Things you probably didn't know

A bunch of people have been doing these "12 things you probably don't know about me" posts recently, and I started wondering what silly things people don't know about me that would be shareable.  I don't think I've got twelve, but I have a few if you're ready for a small bit of amusement.

• I remember learning about the rainbow in preschool.  Ever since, I've had a thing about putting like objects in rainbow order.  Like M&M's and like Annie's stacking cups.
• For many years, the same piece of music was running through my head when all other internal or external sound was stopped.  It was the Bourree from Bach C Major Suite.  Except in G Major.
• When I was a child, I always wished I'd had one or two more siblings.  I'm sure my parents did not.
• You might never be able to tell, but I have an extremely thin skin when it comes to being criticized, having interpersonal conflict, blood and guts, scary stories, tales of woe, and seeing hurt of any sort.  I think I generally hide it well, but that doesn't mean I'm handling it well.
• My parents were into the Meyers-Briggs personality typing for a while, and ever since that time, I have been fascinated by it.  I'm often not good at guessing others' types, but if I learn their letters, I am able to understand them better.  One tiny tidbit is that in Jared's and my immediate families, I  am the only "P" surrounded by many "J"'s.
• You would be shocked if you saw how much food I put away in a day right now.  Nursing a growing child and running is a pretty winning weight-loss program.  I stuff my face to keep up.
• One of my family members had surgery when I was very small.  After that, I decided I wanted to be a surgeon, but I thought that was way too risque to tell my parents, so I told them I wanted to be a veterinarian.  Keep in mind, I was a preschooler at the time.  I am so glad I did not attempt to follow either of those career paths. (See point number four.)

Busy day, busy people

The baby had a good night last night, so I woke up of my own accord well before 7:00, feeling entirely human.  It's just starting to get light, and since the leaves are off the trees and it's a clear morning, there is a stunning view of Mt. Rainier from my dining room window.  Even if a lot of things go wrong today, that's a pretty wonderful start to the day!

It is quite cold out and was so overnight, so last night we brought the plants in.  There are a lot of them and they are bigger since we last had to bring in plants during the winter.  They take up about half the living room.  The cats and the baby were quite delighted, and they all four got busy digging in the dirt and eating leaves.  The funniest part was that Anne's entire face smelled like rosemary.  I've had this experience before, but with our cat Gregory.  He'd go to sniffing in the rosemary plant and then he'd smell like foccacia for days!  (It's been two years this week since Gregory died.)

I was feeling stressed out yesterday morning and I may or may not have been a little rude to Jared when he was trying to help me fix the problem on our walk/jog yesterday. ...I mentioned how I sent off at least sixteen emails in an effort to find more students.  So when people start replying to the emails, I then have to make phone calls and meet with people in person.  And the prospect of going out and trying to meet and request things from all these strangers is just a wee bit overwhelming for this very introverted person.  Anyway, I'll just have my meltdowns in private, and when I meet these people I'm very enthusiastic and direct.

Yesterday afternoon Anne and I went to meet with a man who owns a music store and has built teaching studios, to talk with him about renting space from him.  I asked him all kinds of questions, and I think I have a very clear picture of how everything works.  The jury is still out on whether I will do it.  Researching it and thinking it over a bit more.

Also yesterday, I spoke on the phone with a mother whose son had a trial lesson with me a couple of months ago.  The family wanted him to study, but they didn't like the price.  In our conversation yesterday I learned that the boy and his brother both study guitar, and the guitar teacher charges basically one quarter of my rate.  They are still interested in lessons, but don't think they can afford me.  I was quite interested in working with the boy, because I have the sense that practicing will occur.  I'm trying to decide what sort of work study to offer them.  I don't do scholarship students, because a) it's not fair to charge different students different rates for the same instruction, b) I do need some income around here, and c) I've learned through experience that students who have reduced rates often put in reduced work and/or take advantage of the teacher in various ways.  Work study might include caring for the cats when I'm out of town, babysitting, or preparing meals.  In the next few days I need to think about what price I'd be willing to offer them in conjunction with what work study needs to happen and how to write it up so that I don't get the bad end of the deal.  Been there, done that.

