The Last Days of Summer

This week is jam-packed full of busy. Most of it is fun.

My girls and I went to visit my sister-in-law and her family Sunday night and spent the day together yesterday. The four little girls (ages 4.5, 6, 6.5 and 8.5) played together better than ever. Monday morning we took them swimming for nearly 3 hours, and that was a blast. It was a joy for my sister-in-law and I to listen to them play in the bedroom from our conversation in the living room. She and I have been friends since we were 6th graders, and it's always amazing to get together and look at how we are related now, with blood relatives in common, and still friends who love one another.

Today I have a doctor appointment to see my knee doctor. My knee has clicked for over two years now, and I'm finally having it looked at this summer by a specialist. This is the third time I'm seeing him this summer. I saw my general doc about it two years ago, and he ordered x-rays and then I never heard from him about what was up. On my first visit to the knee doctor, he had my x-rays from two years ago and showed them to me and told me what was going on. He ordered physical therapy, which I did for a month. Then I went to him again after that month, and he stopped the PT order, and we're going to see today how I've been doing on my own.

My kids get to hang out with their Nanna while I go to the doctor. My mom is so great to help me out with things like this. It's not that my kids can't handle going to the doctor with me. They went the last time. It's that she loves them and doesn't want them to have to go, and she loves me and wants to offer me the luxury of not having to take them and then being free to get other things done afterward. I can't say enough about how wonderful my mother is to me. She doesn't tell me how to run my life, but she steps in to help me when I ask for help. She'll probably teach Big Girl a piano lesson and take them both swimming afterward. Day two in a row of swimming for them. Fun!

Then the plan for tomorrow is for Daisy to go to the vet to be spayed. That's been on the books since June. While she's not in the house, us girls will go back to our favorite water park for the entire day. This is the same one where my choirs go after they sing a contest (which my tiny choir has won "Best in Class" for two years running!!). They give me coupons to come back with my family for very cheap. Tomorrow the three of us will get into the park for $20 plus tax. Tickets are usually in the neighborhood of $40 per person. So that's day three in a row of swimming for the girls.

Thursday... I start work. Already.

I think I'm ready. Last week I started digging through my music library to pick out pieces I thought would work for my choirs. It's a crap shoot at this point, since I don't know who is in my classes, but I can at least pull out pieces that interest me so that when I go to make real selections, I have much less to look through. I have four envelopes set aside, one for each of my choirs that I will direct, and then a miscellaneous stack of pieces that I like and want to use, but I don't know which choir would be best suited by the pieces... It's so complicated. I'm choosing the songs that will be stuck in my head, and the heads of my students. Whatever we start the year singing will likely be the songs at the end of the year will be requested for nostalgia's sake. It happens that way every year.

I don't think I'm ready to deal with the schedule of going back to work. The work itself is not my hangup. Getting up before 7:30 EVERY DAY will be a shock to my system for a while. Now that I think about it, getting up at 6:00 is a shock to my system all school-year long. My body wakes up naturally around 7:30 or 8:00. It's been nice to get up when I feel like it for these months. It makes me sad that it has to end. Again, here I am being a big fat baby.

So here's to making the most of what little time is left!

The song in my head is one that hardly anyone will know, so I figured out how to post it to this blog so you can hear it yourself. It's "Psalm 20," by Eternity. You won't find gems like this on youtube!




Edit to reflect the rest of Tuesday, August 9, 2011:
I need to say a bit more about this song. I have had it in my head since I woke up this morning. As I was driving around today (which was quite a bit more than usual), I would start to sing it, and be brought to tears. There's been something weighing heavy on my heart (I'm not quite ready to blog about it), and the pricks of conviction would come every time I'd sing it. It's powerful stuff. Additionally, it's a song in 6/8 meter, which is my all-time favorite meter, with some duples thrown in for variety on the chorus. Love it. I can't sit still and listen to it. Even if it does have a cheesy synthesizer at the beginning. When I was singing in the car, I had left my iPod charging at home, so I was just hearing it in my head, and only sometimes was I singing melody. :o)

Monkey Brains

I've been tired of answering the question, "What's for dinner?" for a long time, so lately I've started answering,"Monkey brains," as my stock answer. That usually gets a giggle. Well, a couple of days ago Big Girl started talking about monkey brains soup, monkey brains sandwiches and monkey brains pizza like it was no big thing. This kid really knows how to play the joke straight. Her favorite is macaroni and monkey brains.

