouldn't do that. Oh well, I'm doing my best. I also have a blog to keep up with at work, and yes, that one gets priority.

Two weeks ago the 7th and 8th grade choir students of our region auditioned for the All-Region Choir. That day I was on a judging panel as one of five judges listening to the second tenors sing selected measures of the music. We were behind a screen so we couldn't see the auditionees, and we weren't allowed to talk about what we thought of the musical performances until after it was all said and done. We ranked the voices we heard and turned our scores in to the tabulation people who then came out with the final rankings list later that day based on the scores we judges gave. It was very interesting to see the process from the director's side, as this was my first time to be there. I auditioned as a high school kid, and that was the last time I been involved with anything like that. (I'm not going to say how long ago that was...)

The top 15 kids in each section who auditioned that day made it into the All-Region Choir. Those kids got to sing today in an all-day clinic followed by a concert. It's a very valuable experience for the kids who get to do it. The "all stars" from each school sound very nice all together, and they get to mingle with the choir nerds from other schools who are like themselves. It's very, very cool.

Since I work at two schools (the one with the giant choir where I teach only 6th grade, and also the school with the tiny choir where I teach everybody), I found myself bouncing around a little. From my small choir, I had one girl make it. I'm so proud of her. She's a sweet girl, and she works hard. She was a little nervous being the only one there from her school. The other school had 36 kids make it. I invited her to hang out with the other school for lunch and at other points during the day when she might have otherwise been alone.

It was a very nice day. Students made music, directors networked... Lots of fun. You know what was really fun about it? All-Region Choir is where being a choir nerd is cool. We're all in our element, and it really shows...

Afterward I went out to dinner with the 14 kids from my giant choir school who made 5th chair or better in their sections, and the other director. He picked up the tab for us all. He has done this top five dinner as a tradition to motivate and reward the students. It was such a fun time... We went to a fancy place where they use actual linens on the table, and the en trees average about $20 per plate. We don't often get to spend purely fun time with the students. They worked plenty hard all day, and it was time to loosen up and have some fun (and also teach a little bit about table manners). We had reserved the party room at this particular restaurant, and it was perfect. We didn't have to worry about bothering other patrons (after all, we brought a bunch of KIDS with us).

So I left this morning before 7:00 AM, and I got home just after 9:00 PM... It's been a long day, but also very satisfying. I will sleep very well!

Places I've Been

I'm stealing this idea. I liked it, so I'm doing it. And I'm not plagiarizing because I'm admitting that I stole it. And the person I stole the idea from stole it from someone else. That makes it a trend. I'm just jumping aboard.

Anyway, here's where I've been:

visited 26 states (52%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Fall Concert, Round 2

Since I teach at two different schools, I get to direct twice as many concerts. The first one was for the giant choir program where I'm assisting. For the most recent one, I was on my own. The entire choir program is my responsibility.

We had the concert in the choir room, which is big for a classroom, but it's lots smaller than the cafeteria and gym. The acoustics were great. I didn't have to move the baby grand piano or risers, which are on a small stage the end of the room opposite the door. It was really quite a nice venue. I swept the floor before setting out chairs. I got the first 45 or so chairs set out by myself before the after school rehearsal, and then Mom helped me afterward. She came over to accompany the rehearsal, and then she helped with the last minute setting up. She saved me at least a half hour, which insured that I got to eat dinner! YAY!

The concert went very well. The room looked great. The girls filed into the room in line and straight onto the risers. They sang pretty well. I was quite pleased. You could distinctly hear two parts throughout the whole thing (where there were two parts, of course). Seventeen girls performed, which is remarkable because I only have thirteen students in the class. There's one boy in class, and one in the after school club, but neither of them showed up for the concert.

One of the fine arts department administrators was there. Her comment afterward in an e-mail to me was that we "kicked it up a notch" with the choir program. What more could I ask for? My principal seemed impressed also. It was a success.

The struggle does make success a little sweeter. I don't think I'll ever forget that night, from the sweeping of the floor, to the last minute purchase of cookies for a little reception afterward... Someday it will be a, "remember that time I had to sweep the floor and set up all the chairs?" kind of thing. For now, that was just this week, and I'm planning to do it again in December. I set out about 65-70 chairs, and the audience was pretty full. Not every chair was occupied, but it was comfortably full. I think that until we get to standing room only, I'll keep using the choir room.

I'm rambling because I'm tired... sorry. I should go...

7 Year Olds Are Easy

At least my almost-7-year-old is pretty easy when it comes to birthday parties. She did go back to the idea of doing a special something with one friend... although her friend that she chose for that special something was unavailable for this weekend. No problem. We were going to have Hubby's family and my parents over for a family birthday party. But Hubby's family couldn't come down to our house, so we ended up doing a "party day" at my mother-in-law's house with Hubby's sister and her family and us.

My mother-in-law did everything, which really took a lot of pressure off of me. She got a cake, party plates, cups, napkins, and party favors for the four kids even. I'll probably still make a cake for Big Girl in the next few days, since her birthday isn't until Wednesday anyway.

I'm way behind on stuff around the house, and I didn't get to make any headway on that front, but I wouldn't have been able to do any of that if I'd had a houseful of party guests anyway.

I have no idea how I'm going to get laundry done... I should have done it last weekend, but that concert (really, the rehearsal Saturday afternoon) threw me off schedule. I've been trying to get a load done here and there, and so far I've only done 3 of my 6 loads. If I didn't do much of anything else tomorrow, I might be able to get the rest done.

A classmate of Big Girl's has a birthday party tomorrow afternoon, and we're going to take her to that, especially since it's at one of those bouncy house places. She just loves those... One of these days she's going to realize that she's never had a birthday party at one of those places. Oh well, she seemed pretty happy with the family party she had today. Like I said, she's easy. Easily excited, anyway.

It's been a big weekend. And it's not even over yet.

And Big Girl gets another "celebration" with my parents still. Maybe she'll think she has 2 birthday parties this year. See? EASY!

Full Circle

Today I had another "full circle" moment.

My mom is accompanying my choir concert for my tiny choir, and she came over today to practice. So there was my mom at the piano, and me directing her (and the choir club). I'm the boss now. She commented about that afterward, taking direction from me, when she's the one who taught me in my musical infancy (my literal infancy as well). Now I'm calling the shots.

Setting tempos, really.

I love my mom. She's a really great lady. I'd choose her to be my mom if I had a choice.

Music, Beethoven & Grief

Music is the wind that fills the sails of emotion.

Profound, huh? I thunked that up all by myself. Really. I did.

Think about it... When you're happy, and you listen to happy music, it lifts your spirits even higher. Same when you're down, and you listen to something somber, it helps you wallow in it. When you're up and the music is down (or vise versa), you can choose not to hoist the sails up the mast, and let the wind pass by you. I really like this metaphor. It works for me.

Tonight I had one of those moments at CAS. We're working on Mozart's Requiem, and we've really got it nailed down pretty well. Too well for the directors to leave us alone. They more recently added Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, and a Beethoven's "Elegischer Gesang," as well.

The Beethoven piece was written to commemorate the anniversary of the passing of a dear friend's wife. Beethoven had stayed with this couple on and off for several years, and they must have been dear friends. The woman died in childbirth. The text is in German, so it's not so touching as we work on it. The first night we read through this piece, the director told us what it was about to help us sing it with expression from the start. Tonight, a few weeks later, he told us a personal story of grief that he has applied to this piece which has made it very touching to him. As he was speaking, telling us about his grandmother, it struck me so strongly that I had to leave the room.

