This morning I stood at my kitchen window, opened a new bag of coffee, and inhaled deeply for a good 30 seconds. It was bliss. All the activity in my life right now makes me think something needs to be happening or I should be hearing from someone all the time. I'm oversatiated. I hate that. I need a time out... with my bag of coffee.

ugh

There's too much going on right now.  All I want to do is practice and be left alone.

... kind of.  Except I miss my friends.  The only people I talked to today aside from my students and their parents were Jen (the music director at the school I play for), Georgia (the accounts manager at the school I play for), and my mom.

...oh yeah, and the guy who did my mom's pedicure for her.  She thought it would be funny to hand the phone over to him so we could chat for a bit seeing as how I apparently don't get out much.  I guess it's true.  I'm blogging about it.  But whatever... I'm contemplating leaving society and living in a cave right now anyway.

And can I just take this opportunity to say that my mother is always trying to set me up with someone???  If it's not her male pedicurist (a man I'm convinced is 30 yrs old and doing toenails for a living), then it's the male nurse tech at the emergency room last month.  My parents look harder for a mate for me than I do.  It's a little unnerving sometimes... as in, "No, Mom.  I really have no desire to talk to the man who's painting your toenails right now... thanks."  Or maybe, "Mom, I'm sure this man is a lovely, caring nurse, but clearly he's just as uncomfortable as I am right now.  Perhaps we should save awkward introductions for a time when you aren't having chest pains..."

But I digress.  All I want to do is practice and be left alone so I can get work done... and work on my stuff.  But I have a teaching and rehearsal schedule to keep.  And multiple performances coming up.  Ugh.  So I burn both ends of the day.  And I start having 10 and 12-hour days in a row.  Again:  ugh.

Sometimes when I have free time, I wonder what I used to do with it... today I had an hour for lunch around 2 pm and I wondered what I was supposed to be doing with myself other than eating and getting myself from point A to point B.

And then of course there's everyone else's stress... I need to get better at saying no to all of that in my brain.  As in, "Ok, yes, you're telling me all of this but it is not my problem.  And I love you and I'm sorry but there's nothing I can really do about it.  Emotional detachment commence."

That sounds horrible.  I sound like all the other jerks out there in the world... I guess you have to be a little bit of a jerkface now and then to protect yourself.  But I don't like that either... being an adult is really lame and unfeeling sometimes.

Anyway, all that to say... Lent / contest season / spring has basically become my own version of tax season.  I'm just glad to get to the end of each day.  It's frankly a minor miracle if I crawl into bed at night and haven't resolved to give up on society and go live in a cave by the end of the week...

... but honestly, I'd probably take my piano with me if I did.  Because then I'd finally make some serious headway in my Beethoven.

note to self

Tonight I nailed my mom's black-eyed pea recipe with peas from Grandpa's garden.  Oh man, they are so good.  It doesn't even matter that it's 10 pm and I'm finally sitting down to dinner.  I feel like a rockstar, I reproduced this so well.  Not that it's insanely difficult.  But it's one of those old recipes that my grandma passed down to my mom that I've just never gotten around to trying.  Anyway, they are delicious and I feel amazing, which is a great place to be, given the crazy week I've had.

I won't go into details but a lot happened that was beyond the realm of my control and nearly every day was longer than the one before it.  It was, in fact, fairly horrendous and I don't know about you, but by yesterday evening, a stiff drink sounded like just the ticket.  It was one of those weeks where now that I have some free time on Saturday evening, I don't even know what to do with myself.  Ick.

Maybe I'll go to bed early.  Or maybe I'll stop being a 92-year-old.

Anyway, things did get a little better after Wednesday's post (an entry I was later told was a little alarming...) but they didn't really get better until yesterday when I was able to see my siblings and then have a nice, long conversation with a dear friend of mine -- a friend whose perspective I truly appreciate and who never fails to make me laugh... or laugh at my jokes, for that matter.  And even though there was no stiff drink, the conversation was full of everything:  all the good stuff.  We laughed, I cried, and he made Yoda impressions.  It was perfect.  Just what I needed.

And for two days in a row now, I've seen both of my siblings for probably the first time in two weeks.  I need them so badly, more than I ever ever ever would have thought possible while growing up.  They are amazing.  And we are amazing together.  This afternoon my brother and I went on another ice skating date and it was awesome.  He fell a couple of times and we had a good laugh about it.  I won't even begin to think about the fact that in six months, we won't be able to go skating or fishing or bike the trails around St. Peters or get ice cream anymore when he goes away to school... because it's too big of an adjustment to think about just yet.  Let's hope I don't haul off and move to Warrensburg with him...

... KIDDING.  Mostly.

Not much else to report.  I need to do my Bible study but things have been so busy.  Lent sucks.  I'm barely getting in enough practice time.  Correction:  I'm not really getting in enough practice time.  But that is another matter in and of itself.  If I had my way I would give up half of my commitments and just practice and teach.  But that just isn't where God has me, and quite frankly, pianists don't get better at what they do by locking themselves in the practice room and never performing in the wild.  It's just our lot in life.  The practice room is strictly that.

And now that I think about it, maybe that's the reason my week was so stressful (aside from pure exhaustion):  It was full of unfamiliar things.  Maybe it's like my mom's black-eyed peas... when things get tough, you just need to be in and with the familiar, the things you love, the things you know to be true... that know and love you back, the things you trust.  Like my siblings.  And my Bible.  And my friends.  And le piano, working on my stuff...  all things that I haven't been able to spend much time with recently...

