Too Much Introspection for the Average Reader and First World Problems to Boot

I saw a meme recently which described my life rather perfectly:

Sees a painting - I want to make that

Hears a song - I want to make that

Plays a video game - I want to make that

Eats a tasty treat - I want to make that

Holds a figure - I want to make that

Uses chapstick - I want to make that

Watches a craft tutorial - I want to make that

The fact is that I have always been really creative and interested in things deeply, which has been both a blessing and a curse.  Blessing because I have had the chance to learn about and create so many wonderful things.  Curse because it means I have trouble planning ahead in many ways.  I have always been so sucked into the wonder and depth of the moment that the future either does not exist, or is a momentary vision which is a flash-forward of the very current moment of temporary inspiration, not a more reasonable projection of the long-term reality.

Since a very young age, I knew that music would win the battle of the obsessions.  My historical reenactment self and and linguist self and dancer self and scholar self and author self and whichever other selves I dreamed up for whiles have always known deep down they were in second place, no matter how real and central they became.

My musical self knew since elementary school that it would be a violinist, really, I think, before I ever had a violin of my own or took a lesson.  There was a sense of destiny about it, and one that I did not question, because it fit so well.  

Which sort of violinist self would be the self which came out on top was never clear.  I was always so wrapped up in the violining of the moment that I could not project one of the violin selves definitively into an adult future.  Each special violin event - holiday group concert, summer institute, masterclass, side-by-side youth orchestra concert, chamber fest - the wonderful, tingly intense excitement pushed me straight towards music school.  Music school was the quantifiable goal, because it would be all violin all the time all day at high intensity.  I knew that's what I wanted.

I did not have a vision for what came next, only that I was, without question, a violinist.  Conservatory was the only tangible goal.  For many of my peers, conservatory was a stepping stone to an orchestra job or a place to try to find collaborators for a chamber career or a launching pad to work toward a pedagogy career.  For some others it was a natural outgrowth of their high school studies, then disabused them of the notion of making music into a career.

When I was very young, I knew that teaching was a deep interest.  I really liked the organization and order and progression and analytics of the thing, which complemented my leaps-of-intuition way of being.  

I also loved the music itself - the moods it created, the complexity, the counterpoint, the history, the harmony.  

I did some composing, which I really cared about, partly for the sake of posterity, and partly as a way to play with understanding what I was delving into; it may really have been a way to process the exetential crisis of the temporary nature of history, life, the universe, and everything - a sort of religious act.  I lost the thread at some point, because the field of composition in Western art music is so wide open right now that there is no agreed-upon armature to build upon.   I might have been an interesting and creative composer in the Baroque era if I had been given the opportunity, but in the 20th century I was lost floating on the jetsam. 

I loved playing the instrument.  The sensations of the physical technique was satisfyingly complex and malleable, and the first-hand engagement with the music itself and the feelings it was created to produce were intoxicating.  

I was asked, when I once auditioned for an arts high school where I was headed with the violin, and I told the questioner that I did not know; I loved all of it.  This was true, if not perfectly honest. My skills did not match each of my ever-shifting dreams.  My dreams were not conceived exactly as goals to be worked toward; they were visions of what might be if "stars aligned", and were subject, metaphorically speaking, to the astronomy of the month. I always felt that I did not want to work towards a specific point, but wanted to wait and see what would happen.  I was alive just for today, in this very moment, and that was overwhelming enough. To head for a goal was primarily to close other doors, and that was a pain I could not willingly subject myself to.

In conservatory, I still had no specific ambition outside of Do all the Violin Things with great love and passion, and Push myself to Excell in all of them.  My undergrad thus flowed naturally into graduate school.  

My graduate school teacher asked me where I was headed.  And I still didn't want to commit, because I couldn't fathom stomping out the possible alternate realities.  He suggested a specific trajectory - auditioning for concertmaster spots in small orchestras.  I pretty much rejected the idea out of hand without considering it.  I did not know how to go about preparing for and pursuing that course of action, and it did not occur to me to ask.  I could not imagine what that life would be like short- or long-term, so it just did not exist in my mind.  