This song so aptly could be sung in memory of my unborn child who died in April of 2004. The text translated to English is, "Life gently touched thee, and passed as softly, thy spirit too holy to know pain! No eye could weep for this spirit, so heavenly, when homeward turning."

I don't often think of my miscarriage, or my baby in heaven. I cry over her even less often. I haven't been struck by the grief of losing that child so poignantly as I was tonight in a very long time. And it came on in an instant.

We never fully recover from grief. Even after God has healed the hurt, a scar remains. Time heals nothing. Time just gives us other thing to think about... I didn't know I could still hurt over that as much as I did tonight. I'm OK. I'm just surprised at how quickly that wound could reopen.

For me, that song will from now on be linked with my precious child waiting for me in heaven.

Fall Concert

Tonight was my first concert as a middle school choir director. My 6th grade choir did me proud. They sang 4 songs, one a capella round, and three accompanied pieces. I'm so happy with what my choir did tonight!!

Things didn't go perfectly. There was a mix-up with how the students were seated, which also meant they were not in the right order when they got on stage. The kids singing Part 1 were on the side with the ones singing Part 2, and as soon as I realized that, I went on stage to sort them out. It just took a few minutes, and once they were set, we just carried on.

The round went a little too fast, which is a problem they've been having with it for a while. They did the phrasing very well, which we've worked so hard to get just right. Even with a bit of runaway tempo, the phrases weren't clipped, and all 3 parts could be heard. The next song was "Scales and Arpeggios" from the Disney movie, Arisocats. It went VERY well. The two parts were balanced, and the tempo didn't rush.

The ballad came next. It was "Music Speaks." I told the kids to handle it delicately, like a confetti egg that they had made, but weren't ready to use yet. They carried the phrases so beautifully. After they sang it, I did have to hold back a tear. The last song was the one where they could bust the confetti egg on the audience. "Sing Cantate Domino!" was the explosive, sparkling closer. That song could have been a good opener, but it programmed very well as the closer. It left that happy, celebratory feeling with the audience right as we finished.

So now, after a happy night, I'm exhausted. I'm satisfied. Hubby and the girls came, and so did my mom. I nearly cried when I saw Mom. I didn't know she was there until afterward. I ran into her in the lobby as she was just about to leave. It's been a really great day. I'm ready for bed...

Concert Week

Concert week is in full swing... Boy, the pressure is on. It's mostly self-imposed pressure. You know, that "fear of failing"stuff and such. With my 6th grade choir, I have only four real rehearsals left before the concert. Yikes!! With my other school, we have about 2 weeks more before our rehearsal, but my after-school choir club kids only have 5 more rehearsals before that concert, even though there are more days on the calendar between now and then.

Last night I woke up about 1:30 A.M. in a near panic over not having yet done the programs for Saturday's concert. I started working on it, made significant progress on the layout and formatting with very little content, and satisfied my nervous mind enough to go back to sleep for another hour and half. Yeah, I still woke up way before my alarm. Not liking this at all...

I'm scatterbrained enough already. (I can hear my husband laughing at this.)

Tonight I'm not getting to go home between work and CAS. I'm tired enough to call it a day, and I have 3 hours of rehearsal left in this day before it's over. Yay for free wi-fi at a local sandwich shop. My "California Club" was super tasty, and I got to play online for a few fleeting moments before the rush begins again.

Well, it's time to go... I hope my readers' lives are less hectic than mine! Blessings to you out there in cyberland!

Failing Everyone

I've come to learn that my driven personality has a downside. Occaisionally I'll get the feeling that nothing I'm doing is up to snuff, and I'm letting everyone down. I'm an acheiver, a goal-setting (and goal-reaching) maniac. There are so many areas in life where there aren't any concrete goals, and in those things, I flounder.

Raising children is one of those things. Of course I have the goal of raising my girls to be competent, pleasant, independent adults. But what does that mean for right now? Well, with Little Girl that meant reigning in her outright defiance over the last several years. In a way, that was easy. I had the end-game in mind, and she wasn't going to win. (I'm speaking of this in the past tense now, as it hasn't been a constant struggle for us in the last four months or so - PRAISE GOD!!!) But other things are more nebulous. How do I succeed in the short term in making my kids feel loved? How do I make memories for them that will outlast my lifetime?

Big Girl's birthday is coming up. She's expecting a party. I don't know if I can pull it off... It's too late to call up one of those places and book her party somewhere so that I don't have to DO everything. But at the same time, I don't want to pay big bucks for a 7th birthday party. I know she's old enough to remember everything now. When they're super little, it makes no sense at all to have big parties (I have been to a 1st birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese - no lie). But that's no longer the case. Besides, this is the kid who wrote a letter to the tooth fairy this school-year and included the date on which she lost her first (and only) tooth, April 21st. How many kids remember stuff like that in such detail six months later?

Since I don't have the kind of time I used to have, Hubby and I were trying to get Big Girl adjusted to the idea of having one friend over to spend the night, and doing something special with that friend in lieu of a birthday party. She seemed to like the idea, but then I guess she didn't realize that she was forfeiting a party in that scenario. She's changed her tune. I have just under two weeks to make this happen. The pressure is on.

At work, this is concert week. The Fall Concert is Saturday night, and the district's Performing Arts Center (PAC). My 6th grade choir is sort-of getting there. We had our first practice with the acocmpanist on Friday. The class that I thoguht was the best completely fell apart at one place. And it was in a song they KNOW. I couldn't believe it. I don't think that will happen again, at least I hope not. My conducting is atrocious. I've been mostly playing the piano in rehearsals, and I haven't been practicing my conducting. I can't even keep a four-beat pattern going consistently, it seems. I am at least giving cues, dynamic gestures, and important cut-offs. I'm really glad my conducting professor won't be at this concert. He might be tempted to go back and change my grade from 10 years ago.

In this situtation, it's not so much that I'm failing everyone, I'm just really afraid that I will. I don't want to let the students down, and do something on stage that makes them mess up. I don't want to let my teaching partner down. After all, he picked me to work with him. He believed in me. I don't want him to rethink that. I want this concert to be great also as a sort of justification to myself that I'm doing the right thing in going back to work. If I can't succeed here, then maybe this is a mistake. (As I type that sentence, I know it's not true. God's hand is in this, even if I fail.)

What really gets me doubting is my time with Little Girl and Big Girl. They are not suffering from our recent changes in the family routines. But if they were, would I be able to tell? Is this the kind of thing that will come up with a therapist in 20 years? "You see, doc, it all started when my mom went back to work when I was 4 years old..." Who wants that??

I'm feeling so very guilty right now about neglecting the scrapbooks. I honestly don't have time to do anything with them right now, but when I was home, I didn't do much with them in the last few years. And the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2006 still haunts me.

I woke up this morning about 3 minutes before my alarm went off. It's set for weekdays, and I failed to turn it off for yesterday and today. I turned it off after it sounded, and then I tried to go back to sleep. But all I could think about was how I'm going to let everyone down, thus, this blog entry.

