Three-day weekend!

Happy Labor Day weekend!  I hope you have some nice plans for tomorrow.  Steve’s September movie watch is all three Chronicles of Narnia so that is we are going to do Monday.  Can’t wait.

We visited St. Louis on Friday and Saturday.  We had hoped to make the 7:30 temple session on Friday night but something caused slow-moving traffic outside of Warrenton (accident?  Labor Day? we never found out) and we didn’t arrive at the temple until 7:40 so we did sealings instead.  We spent the night and Saturday morning with Emily and Joe and kids.  After a gentle awakening and breakfast and some crafting on the kitchen table, Emily and Noah and Lucy took Steve and I to visit a lovely little gluten-free bakery down the road ( I bought a lemon cupcake and a sugar cookie and some gooey butter cookies – mmmm) and to shop at Five Below (a five-dollar and under store).  Then, Steve and I left to attend the 1:00 temple session and returned to Columbia to shop at Aldi, visit with Julina on the phone, eat, and collapse in front of a movie “The Slipper and the Rose”  (remember that film?) 

After week #2 with my Oakland 8^th grade orchestra, I can say that things are going a teeny bit better.  I just have to remember how TALKATIVE 8^th graders are AND that, just like cattle, they are always testing the fence and looking for a weakness to shanghai the lesson plan. 

RTO resumed fall rehearsals on Monday night.  Remember when I went on the radio to plug the group?  We actually got some recruits as a result – yay.  

Sadie got her teeth cleaned on Monday.  So that meant no food after midnight on Sunday and no food until Tuesday morning because of the anesthesia.  Poor Sadie.  Poor also because she had two little incisors removed.  Now, I need to be more diligent in daily brushing her teeth!  One really nice result is that her breath never smelled better.

This pretty much sums up our week.  We bought a new printer (finally) and we finally figured out how to register the newest Microsoft Office suite (I love the new WORD), and we bought three rabbit-ears television antennas so we can get rid of our cable subscription.  Still working on why I can’t read my e-mail on my smartphone.  Technology :/

 Emily found some Thomas the Train engines for sale on Craig's List in Columbia so I picked them up for her.  Quinn and Lucy are thrilled.

Noah and Lucy played with clay after breakfast.

Quinn sporting a hat and carrying around the toy school bus which he calls "Bye"

and school begins

I made it through the first week of school!  I absolutely LOVE my Rock Bridge Chamber Orchestra.  Those kids are the cream of the crop!  They are all excellent musicians, they like to play whatever I put in front of them, they are incredibly well behaved, and they seem to like me (I even got a beautiful red silk stuffed fish to hang from one of my students who went to China over the summer).  I have pulled a bunch of possible music selections and we are currently in the process of sight-reading through them. So far, everyone loved all four pieces we read through on Friday.  And there is more great stuff to come (Copland, Dvorak, Mozart, Brahms!) Wow, it is going to be hard to choose out of the pile.  I am going to really enjoy working with them this year.

The jury is still out on my Oakland Middle School crew......

They are 8th graders - just about the WORST age of teenagerhood - and I am NOT Mr. Strozier (their beloved teacher from last year).  I am that teacher from Lange who, when OMS and LMS collaborated on concerts last year, was the one who took tempos too slow.  They also hate the fact that every other day, we have to rehearse in the drama room.  This is because the 6th grade orchestra meets during the same class period on alternating days and their size is so large that they need to have rooms 121 and 123 opened up to accommodate them.  The large open room also benefits the choir and general music classes that meet in the afternoon.  And, when the movable wall is closed - is doesn't close all the way (the school is over 40 years old and I guess no one felt the need to repair this problem) so there would be sound-bleed between my group and the 6th graders, should we meet in the side-by-side rooms.  They were not happy with the music I put before them on Friday to sight read - the rhythms were too difficult (they really weren't - it was all stuff they supposedly learned in 7th grade).  And, I have a class idiot - a smart boy who has decided that acting helpless and stupid is funny; a girl who should be my ally but is currently full of attitude; a girl who was a late starter to the violin so she can't read music as fast as the rest of the class and so she gives up; and, finally, the girl who wants to compete with me to be in charge of the class.  She has a smart-aleck comment to make about everything, she has to have the last word every time, AND, she is really not a good musician - she just thinks she is.  So, when I gave her the second violin part to read on Friday, she flatly refused to play  - for the entire class period.  I have already been in communication with the office about how to deal with her (needless to say, they are VERY familiar with this individual)

This equals a less-than-perfect first week for Oakland.  Sigh..... But, tomorrow starts a brand new week and I will invite them to a fresh beginning.....