I knew I would love to teach dedicated students at the conservatory level, but I never considered what sort of paths one would take to get there.  One possible path to that end would have been a doctoral program. I did think about such a thing for close to a week once after most of the application deadlines had past.  But I was so tired.   Tired of school.  I let those thoughts flit away without considering if that path was for me - (it probably wasn't) - why I might be tired, or what to do about it.  Life was what happened to me, not what I chose to make it.  And though I come from a place of privilege in the global experience, that thought is very much the way of being for most who have very little power over their circumstances. 

I knew that a life of playing chamber music was a dream which seemed worth pursuing,  and in fact, a quartet which some friends and I put together was offered a starter job at a small Midwestern college.  In the end, it came to nothing when one of the other members got cold feet about the specific duties and the rather small compensation package.  Life was just what happened.  I was mildly disappointed, but more importantly I was not committed to that version of reality either. 

Graduation came round and I still had no plan.  I wonder now what my teacher thought. He believed I had a lot of potential, and he was poised to help me knock on any doors I wanted; I just sort of wandered off into a proverbial field. Through sheer apathy, or more likely lack of decision-making skills, I decided to stay in Cleveland and pay my rent, as it involved the least decision making and change.  My teacher helped me reach out to some people so I could teach kids locally - and it was anyone who came through the door.  I think that resonated with my sense of equity.

...Recently, one of my undergraduate teachers wrote something celebrating one of my former classmates who was a couple years younger than I.  Apparently at their first lesson together our teacher asked this young person what he wanted to do with the violin, and he said he wanted to be a soloist.  Our teacher thought he had the potential to fulfill this in a small time career, and together they worked together towards it.  Said former student is now off happily doing what he wanted.  For some reason, this story shocked me.  It seemed presumptuous to have such a specific plan and to name it and work toward it.  But was it really?  I think I just could not image putting myself out there - the fawn response has been strong in my life - and I could also not imagine making choices that would exclude other choices. It may have been fear of failure, but probably it was more what gets termed executive dysfunction - a grey clinical description of an active, creative, dreamy mind lodged firmly in the here and now.  If I were to have pursued such a path as my colleague,  I could only imagine it happening because my teacher thought me suited to it and ushered me in.  Yet that is rarely the way of the world....

After school, I was unmoored musically,  but I made up for it with the sudden intensity of wanting to get married.  I don't quite know how that came to be the beacon on my journey, and I never considered any alternatives except for the possible horror of remaining unmarried against my will.  I could not imagine staying single on purpose.  I could not imagine merely having a long-term dating relationship.   I could not imagine pursuing a career first and then considering marriage later.   It was an intensity that was like a spell had been cast, and fortunately for my sanity, it somehow came to pass.

And the music was still there.  I was at the height of my teaching career from a resume standpoint (maybe not so much from an experience standpoint either musically or psychologically), and I was getting to play chamber music concerts several times a year.  In certain ways, maybe I was living the dream of my late 30s.  But I was in mental crisis.  I had not lived up to my potential and my training.  I had arrived at my current station by the tides of time, not because I had chosen a destination.  It was not so much the expectations of others that weighed me down; it was my own failure to launch.  Yet I still had no specific idea of where I thought I should have been launching to.  I just knew that wherever I was I was not "there".  The prospect of turning 30 weighed so very heavily on me in the years leading up to that milestone.  I had not found myself living any iteration of the violin dreams which had haphazardly projected themselves into my consciousness, and we were also not in a place to have kids, another milestone which had inexplicably appeared in my mind with relentless intensity.  I obsessed over caring for my students, and I almost couldn't bring myself to attend professional concerts.  I would weep silently during the music with missing out on everything I had wanted and trained so hard for.  And still I had no notions of taking action to remedy the pain or where exactly I wanted to be.  Life was what happened, and my job was to deal with it.