I wish I wasn't so hard on myself. The likelihood that I will fail everyone is pretty low. Yes, I'm sure there are things about raising my kids that I'm going to regret, that I already regret. I will fail at that to some degree. The task is too huge for it to be free of mistakes. I'm also pretty sure that I'll make some mistake on the concert next Saturday, but I'm also sure that the 6th grade parents and kids will be pretty happy with whatever happens, and they probably won't notice a little mistake here and there so long as their little angel is singing. Big Girl's birthday will happen, and there will probably be a party, although there aren't yet plans made. It will come together. She will not be neglected.

The ultimate truth is that I can't handle all the things on my plate. Not in my own strength. If I try doing all this on my own, I will fail. No doubt. If I put my trust in God, then the things that need to get done will get done. He can double my efforts, give me wisdom to tackle what's important. I am not in control.

And that's the ultimate truth: I am not in control. I need to rest in that.

I Care

This whole "going back to work" thing has really taken over my blog. It's really taken over my life too. Sorry if you're getting sick of it, readers, but there's just no other way.

Anyway, this week a couple of things have come up that reveal to me what kind of teacher I am. When I taught elementary music, I never really saw this side of myself, but it's coming out in a big way now that I'm in the middle school.

I have a student who enrolled just after the start of the school year, I think it was the third or fourth week of the first grading period. I'll call her Jodie. She's a very sweet young lady, timid and a tad overwhelmed. As she got used to me and the things we do in choir (like solfege, and a tongue twister warm-up song we do nearly every day), she settled in pretty well, as far as I could tell. Yesterday at the start of class, Jodie came up to me with tears in her eyes and told me it was going to be her last day in choir. The school administrators were changing her schedule to take away choir, her only elective, and put her in a second language arts class. She's already in two math classes.

As soon as my classes were over for the morning, I marched down to the office to get to the bottom of Jodie's situation. Sadly, hers is a story of homeschooling gone wrong. Her parents pulled her out of school in 3rd grade to homeschool her, but they hadn't really done much to educate her. She's struggling in all areas except for my class. The sad truth of it is that Jodie is a bright girl who has not been given the educational opportunities, and now she's suffering.

But how can it be right to take her out of the one class in which she's feeling connected? She's doing great with choir, catching on to all those things that overwhelmed her at first, and she's succeeding. Jodie is very responsible, being among the first to turn in forms (including her choir T-shirt order and money). She strikes me as the kind of kid who will do what she has to do, if she's given the opportunity to do it. If the principals and counselors want to demoralize this girl and ensure that she hates school, this sounds like a good way to do that. I left school yesterday just sick to my stomach for Jodie. I just wish I could blink my eyes like "I Dream of Jeanie" and fix everything for her.

At my other school, the student I've mentioned before, let's call her Molly, wasn't in class. I heard from the other students that on her way to class, she was tripped by another student and after recovering from the face-plant, she cussed out the tripper and was caught by the assistant principal. After class, I went looking for Molly, and when I couldn't find her, I tracked down the AP who caught her. Turns out he sent her to in-school suspension for the rest of the day as a punishment for the cursing. (He also sent the other student to in-school suspension for the rest of that day and two additional days.) In looking for Molly on other occasions, I have her schedule for after my class memorized, so I went to the teacher where she was supposed to be, got a message from the teacher about work she needed to do, took it to her in ISS, and had a brief conversation with Molly. I didn't ream her out for what happened, I just told her that I missed her in class, and that I heard what went down. (No pun intended.) She smiles when I talk to her one on one now. In the last week she has really softened in class too. She doesn't glare at me as often, and we've actually had some productive rehearsals. Amazing...

I was really worried about Molly when I realized she wasn't coming to class. And when I heard what happened... I felt bad for Molly. She didn't ask to be tripped. Her response to it wasn't appropriate, by any means. But she's had a rough life, and she was defending herself. Plus she's been in ISS so much (in the past, from what I hear), I wonder if that's a productive way to handle the situation. I'm not saying I know what the right thing is. If Molly is going to learn to respond to this situation appropriately, she needs to be able to trust the AP enough to go to him and report the other student. As it is, his sending her to ISS damages that relationship, making it harder for her to go to him in the future. He may go (or have gone) to her later to repair that relationship and give(n) her advice what to do next time. Oh well. All I can do is all I can do.

Molly and Jodie are as different as night and day, and their situations are polar opposites. Both of these situations are ones where I wish I could fix it for their sakes. I care about them. I care more than I expected to care. It's not that I didn't care about the elementary kids who came through my classroom all those years ago. I think that seeing my students every day makes a huge difference in the relationships I'm able to have with them, and it ups my investment in their lives. That's where eternal impact takes place. This is my calling.

******** Update - 10/5/09 *********

Jodie won't be allowed to come to choir at all. I could just cry. In fact, I have.

When Words Aren't Enough

Tonight (last night, really) I went to a concert with my mom. It was a piano concert being given by my piano teacher from when I was in 8th, 9th and 10th grades. It was held at a local college, and my mom happened to see a flyer for it at a local music store a couple weeks ago. The artist's name is Joseph Martin, and he's an accomplished composer of choral works as well as piano arrangements. In short, he's pretty darn amazing. Tonight's concert was profound for me on many levels.

When I was a very little kid, my mother would take me with her to piano recitals. She took me to kid recitals and she'd tell me that I would do that some day. She took me to adult performances too. She was in college at the time, and she was getting recital attendance credit for some of it, but she was also very intentionally exposing me to what she believed was my natural bent. She was doing everything in her power to raise me up in the way she believed God had made me to go.

When I was in 8th grade, my mom drove me downtown in 4:00 traffic (and then back home in 5:00 traffic) to take me to my piano lessons with Joseph Martin. I know those lessons weren't cheap. He was already at the point of not needing to teach lessons to make a living. His first CD of piano solos (his own arrangements, of course) came out that year. Mom took me to those lessons down there for nearly 3 years. And she really hates driving in traffic.

Sitting beside her on the front row tonight, I thought of all those things, and I cried. Tears of appreciation for her wisdom and sacrifices all those years ago flowed freely as the air was filled with beautiful piano music being played by my teacher.

As regular readers of my blog know, I have been feeling the presence of God's providence in my personal history converging on this very time in my life, with going back to work and becoming a choir director. Studying piano with Joseph Martin was a critical chapter in my musical development. Working with him honed my musical instincts BIG time. He was also a spiritual influence as well. I can't even really put that part of it to words... The supernatural in music, emotion, spirit... I don't think I had ever really thought about those things before studying with Joe. (Granted, I was only 13 when I started working with him.) Now those concepts are as connected in my thinking as breathing is to living.

And of course now that I'm leading choir rehearsals daily, I'm playing the piano daily. Most often I'm playing badly, but at least I'm playing. I hadn't played much in the years between college and now. I really think I had been running from the piano. My mother was always disappointed that I didn't practice enough, and I had tied her love for me to the piano (it was all in my head- she never meant to do that). Now, in the last couple years, after having been away from it for so many years, and still feeling loved by her (after all, I've given her GRANDCHILDREN now!), I have felt God calling me back to the piano. Since about a year ago, I have been making myself play more often, just whatever I wanted to play, and I'm seeing even that as leading me to where I am in my job. Like I said, I'm not playing well, but I can play enough of the accompaniment for the students to get their cues.

Joe has remained someone special to me, long after I was no longer his piano student. He played the piano at my wedding. I know he doesn't do that for just anybody. I have seen him at music conventions and things throughout the years.

All these things went through my mind as I listened to the concert. And cried. Happy tears. Thankful tears.

When words aren't enough, music speaks.