This afternoon Anne and I will be going to coffee with the head of the music department at a community college where one of my students studies, to talk with him about expanding their instrumental offerings.  No clue where the conversation may go; it may just be a "good to put a face with that name" meeting, and that's fine.

Tomorrow morning Anne and I will be going to meet with the orchestra director at the high school just east of us during his planning period, to give him Jared's and my business cards and to put a face with a name.

Anyway, that's what came out of my emailing bonanza in the first twenty-four hours.  We'll see what other opportunities turn up today.

Anne has gotten so busy it's hard to get her to bed at night again.  She is crawling around.  She is pulling up to kneeling and standing.  She is finding new things to get into.  All the time.  So I lay her down on the bed.  She is exhausted.  I more or less lie on top of her, pinning her down, to nurse her.  And she takes a couple of sips.  Squirms out.  And starts crawling around the bed.  And then I have to stop her from torturing the cats if they're handy.  And crawling off the edge of the bed onto her head.  Repeat this process for about half an hour.  Then give up, and decide she's not going to bed yet.  Then go get myself ready for bed.  Then Jared and I lie in bed and do our Bible reading.  While she is using both of us for a jungle gym and trying to get her hands on the Bible.  With the intent of getting her teeth on the Bible.  Keep moving the Bible out of range.  Once everyone in the house is asleep, she is ready to consider it.  Having so much fun with her, but I'm not sure I'm ready for her to be so grown up yet!

Also in the last few days she's started initiating peek-a-boo on her own.  At dinner she'll pull her bib up over her face, or in the stroller she'll pull her blanket over her face, and then say "Eh!" until you notice.  Then she uncovers herself and smirks or giggles.  She is going through a really clingy phase right now.  No one except Mommy or Daddy can hold her, even if we're standing right next to her.

But when one of us is holding her, she is quite happy to meet new people.  The other day at the Bible study, she and I went into the nursing room, and an older lady was in there.  And at some point Anne was sitting on my lap, trying to get this lady's attention.  She kept smacking her hands on the arm of the chair and saying "Eh!"  until the lady noticed her.  And then she was all grins.  Quite the little charmer.

I'm also quite sure she is working on saying "cat".  A week ago she'd look at the cat/s and say "kh!" Now she looks at them and says, "kaa!".  My parents said my first word was "kitty cat".  So there you go...

Empty/full

As of yesterday morning, my Tuesday schedule was looking unofficially empty.  As in laundry, running, Bible reading, practicing, taking care of the baby, and finishing my knitting project.  After a phone call in the evening, my Tuesday schedule became full.  I did some laundry.  Anne and I went out to a Bible study this morning to see if we want to join it.  We do.  Then we took the recycling to a drop off point.  Then we came home and went running with Jared.  Then my co-teacher came over and we watched the videos from our Sunday studio recitals and discussed students' progress.  We also brainstormed about how I'm going to get more students.  Then I put Anne down for a nap and undertook the follow up of the brainstorms which involved a lot of web searching and then the sending of at least sixteen emails.  Haven't done the practicing or Bible reading yet.  Those are next on the list.  And maybe I'll finish my knitting project tomorrow (it's Jared's metronome case) so I can start on the next one, which is Anne's Christmas dress.

End of a weekend

The quick rundown of the weekend.

Friday night - family walk in the rain followed by dinner
Saturday morning - church
Saturday afternoon - read and worked on a puzzle during Anne's nap
Saturday evening - my brother called on his way home from work, and he came up the hill and joined us for a walk not in the rain.  And then his wife called after her tea party outing and joined us.  And we all had an impromptu family dinner at our place.  And Anne sat up from crawling on her own.  A first!
Sunday morning - Skype lesson.  Recital preparation craziness.
Sunday afternoon - Two studio recitals.  Successful, both.
Sunday evening - not doing much  :-)

I'm sure that was fascinating...