Eventually Jared got one job, then another, which were theoretically what he had aimed so single-mindedly for all those years, but they turned out, partly (maybe largely) due to poor economic timing, to be essentially career ending.  I did some musical things alongside what we had presumed to be Jared's big steps in the right direction, but I had largely lost my passion, and I spent a lot of those years resting, reading, knitting, walking, running, enjoying our cats, and wondering whether we might ever even have kids.

Then things got really crazy as we became unemployed,  moved across the country on a sort of whim, and became parents in the space of a few months. Life is what happens to you, and it happened all at once.  We both started trying to rebuild a life from essentially scratch, and it felt so hard in Seattle.  Our little bit of family and the amazing great outdoors and our new children were the things holding us from the brink. I won't go into all the things holding us back from music; there is more than I really want to write about.  We found ourselves living in a more-or-less Classical music desert compared to our previous communities in three states, and we had very little way to get connected in.  We were miles and miles from the centers of Classical music-making, and the efforts to keep up with the bills and an opinionated newborn and nearly no child care was pretty much a catch 22.  For the first time in my life I went days without practicing on a regular basis, because musically speaking there was nothing to live for. I felt a lot of guilt about this, and I felt a lot of contrariness towards the "shoulds".  I pretty much just gave up and accepted that this is what had happened, and this was my new life.  Jared, being a creature of routine and dedication, kept up his practice schedule, but I imagine he, too, fell into a pit of meaninglessness with it.  Playing with others and performing is the fun part, and how could we enjoy the craft without outlets?  

Life just stayed chaotic in a way that is hard to convey, and violin took a back seat.  Sure, I was teaching as many as 30 students a week at times, but that with almost no childcare and the adage that there are no life hacks for three kids in five years.  Once or twice a year I would have the opportunity to mount a concert that I arranged myself pro bono.  I would practice for those as the inspiration struck, but the rest of the time my skills would fall into disrepair and I could go weeks without practice.  Three kids in five years in tiny spaces where we were also trying to earn a living without childcare was really a nearly impossible order.

And then after many years of intense work just for survival, things calmed.  The kids grew up just a little bit, and at Jared's nudging I gave myself permission to dream again.  Now I am at a point in life where so many doors have already been slammed shut, and I have missed out on certain types of experience and opportunities, that I am less worried about that aspect of decision-making and am ready to march forward again with the experiences and opportunities I do have to work with.  Maybe this is what they call a midlife crisis?  Or maybe it's just a natural outgrowth of where the tides have carried me.  

When I was in the middle of my first professional rehearsal this fall, I found tears springing to my eyes as the words scrolled across my mind: I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this.

At the End of a Rope

One Saturday afternoon in September, four of us went out to Issaquah, some ten miles distant, to see the State Fish Hatchery there.  One of my students had been earlier in the week and let us know that a major salmon migration was underway, and in addition that there were many interesting exhibits to see.  

We had been meaning to jump our Honda, as it seemed to not be starting, so we took this opportunity to power it up from the Volvo, hop in, and roll on our way.  We took the Volvo along on the outting at Jared's suggestion, so that if we needed to jump again, we would find it easy enough.  When we finished at the Hatchery and a neighborhood park across the street - a lovely and informative adventure with lots of active and swarming fish, we started to pull out of the parking lot.  But the Honda clearly needed another jump.  After we pulled up nose to nose and ran the cables between engines, Jared drove the Honda around the parking lot some more to determine that it was functional.  Then we headed off in our two vehicles in tandem.  While waiting at the light for a left turn onto the main road to take us back to Renton, the Honda went out completely;  first the power steering, then the entire dashboard and motor flicked out.  With cars honking at him to move through the green arrow,  Jared hopped out to motion for the other drivers to go around.  Fortunately,  a generous fellow whose companion was driving also hopped out, instructed Jared to hop back in, and pushed the Honda through the intersection to a wide and seldom used bike lane on the main road where it was safer to park.   We followed and stowed the Volvo in the same lane.