Other events of the week:  Steve and I used a gift card from Beckie (from last Christmas!) and had dinner at Red Lobster Friday night.  Mmmm.  We also went to see "Hundred Step Journey" Saturday afternoon and absolutely loved it.  Go see it. You won't regret it.  We also had a stake single adult picnic Saturday at noon at Cosmo Park.  Summer in Missouri was slow in arriving but it is here now with a vengeance so temperatures kept many people away, I believe.  But, we had a few brave souls show up and we had a great time discussing single adult activities for our stake.   The food was easy and yummy  (sub sandwiches, chips, watermelon, cookies, water) and, of course, there were lots of  leftovers so I spend some time Saturday evening dropping food to the various sets of missionaries on the east side of town. 

In case you hadn't heard, Elise found an apartment.  You will have to let her tell you the details but it sounds perfect for her situation right now. 

This pretty much wraps up my week.

 

on being brain dead, itchy dogs, and formula painting

My friend and teaching colleague expressed it perfectly:  those days teacher meetings at the start of every school year are like the dementors - they suck the enthusiasm and life out of everyone who attends.  I have been really dragging my feet this year in prepping my brain for returning to school and just when I mentally readied myself - the meetings began and by Friday afternoon, I was back to square one. 

In those three days, I spent maybe one hour actually working on what I would do the first days of class.  The rest of the time I did a LOT of sitting, my feet and legs (and derriere) getting more and more uncomfortable.  My brain was so busy filtering out what really applied to me in my orchestra class room that I couldn't multi-task and do useful thinking about my syllabus, where I could find additional method books, how the sad little classroom at Oakland Middle School was going to work for my 8th grade orchestra, and which of the dozens of folders of music was going to be performed for which concert. I did have a nice taco lunch and scrambled egg/bacon breakfast.  And, I did work on green fuzzy baby hats that will become Christmas tree hats. 

these hats are REALLY fuzzy - it is hard for "ornaments" and the "star" to show up

I took Sadie to the vet Monday morning for her yearly check-up.  She behaved quite well for Doctor Greg - even when he gave her a rabies/distemper shot and drew blood.  I took Sadie back to the vet late Monday afternoon as she was covered in hives from the shot.  She started to act really odd around 4:15 and I thought it was just that she couldn't stand the sounds coming out of the violin I was practicing (music critic).  Finally, I thought she might have a flea or two (shudder) and when I turned her over to inspect her tummy is when I saw the hives.  By this time, she was panting rather frantically and all I could think was that her airway might be closing so I called the vet who advised me to bring her back in for a steroid shot.  That was the longest ride EVER.  She was so distressed, couldn't sit still, breathing so ragged. Scary.  She was very good for THAT shot, too and, thankfully, by bedtime, she was completely back to normal. 

Speaking of violin and veterinarians:  I had a violin student for about two years who was just a terrible player.  He was a bit young - I started him at the end of kindergarten, I think - and he just never really got the whole holding the violin correctly, putting the fingers in the right place, counting out the beats for the right amount of time.  Not that he wasn't bright - he was quite smart.  He just never practiced.  How did I come across this little fellow?  Well, when I was teaching CIS, I would donate a month of music lessons for the silent auction connected with the annual gala fundraiser.  That is how I came to be his teacher.  He was a very sweet little boy and his mom was really great and no matter how many times I tried to suggest that maybe a REAL violin teacher might do better by him, they kept coming to me (I think because the location of my house was so convenient to theirs).  Nevertheless, he is now gone - they moved to Hawaii for his mom to be a veterinarian on the big island.  And at his last lesson, he presented me with a gift card to The Canvas on Broadway.  It is a place for people with no experience in painting to go and create a painting.  They are just a teeny step beyond paint-by-numbers  and by no means can they be considered fine art.    And, you all know that I am aspiring to do fine art.  But you also know how I cannot stand to waste anything - including gift cards.  So, I signed up for a Friday evening session at The Canvas and this is what I produced. 

