All State

This weekend was all about my boy. I already told you where we were and why we were there, so, how about telling you what we did?




I took him out for pizza, 'cause that's what you do with boys.




He made a little music too.




We had breakfast at a cereal bar. Seriously. It was so cool!




This is the delicious mess he ordered up.



Now, I am definitely not a city girl. I like taking pictures of trees and, well, natural things. I also didn't have much time to explore and think about picture-taking. But still, I had my camera everywhere and saw some things that I liked.





Then I found something a little bit more to my picture-taking liking.



I ran into my junior high band director.



This man so greatly influenced my musical life. He made sure I went to see the Nutcracker so I could see a real orchestra. He's the one that put a bassoon in my hand. He taught both of my brothers and myself. He even played a song for my wedding. It was such a pleasure to introduce him to my son, who plays the same instrument he does, and to tell him that I'm a music teacher now.

But most of all, there was a concert. An awesome concert. And my boy was in it.

One More Something

Andrew had a concert.



Check out that super awesome bass player!



If you grew up here and were ever in band, you remember this auditorium and its giant Christmas decorations very well. It's really fun to attend his concerts in the very same place so many of mine were held.
I also had a concert a couple of weeks ago. And Emma has one this week. And everybody has a recital on Saturday.
Sigh.
All good things, they are, it's just that there are so many!

On With the Show

I've had a few people ask, so I'll tell you all a little bit about our Saturday night. My brother and his wife gave me tickets (for my birthday) to see Counting Crows at Hard Rock Live in Orlando. They're out on tour right now with Augustana and Michael Franti & Spearhead. They're calling this tour the "Traveling Circus and Medicine Show" and that's pretty much what it is! It's a crazy, circus-y show with accordions and marching bass drums and Real Pianos (That alone made my heart pitty-pat. I'm kind of an acoustic, real-instrument gal), but it was crazy good too. Is it okay to admit that I've never been a fan of Counting Crows or anything? I mean, it isn't that I don't like them, it's just that in the 90s, I was into other stuff. That said, I was really bowled over by the quality of musicianship and the camaraderie.
Yep, you heard me.
Camaraderie - as in good fellowship (look it up). The thing I loved most about this show was that the supporting bands and the headlining act all played together. At different times. In each other's sets. Unexpectedly popping in and out of songs and with random instruments.
That was great.
It gives some of the lesser-known guys a chance to be heard. Too often, people show up late to a show in order to skip the openers and catch who they really bought tickets to see. I think that's such a shame. Experience and friends-and-relations-in-bands all tell me that lots of really amazing bands never get that big break, but they're so worth finding and their songs are probably better than the stuff you hear on the radio anyway. Not that I have an opinion. Wink.
So, it was nearly four hours of raucous fun and incredible live music. The close of the show was this huge jam session - an on-the-spot mish-mosh of all the musicians, putting out some great tunes that everybody knows and loves. Three lead singers. Multiple lead guitarists. Zero visible ego. Sure, it's possible somebody up there was a diva, but they sure kept it to themselves, and every one of them looked like they were having such a great time.
Now, that's incredible!

In other on-with-the-show news, today was Emma's first day back to school. Andrew still has another week of summer, which is a little odd, so I sort of feel like we're limping into fall at this point. We got up early, but not early enough. We'd had something of a miscommunication about what time we needed to be out of bed - as in, I might not have actually told Chris when to wake us all up. He gets up early and I. Do. Not.
So, Emma donned her shiny new pink backpack and pink Nikes and her P.E. uniform, since they always have to wear those on Mondays, and Third Grade began.
(sorry this is so dark!)

She has the same teacher Andrew had for Third Grade, so we kind of know what to expect, which is good. For the first time ever, I didn't sob buckets of tears as I pulled out of the school. Maybe there are just too many good things in our lives right now for me to be bothered with my usual sentimentality. Maybe I'm too busy for tears.
Whichever one it is, I'm okay with it. For better or for worse, my wish for 2009 seems to have come true.

Daily Bliss: A phone call from my bestie - 15 minutes of laughing 'till I had tears over the most serious things in life. I know that doesn't sound quite right, but it works for us.