Of all places to be stuck for a while, this one was good.  Not in a traffic lane, triple-wide side walk next to viney, jungle-y place, etc.  Jared and I researched a local towing outfit and the closest repair shop that serviced Japanese automotives.  Jared called the tow company, and they said it would be 30-60 minutes.  We waited.  And waited.  Kids had some coloring books with them, and I managed to scrounge up a shred of snackage.  We ran and danced and galloped along the sidewalk.  It got dark.  It was past dinner.  Tow company was called once more and still did not show up.

A second generous man pulled into the bike lane and asked if we were OK.  After explaining about waiting for the rather delayed tow truck, he offered the kids some brand new snacks out of his minivan, which they gratefully accepted.

We waited some more.  A third good Samaritan pulled up in his old VW van and asked about the problem.  He, it turns out, does all his own car repairs, and knows many things about cars.  He pulled his vehicle up next to the Honda, ran some cables out the passenger window, and tried several different things to jump our vehicle.  It would not start.  Based on what he saw, he thought that it was one of three things: two he said were really big, expensive problems, and the third was a single loose wire in the something-or-other system.  He, of course, was much more specific in his wording, but at this distance of time, I fail to recall the details.   

He then suggested that he could go up the hill home to get his truck and tow rope and then tow us to a nearby shop.  We agreed to this very generous offer as the tow truck was still no closer to arriving, and we had been by the side of the road for nearly two hours, it was way past dinner time,  the two little kids were restless, and E was still stuck at home alone. Jared was back on the phone again to cancel our tow request, and then moving up the phone tree to supervisors trying to get a refund on the prepay.  Very scammy, it seems, and not local despite theeir advertising to the contrary. The car geek returned shortly and tied our Honda to his truck, gave Jared instructions on steering and breaking in a dead car on a tow rope, and off went our entourage into the quiet suburban evening with hazards flashing.  Having dropped off the car in the lot of a place which claimed to service Hondas, our helper vanished into the night, having answered our heart-felt thanks with a quip about needing to do his boy scout duty at least once a year. 

Monday I started rehearsals for the first concert of my new freelance career, and we heard back from the car shop that it was a simple loose wire, the beat case scenario suggested by our towing Samaritan. 

During that first week of rehearsals, I got calls for five more gigs, only one of which I did not have conflicts with.  It was a heady and exciting moment, but I knew it would not last, and soon I will have many weeks in a row go by without a concert. 

A couple of days later, we got up the nerve to try towing our dead Chevy to the neighborhood repair shop less than a half mile from us as the crow flies.  Using what Jared learned from the towing Samaritan and some how-to YouTube videos, we tied the Chevy to the back of the Volvo.  We did not have on official tow rope, but we had some similar and sturdy straps with hooks. Lazarus and I buckled into the front car, and Jared again sat behind the wheel of the dead vehicle.  I drove carefully and slowly with the hazards on, taking the long way around the block to avoid the steep hill.  The endeavor was successful until we arrived at the four-way stop across the intersection from the car shop.  The strap gave way, so I pulled the Volvo into a spot by the curb and commenced trying to push the Chevy across the street to the shop.  It was a no go, so I took to directing traffic while Jared walked over to recruit the car shop owner and another employee to push our useless metal object on wheels into their parking repair queue. 

Anyway, we currently have all three vehicles operating, two of which were essential the following week as on Laurel's birthday,  I needed to take a car to the church to take her cake instead of walking with my fiddle as I usually do.  And Jared needed a car to drop Lazarus off at the church on his way to the dress rehearsal for the concert he was playing that afternoon.  And then I needed a car again to leave for the concert I was playing before Jared got home from the concert he was playing.

And in between it all, the kitchen sink slowed to a trickle.  Jared turned off the water one day and did a repair, and it seemed to solve for a day.  But then it got worse. When the kitchen sink does not work, it also means the dishwasher does not work. And then there was a leak in the under-cabinet. So he turned off the water again and did a much more extensive repair.  Fixed.  And then trickle again.  Finally found a tiny issue that needed to be adjusted in the piece which connects the spigot and the dishwasher tube.  Everything is working again.  There was a huge backlog of dishes for a bit...