("Music Speaks" is the name of a song my choirs are singing. I'm currently trying to learn to play the accompaniment respectably!)

Childcare Difficulties

With the H1N1 flu scare going on, I'm definitely being much more cautious about sickness than I ever have been before. Also, with my new job, and having gone through a little bit of sickness already this year (did I blog about that?), and knowing that nothing productive will happen for my students without me, I am doing everything I can to be there at work.

Little Girl's babysitter has not been able to keep Little Girl for the last 5 work days. Her poor daughter has been sick with fever for 7 or 8 days in a row now, I don't even remember how many days it's been. She dosn't have the dreaded "swine flu", but she does have something nasty, keeping her fever in the 101 range for all these days. I don't need to be bringing that home with Little Girl, so to limit her exposure, I've been picking her up from school about 45 minutes before the usual end of her school day, and taking her with me to my afternoon school to hang out in my office while I teach that one class. I've been bringing my laptop and playing DVD's for her, so she's been pretty happy. And she's very fascinated with the "big kids" who come to my room.

We knew that having a private babysitter left us vulnerable to this very situation. This has been the worst-case scenario, but I think it's working out better than I expected. My principal doesn't seem to be bothered by Little Girl being there at school with me, and the other teachers who see us in the halls smile at her, and some even talk to Little Girl. She has "helped" me carry papers back from the copier and things like that too, which is very good for her. She loves to be a helper.

The thing that's difficult in all this is the drive to work, then back past home to pick up Little Girl, then back to work. It's about 40 minutes of driving in the middle of my day that I need to be spending on work. In an ideal world, I'd also be dropping by the grocery store during some of that time too. We've been needing bread and milk at home for the last 3 days, but having Little Girl with me, I don't think to make that stop. It's just different... Since my schedule is as complicated as it is, with a break in the middle of the day, I'm not actually missing any official work time in all this craziness. That's my own time that I'm spending to drive across town and back, or that I'd spend working.

Little Girl has been such a champ. She has not been disruptive except for the 2 times she's needed to go potty in the middle of class (which isn't bad considering that she's been there 5 days). The choir kids let out an "AWWW!" every time she pokes her head out of my office when they're around. She is pretty cute, I can't blame them.

I have been able to spend quite a lot more time with Little Girl through this, which has been kind of nice in a lot of ways. I really was missing her. I think she was missing me too. We have had lots of little snuggly moments in the last week. It has been a blessing. Now I can be ready to not have to go get her anymore once the babysitter's child gets well, and I won't long for her like I had been. I'll appreciate my autonomy quite a lot more!

I think it's been good for my choir kids too. They can have a face to put with the stories I tell. They have seen me as more than just their teacher, they've seen me as a mom. I had told them before that I missed my daughter, and now they've seen her, they've heard her little voice. They've seen her holding her crotch and telling me that she had to go potty, and then me running to take her as quickly as possible!

Let me say here that I'm so very thankful that she actually GOES POTTY!! It wasn't so long ago that I was doubting if she ever would.

Timing... it's so important. The timing of Little Girl's becoming potty-trained, of my schedule allowing enough time in the middle of my day for me to pick Little Girl up and eat lunch and still be in place for class. God had this whole thing arranged to work out just right. Even in the midst of crazy circumstances, there is still order, and needs are met. God is so very good.

I really do feel for the babysitter who is caring for her sick child. She's been torn up that she hasn't been able to do for us what we've hired her to do. She has two other children at home that she's trying to keep healthy at the same time as taking care of the sick one. And the poor girl who has been sick will have at least 6 days of school-work to make up when she finally goes back to school... She's probably on the mend, and we're hoping that tomorrow will be the last day that the she'll have to stay home and I'll have to pick up Little Girl and take her with me. Please, God? Will You make it be the last day? Will You please put things back the way they were with everyone healthy?

My Calling

I think I have found what I was born to do.

When I'm leading a choir, teaching musical concepts through a given piece of music, it thrills me to my core like nothing else. And when the choir actually gives me back what I asked for... there is nothing like it.

I truly love what I do. I have wondered if I would ever get to the point of finding a job I could do for the rest of my life. I have always heard that in order to be satisfied professionally, you have to find something that you can do that you would do even if you weren't getting paid to do it. I think directing choirs is that thing for me.

I have often tried to do it "on the side" with adults, and the problem has been that they don't stay committed. Well, if you get a group of kids, and they have to be there, it's all the better. Of course that compulsory element brings with it administrative stuff that is less than fun, and then you get into why I get paid to do what I do. Not only do I get to do the fun stuff, actually leading the choirs, but I also have to do that other garbage that I must be paid to do.

Anyway, I have had people ask me how things are going with the whole going back to work thing. I'd say that things are going well, and my calling is confirmed.

Then there's the other part of the calling. Why now? Why not next year when Little Girl would be in Kindergarten? I have no doubt that I am called to those kids that I will only be able to reach this year. Next year my 8th graders will be 9th graders, and even if I got this very same job, I would not be able to make any impact on those kids. Timing is an important aspect of this.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Just wanted to share.

I have a feeling that the eternal implications of this calling will be hidden for a long, long time, so I'm not looking for tangible results in that arena. My short-term goals are to build relationships and to make music. From relationships will come influence, and from music-making will come shared experiences, strengthening relationships. This is a good place to be.

Coming Together

This is the first week that I am considering "normal". I have started a choir club at the school where I teach in the afternoon so that I can boost my numbers for performances and contests. We're meeting twice a week. Those are my late days. I now have a feel for how my crazy schedule works, and when I can expect to pick up the kids and get home each day.

For the first meeting of the choir club, I had some students who showed up just because they knew I'd give them candy. This time, I had a much better group of kids. The kids who are not in choir class, but ARE in choir club, are really great kids. Today's choir club meeting was so fun. It's a tiny little group, but they are focused, and kind, and we had such a great rehearsal today. I was able to teach them so much in a short time. It does help that half of the kids in the club are also in class, but still, there are several who really don't know anything about sinigng in a choir, and they're working hard to catch on. If things keep going down the road like today, the choir club will be a very satisfying experience for the students and for me.

At my other school, where I teach 85 6th graders, things are going very well... I can't wait until the rehearsals where all three periods get together and sing as one giant choir. I think they'll be blown away by the massive sound. So far all three classes know two of the three songs they'll be singing for the concert in a month. I need to get that last song out to them... note to self...

All in all, I think things are coming together...

The girls are both doing well with a working mom. I expected for Little Girl to run into some problems, just because she's only been with me since she was born. She seems to be doing very well. She likes to go to school, and she's doing well with the babysitter. We've run into our first hiccup with that plan this week, and it's not even been that big a deal. Our babysitter's daughter has been sick, so I went between my two schools and picked Little Girl up and brought her to work with me for the afternoon. Looks like I'll have to do that tomorrow too. At least tomorrow will be an early day for me, and I can leave work before 3:00. Anyway, Little Girl did great, and she was kind of an attraction for my students. They all "AWWWW"ed at her when they peeked in the window of my office at her. She was just sitting there watching DVD's on my laptop while I taught class, and then ran the choir club after school. It was quite nice to see Little Girl for so much of the day today. I really have missed her lately.