The Days are Few

I'm looking ahead to starting school next week. Teachers go back Thursday in our district. That means I have a single week, a mere seven days, of sleeping in, of freedom, left. In the week to come, I have made plans for Monday, I have a doctor appointment on Tuesday, and more plans on Wednesday. Then Thursday, back to real life. For the rest of this week, my main goal is to get as much fun out of it as possible with my kids. Most of what's in the plan for next week is fun stuff that they will enjoy (aside from the doctor appointment).

I have done some preliminary work that I hope will make the school year run more smoothly. I have started digging through my single-copy music file, and pulling pieces I'd like to use with my choirs. I have three envelopes set aside for each of the choirs I direct. I got from A to I in my file before I ran out of gas on that project on Monday. I have the rest of the day today and tomorrow to get that done. It seems like a monumental task. I doubt I'll finish. (Realism is overtaking the optimism.)

Right now I'm waiting for my firstborn daughter to finish taking a shower. Then we have some grocery shopping to do. I think my days of going grocery shopping without my kids is pretty much over. I had worked things out last school year that my kids stayed at the YMCA after school program at their school, so I'd go shopping before picking them up. This year we're not doing the Y, and I'll be picking them up after school each day, and dragging them to the store with me. The good news though is that they aren't babies, and soon I'll be able to send them on errands for me within the store. "You go get this and you get that, and meet me back here in 3 minutes." We're not there yet, but we will be soon.

Hubby and I have been watching "Arrested Development" on Netflix streaming. This started a discussion about various cast members, including Portia de Rossi who married in the mid-1990's to obtain legal working status in the US. That thought led me to thinking about Green Card, a movie starring Gérard Depardieu, whose name is mentioned in the Weird Al song, "Genius in France," (at about the 6:00 mark). That's how my brain rattled around from "Arrested Development" to "Genius in France," which was the song in my head last night.

The letter I wrote to baby #2 back in Nov. 2004

I've been looking through my facebook notes and deleting ones that were duplicated here. This one wasn't, and I thought it was blog-worthy.

___________________________________________________

November 16, 2004

Dear Baby,

You never got a chance to know me, but I’m your mother. I carried you for your short life of only six weeks. I was the one who saw the tiny flicker of your heartbeat on the ultrasound screen, and I may be the only person who truly misses you.

From the day I knew you were inside me, I loved you. I had dreams for you. Your sister would have been just over two years old when you were to be born. I was already envisioning a life as a stay at home mom with the two of you. I hoped you would be a girl. In my heart I’ve always thought of you as Katie. You were supposed to fit into all of your big sister’s clothes, being born in the same season. You and your cousin would have always been right about the same age. This Christmas was to be your first Christmas, right along with your cousin. It was supposed to be so much fun.

But all that ended April 18th, when I lost you forever. I don’t know why. All I know is that you weren’t growing like you should have been when we did get to peek at you at that ultrasound. They didn’t tell me that. Hindsight being what it is, it’s plain to see that you weren’t going to make it.

So since you’re already there with God, could you ask him why you didn’t have the chance to live? Could you find out for me what all this was about? Why did I have to go through the pain of losing you, someone I had never met? When will I be through mourning your death? How could I love someone so deeply whose face I’d never even laid eyes on? Why must I go through all this alone?