Bookaholic

Hello.  My name is Ruth Marie.  And I'm a bookaholic.

Monday I pulled the second book off my must-read-before-I-die shelf, and I read and read, ignoring all but the most essential duties of my week until I finished it yesterday evening.  I've had this problem ever since my dad got me started on Nancy Drew during a road trip in NJ/NY/PA when I was maybe seven.  I have a problem with narrative stories which are remotely gripping.  Sometime in college I mostly gave up on stories, choosing to read only non-fiction/non-narratives.  That's because I can pick them up and put them down at will, and I wouldn't ruin my entire formal music education, being sidetracked by my informal literary education.

Anyway, the book I just finished is called Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu, founder and CEO of Geomagic, Inc.  As you might guess from the author's credentials on the front cover, the story has a happy ending.  People, there is a lot of pointless suffering and collateral damage in this world.  There is a shocking amount of carnage and pain and hopelessness.  It's on my mind all the time.  So when I'm going to read a story, I need a happy ending.  It doesn't need to be a Disney "...and they lived happily ever after" or a Hollywood they just knew they were meant for each other and walked off into the sunset, nevermind all the unanswered questions.  Yeah, maybe I'm a little too cynical to enjoy those sorts of endings.  I like a little reality in my stories.   But tragedies aren't for me.  And endings where everything is left hanging are not for me.

When Bend, Not Break opens, the author is twenty-five years old and is being deported by the Chinese government, leaving behind everyone and everything she's ever known with no hope of ever seeing her family again.  She's headed to the US with no English and no money.  And upon arrival she is kidnapped and imprisoned by a refugee living in subsidized housing.  So obviously there is a long way to go to get to the happy ending.

But here's a cool thing about how the book is set up.  After she tells about the start of her life in the US, she goes back and tells about the start of her life in China.  Then she tells the next little piece of her life in the US and then the next little piece of her life in China, filling the story in checkerboard fashion.  So when there are horrible bits, you can also, in the same chapter, look forward or backward and see some hopeful bits.

This was the first time I've read a first-hand account of someone who lived through the Cultural Revolution.  I once, for a few months, studied with a piano teacher and her daughter, who was our translator, who had lived through the Cultural Revolution, but I was only a child and had no idea what that meant.  Well, I guess even now I've lived a good amount of adult life without really knowing what it meant.  But now I know what it meant for one individual.  And it was pretty horrifying.

I enjoyed reading about how the author founded, and has continued to run, her high-tech start-up Geomagic, Inc.  I couldn't really understand all of it - so much business jargon goes in one ear and out the other.  I hear that sort of jargon from my dad, since he is a serial high-tech start-up guy.  But I have a hard time translating it all into English for myself.  But what impressed me about this part of her story is her complete humility, reporting where she made mistakes and hurt people and the company, and reporting what worked well, without any self-agrandizement.

Since we had Ran for our roommate in Alabama, I've had more of an interest in China.  It was so interesting to hear his perspective on his country and his culture and his government and try to mesh that with what we know in the West.  I'm sure that not all that we know about China is accurate, but I am amazed at how much censorship and revisionism is fed to the Chinese people by the authorities.  After reading this book, I know that not all Chinese citizens believe what they're told.  And also, I really want to go to Beijing to visit Ran's family and see what it's like.  I know I can't imagine it properly.

Throughout the book, Ms. Fu shared important lessons that get her through challenges, and three of them stick out to me.  One lesson is called The Three Friends of Winter, and it's where the title of the book comes from.  I'll let Ms. Fu tell you:

There are three friends of winter: the pine tree, the plum blossom, and bamboo.  Pine trees are strong.  They remain happy and green throughout the year.  In the unbearable heat of summer and the severe cold of winter, they stand unperturbed....  The crimson petals of the plum blossom gleam brilliantly against the white snow.  The ability to bloom in the midst of misfortune suggests dignity and forbearance under harsh circumstances....  Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance.  It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times.... Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances.  When you are like the three friends of winter, you take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.