Big Girl is loving her after school care. She's going to the YMCA after school program that meets at her school. She cries when I pick her up sometimes. She just wants to play. I'm taking that as a good sign. She's making friends there and in her class. I just love hearing her talk about friends and playing "school" with them. To think of where she is in light of where she was four years ago, not playing with peers at all... I'm so thankful to God for getting her diagnosis and also the special ed intervention when she was so young. She's almost 7 years old now. Most people would never know there is anything different about her at all. She's so amazing... I could go on forever...

I am blessed. God is good, He is SO good to me!

Another Cart

I am loving my cart even more than I expected. It's a very good thing. So good, in fact, that I have now checked out a cart at my other school. I have an office there, but I have to bring out stuff to use during class, and then pack it all back away in my office at the end of every day. Carts are so nice, and I've found that librarians really like to check out the ones that don't have any AV equipment on them to get them out of the way. Most people just want to check out the ones with the equipment, and then the empty ones just get moved out of the way of the others, then shoved back into place over and over again... I'm so happy with my little cart.

It's the little things.

And something big-ish happened today too. I can't give any details, like I would anyway... I read the poetry of a student today, some very dark poetry from a very disturbed student. I just hope that this is the beginning of the relationship-building that it will take for this otherwise very capable and talented girl to realize her worth and potential. My heart goes out to her. She needs divine intervention in her life, BIG TIME.

Lord, please break through the walls around this girl's heart. Soften her heart. Prepare her to hear the truth of your love. Lord, please replace this child's heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Only YOU can make a difference in her life. If I can help her along her journey to find you, please speak through me, and give me the discernment to know when the time is right to speak. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Please join me in praying for this girl. Thank you, blog friends.

Phrasing

I had a totally middle school day today... Well, one class period anyway.

Today I finally started to teach the kids some MUSICALITY, which is when their singing starts sounding really good. I have one class in particular that already sing rather well, and so adding the nuances just make it heavenly.

So today I was trying to teach phrasing. That's when there is some dynamic shape to each musical line. In the particular phrase I was using to teach the concept today, there were two high points. I drew a phrasing map on the board as a visual representation, and we talked about which words were the ones at the climax of each part, and marked that on the board. It looked like two humps on a camel, or something else...

This class could not stop snickering the whole time. Every time I went to the board to add to the visual, the giggling increased...

I didn't even say what I knew they were all thinking. They were thinking dirty. I drew an innocent picture to help them understand a musical concept, and their dirty little minds went somewhere else. Well, after a little while, I couldn't stop seeing it that way either, and then I was giggling... Never again will I be able to draw two phrases on the board side-by-side. At least not for that class.

Since I was giggling, and to get their minds out of the gutter, I told them about how my brother used to be able to make me laugh at will by looking me in the eye and saying four little words to me. I wouldn't tell the class what those words were because I didn't want them to say those words to me over and over. They are dying to know those words. So the deal is that if they are perfect angels and there is no chit-chat in the transitions for the WHOLE CLASS PERIOD, then I will tell them what those words are. They aren't magic or anything.

He would always give me a grin with a twinkle in his eye and say, "I see that smile." No matter how angry I was, he could always make me laugh. Which would also make me more angry because I couldn't keep my angry face on.

Anyway, as long as that class REALLY wants that information, I have to weild it as power. I think I turned what could have been a really bad situation with gutter-brained adolesents into a positive relationship-building situation that will hopefully make classroom management easier tomorrow.

It's pretty sad that middle school is turning out to be such a good fit for me. What does that say about my maturity? (That's a rhetorical question. Please, don't answer.)

Another Happy Dance!

In order to truly communicate my extacy over what has transpired today, I must first share the depths of my frustrations which once resolved set my feet to dancing.

I have two schools, one where I am an assistant choir director, and another where I am the only choir director. At the school where I assist, I share an office with the other choir director. He's a nice guy, and we get along well. That being said, he's a clutter-bug, and there is not a clean work surface to be found anywhere in the entire choir room, let alone the choir office. I moved a student desk in there so I'd have a place to call my own without taking up too much real estate. Within 10 minutes, I was sharing "my" work surface with the office phone.

After a couple weeks of school, I've run things off to pass out to my classes, and what do I do with the extras? They go on my desk. Now where's that one thing...? Oh, it's on my desk, under the pile of papers... I don't have enough space to spread things out and figure out what's what. Frustrtating.

To make my situation just a little MORE complicated, I teach one class in the choir room, and then I teach the next two class periods in the room next door. When I have passed things out to my 2nd and 3rd period classes, and someone is absent, then they ask for it the next day, and I have not brought that stack of extras to the next room. It's on my desk in the office next door. It's been a problem, and I hate not being prepared. It wastes class time, and there's not enough time to waste on running to the next room to get that thing that I passed out yesterday for the kid who wasn't there.

Today, I got myself a CART!! I checked it out from the library, and it's MINE!!! I can put papers on it that need to be passed out, and then just wheel it next door and have every thing I need! It's a dumb thing to be happy about, I guess, but it should solve some pretty big frustrations for me. Also, it's some horizontal surface that my office-mate isn't allowed to stack things on. It's the closest thing I have to a real desk of my own. I want to get some of those "in" and "out" boxes to put on it so that kids will have a place they can turn things in to me without having to say every time where things need to go... I may even get some ribbons and decorate my cart to scare off the clutter-bug...

Now hopefully I can spend less time running next door and more time with the kids SINGING!

Today was a good day for singing... I'm in the right job. I just love it. Especially now that I have my cart!

My Email Happy Dance

This week I finally got email access at both my schools. I had been waiting for that for about two and a half weeks. As boring as it is to look through emails from teachers where the subject line is "Two student desks up for grabs," completely empty in the body of the message, it's pretty over whelming to see 50 of those every time you sit down at the one computer where you can actually see those messages. It's so helpful to be able to sift through things at least twice a day, keeping the new message load reasonably managable.

The other problem that has been solved this week is the log-in problem. I have been sharing a computer with the other choir director at one of my schools, and every time he or I would sit down to look at emails, we'd have to log the other person out, and then log in. Now, my local account has been moved to the other campus, and my remote access is through the web, so he doesn't have to be logged out for me to see my email. It's a more streamlined experience for both of us.

This has got to be one of the most boring posts ever. Sorry. My life is getting so complicated these days... it's the little things that must be celebrated for my sanity to remain!

I have NO idea why, but the Gwen Stefani song, "It's My Life" is in my head. I don't even really care for her music. *Sigh*

Tech Support Nightmare

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

I recently purchased a new Dell laptop computer, something Hubby agreed I could do if I got a job. I got a job, so I got to buy a computer. Anyway, I've had the thing for exactly 3 weeks today. 21 days is the magic number for being able to return it and get my money back if I'm not satisfied. I had been satisfied... until Thursday.

Thursday morning I saw the blue screen of death no less than 6 times before school started that morning. Every time I tried to disconnect my USB flash drive, it was immediately going to the blue screen, and then spontaneously restarting the computer 5-10 seconds later... SO FRUSTRATING!!!

I didn't have time to call Dell tech support on Thursday. Friday I didn't even take my computer to work since I was having problems with it Thursday. I didn't sit down to deal with it until this morning. About 11 AM I called Dell tech support...

... for the first time...

The tech guy (probably in India) remotely accessed my computer and updated my USB port driver, and maybe messed with one other thing... problem not fixed. I could make my computer go to blue screen on command with my flash drive practically on command. It was not a power I enjoyed having, let me tell you. So that guy finished with me and sent me over to a software tech support guy who basically told me that I should get my money back while I had the chance, today being day 21 and all.