I guess I don’t really expect answers to any of my questions. That’s not how it works. What happens is that God tells us in the Bible that He knows what’s best for us, and that He loves us, and we just have to trust that He’s telling the truth when things like this happen. When we don’t understand the specifics of the pain, or the problems, we go back to the principles that He’s taught us through the years, and those are the closest things to answers that we will have until we get where you are now, and can ask Him face to face.

Since I’m on the subject, let’s see what God has to say about this.

Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD , "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Before the beginning of time, God knew about you. He knew before I was born that I would carry you, love you, and lose you. He knew, even planned my current pain. And yet, He says that His plans are not to harm me. He plans that through this I will still have hope and a future. I can see that, sort of, playing out right now. I already mentioned your big sister. Well, you now have a little sister. She wouldn’t be inside me right now if you had lived. Her life started just two months after yours ended. Early ultrasounds indicated that she was healthy. In fact looking at the pictures of you and her side by side, the contrast is remarkable. I have hope for the future in that. But there is hope also in facing that the pain I’ve felt over losing you hasn’t been the end of my life. There were times when the only thing keeping me going was your big sister and her need for a mommy. I’m the only one she’s got, so I had to get out of bed and take care of her. That’s not the case anymore. I’m not sad all the time. I almost feel bad putting this in a letter to you, but there are days when I don’t think about you at all. I used to be acutely aware of your absence every day with a pang in my heart. As time has gone on, more time passes between my thoughts of you. It doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you, or that I didn’t love you. There’s one little girl here now who needs my attention, and there’s another on the way who I’m loving and thinking about in the ways I loved you and thought about you. All that’s to say life goes on, and God’s word indicates that it’s a good thing to go on.

Deuteronomy 31:8

“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."

No matter how alone I may feel, I am not going through this truly alone. I may look around me and not see anyone else in tears of mourning over your tiny life, but I am never alone. Besides the Lord being with me, there are hundreds of women whose hearts ache for their tiny babies that died just the way you did. Their pain is just like mine. So many women I never knew had lost babies have come to me in my grief to try to help me. That seems to have subsided quite a bit since your little sister is on the way. I’m sure that some day I’ll be the one to go to another woman who is hurting and share in her pain. I know how she hurts. I know how her dreams have been crushed. That verse of scripture also speaks about having fear. That’s something that I didn’t quite know how to deal with, especially before I found out about this new baby. I was terrified of getting pregnant again. I didn’t want to go through this again. I was about ready to give up entirely on having any more children because I didn’t have a guarantee from God that this wouldn’t happen again. Then I was expecting. Before I could see the ultrasounds, hear her heartbeat, and know that everything was going well with her, I had fear that I would lose her the way I lost you. I guess I still have some fear. I never had any of these feelings when I was expecting my first baby. I just trusted that everything was going to be fine. In the four months I have until this baby is supposed to be born, I know, intellectually, that many things could go wrong. I am not guaranteed a healthy baby just because I’ve carried one for five months. The key to getting past that, besides noting in scripture where it says not to fear, is the knowledge that even if the worst happens, I won’t be alone, and that there is still a future for me. God’s guarantees are not healthy children, or a pain free life. He promises that no matter what, we can trust Him with everything we have, and everything we are. At the end of the day, that has to be enough. That’s all we’ve got.

I love you, and I miss you. I know you’re now with God, and that’s some comfort to me. While you’re there, get to know your Great Granddaddy Doc. From what I’ve heard, he was a pretty neat guy.

Love,

Mom

___________________________________________________

Since losing this baby, I've had more practice at grieving. My grandfather died in January of 2007, and my father-in-law died in January of 2008. In each of those situations, the heartache of losing this baby was dredged back to the surface, and I went through all of the stages of reconciling the truth of what happened with God's goodness. There were times, especially after losing my father-in-law, that I thought I would never again be able to say, "God is good even though this happened."