Cooking Lessons

Recently, camping twenty minutes from home with some old friends and some new, E requested me to tell two family stories at the propane campfire (statewide fire ban in state parks being normal in the late season.) I will retell them now, as they are from twenty or more years ago. But I will preface them with some explanatory wanderings....

When my dad cooks, he takes the engineering approach, which makes sense as he trained as an engineer. This means he follows ingredient lists, quantities, orders of procedures, numbers of mixing bowls, temperatures, and timings to the letter. And he usually finds great success.

My mother cooks, usually to survive, and also with an eye toward aesthetics, not just visual, but also in texture, flavor, presentation and historicity, depending on the purpose of the cooking at that moment. This means she takes recipes at face value, but will also alter them for practical reasons or for reasons of artistry. Due to the survival instinct and morals againat waste, less than perfect creations will be devoured by her, but not necessarily shared with others.

When I was growing up, food preparation was, most of the time, really a matter of survival, due to the overwhelm of so many people with so many needs and wants going in so many different directions. This meant that simplest was best, and including as many pre-prepared items as dictums of health and budget would allow was essential. My mom did most of the food preparation, with my father's volume of cooking coming in a distant second.  

Mine was an even more distant third, like the distance from Mars to Pluto. This may have been a good thing, as my approach to cooking was to imagine something, often with the fantastical vision of one viewing another century through a magical opening in the clouds, and then to start throwing things together in an ethereal haze of time travel. The results were often inedible, or non-ideal from a flavor, texture, or volume perspective. The same could be said of the rare times I tried to follow a recipe. The recipe was taken as a suggestion, with alterations made seemingly willy-nilly.

Jared's family, however took a very different approach. More members of his family took an interest in cooking, and it seemed that they all managed to follow recipes, at least to the level where they turned out edible. They also seemed to have a habit of starting earlier in the process on average than my family, for example by regularly using raw ingredients such as dried beans.

When Jared and I first met, we eventually got to visiting on the weekends for a meal at each other's apartments. We relied on some basics like pasta with tomato sauce. Jared, knowing I was from Texas and that I liked salsa, decided to add a little culinary heat to the tomato sauce. Noticing he did so, and not being a confident cook myself, I followed suit, assuming he liked heat, and/or this was the correct way to make pasta sauce. And little by little, more red pepper flakes and jalapeño got added to each of our dishes over time in service of the other's supposed tastes and expectations; eventually neither of us was very... comfortable... eating a meal. We sat politely, nibbling at the firey hot stuff, suffering with smiles as we each imagined the other was enjoying our creation, steam pouring out of our ears, tongues hurting, and stomachs churning.

I don't remember how we eventually broke the cycle, but somehow our cooking did become more edible and sane again. 

The cooking of dried beans was an art with which I had no previous experience, and in the learning process mistakes were made. One of those mistakes was to try seasoning black beans with dill, an herb I knew in the form of store-bought jarred dill pickles, but not with regards to its other applications. It turns out that for some reason, the flavor of dill when combined with the flavor of black beans creates a horrifying amalgamation, and I was able to swallow only the merest quantity of the finished product. Not wanting to waste the food or the effort, I somehow got the idea to go pioneer woman, and incorporate this terrible concoction into a loaf of bread. Which I set about mixing. I did, in fact, complete the process and bake it. Some people make banana bread or zucchini bread or cranberry walnut loaf. I presented the world, briefly, with Skunk Bread. No other name could suffice, as the flavor really did remind me of trying to eat the smell of skunk. I bravely soldiered on with my intention of not wasting, choking down a slice here and there. It is possible Jared ate a slice at some point, too. But after sitting on the counter for far too long, with its inherent putrescence and inedible texture, it went on the next leg of its journey to the dumpster behind my fire escape. It has been well over twenty years, but I would not be surprised if it were still sitting, intact, deep in the Cleveland landfill, telling other deathless garbage the sad story of its untimely creation by a heartless Frankenstein of the kitchen.