 

 Yes, the creative process was very therapeutic after the dementor sessions and yes it was fun to swish around a paint brush but I really do not like the end result.  But, I wasn't experienced enough in acrylics nor was I courageous like one of the participants to just do something completely on my own.  However, I still have enough on the gift card for one more session and I know exactly what I want to create.  Stay tuned for session #2 in September.  In the meantime, maybe I'll smear gesso over what I did and paint something in oils on top of it?

August

My last full week before I have to go back to school.....

I was interviewed twice this past week about the RTO (Really Terrible Orchestra) which starts back up again this month.  On Tuesday, it was with Paul Pepper on his Radio Friends on KBIA that airs every weekday morning at the end of Morning Edition.  On Thursday, it was on KFRU with David Lyle.  Of the two, I really enjoyed my time with David Lyle.  He really has a gift of making people feel comfortable and asking really valid questions.  I hope we gain some new members of the orchestra as a result of these two interviews.

I did all the beginning-of-the-month finances and shopping that takes up time.  Ricky Remus, our repairman, called Friday night to say he had some time Saturday afternoon to come by and fix stuff on my repair list.   Nothing on the list was urgent but we have been waiting all summer to get to the top of his list so it was with a silent “yahoo” that I said “come on over”.   He replaced our bedroom ceiling fan.  The motor in the fan stopped working sometime last summer. 

 

He replaced some of the “popcorn” that had come down from our ceiling.  He replaced our front-door threshold that was really looking ratty. I had to keep putting our door mat over it to cover up how bad it looked.  He hammered back in some of our outdoor siding (stupid settling foundation).  And he rehung our swinging café doors to the laundry room.  

 

  

I visited Laura Jost to talk over some humanitarian project ideas I have with some of my excess yarn and fabric and came home with some great plans.  I started the first project during a morning-long faculty training meeting I attended Friday and I finished them tonight – baby hats to look like pumpkins!  

 Aren’t they the cutest thing?  I started out making pompom tops but I kept thinking that a crocheted top would be so much better so I found my crochet hook, dusted off my knowledge of basic crochet,  and I am really happy with how they turned out. 

I also decided that since the frames on three of the four master bedroom walls were black, the ones on the north wall also really needed to be black so I pulled them off the wall and pulled out the black paint.  I will re-insert the paintings tomorrow.

 

 Emily gave me a free-hanging wall shelf and I painted it white and piled a bunch of my stuffed lambs on it.   Thanks, Em....   (Jefe, would you say we have a plethora of lambs???)

 

I finished an oil painting that I had started almost twenty years ago.

 

 

I re-stacked our woodpile out in back, thanks to the help of one of my piano students. 

(it is too dark to take a photo - plus, woodpiles look boring)

I sewed a simple top for me and I am not really happy with how it turned out.  Sigh. When I was younger, I could not understand why my mother didn't sew for herself.  I think I am now beginning to understand why....

And, we got over three inches of rain Wednesday night and Thursday!  It was SO welcome.

Steve and I watched his August movie  - Remember the Titans  - on Friday night and we watched Jack Reacher (which was surprisingly entertaining) on Saturday. And, earlier in the week, I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and found it totally charming. 

Johnson's Shut-Ins 2014

We camped at Johnson's Shut-Ins Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  Emily and the kids came with us - Joe joined us Friday night after work.

This is Cabin 4 nestled in the woods.  Cabins 1, 2, and 3 were farther down the hill nearer the flush toilets and showers.  They were closer together with fewer trees in between.  Ours was in a delightful spot.  My only complaint was that the stairs from the cabin were on the opposite side from the outdoor cooking area.  But, that gave us more exercise walking back and forth :)

 
 





















This was our front porch
Each cabin had gravel pathways.  I found Noah trying to make a "gravel angel" on one. 

 

This is now they looked inside:

Note the microwave, mini-fridge, and tons of cubbies for storage

the cabin had two rooms separated by a wall that only went half-way up to the vaulted ceiling.  There were fans and a window air conditioner so it made for comfortable sleeping.

This was what we saw from the porch.  It is followed by Noah's landscape of the same view

Here are Steve, Noah, and me relaxing Friday afternoon

Friday morning was a bit foggy at first until the sun came up.

Below is an artful arrangement of Noah's polished stones he bought at the campground store.

Silly Noah

And, of course, the Shut-Ins......