Happy Birthday, Brother!

Today is my baby brother's birthday. Well, he's 30 today, so he's not much of a baby, and he hasn't been for a long time. He'll always be my little baby brother, even if he is 6'6" and a doctor in the Air Force. When Mom and Dad brought him home to me, I declared him to be "my baby." In my 20-month-old mind it made perfect sense.

I'm really quite proud of the man my brother is now. He is a doctor, and that's no small thing. For about 4 years, every time I called him, he was in either Starbuck's or Barnes & Nobles, reading, studying for med school or the boards. He showed a determination and drive like never before. He made himself study for 8 hours on end because he knew he'd have to concentrate for that long in taking the board exams. (The picture on the right is my parents, brother and me the day he got his white coat at the beginning of med school.)

At the start of his second year of med school, my brother decided to join the United States Air Force and exchange 3 years of service for 3 years of med school tuition. He's always been the kind of guy who enjoyed working out, and physical challenges. Our Pawpaw was a Marine, and he's carrying that proud tradition of military service forward in our family. In officer training, they had to climb a rope. My brother commented to the guys waiting in line about the guys using their feet to climb the rope. When it was his turn, he did it with just his arm strength. That's my brother! He talks smack, but he can back it up.

About three years ago, my brother brought a girl home to meet the family. Less than a year later, he married her. I knew from the start that she was a perfect match for him. It's been fun to watch them grow in their love for each other and for God. I'm really glad he broght her into our family. (The picture on the left is my brother and me on his wedding day.)

So all that's to say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the best little brother a girl could ever have! I love you!!!

The song in my head right now is whatever is playing on my iPod. Currently that is "The Song Remains the Same" by Led Zeppelin. In about 3 and a half minutes it will be something else.

Mr. P

I've been doing a lot of thinking about some of the people who have influenced my life, and why they are special to me. One of those I've been thinking about is my middle school band director, Mr. P. He prefers me to call him by his first name these days, but that's really hard for me. I make myself do it every now and then, thinking it will come more naturally, but it still feels funny.

20 years ago, I was about to start 6th grade. I signed up for band at the end of 5th grade when it was time to pick electives for the following year. That was the big jump from elementary school to middle school. So many changes took place in that transition. Changing classes every period, lockers, dressing out in PE... middle school was a strange, new, and scary world.

Band was a bright spot in it from the beginning. I remember summer band, which started a few weeks before school started. That was a crash course in learning the instruments so that when school started things would go more smoothly. Being introduced to it ahead of time, band class was the safest place on campus even on the first day of school.

I started out playing percussion in 6th grade. I was in a beginning band class of woodwinds and percussion. I learned very quickly that I did not like percussion. I knew too much music to be satisfied with just playing rhythm. I got bored. And the other girl who played percussion in my class liked to hit me with her sticks when no one was looking. It was not a happy thing for me to be back there in the percussion section.

I remember going to Mr. P about 6 weeks into 6th grade with my aunt's clarinet in hand. I went to him and begged to switch over. I played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for him to prove that I was able to do it, and immediately be caught up with the other clarinet players who had started about 10 weeks prior. He let me make the switch. It was a very good move for me. Not only was I now playing music, I wasn't being assaulted by my fellow players!

Mr. P's office was the place to be at lunch time, before and after school, any time we weren't required to be in another class. He always had funny stories to tell. He treated us like people, and he wasn't afraid to be a real person. Looking back, I know there were plenty of things that he didn't share with us, but we never had to wonder if he cared. That was obvious. One thing he could not tolerate was disrespect. Whether it was during class or any other time, if there was disrespect taking place, Mr. P was not letting it pass.

Fast forward to my 9th grade year, and Mr. P made the move to a high school in the district. For that and a couple other reasons, I transferred to that high school. I got to have Mr. P for four more years.

After I graduated from high school, and even college, I'd go back and stop by to see Mr. P, to say hi and catch up. I was always greeted with a welcoming smile. He always made a few minutes for me if he could. In the last several years our visits have been few and far between, but I'd say that I consider him a friend. Having not been a student of his for 13 years, the majority of the time I've known him has not been as a teacher and student, but as friends.

As I think about the prospect of going back to work, being a teacher again, I often think of Mr. P, and how I'd like to be for someone else what he has been to me. I believe that bond begins with making music.

Mr. P and me at the end of the band banquet my senior year, 1996.

Projects!!!

I just love projects. I love finishing a project, and then admiring the fruits of my labor, especially when it's something I've made for my house. Last week that's what I did. I did projects.