Movie Hair, Mushrooms and a Little Music

Haircut day! Haircut day! It's my favorite.
No matter how yucky I feel when I get there, I always leave my hairdresser's chair feeling like a million bucks. Usually, he asks me what I want to do with my hair and I shrug and tell him to do whatever he feels like doing. It's always good. But I'd just recently made Chris sit down and watch Amelie with me, one of my favorite movies. It has subtitles. It took me a long time to convince him it was good. He did like it. Please don't take away any of his man points for that. I promised him his points were safe, but I think we will have to watch Wolverine and the new Star Trek movie to make up for the fact that Amelie is a French movie. And possibly a John Wayne movie too.
Anyway, I love her hair. So, I asked my hair guy for something like it, but a little less severe. He pointed out how nice it is to have a hairdresser that likes foreign films, because he knew exactly what hair I was talking about and also knew exactly how to adapt it to make it work on me. He and his wife own the movie. He's so cool.
I tried to make an Amelie face for a picture, but it was really, really awful. So here's a couple of less-awful ones:


Also, there were some cute little mushrooms growing out of a tree root by our neighbor's fence. I was taking pictures of my hair when I saw them and they distracted me. I went down on all fours in my pink sundress and started taking pictures and trying to get the aperture and the shutter speed set just right. Oh me. What must my neighbors think?




I love these sneaky little ones, stretching out after their nap in the cracks of the bark.


Aaaannnnd, the kids had their last recital of the school year this evening!
Emma played three pieces on the recorder and one of them was an original composition! I am so proud of her. She wanted to play the flute, but her arms aren't quite long enough to reach, so her teacher started her out on recorder. She was extraordinarily nervous and, though her performance was nearly flawless, she burst into tears the minute she stepped off the stage. My poor girl. I understand exactly how she feels.
On the other end of the spectrum is her brother, who is quite the confident performer. He played two piano pieces, a euphonium solo, a duet with another euphonium player and a brass ensemble piece. He was brilliant. He was not flawless, but he shrugs that kind of stuff right off and keeps going.
I am so blessed to have been given charge of these two amazing people.

(warming up)

(Malaguena!)

Daily Bliss: Clearance lip balm from the happiest place on Earth - Anthropologie! I really like lip balm and it's in a fancy little tin. Lurve.
Wake-Up Playlist: Some piano song that I wrote in my dream. It's gone now, but I am left with a lingering desire to return to my first instrument

Focused? Nope.

I was utterly bored today, for a good portion of the day. That made it so very difficult to focus on anything important (not that I have much important work to do).
But once I got home, things started looking up. Or at least more entertaining.
I followed a couple of new-job-idea-leads while the kids practiced their myriad instruments and generally made noises all around me. I managed to get some dinner going and to suddenly toss a serious, future-iffic conversation at my honey the minute he walked in the door (Honey, what about if I just join the circus? I mean, I'm talented, right honey? Right? Honey, why are you rubbing your temples already?). It's not wonder that he sometimes comes home late.
He did the dishes for me, even if it might have been an attempt at finding some peace & quiet, because I will generally not be found anywhere near a sink full of dirty dishes.
I forced the elder of my noisy children to play Uno with the youngest of them and they managed to turn even that into a serious competition. And I tried to knit. But I was reading blogs too.
My head is just elsewhere and it is refusing to be put back in line. I have my little tricks and gimmicks for reigning in my mind and I will use them when it becomes absolutely necessary. It is almost absolutely necessary.
But maybe not just yet.
Chris has some money in his iTunes account that's been sitting there for a while. It's a good thing I didn't know about it before. It might have mysteriously disappeared. He bought a couple new albums of which I highly approve (Iron & Wine's new one and the She & Him album that I've heard is really good - he kinda looked a little dreamy-eyed about Zooey Deschanel, but I don't mind.). I've been on something of a folk kick for a while. It seems that's all my subconscious is singing in the morning these days, too.
Oh my. I lost track of my point. Surprised? Me neither.
So, he called me down to check out M. Ward's new album because he was liking it and that was his first mistake. iTunes, for me, is like an endless tunnel. Once I get in, I will never find my way out. It was not long before I had commandeered the mouse and found two or three more albums that I was strongly suggesting he should purchase. Um, Patrick Watson? I might love you. It's a good thing he's so open to suggestion. Or else it's a good thing that he thinks I'm cute enough to buy music for.
Whatever.
Now, I have a shawl to block (hear that, Mom?) and I need to obey some lovely rain that is calling me to the bathtub.
Maybe that doesn't happen to anybody else.
I love to open my salvaged window right next to my claw-foot tub and listen to the rivulets of water smacking the pavement of the driveway as they roll off the side of the roof. And sometimes, that is even a trick I use to bring my brain back into submission when it has decided to go a-wandering - giving it something so lovely on which to focus.
But we are not resorting to tricks yet, are we? That's what I'm telling my brain for right now. I suspect it is a little skittish and I don't want it to run off in the other direction under the threat of being forced to behave.