A friend of mine, another choir director from a middle school in my district, has just lost her baby last week. He was full term and born alive. I don't know how long he lived after he was born, but it wasn't long. Not even a day. I can only imagine the heartache she is feeling. Please join me in praying for her. Her body is still recovering from pregnancy and the birth. I'm sure her arms are aching to hold her baby just one more time.

Living in a fallen world is no fun. I long for heaven when I will be reunited with my baby, my Pawpaw and the sweetest father-in-law anyone could imagine. Pain will be history.

Just as a matter of wrapping up the story of Baby #2, my heart wasn't healed until my Little Girl was 10 months old. My sister-in-law was due with her first baby two days behind Baby #2. It was probably 4 or 5 years before I could look at my niece and not be reminded of Baby #2. There was a definite point where I could say it didn't break my heart to think about this, or even to talk about it, and that's when I think my heart had been healed.

About 3 or 4 years later, one of my best friends experienced a miscarriage. For her it was baby #3. Walking that road with her was a healing experience for me. I think she and I went through our miscarriages for each others' sakes, only I didn't know it at the time that I was going there for her. If I help anyone else for the rest of my life, it's just gravy. That experience has served its purpose.

Well, now I'll delete this note from my facebook page. It's preserved.

Love and Logic

Here it is, two days after I got home from convention, and I'm still ruminating on one of the best workshops I've ever attended. It was a session based on Teaching with Love and Logic, as applied to the choir classroom. It's exactly what I need right now.

I will keep the handout from that workshop in the front of my folder this year. That way I'll have those ideas at my fingertips.

The most revolutionary concept shared with us was what to do when a kid is arguing with the teacher. They told us to go brain dead. Don't reason. Don't think. Just come back with a one-liner that will either diffuse the situation or make the student think about what he/she is saying. It's a practiced response thing, and not a power struggle.

I want to get that book. I want to read it cover to cover before school starts. (That may or may not happen.) I want to go to more training on this. Most definitely.

The song in my head is leftover from the wedding yesterday. "Dodi Li." It's an easy enough song that I think I'll have my 6th graders sing it this year at some point.

Choir Directors Convention

I am back from the convention. It was great. I have massive piles of new music to add to my single-copy library (from which I choose most of the songs my choirs sing), and many new ideas to take to the classroom once school starts. I have two hand-outs I want to keep in the front of my folder to remember those things I was taught this week. If I don't do that, it will never end up making a difference in my teaching. When I get into those moments when choir rehearsal is becoming a drag, I need those quick energizer activities at my fingertips. When a kid is baiting me to argue and get upset, I need that list of quick one-liners to diffuse the situation. The key will be remember that they are there, and remembering to USE them!!

It was great getting to hang out with the other choir directors in the district. We have so many wonderfully talented people right here in our very small sphere, and we really do support each other very well. This year I didn't hang out in the hotel bar with the directors from a nearby district like I have in the past. I know they were there. I've seen evidence on facebook already. I just didn't end up going over there this year because I stayed in a hotel that was closer to the convention center, and for some reason I didn't end up there... Curious...

I also got to hang out with my voice teacher and academic advisor from college. She was also my Music Ed prof, and mentor. She and her husband are always at these conventions. Seeing her and getting to eat lunch with her was a very rare treat. She had some wonderful insights on grad school that have given me the nudge I needed to know where to apply. I was torn between two schools in my area, and I am no longer in doubt. Now the question is when to start... More on that later.

The day after my lunch with her, I ran into my old choir director from college. He was only there one day, and seeing him is another rare treat. He came to my tiny-choir school in March to work with my students before contest. That was such a blessing. It was my new favorite day of my career so far... Anyway, he's up for doing that again this year, which is downright AWESOME!! I'm definitely looking forward to that!

The ladies I roomed with wanted to go see "Horrible Bosses" on Thursday night. It was so funny. The language was horrible as the bosses, but it was FUNNY. If you can tolerate the f bomb repeatedly, I recommend that movie. No spoilers here. I'll move on.