Here's what I started with:
And here's what I made first (it's the same thing in both pictures, just rolled up on the left, and rolled down on the right):












I realized as I was making the matching curtains that I needed to paint the walls BEFORE putting up the curtains, so Friday I did this:


By the end of the day Saturday, my breakfast area (really our only dining room, since our formal dining room is really our office) looked like this:
I'm really quite proud. The idea for the door window shade came from seeing one in my friend's house a few months ago. The whole thing is attached to the door with velcro, and the two strips holding up the rolled curtain are also fastened with velcro. The strips are made from scraps from my living room drapes, so the decor in the two rooms are tied together nicely. I'm so happy with the result! The other two curtains are stapled to 1x4's, which are mounted above the windows with angle brackets. That's why painting had to happen before installation, because the whole putting them up and taking them down is more complex than just taking down a curtain rod.

Some time in the not-to-distant future, the walls of the living room are going to end up this same color. The unfinished edge you can see on the left in that picture will not remain a sloppy unfinished edge. I want to get at least 3 walls painted before we go on our first trip, coming up late next week.

I've had a few random songs taking turns in my head lately: "Alice Childress," by Ben Folds, "City Love," by John Mayer, and "Selfless, Cold and Composed," also by Ben Folds. Then today my husband's facebook status put another song in my head, "Everybody Knows a Little Bit of Something," by King's X, his favorite band of all time, ever.

Triathlon Dream

This morning I woke up from a dream. It was that dream where you're at school, and you suddenly realize that you never got dressed and you're still wearing your pj's (or nothing), only it was a triathlon, and I didn't have a bike.

But in this dream, I wasn't going to let that stop me.

The swim took place in the ocean instead of a lake. Swimming with the waves was much harder than in the lake. And to help myself swim better, I had my favorite serving spoon in my right hand. I haven't had it very long, so I was really sad when I lost hold of it and it went sinking in the ocean.

Then when I got to transition, where everyone else was mounting bikes and taking off, I sought out a guy named David Moreno (a complete figment of my imagination- I don't know any David Moreno), whose wife Debbie was the coordinator for this fictional triathlon, the "Miracle Cure Triathlon". When I found David, I asked him if he thought there would be anyone who didn't complete the swim whose bike I could borrow. (Now that I'm thinking about it, that would mean they possibly drowned, which would be very bad. But hey, this was just a dream.) He said that was probably the case, but we wouldn't know which bike was available for a while, so I'd be better off asking the fast finishers if I could borrow theirs when they get back from biking. Not long after that, the leaders started arriving. The first two wouldn't give me the time of day, but the third one back was Julie, my best friend from high school.

I asked Julie if I could use her bike, and she said I could, but she had already taken it apart so it could be shipped back to Colorado, where she lives now. Her bike was purple with sparkles. If anyone knowing Julie is reading this, you'd already know that nothing Julie owns would be purple with sparkles. She has a very distinct sense of style, and it has nothing in common with first-grade girly sensibilities. Anyway, I now had a willing lender of a bike, but it had no wheels, no handlebars, and no seat. I found David again, and asked him to help me. He was willing to help, but it was like Christmas morning, sort-of- the assembling presents part of Christmas morning.

By this time I had been in transition for over half an hour. When I came in, the race clock (which there wasn't one in transition at the Danskin) read forty-four minutes, and by this time was nearing an hour and twenty minutes. I was getting more and more nervous... and that's when I woke up.

And in my head, lying there in bed, I thought of this joke. (Warning- it's pretty bad.)

Why wouldn't the man fix his wife's broken bike chain?

Because he wasn't comfortable with public displays of a fixed chain. (Rim shot)

So will I do another triathlon? I'd say the likelihood is growing, since I'm still thinking about it a week and a half later.

I'd like to wish my Ironwomen friends good luck and God speed this Sunday! They're already in Idaho, I believe. Rachel and Christine, you ladies are AMAZING, and COURAGEOUS!! You can do it!!! Philippians 4:13 - "YOU can do all things through Christ who gives you strength."

The song in my head is a Toad the Wet Sprocket song, "Whatever I Fear." It's a good song, but it's been playing in my head for a couple days now, and I'm getting tired of it.

Settling in to Summer

This has been our first full week with no school. Big Girl's last day was Wednesday of last week, and with preparing for a guest and the triathlon over the weekend, I was way too busy to even think about what we'd do with our empty summer days.

So far I think we're doing great. Tuesdays will be our pool days, I think. We went on Tuesday this week, took our lunches there for a pool picnic, and it was great. Mondays will be grocery shopping days. We did that this week, and I told the girls that if they were good at the grocery store (I gave a specific description of what "good" meant to me), then we'd do something fun when we came home. They met my expectations, and earned a game time when we came home, after everything was put away. I've decided this is a good way to get help with putting the groceries away. Those little girls were so ready for a game, they'd have done just about anything to get me finished so I'd come play!

