The last Sunday in June, Jared took leave of us and flew out for a week of teaching in Chattanooga.
Sunday night Anne and I had Ramadan dinner with our Afghan neighbors (starting at sundown - 9:11.) And despite that, I still got Anne to sleep by 10:15. I *needed* her to go down early, because I had to leave at 6:30 am for a midwife appointment. So far, so good. Except then *I* couldn't go to sleep, and I ended up reading in the bathroom until maybe 2:00 am. Hooray.
Monday morning, Jeffrey showed up at 6:20 while Anne was still asleep, and I took off for Issaquah. The rest of Monday involved hours of teaching while Anne entertained herself, mostly with play dough. Which ended up seed-sized and scattered over the entire living room, stomped into the carpet by the time I was done. Big, big mess! But she let us have our lessons in peace. And then Mama was ridiculously tired.
Tuesday night our fridge went out while my brother and his wife were here for dinner, after I was done teaching. I was trying to finish up all our fresh stuff since Anne and I were headed out of town on Wednesday. However, the freezer was totally full with amazing things from the Oregon farm. Some of which were frozen in extra ice to the freezer walls. Jeff waited patiently while I attacked the ice block with a hammer and screw driver. As I freed items I chucked them into our camping cooler. When I dropped ice on the floor Anne picked it up and put it in the sink for me. Then Jeff took all of our salvageable perishables home and stuffed them in his slightly larger fridge and freezer. Anne and I were up ridiculously late cleaning up the mess left by this. And packing for our nearly week-long Oregon trip. Part-way through the evening I suddenly felt the sore throat kick in. (A few days later Anne came down with the same cold, except she spent a whole night moaning with fever. And then when Jared came home he got it, too. We were all generous that way.)
Wednesday morning after fridge meltdown "Big" Anne joined us, and we loaded up my car and drove to Fox Island for my short teaching day there. Then we hauled ourselves down to Oregon to Jared's parents' home.
Thursday and Friday Little Anne played all day in the wading pool with Grandma, while Big Anne and I got to observe at the Oregon Suzuki Institute. My favorites to watch, as usual were Ed Sprunger and Tracy Helming.
I have always appreciated Ed's teaching on so many levels, partly because his personally laid back style combined with inner intensity is a good match for my own style. I am fascinated by several things about his teaching that I would love to channel for my own work...
There is so much nutritional density to his teaching. For example, he was working with one student on tone in a very concrete way, but at the same time he was structuring the lesson so as to also teach the student about ergonomics, phrase structure, self-awareness, independent thought, intonation, and how to learn notes to a new piece, without even talking much. And the student was drinking it in. I also love seeing how he is aiming for the absolute highest levels of achievement with the student, one bite at a time. I also appreciate his combination of truth-telling and kindness, tempered by sharing only as much information as the student can use so as to avoid overload. It's so easy for me to see a student try and make a small adjustment, and then to say, "Good job," and move on. But I watched Ed say to a whole group class with utmost kindness, "I'm sorry to say none of you are getting this. But the good news is that you know all the steps to get there. So practice those." He also has a way of letting students know that their brain-engaged effort is what will meet the violin's demands - it's not to please the teacher, and he's not being arbitrarily picky. At the end of a student's lesson he pointed out all the things the student had learned and then told him that now he was really "qualified to start doing this type of work on sound." He lives out the idea that hard work and learning new things are a privilege and opportunity. He also finds a way to make the student do the hard work, while he sits by to encourage and respond. He doesn't look like he's doing any work at all, but I know his brain is racing. He has so much wonderful material to draw from, and I am amazed by the depth and breadth of information he can pull into his teaching seemingly effortlessly. I know it's backed by constant practice, research, and thought.
...All through the week, Jared and I were back and forth on the phone with each other and with third parties trying to take care of business stuff with both our Washington apartment and our Alabama condo, which was complicated by our three-state, out-of-town scenario. I was a little nervous about the cats, even though Jeff was caring for them, because we had a lot of maintenance entrances scheduled for our apartment, and I was worried about an escape. As it turned out, there wasn't any interior maintenance done, because their copy of the key wasn't working.
Friday night we got Jared back in Oregon and spent the holiday weekend with his parents. And both of us accomplished first drafts of our fall lesson schedules. I'd been prepping that project for months, and after a few more revisions this week I hope I've got something that all the students can do and that will work for me, too. It's hard to know what life might be like after this new family member arrives.
Finally yesterday, more than a week after melt-down, we got a new fridge delivered. Yay! And we got the pipe in the hole in the ceiling over the dryer replaced, so we should no longer have a leak. And we are scheduled to have our bathroom fan replaced today or Monday.
Just in case you needed to know, having the fridge replaced involved a lot more moving and cleaning on our part before and after. We have a shoe rack in the front hall, as well as a shoe bin, and a rack of bags of various sorts, all of which had to be moved. And also a recycle bin/cooler stack and a cat feeding assembly in the kitchen, all of which had to be moved. And when one moves these things, one finds that one needs to sweep, vacuum, and use the trash can... And then after the old fridge is removed, one needs to wash one's kitchen and entry-way rugs. And there was teaching going on during all of this, so we had to carefully pile things in such a way as to not impede on said activity. This involved moving the bikes/trikes/stroller/laundry drying on the rack, laundry basket... It's sort of a 3D jigsaw puzzle when you're in 800 square feet of space and have a whole lifetime's worth of things, and your three-year-old is busy playing and pulling things out while you're trying to tidy.
There's more maintenance coming up when we are out of town next, and I'm again worried a bit about the cats, especially since this next round will involve bathtub refinishing (fumes for hours) and sliding door replacement (major escape possibilities). I'm trying to get all the cat sitting worked out for that.