... note to self.

ashes to ashes

It's 11:23 pm.  My sucky day is officially over.  I just walked in the door, am going to write for 6 minutes, change clothes, crawl into bed, and hope that when I wake up, the way I feel right now will be but a figment of my imagination or the result of low hormones and high stress.

I won't go into tons of crazy details, only to say that I had two pretty stressful rehearsals this morning, followed by an afternoon of teaching, followed then by an Ash Wednesday service that I had to play for, which I was of course late to because I had to teach.  To top it all off, I went out with some dear friends afterwards, which I thought would be fun.  But then the two brothers of the husband came along as well, one of which I'm positive has sworn to loathe me for all eternity, tonight not sparing.  He was totally rude and it was completely uncalled for.  I drove home wondering what the hell I said or did to deserve such treatment other than to exist as a single female within his sphere of acquaintance.  It also made me wonder if I'm ever going to find the right person.  Not because I'm attracted to him by any means, but because with my track record... well, when a man treats me badly, it doesn't surprise me one single bit, but rather just adds to the weight of sadness -- years of feeling largely ignored or abandoned by the male population in one way or another...  I have to fight to believe that there's one out there who will actually treasure my heart someday.  And yes, that's the truth.  At least, it's the truth of what I feel and have felt for a long while.

So that brings me to now, sitting at my computer, still in service attire, blogging the cold, hard truth about my problems right now and feeling sorry for myself online because it's 11:30 and it's inappropriate to call anyone and talk.  Not that I would want them to hear any of this anyway.  I pray this is a faint memory in six hours when I have to wake up and go teach my 8 am student.

Here's the thing:  Jesus, I need you.  Because I'm too cynical and skeptical for my own good.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  It's what we came from.  It's where we go back to.  Dave Cover used to say that whether a believer or not, "we weep our way into eternity" because of the brokenness of this world.  Thank God there's one greater than ourselves... who came to save us from ourselves.  Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.

colorado

Tonight I sit here at my desk with the remains of a fantastic dinner scattered about me.  I felt it necessary to cook a good meal after the crazy/awesome/exhausting weekend I had:  pan-seared steak (thin cut... let's be honest, I didn't go crazy.  Steak is expensive!), gluten-free alfredo, peas, and a small glass of red wine (my first drink since October).  I've been off the medication now for at least a week and a half or more and so I figured I could probably have a glass of wine, so long as I made sure to douse myself with water and follow it up with a couple of fiber supplements.  I am seriously old.  Today when I went to the grocery store, I literally contemplated buying dates vs prunes.  I finally walked away after five minutes of standing there and realizing that I was actually having this debate within myself.  You have to draw the line somewhere.

Anyway, this weekend was amazing.  I am seriously sleep-deprived, but it was so worth it.  It's frankly a miracle that I made it through teaching this afternoon and back home without falling asleep along the way.

This weekend, I learned how to ski.

It was incredible.

I went as a chaperone on the youth ski trip with my church.  Totally free for me, so long as I could manage to put up with 40 high schoolers for a weekend and not kill myself on the slopes.

And let me just say, skiing was so stinkin' hard at first.  I swear I fell like 30 times down my first time on a slope that was way too hard for my own good.  One of the other female leaders on the trip had promised she could teach me.  Right.  But then the resort was giving out free lessons and I had an hour of one-on-one time with an instructor who showed me what I needed to be doing and everything got way better.  After that, I probably only fell a total of 5 times in the remaining day and a half that I was there.  It was awesome and totally made me feel like a rockstar that I was able to learn and get down some modest green slopes with relative ease all in the same weekend.  And the whole trip did nothing except to feed my love of beautiful mountain scenery, snow, and cold-weather sports.  I hope my future husband can one day support both my art and my newly-found need to go to Colorado every now and then.  He'd better take me on plenty of ice-skating dates too while we're at it.

I learned a lot about myself on the mountain too.  Skiing is actually a lot like performing at the keyboard.  You really have to just learn to shut everything and everyone else out (even those crazy snowboarders who come flying down the mountain at 90 miles an hour), focus on completing one stretch of slope at a time, concentrate on what you're doing, resolve not to be passive in your efforts, and yet let your subconscious take over to some extent.  I will forever equate the two in my mind from now on.  And I can't wait to get back on the slopes again.  It was so quiet and peaceful up there.  Cold and white, with aspens and evergreens everywhere.  It was perfect and beautiful.  Totally worth feeling like I'd been hit by a truck for two days in a row :)  Not to mention the 20-hour bus trips both ways.  Oy.

And now...?  Well, now that I've pushed myself past the point of physical and emotional exhaustion, I'm going to finish my modest glass of cab, take my dishes to the kitchen, and crawl into bed.

high school in the lou

Holy cow, this is hilarious and accurate.  An article from the Riverfront Times explaining the question forever on the lips of St. Louisans... "So, where'd you go to high school?"

And honestly, why should we care??  But here, that one single question tells a lot...

You may have to click on the flowchart link in the article and download the flow chart separately to view it.  It doesn't seem to want to work directly for me on my computer.  Props to you if it does.

"So... Where'd You Go To High School?" Article and Flowchart

True story:  after her lesson today, my six-year-old student picked up her cat from behind, held it under its arms, and tried to make it play the piano with its paws.  The cat just hung there and took it.  I think at one point it looked up at me and silently pleaded with me not to judge.  At which point I heartily laughed.

Happy Valentine's Day.