Thursdays are piano lesson days. This means we go over to my mom & dad's house so my mom can teach Big Girl her piano lesson. This is what we have done today. During the lesson time, I took Little Girl outside to play on the new swing that Dad put up recently. It's a very nice swing, supported by long chains hanging from a very sturdy tree branch. It was fun.

Mom and Dad's place is just up the road from where my middle school and high school band director now works, so I stopped by for a little while after the lesson was over since I saw his truck out in the parking lot of the school. This has been the sum total of our relationship in the many years since I graduated. I see his truck, so I stop in and say hi. I have always been welcomed with a big smile and a hearty chuckle. While I was there, the choir director came in too, so I got to meet him. The more contacts I can make in the middle school choir world right now, the better... It may not help, but it certainly can't hurt.

Our usual pattern is to go to Chick-fil-a on Wednesday evenings for dinner, and so far we're sticking with that. We don't really have agenda items for the daytime on Wednesdays or Fridays, so those will be my laundry days, or project days. I have several projects I'm working on, and as I finish them, I'll share pictures and such. I just am not ready to blog about them yet.

This is going to be a good summer, even if my girls do fight over who gets to mix the pretend cupcakes. (That was yesterday's tragedy... I don't see why pretend batter can't be mixed twice, but then I'm not 4 or 6 years old.)

For some strange reason I have a Rush song in my head today. "Stick it Out," which we have on Different Stages. The riff is catchy. I think that song came on my iPod recently or something. I can't think of why I'd be listening to that in any other context... (The video I linked is concert footage, and the song doesn't start for a minute after the video starts.) For a three-piece band, they make an amazing sound. It doesn't hurt that all three of them are virtuosos on their instruments. They definitely don't sound like anyone else.

I Tried

Last January, some friends and I had a girlfriends' weekend. There were seven of us. We all used to go to church together, and we all had our babies together. There's a bond there... 6 of us had babies in either 2001 or 2002, then 4 of us had babies in 2005, and the other one had 3 babies in 3 years, starting in 2006, and she was friends with the rest of us when we were having ours. Kim moved away in 2006, so the rest of us made it a getaway to her house.

Anyway, two of these friends have become triathletes in the last 3 years or so. They've both dropped quite a lot of weight and they've both become superwomen. There's no debating that. They'd probably argue with that statement, but one word would put any fight to an end. IRONMAN. They're both doing the Ironman in Coeur d'Alene on June 21st. They are superwomen.

In discussing their new passion for triathlons, they brought up a very friendly little triathlon called the Danskin. Danskin does them all over the country, and there's one in our city, so why not? The idea sounded like fun, and one by one we said, "If she'll do it, then I will," until there were five of us committing to do it. At that time it was 4 months away. (One of our friends was moving, so she couldn't do it, and another one is deathly afraid of water, so she wasn't going to do it, no matter how much peer pressure we exerted.) Since three of us were first-timers, and we were more interested in doing it together than getting a good time, we decided we'd take it "easy", swimming with noodles, and walking the run, stuff like that. This was supposed to be an easy day for our superwomen, being only 2 weeks before the Ironman.

So in the months before the race, I tried to start training. I could walk an hour without really wearing myself out. I tried to bike, but I found it very difficult to fit it in between walking Big Girl to school, and Hubby's departure for work. Also, I couldn't go very far before my legs would scream, beg me to go back home. I used a borrowed bike since I don't have one of my own.

Just about the time I started to get a rhythm of training going, I had my tooth problems, and I was really worthless for a while. Then when that was all done and over, had my crown, and no more pain, then the job stuff started up. That's about when I was finding out about the opening, and spending more time in my mom's classroom when I'd drop of Big Girl for school. Mom's conference period was first thing, so I wasn't intruding on a class or anything. I'd just stay there, and talk to her for a little while, and then I'd go home just in time for Hubby to go to work.

The race really did float to the back of my mind, and it stayed there until about a week ago.

Then the fear began.

I can swim, I wasn't worried about that. Several of us got together to do an open water swim (which is very different from swimming in a pool), and I did fine with that. I know I can walk for a long way without problems. It was the biking that had me in a sweat just from thinking about it.

So the day before the race, we all took our bikes to the race site and racked them in the transition area, and got our registration packets. Reality really set in then. I was there, I had a number, I had my bike in position ready for this to happen... At least something was "ready."