I got off the phone with him, had a conference with my hubby, and tried to call Dell back.

I should make it clear to my reader(s?) that every time I called in I waited on hold for at least 15 minutes before I spoke to an actual human being. And the music playing was a very fast-tempo string quartet piece that was edited together so that it never ended. Every few seconds a recording would interrupt the music and tell me how to go online and/or solve my problem some other way. It was obviously designed to make people want to hang up. Good thing my computer was still working well enough for me to be sitting there playing Free Cell and watch HGTV while I waited.

So when I called Dell back to hopefully talk about my options for returning my computer or exchanging it, I was redirected once, and then left on hold until the recording on the other end finally came up and told me that they were unable to complete my call and to call the 800 number again.

So I did, but I was much less nice about everything by then.

TWO technical support people, one supervisor, and 4 hours later, my computer was fixed by uninstalling some recent Windows updates. Befre it was fixed, I had already threatened to drive to Round Rock's Dell campus and yell and scream until I got somewhere... I was so frustrated...

But now my flash drive and my computer are on speaking terms again, and I no longer want to throw my new laptop out the window.

So even though I went through the tech support nightmare, I guess the story has a happy ending... until the next wave of Microsoft updates comes out...

School Has Started

I don't know how good of a choir director I am, but if step 1 is making relationships with my students, I have definitely started mostly on the right foot.

Today I played a name game with my students. It's the second day I've seen my students, and in order to force myself to learn their names, I played a game where I'd say their names, and then throw them a ball. If I had to ask the kid his/her name, then that kid got to choose whether I had to do the Macarena or the Chicken Dance right then. The students laughed at me, I turned red. I have never been so motivated to learn names in all my life. It's voluntary humiliation. It also became a vocal exercise when the students started saying "WHEEEE" as the ball flew through the air. Some classes even sang the songs for the Chicken Dance and Macarena.

I have enjoyed this week for the most part. It's interesting to me how quickly I can tell which kids I need to keep an eye on and which kids I know will be the ones I can count on.

I have a very silly song in my head.. I don't even think I can properly describe it... I'll go looking for it online some other time. Now that I'm getting up every morning and going to work, going to bed early is a MUCH higher priority!

San Francisco - Part 2

I have realized that if I don't do this now, it will never happen. I apologize for taking this long to get to the vacation recap for a trip that happened over a month ago... Life has just been so crazy since we got back. If you're a regular follower of this blog, then you already know that...

Back to the trip. (For Part 1, read here.) I think I forgot to mention that we ate lunch at In & Out Burger on Friday. It was so crowded...

After that we went up to Coit Tower. It's a neat place, but there's not much to do there but look around. There's a mural all around the bottom floor, and that was cool. Coit Tower is on Telegraph Hill, one of the 7 hills in the city. From there we saw Lombard Street, the famous street that zig-zags down the hill (I say down because it's one way). After seeing it from afar, we decided to go there next. We took the bus from Coit Tower over to that area of town near Russian Hill. We probably should have picked a bus route that would take us to the top of the hill, but we didn't. We hiked up and up and up a few blocks to get to the very famous part that everyone knows. It felt like we were climbing stairs, it was so steep.

Our time at Lombard Street was very memorable. We happened to see an estate sale at 1018 Lombard Street, so we went in. We were thinking, When else will we get an opportunity to go into one of these houses? Why not? It turned out that the woman who had lived there was an artist. There were many water color paintings for sale with prices ranging from $10 to $250+. Some of them were framed, and some were not. After poking around the house, looking through some or the things for sale, we found a painting we liked. I had noticed this painting had a building in it that I had seen from the window. It looks like the lady had painted it in one of the rooms we had been in. It seemed very cool that our souvenir from our trip would be something so very unique. It is our tradition to buy wall hangings as souvenirs, so this fit right in!

Here's the painting in front of the window where it was painted:

We figured that whole stumbling on the estate sale part of our vacation was pretty unique, and then to get our souvenir there, was just gravy. Very cool. We shipped the painting home to ourselves so we wouldn't have to take care of it on the plane. It was hard enough just to walk up and down Lombard Street with it in our hands, then catch the bus and get back to the hotel. At least the UPS place was right by the hotel.

As if our trip wasn't already going great, we had our Alcatraz tour that night. We had been told that the night tour was the best, so we were pretty excited about it. The way it works is that you follow a park ranger up to the prison building (after riding the boat over, of course), and then you get a headset with the audio tour. Hubby and I pushed play at the same time so we'd be together on the tour. It's really cool. It tells you as you go to find different things, and the people who were there tell about whatever it is. They actually have former prisoners and guards on the recordings. Once the audio tour ended, we were on our own to explore.

At one end of the island is the power plant, and at the other is the light house. The light house end of the island is where the guards lived. That's where we were when our adventure really began. It was so windy and cold, it was rather unpleasant to be out there. We saw a staircase that led down from where we were to a sidewalk that lead down and around the building. It was blocked off, and obviously not safe to use. We found another way to get down there, a round about way, so we went down that way to see where that sidewalk would lead. There was no one else in sight, and we kept wondering if we were even allowed to go that way. Seagulls' nests were everywhere. It was obvious that those birds were not used to sharing their space. We even had one seagull squacking at us, blocking the sidewalk, protecting her two chicks. The chicks were gray all over, and not as big as the mama seagull, but they looked like they were almost old enough to learn to fly. Anyway, we mustered up our courage and ran past her. The further we went down that walk, the more we wondered if we were supposed to go there. We were the only people in sight. It was eerie.

The sidewalk led to a concrete staircase that went back up toward the prison building. We went up it, and it led to an iron door. (Are you getting how spooky this was? It was foggy, windy, and we were on ALCATRAZ! The only living things we could see were the seagulls all over the place.) We went in the door, and found ourselves in the rec yard of the prison (pictured below). It was so very creepy. Al Capone was there, once upon a time. The Birdman, Robert Stroud was there. On July 17, 2009, we were there. And it was so spooky.

I think that if our trip had ended there, we'd have been satisfied. But it didn't. It got better!!

On Saturday, we rented bikes and rode from Fisherman's Wharf, over the Golden Gate Bridge, to Sausalito and then all the way to Tibouron. Summing it up in once sentence really doesn't do the experience justice. It was so very satisfying. The whole day we kept saying to each other how we felt like we were accomplishing something. And we did. It wasn't easy. As bike rides go, it wasn't too hard, but it was work. I had some trouble with my bike chain, and Hubby had to fix it a couple times. I think I ate the best lunch of my life that day. We ate in Sausalito at a very quaint little restaurant. We had a pizza with pesto sauce, spinach, tomatoes, garlic and pine nuts. YUM! It wasn't just that the food was good, we had biked 8 miles to get there, and we were HUNGRY! We toyed with the idea of taking the ferry from Sausalito, and skipping the rest of the bike ride to Tibouron, but opted to press on. And the ride from Sausalito to Tibouron ended up being the prettiest part of the trip, and very worthwhile.

That's all we could handle that day.

Sunday was our last day to spend in sight-seeing in San Francisco. That morning we rented a car and went to Muir Woods. Hubby had earned a voucher for a free rental from his business travel back in 2007 and 2008. Muir Woods is a redwood forest. It was neat to see. We spent a couple hours there. Once we got back to the city, there was only one place left on our list of things to see, and that was Alamo Park. That's where the famous row houses are from the opening of the sitcom "Full House". They're called the Seven Painted Ladies.