A second one is Who can say what is good or bad?

Among the people who lived close to the border, there was an old wise man who led a kind and peaceful life.  Without reason, his horse escaped one day and fled into barbarian territory.  Everyone is the village pitied him.  But the old man said: "What makes you think this is not a good thing?" 

Several months later, the old man's horse returned, and a superb barbarian stallion accompanied him.  His neighbors congratulated the old man.  But he said: "What makes you think this cannot be a bad thing?" 

The old man's grandson enjoyed riding the new horse.  But one day, he fell while riding and broke his hip.  Everyone pitied the old man once again.  But he said: "What makes you think that this is not a good thing?" 

One year later, a large party of barbarians invaded the border region.  All the men from the village drew their bows and went to battle, where nine out of the ten of them died.  But because he was lame, the old man's grandson did not have to go to war.  His life was spared.

I had a tiny, tiny experience with this yesterday.  Jared and I went out running with the stroller, and I ended walking a bit of the way, so when we got close to home, I decided I wanted to run a bit more.  Jared went home, and I went back out with the stroller.  On my way home again, my hands started to get cold, which was the bad thing.  So I reached into the stroller for my gloves and found that one was missing.  Which meant that I knew to go back and look for it.  Otherwise, I might not have discovered the missing glove until another day and by then I wouldn't have been able to find it when I retraced my steps.  So the cold hands let to the return of my missing glove, which was a good thing.  Rather a tiny point, but the experience stuck out to me since I had just read the story.

The third lesson which the author learned again and again was that very small kindness went a long way, and the benefactors of those small kindnesses may never have known the large impact they would have.  Just a little reminder to me to keep my eyes open for how to deliver even little blessings.

I am amazed at Ms. Fu's overall optimism and at her continued growth throughout her life.  She never feels that she knows it all and is always striving to learn new things.  Very inspiring.

Once-in-a-lifetime experience

I'm hoping that I just had a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I'm not counting on it...

Got a call from our co-teacher who was in a lesson with one of her students I saw last week.  They decided to change the student's piece for this Sunday's recital from A Major Scale to E String Concerto, and they wanted to hear the accompaniment part.  So I walked in to the piano, put myself on speaker phone, and played the piano part... while standing in my bare feet in cat barf.  Yeah, I didn't see that 'til it was too late.  And playing the piano woke the baby up from her nap.  Oops.

Family history

I just got back from having all my fillings redone.  And seriously, this dentist is amazing.  While I was lying there having my mouth worked on, I was thinking, what am I going to do if we move again or if I outlive this dentist???  I've never liked going to the dentist, but this one is great.  Period.

Anyway, let's not discuss my teeth.  Instead, let's discuss the fact that Anne is in the middle of a big transition today from army crawl to knee crawl.  Meaning she is going to be a lot faster.  And she is also working toward pulling up to standing on her own.  She's got the pulling up to kneeling thing nailed.

We went to Oregon over the weekend, and Jared's Grampa had his 90th birthday party.  Jared and Anne and I were three of the eighteen people who were there are lunch.  Grampa said we need to come back in ten years, because he'll have another birthday then.  I told him that Anne would bake the cake next time.  Anne was a little unsure of seeing all those people at once.  But she bonded with cousin Erik at lunch.  She kept throwing her sippy cup on the floor on his side, and he kept picking it up for her.   Also Aunt Claudia brought her some new percussion instruments, which she has been enjoying quite a lot.  When it was nap time, and she was exhausted, but she was too wound up to sleep, we went outside where Uncle Matthew's and Aunt Marie's dog was hanging out.  Anne loves animals and was quite delighted to see Lotus.  We went on a walk which hit the spot for the dog and put Annie out for her nap, so it was a win-win.