I got some business taken care of at the exhibits. T-shirt art ordered, trip date booked with festival company (going back to the waterpark!!)... Boring stuff like that. I scored some free pizza kits from a fundraising company that sells them. The man kept talking to me and I kept listening and then he offered me free stuff. Works for me!

I brought home some gifts for my girls. I got Big Girl a piano necklace since she plays piano, and I got Little Girl these funny treble clef glasses because as soon as I spotted them, I knew that she would LOVE them! Maybe she'll let me borrow them for special days at school when I may need to be super silly.

OK, so the thing about when to start grad school... I have thought I would go back to school since about a few years after I graduated from college. My priority was starting my family. As long as I was a stay-at-home mommy, grad school didn't seem like a relevant concept. Since starting back to teaching two years ago, it's something I've thought about more and more. Hubby and I agree that it needs to be a financial priority for our family in the upcoming years. I have looked into it and found a masters program that offers classes in the summers for working teachers, and that is what I will do.

The question is whether I start in 2012 or 2013. The reason to delay is an opportunity to travel to Europe. The best man in our wedding is a major in the Air Force and his family is stationed in Germany. They live close to France and Spain, so our trip would be more than just to Germany (we've been there before, but it was with a large group and we didn't have much control over our schedule or which attractions we visited). An opportunity like that doesn't come along all the time. He has been stationed in Europe before, and we were not in a position to take advantage of the offer. I think it was when our kids were little, and finances were tighter. Anyway, that's the question of when. Everyone I've talked to has encouraged me to go to Europe over starting school if we get the opportunity to go.

So I have some action items on my agenda for the short-term: 1. get passport renewed, 2. get convention handouts laminated and in my folder, 3. make sure to take the rhythm cards to tiny-choir school, and stuff like that. I have medium-range goals: 1. plan trip to Europe, 2. take GRE and start application process for grad school, 3. sight-reading every day with students, EVERY DAY no matter what, even if it's just 2 measures...

Those things may not seem like they are related, but they don't have to be. This is my stream of consciousness. You're welcome to get out of the water...

The song in my head came on the radio on the way home today. "Barracuda," by Heart. It doesn't get much cooler than that.

Choir High

A fellow middle school choir director in the district is getting married this weekend. She and I generally have to curtail our conversations in meetings and such. We never run out of things to discuss, and I definitely consider her a friend.

For her wedding she has several choral selections she wants performed. Of course that means assembling a choir. I have been honored to be included in this choir.

Last night was the one and only rehearsal for the wedding choir. It was very much fun to see some other familiar faces in that choir, people I know from singing in other choirs, and one girl I went to high school with. I've remarked before about the choir world being a small one, and it was definitely another confirmation that it surely is.

I don't think any of us had really spent much time with the music prior to last night's rehearsal. At first it wasn't all that great. There were plenty of mistakes, as there always are early in the rehearsal process. But this choir got everything fixed faster than any choir I've ever sung with before. There was no discussion of "off on 4 there" or basics like that. Once the difficult spots were ironed out, it was a matter of interpreting the expression of each piece which mostly came naturally. There was a magical moment as we rehearsed the last song of the evening when the bride, seated in front of us, was moved to tears. We all felt it.

THAT'S why I do this. That's why I love choir.

I came home after two hours of rehearsal on a choir high. I was keyed up and excited to tell Hubby all about it. I think I overwhelmed him.

As my head hit the pillow last night, I thought about the fact that I get to do choir for a job. I get to do this thing I love, share this thing I love with my students. I get to go through the process and hopefully get to that places where the music moves us to tears. I am extremely blessed. My cup runneth over.

This was just the attitude adjustment I needed going into the convention, and the impending school year.

Last night I had in my head, "Erev shel shoshanim," "Dodi Li," and "Seasons of Love." (We're not doing "Seasons of Love" a capella, but you definitely get the idea. The other two YouTube examples are the same arrangements we're singing.)