A very fun part of the whole thing was that Kim was in town, and staying at my house. Unfortunately we couldn't have the slumber party we both wanted. We had to be at the race site at 5 AM the next day, so we gave ourselves a 9 PM bedtime.

So the next day, we got up, got there, and met up with the other girls. We went to the transition area and set out all the things we'd need: bike helmets, shoes, shirts, etc. We got ourselves ready and went to the opening ceremony. Then wave by wave women entered the water and started the race. We were in the second to last wave. As we entered the water, my emotions really got to me. The magnitude of what I was doing really hit me... By the way, it's not a good idea to cry with goggles on. It doesn't work out too well.

The swim went well. I didn't ever get to a point where I thought I was in trouble. It was a long way, but it wasn't terrible. (I'm still not going to sign up for a 2.5 mile swim like my Ironwomen counterparts!) I even hit a stride where I did breast stroke for a while. That worked for me. I don't do American Crawl at all. I just never have been able to get the breathing right with that stroke. Anyway, I got through the swim feeling pretty good.

The biking just about killed me. It's not the 12 mile distance that did me in. It was the HILLS!!! I did walk my bike up a few hills, but I got through it, and that's what's important. I did have a near fall, and at that point, about mile 6, my emotions took over again. But this time it was PANIC. I had to sit on the side of the road and regain my breathing and my composure. I really expected to wipe out at some point, especially when going downhill at about 24 mph, but it didn't happen! Yay! I have never been as happy to be finished with something as I was when I finished the biking. Kim had finished before me, and when I saw her in the transition area, I went to her and hugged her, sobbing. I was so relieved.

Then we did the walk together. It was such a relaxing time. We chatted the whole way. Compared to what we had all been through already, that was a piece of cake!

In case you didn't already know, tri is the verb form of triathlon. (I don't really like the verbification of nouns that seems to happen all over the place these days, but whatever... that's another topic for another post.) I just wanted to clarify the title of this post. I TRIed. And I FINISHED. And that makes me a winner. :-) I have a medal to prove it!

During the triathlon they had music playing and a DJ obnoxiously talking, especially at the beginning. Anyway, during the swim, I heard Cake's "Short Skirt, Long Jacket," playing. It really motivated me. That's my favorite Cake song. So that's the song in my head for today.

Long time, no blog

There have been so many things going on lately. There's one big thing I knew I couldn't blog about at the time, but now I feel like I can blog about it, partially at least.

As you probably know, the idea of going back to work has been sinking into me for several months. I had first thought about it after deciding that Little Girl would be going to school next year. Then in March I renewed my teaching certificate, just in case. Well, in April a job opened up that I wanted. At my mother's school, the half-time music teacher found out she'd be moving. The job would be half-time at mom's campus, and half-time at a nearby campus, making a full time job. I filled out the district's online application. As soon as I had heard that the teacher had talked to the principals at both schools, I went to each school and gave them my resume with a cover letter expressing my desire for the job. I taught elementary music when I graduated from college. I even taught at my mom's school for 2 years. I was going after my old job. It seemed like a no-brainer.

About five weeks after passing out my resume, I was called for an interview. The phone call came on a Tuesday, and the interview was for the upcoming Thursday. I was so excited and nervous for those 48 hours. I knew my task was to win over the other campus. The people at mom's school seemed to like me and think the situation would be good for everyone if I were to be the one in that position. They have had to hire someone new each year that this job has existed like it does, split between the two schools. It just seems like they'd want to hire someone who would stick around. I would be interested in staying there since my daughter and my mother are both at one of the schools.

Well, to shorten the story, and leave out all the agonizing details, my interview went well, but it didn't matter. I did not succeed in winning over the principal from the other school.

Ultimately the whole situation was (and is) in God's hands, and I trust God that the best thing for me was not this job.

It has been hard on Mom, too. She was obviously excited about the idea of working with me again. She was in on the other interviews and all the discussions between the two principals and the other music teacher. Neither of the music teachers were in on my interview, just the principals.

In the course of waiting and checking the district's online list of openings, I found a middle school choir opening that really got me excited. If you read my blog much, then you know how much I love choir, and the idea of teaching choir just thrills me. The opening I saw is no longer open, but I did talk to some important people, and I have some contacts out there who are very excited about the idea of bringing me on board. There probably will be something for me, but the way things work, it won't come about until later in the summer. I can wait, especially for the right job.

The right job may very well be staying home for another year. I don't know.

I have more to blog about, but that's enough for now.

"I Was Made For Loving You," by KISS, spent several days rolling around in my head. Thankfully, it has passed.