Daily Bliss: watching a papa cardinal and his baby peck around by my mom's bird feeder

Wake-up Playlist: Iron & Wine - Resurrection Fern

Tunes

I've noticed something about myself this past week or so. I don't suppose this is deep, revalatory knowledge, but I have caught myself singing the most random songs in the mornings. I mean, I sing all the time, right? Who doesn't? It's fun and it embarrasses my kids and what could be better than that?
But I guess I just noticed that I was singing songs that were so random and so eclectic and seemed to have nothing to do with anything. I've decided that they must be the soundtrack of my dreams, since I find myself singing, say, Led Zeppelin at 6:00 AM, as I'm about to take my first sip of coffee. Pre-coffee Christy's subconscious is an open book. Post-coffee Christy has very little recollection of what Pre-coffee Christy did on any given day.
This morning, I was singing You Can't Always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones, of course. Yesterday it was Midlake's Young Bride. I don't even know why. I do like those songs, though.
Sometimes it's a song that I don't like at all, like Francesca Battistelli's Free to Be Me. Honestly? I just had to Google the only snippet of lyrics I remembered to see who sang the song and what it was called. I have no idea where I picked that one up. Plus, it's a little on the pop-country side of things for my taste. Nonetheless, it was in my head before my first sip of coffee three days ago.
It's just an interesting thing to pay attention to. I might start a "Morning Soundtrack" section of my posts, in addition to those blessed "Daily Blisses" - just for funsies. Just for laughs. Just so you can make fun of me as you go about your day. And some of the music is bound to be good, so you might want to check it out too. But some it if will probably not be good. I don't pretend to have good taste.

Daily Bliss: cooperative children this afternoon, who finished all of their responsibilities and then some

It's the Little Things

Things are humming along here in our lives. School is definitely back in full swing and clubs and extra-curriculars are too. Music lessons re-started this week, and both of my kids are participating. Andrew has piano and euphonium lessons (he decided to return to the keys instead of continuing guitar....he is my boy after all!) and Emma is beginning flute. She has desperately wanted to and we have discovered that she's a mite small yet. Her arms hardly reach down the length of the flute when she holds it in the right spot. We will probably work her into it with some recorder lessons, but keep the flute as part of her practice and lesson schedule so she doesn't feel disappointed. We have practiced making noises by blowing into a soda bottle today and we have made some "twee" sounds, as Emma calls them, on the flute's head joint (which is basically the mouthpiece).
Andrew was thrilled to discover that, since his lessons are no longer on Thursdays, he can join the chess club at school.
Sigh.
That boy will be the death of me. He wants to do everything. I told him we'd look at it and make a decision soon. I'm feeling very much in-the-trenches right now and as such am indisposed to making new commitments.
I mean, it's not a bad thing. This is the part of mothering that I always meant when, growing up, I said I wanted to be a mother. Their interests are growing and they are unfolding as people right in front of my eyes. It's very exciting!
But still.
It's kinda sad when one of the most beautiful things you've seen all day is a warm ray of sun glinting off an instrument case.

Rather, it's kinda sad when the most beautiful thing you've noticed all day is a warm ray of sun glinting off an instrument case. Because that's the most still and quiet you've been all day - the most able-to-notice-things you've been all day.
I've always been one to look for the beauty in simplicity - to find things that feed my soul wherever I am. But still. People looked at me a little weird when I whipped out my camera in the lobby of the music studio and started snapping shots of a beat-up euphonium case...

DAILY BLISS: music teachers gushing over my son (his piano teacher said that talent and ability were "just oozing out of him") and a gorgeous, deep-orange to velvet-midnight-blue sunset.