We had a fun time sitting in Alamo Park. There were some "kids" there in the park, maybe about 10 or so, drinking beer, playing guitars, and one was playing a sousaphone. They were playing a Weezer song at one point. We enjoyed that. It was just so very appropriate for San Francisco.

We had dinner that evening in the Italian district. Then we flew home on Monday morning.

And that was the BEST VACATION we've ever taken... so far...

Oh no! I'm doing that thing I didn't want to do!

I'm not blogging!! I'm so tired when I finish each work day that I'm doing good to read a bedtime story with the girls before they go to bed.

I'm wondering how much I can say here. I know it's not a good idea to be public with opinions about work stuff, should the wrong person see it... Honestly, right now my feelings are very positive, and I'm looking forward to the meeting the students.

I got to meet a few today. All the teachers in the school had to go around the neighborhood and introduce ourselves to a list of 6th graders divided by the streets they live on. It seemed like a painful exercise at first, but it was a very positive thing for the few kids who were home and answered the door. If only it weren't so hot... but that's another story for another day.

It's just about 8:30, and I'm going to head upstairs, get into my pj's, and lay in my bed. I hope I go to sleep very soon thereafter, and that I sleep all night long. The gamble with this plan is that I may wake up at some point in the night and not be able to go back to sleep. I'm so tired right now that it's a risk I'm willing to take.

Goodnight, world. (My kids just went to bed less than half an hour ago... this is weird.)

Shmoozing

I tried to say that word today, and it just didn't come out right... SHMOOZING. That's definitely a word you don't have to say too many times in a row before it starts to just sound like a silly combination of sounds and nothing more.

By the way, the word came up when one of the principals was talking about lunch duty, and I thought that lunch duty, if I have to do it, which it looks like I won't, would be a good opportunity for shmoozing with the students, and passively recruiting for my choir. That's the closest thing to "wining and dining" clients that I'll do in this job!

Work has begun...

The fun has yet to begin, however...

So far, I have attended two days of new teacher training. I am being assimilated.

Tomorrow is day three, and I finally get to go to my campus(es). I'm looking forward to it.

I'm looking forward to August 25th even more. That's when the kids come. There's a lot of work to do before then, but I'm just so excited to put the pedal to the metal, the rubber to the road, to really GET STARTED!!

Goodbye, Summer

Here it is, the first week of August, and I have one day left of summer vacation. I know it's because I got a job, but it feels so wrong to only have ONE day left...

Tomorrow is Friday, my last weekday off before I start work on Monday. Even then, I haven't exactly been experiencing summer vacation for a little while now. Ever since we got back from San Francisco, I've been going in to school to get my bearings, meet my fellow teachers and administrators, and try to get acquainted with my resources. I have spent time digging through my music library, and I feel I've not even scratched the surface there. I have met with the director I'm assisting several times, discussed calendar, and general policies, and all with our kids underfoot (my girls and his son). It's been crazy.

Then there was this training I went to for 2.5 days... Friday, Saturday and half of Sunday... I really don't want to talk about it...

I just had a workshop this morning and was supposed to have another this afternoon that was called off (happily). I've been learning a lot of valuable stuff, and it's hard to process it all. I'm feeling behind the game, having never taught middle school before, and also not knowing anything about my students at all, besides having their names on a list. I am ready to meet them, and definitely ready to hear them, so I can really pick out some fall concert repertoire.

I mentioned that school starts for me on Monday. Monday through Wednesday is just for teachers new to the district. The returning teachers start on Thursday. New teachers, all of us, are donating those first three days to the district. We are not paid and cannot claim a start date prior to the 13th. There seems to be something inherently wrong with that... As I am powerless to change it, I won't talk about that anymore.

Now to the heart of the matter. Working-mom* status begins for me VERY soon. So far, when I've had to do things for school, my mom has watched the girls for me on weekdays, except for twice when she couldn't, and I took them to school with me. Monday through Wednesday, the kids will be with her (and my dad). Starting next week on Thursday, they'll go to a babysitter, when my mom returns to work.

My folks are actually taking the girls on a mini-vacation to visit some friends who live on a river 4 hours away. I'm really kind of jealous (I'd really like to go), but more than that, I'm already feeling the sting of missing my kids for so many days in a row. They're leaving early on Sunday, so I'm dropping them off Saturday night, and then they're getting in late Tuesday, so we won't get them until Wednesday after work. That's a long time to be here at home with no kids to make us smile...

The song in my head right now is the little prayer song we sing with the girls. It's to the tune of "Frere Jacques":

Thank you, Father, (repeat)
For our food, (family, friends, etc...) (repeat)
And our many blessings. (repeat)
Amen. (repeat)

*Let it be known that I do consider all moms to be working moms, whether or not they work outside the home. This reference should be interpreted as "working-outside-the-home-mom". Any offense taken by the reader is not the responsibility of the blogger. You know what I mean here, people.

San Francisco - Part 1

I haven't forgotten to blog about the trip. It's just that I've been pretty busy since we got back, and today is the first day I've had to collect enough minutes together to give my few readers a decent account of our trip.

We left on Wednesday, July 15. Our flight was in the evening, and we got there pretty late. We had Super Shuttle take us to the hotel. THAT was an adventure. Our first experience on the streets of San Francisco was terrifying. The driver of that van only knew two speeds: stop, and fast. The streets of that city are very hilly and narrow for the most part. It was like being on a roller coaster, only we were really fearing for our lives. We were happy when the traffic lights were red, and feared when they would turn green. Yes, it was that bad... We survived the trip to the hotel with white knuckles and palpitations.

Thursday morning we hit the ground running. We ate breakfast at a nearby Starbuck's and bought San Francisco City Passes. The City Pass included our public transportation while we were there (including cable cars and the old F line train), de Young Museum, California Academy of Sciences, Legion of Honor, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and an aquarium (which we really didn't care about since we had just been to an aquarium in Albuquerque).

After breakfast, we hopped the bus over to Golden Gate Park, where we went through the de Young Museum and California Academy of Sciences. That was pretty cool. After those two places, we walked around a bit and wandered over to Haight Street and down to Haight Ashbury. We had lunch in a really good hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant over there, and then headed over to the Legion of Honor. Our de Young ticket included admission to Legion of Honor, but it had to be the same day. We were blown away by the Rodin collection at there. That was definitely our favorite museum of the whole trip. (In the Hitchcock movie, "Vertigo", Madeline, thinking she's Carlotta, goes to the Legion of Honor to look at a particular painting over and over, and Jimmy Stewart's character follows her there. It's a fictional painting, so it's not like we saw it, but we did very well see the room where they filmed that part of the movie.)

After going to the Legion of Honor, we went back to the hotel, and found a spot where we could buy groceries (mainly breakfast bars and Coke Zero) for the remainder of our trip.

That evening, we went to Ghirardelli Square, which was very close to our hotel. The Ghirardelli Chocolate company has bought and renovated several buildings all near where the first Ghirardelli chocolate was made. Now it's a bunch of condos, hotels, and restaurants. We ate dinner at a little 50's style diner, and then had dessert at the Ghirardelli ice cream spot. And that was our first real day there in San Francisco. (At some point in that day, we rode a cable car, standing on the outside step and hanging on for dear life, but I don't remember exactly when.)

