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.