I wish I'd been in on more of it, but after all the eating was done, there were old family photos and things pulled out, and stories of forbears told.  I am interested to learn more about Jared's family, to see where various bits of things come from.  So fascinating to be part of a family which isn't mine by blood.  One sort of assumes things about all families from one's own flesh-and-blood family, and then come to find out that other families do and see things quite differently!  That's one thing about marriage I wasn't really expecting before we got married seven years ago.  Anyway...  There was a picture of Jared's paternal grandmother as a toddler, which Aunt Julie thought resembled Anne.  I thought so, too.  Jared never met her - she passed away shortly before his parents were married.  The day after the birthday party, when Jared's mom and I were working in the kitchen, I asked her if her parents' personalities were the same now as when she was growing up, and she told me a lot about her childhood.  I enjoyed hearing about it, and learning new things.

...It would have been a lot better if I had knocked out my violin practicing for the day before I had my entire face numbed.  I may wait a few hours before I fulfill that particular duty...

Schedule schmedule

Tuesday felt really weird, because other than one Tuesday in June, I have taught every Tuesday since Anne was three weeks old, and this Tuesday was nothing.  Although I did get a lot of other things done, including the programs for our studio recitals for next weekend.  Yesterday, however, I taught twelve lessons.  Don't think I was super busy all day, though, because they averaged out to about twenty minutes each.  (Of course there was a lot of pre-cleaning and between-baby care...)Two were mine, and the others were all students of my co-teacher, most of whom are in group class. This morning I'll be seeing an adult student I've not yet met of my co-teacher, and then a family of five kids who will all have lessons in the space of an hour.  It's sort of like institute teaching, I guess!  Then this afternoon, I teach my Skype lesson, get in the car and go straight over to Group Class House, teach two more students I don't know, teach group class, and then afterward teach two of my own students.  I started pumping milk yesterday for today's extravaganza since I should be booked solid from 3:30-8:15, but Anne drank all of it yesterday during my teaching.  So I'm still working on that project so she won't be a disaster this evening.  Debating about going out for a run.  It was raining cats and dogs a few minutes ago, and the radar doesn't look promising for the near future.  Hmmm...

In other news, she is seven months today.

And for Edith's benefit, here is a picture from a couple of weeks ago in which Anne is wearing Edith's booties:

Busy baby. Three-car garage.

Baby girl has been very busy in the last week.  She has figured out how to crawl backwards.  She has further attempted to get her knees more involved in her crawl.  She has discovered that she loves mashed green peas.  And that she loves shaking her spoon with Mommy.  (That's Mommy's game to try to get the spoon back from Anne so that she can reload it.  This child is all about "I'll do it myself" when it comes to feeding.  And most other things.)  I'm pretty sure she's been trying to sign "kitty cat" recently.  That is probably the sign we use the most with her other than "milk," which she started using herself when she was five months.  She has also figured out how to get from sitting to crawling without falling on her face.  And she has figured out how to pull her front half up via a box or the dishwasher or a pillow so that she is close to kneeling.  At the very moment she is hanging onto Daddy's endpin while he practices.  I'm sure she is getting some nice vibrations.  The other first we are dealing with right now is her first cold.  She's had two bad nights of waking up crying in the night, like, say, every hour.  Basically I'll just say that she does not cry at night; only a couple of times when she's had a bad dream, so this is pretty unusual.  Hopefully she'll feel better really soon.

Been doing a little daydreaming, which is not something I've done a lot of recently.  But I've figured out the perfect housing situation.  What we need is a small place - two bedrooms is just fine.  Not a lot of space to have to clean.  But the key element here is either a large basement, a three-car garage, or a good sized outbuilding.  Any of which could be outfitted as two good size and comfy teaching studios - one for violin and one for cello.  Then we could have all the convenience of teaching at home without all the inconvenience of teaching in our living space.  Because I spend hours of my week cleaning before lessons which wouldn't have to happen if our spaces were separate.  And it would be easier for the non-teaching adult to do things like cook dinner during a lesson.  Without all the incovenience of commuting to work.  Anyway, yeah, I'm not in the market for a house right now, but I know exactly what sort of place I need.

I actually finished reading a grown-up book.