Friday we went on the free bay tour cruise that came with our City Passes. That's something we wouldn't have done if we hadn't bought those passes. It was really quite neat to go all the way up to the Golden Gate Bridge, still not able to see it through the fog until we we were right under it, turn around, and come back via the far side of Alcatraz Island to the pier. I took lots of pictures of the bridge and Alcatraz from the boat.

This is a collage panorama of the backside of Alcatraz. I like it. I think it turned out pretty cool.

After the cruise, we went to Pier 39, the tourist trap of San Franciso's Fisherman's Wharf. We bought some cute T-shirts for the girls, and that was just about it. We had already seen the sea lions that live there from the boat we had just taken, and we've seen plenty of restaurants and shops in our day, so we didn't spend too much time there.

As I can see, this post is already very long, and I haven't been able to tell more than the first day and a half of our visit. To be continued in a future post...

Pulled in a new direction

I'm starting to try and get my feet wet with work before my school year actually starts. Today I went to GMS and saw my office for the first time since I was a student there (and never went in that office). I opened a file cabinet drawer, and just started reading through music. The library there is pretty extensive, since the school has been around for at least 30 years. I didn't get past the A section when the custodian came and let me know that they were about to wax the floor in the hallway. I had to get out of there so I'd be able to walk out of my room and get out of the building without messing up the newly waxed floor. In the short time I had to read, I found one piece I really like that will be perfect for my DMS 6th graders, and maybe will work for my GMS choir too, I just don't know. It's hard to be picking music when I have no idea what my students will be able to handle. If the piece I've pulled out is too hard, then maybe that will give me a target for them to achieve by the end of the year. If it's easy enough for them to take on for the Fall concert, then so much the better.

My main impression after this day is that I really enjoyed the time I spent working. I've always heard that the key to a happy life is to find a line of work that doesn't feel like work. I know I'm still in an idealistic fog about all this, but there's a decent chance that I may be in that situation... The music excites me, and I just can't wait to meet the kids and win them over.

After I left GMS this morning, I went laptop shopping for a little while. I'm excited about getting a laptop. The flexibility to sit on the comfy couch with my computer is very appealing, and the idea of using a computer that's less than 6 years old that won't lock up every time I try to multi-task is down-right FANTASTIC. I can only imagine it at this point... Some day... very soon...

Then this afternoon was my HR seminar, contract signing, benefits info session and such. Turns out we'll be saving on our dental plan by using mine instead of hubby's and getting vision coverage that's actually worth having. I wasn't able to complete any of that stuff there since I wanted to bring it all home and compare with hubby's plan before signing anything. And I'm so glad I did it that way since we did discover some savings.

For so many years my heart has been tied to home, and now it's really being pulled a new direction. I know it's God's timing, and it's right. To make sure I got some good time with my girls, we read an extra book at bedtime. That also solved the conflict since they didn't agree on which book we should read. That time of day has been precious to me in the past, and now I see it being all the more precious as other parts of our day together won't be as they have been.

A new twist to my life is that I seem to be motivated to follow through on doing the dishes after dinner for the first time ever. I think it's because I know I won't have time to do it later. I hope that trend continues. I know it's better for me, and better for Hubby, and certainly a better example to my girls.

I've had laundry hanging over my head now for the last several days. I had planned on doing it this past weekend, but on Friday I found out that the workshop I thought would be just Friday was in fact Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday. I was pretty unhappy about that. As a result, laundry never really happened, and I have some work to do tomorrow. Amazingly, tomorrow is the first day in 5 consecutive days that I don't have to do something for my job. Summer break isn't supposed to be over until the second week of August. It's still July, even if only for a couple more days.

I shouldn't really be complaining about that training I had to do... God did some cool stuff through it. It's a long, long, LONG story that probably won't make any sense to anyone, so I won't get into the details, but I met several people who know people I know, and then I ran into one of the elementary music teachers whose school feeds one of my middle schools, and lots of good discussions took place.

God is so good. REALLY. He's SOOOOOOO good. He's so good to ME (and you, too). That's the song in my head, by the way. Little Girl sang it with me tonight. What a sweet time that was.

My Job!!!

As I mentioned in my post on the 4th, I got a new job. And I found out that I got it while I was driving on the last leg of our trip to Albuquerque. I had interviewed for it the Monday before that, and I had felt pretty good about the interview. Getting the call that I got the job was a surprise and a relief. I had given up on hearing anything until after the holiday weekend.

I'll be a middle school choir director at two middle schools in the district where I live. One of those schools happens to be where I went for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. I'm going back to my old stomping grounds, this time as a teacher. The kicker is that I never was in choir at that school. I was in band! I did have 2 classes that took place in the choir room, one was theater, and another was called Future Problem Solving, and it was taught by Mr. P, my band director who I blogged about before. I'm very excited about teaching there, even though it's only a small fraction of my part time job. I'll only be teaching one class period there.

The other half of the job is at a rival middle school, one that most of my high school friends went to. (I transferred to the high school across the highway from where I lived so that I could stick with Mr. P.) There I'll be an assistant to the choir director I student taught for 10 years ago. I worked very well with him for the 6 weeks I was assigned to his school (which was a different school in a different town, closer to where I went to college). He had picked me to be his first student teacher. He met me when I was working for the music conservatory at the college I attended. Kids would come in for piano lessons or voice lessons, and as a part of their program, they'd also do their music theory assignments in a little room where I worked as the theory lab instructor/facilitator. He taught voice lessons at the conservatory, and every now and then when he'd have a no-show lesson, he'd hang out in the hall outside the theory lab, and that's how he got to know me. To now be going to work with him after all these years is really fantastic. God really does work all things together for our good.

The reason I was working in the theory lab back then was because I dropped out of the music group I had been singing with to marry my dear husband. I couldn't have really done the traveling music group thing as a young newly-married woman. The dean of fine arts created that job in the theory lab for me so that I could meet the conditions of my scholarship. I have often had moments of regret over having quit that group. I truly loved making music at that level, and I loved many of the people in it. I didn't really like the "on the road" aspects, and I had burned out on it after two school years of it, and doing even more in the summer between those years. I knew quitting was right for me at the time. And now to see how my life is impacted by the "replacement" for participation in that group... God is really amazing. He knows what He's doing, and I can trust Him.

I'm very excited bout teaching choir. When the elementary job didn't work out like I thought it would, I was rather disappointed. But even during my interview for that job, as I was answering one of the questions, the thought crossed my mind that the answer I was giving would be more compatible with a middle school choir job. Even then, my heart was with choir, and not teaching elementary music, even though there is an after school choir at the elementary level.

All together, my job is a part-time job with .5 of it being at the school where I'll assist my old supervising teacher, and .17 of it at my alma mater. I'll have time in the middle of my day in which I can run errands and get some grocery shopping done sans my kiddos. I think this is a very good lifestyle aspect to this job that would not have been the case with the elementary job I didn't get, which was full time.

I've already got a training thing tomorrow, a meeting on Monday, and another training thing on Tuesday. Today I was fingerprinted, which is a new requirement set in place during my stay-at-home mom years. I'm going to have to do laundry on Saturday this week. It will be my first "working" weekend. My life is already changing.

I have so much more to blog about, but I just can't do it right now. I'm about to take my girls to the pool while we still have some summer left!

I just heard "Walk Like an Egyptian" as bumper music on a radio show I'm listening to. Now that's in my head. Now there's a blast from the past!!