Bedroom reimagination basically complete, minus the top of the bookshelf right by the door (still a disaster) and the large off-white space taken up by the box spring.  I'm really pleased with it, and now the bedroom is my favorite room in the apartment, since it is the cleanest and best arranged at the moment.  If I could only manage to have all three of our official rooms in the same status simultaneously!

And I finally finished my first book off the shelf of "I'm going to read these before I die".  The Magic Years by Selma Fraiberg.  It's one Ed Sprunger has referenced on multiple occasions, so I knew I wanted to read it.  Written in 1959, it's about the first six years of child development from a Freudian perspective.  While I know that Freud has some good things to say, I dislike some of his views, seeing them as strongly influenced by his time and culture.  Being somewhat familiar with the circumstances of his culture through music history and such, I think that there is a lot of dark imagery, grandiosity, and symbolism that aren't to my personal taste.  Partway through the book I wanted to give up, but I'm so glad I stuck it out.  There was some really excellent practical material on a variety of topics in the later part, and I'm going to let Dr. Fraiberg speak for the rest of the post.  An excerpt from Chapter 8: Education of Conscience:

Another aspect of parental uncertainty in moral education is seen in the attitude of parents toward the crime and horror fare that is provided by television, movies and comic books.  Most parents deplore this stuff; some defend it as a harmless means of discharge of aggression.  Very few parents who deplore, however, are willing to take a stand - really a moral stand - on their children's reading and viewing tastes.  Now a child who is exposed to the education of these stories of murder, violence and sadism will acquire a set of values that are certainly at variance - to say the least - with those values that his parents desire for him.  After witnessing a dozen or more screen murders in an afternoon and evening in his own living room, day after day for so and so many years, he cannot hold sacred the idea of a human life, nor can he regard the ending of a life as a tragedy.  At best he will acquire a spurious moral lesson intoned by the sponsor while a janitor sweeps the corpses off the stage: "Crime does not pay!"  Now the moral principle behind the civilized view of taking a life is not that it "does not pay," i.e., "you'll get caught in the end."  This is like the morality of the two year old, the child who has not yet acquired a conscience, who judges the "rightness" and "wrongness" of an act according to whether he gets caught or now.  It is also the morality of the delinquent.  But the civilized man abhors the idea of murder because he exalts the value of human life and because the destruction of another man's life would be morally impossible for him even if there were no possibility of discovery of the crime.

The child who is glutted on television and comic book fare will have a hard time discovering for himself that his society regards a human life as sacred.  Who can hold a tragic view of death when the static of pistol shots assaults the ear from 4:00 p.m. to bed-time and the cheery voice of the sponsor rises over bloody screams and death rattles to bring the message of the hearty breakfast?  The parental voice, if it is heard at all above this din, will have a tough time competing with the education of the screen.

But most often the parental voice is not heard at all.  For although most parents detest these stories and their degradation of human beings and human values, they also tolerate them.  While they hold their own values and live by them they do not raise objections to Johnny's other education and Johnny is afforded the privilege of most nice children in nice homes of being entertained and educated by gangsters, dope addicts, sadists and morons in his own living room.  By this I do not mean that such programs are an education for delinquency.  Delinquents are not made this way.  But I do mean that human values are debased in these stories, and in the endless repetition of these stories and their themes, they undergo some debasement in the child's mind, too.[...]

[...] I think we need to take the child's television, movie and comic book entertainment very seriously as educational influences.  We need to consider what it means to a child who receives a moral education from his parents and is entertained in his own living room, with the consent of his parents, by a constant flow of visitors from the underworld and outer space whose views on society and human values would have been barely tolerated in a Neanderthal cave.  We do not ordinarily invite such visitors into our living rooms and we do not regard murder and brutality as home entertainments.  If we are earnest and moral parents, we have spent many years in building an attitude in our children toward raw aggression, violence and sadism.  We have considered it necessary that our small children give up the primitive pleasure in destructive acts and acquire a civilized attitude of revulsion toward sadism.  But when murder and violence are offered as an entertainment diet, how is the child helped to give up pleasure in the destructive act?