Those were the two stories I was asked to relay by the campfire. But I have thought of two more...

One year in particular, my roommate and I were excited to invite various dorm-bound friends to our old wood-floored century apartment for Easter lunch, just like real adults. Neither of us was famous for planning our time very far in advance, so we started the massive cooking project rather late on Saturday night. In the end, everything turned out fine, but there were two specific hiccups during the cooking phase. One was that neither of us had baked an angel food cake before, and we tried, using a boxed mix. I am not sure our pan was the size called for on the box. We baked it on the middle rack as called for, but it rose spectacularly up through the upper rack, and there we were at 1:00 in the morning in our small kitchen, beating the thing back through the hot bars into its own zone with spoons. It was a bit misshapen when done, but it may have been semi-edible. We also dumped an entire casserole dish of not-yet-cooked scalloped potatoes onto the floor instead of putting the glass pan into the fridge, also in the wee hours, and we salvaged it by rinsing the mess and adding more sauce. It was baked very early in the morning before our church appearance, and no one was any the wiser.

Another year after I really was an official adult, still living in the same apartment, but staying with the last set of rotating roommates before I myself up and married and moved to Rochester, I invited a few dorm-bound strapping young freshman for Easter lunch. I was their de facto music theory teacher five days a week, as their official professor was in and out on medical leave, and I was assisting quite heavily at times. To them it must have seemed like a great invite, but they didn't know about my cooking...  

Somehow, when I went out shopping beforehand, my menu was poorly planned and prone to inspiration. At TOPS, there were some interesting root vegetables from South America for a great price, so I bought a pile. I had never eaten or cooked them, but how different could it be from potatoes, of similar origin? Roughly chopped and thrown into a large glass casserole in the oven with a little salt and pepper, I tossed it into the oven for an experimental and indeterminate amount of time. It was checked on at various points, and what data I was looking for on these checks may have been unclear. In the end, it was blacker and crunchier that might have been desired. This dish of over-cooked not-potato-chips was the star of the show, and was accompanied by two or three other items which I can't remember, but I hope in retrospect were distinctly less awful. They may not have been... Those three young men may have forgotten about their sad introduction to adult living by now, but I shudder to think that they are sitting around campfires even now telling their friends of the awful cooking they experienced at my hands the first Easter of their college careers. 

On the Brink

We are going through a lot of transitions here, and we are all feeling the uncertainties, consciously in some cases, and rather more by energies in other cases.  Everyone is a little on edge, especially the two who are starting new schools soon.

We had the eldest off in Texas for three weeks with family, where everything was looked-forward-to, comparative lap of luxury (own bedroom and own bathroom, undivided adult attention, and general cleanliness.)  We fell into our non-eldest-routine, and the eldest fell into the solo routine.  Then the eldest returned to the chaos of home.

And chaos it is.  We are nearing the end of three weeks of bathroom renovation,  meaning we have had no bathroom at home for almost three weeks.  Porta potty in driveway - check.  Gym memberships for adult showers - check.  Rotating cast of Grandma and Grampa staying in the big studio to do construction work- check.  Dust,  tools,  debris,  noise, smells, and general horrible, inescapable mess- check.  This is a lot, particularly for the smallest person who has never moved house and doesn't really remember any past construction projects.  She was used to our leaky, moldy bathroom the way it was, and had no reason to want it different.  (It is on the way to fabulous,  but there are lots of loose ends which may drag on for a while.)

Next week eldest starts at a new school, so there are new routines, expectations, uncertainties, freedoms, and after-school considerations to work through.

The following week, the youngest starts at a different new school, and ditto all of the above.  All the uncertainties and routines apply to the kids, but also to the parents.

And then middle kid and I will get into a new homeschool routine, but without the younger sister home.  That will be both simpler and more difficult, cozier and lonelier.  I will be his only playmate for many hours each day.

Next Sunday Jared and I play a wedding, then start the tetris of our fall teaching schedule.  I have a couple of students who have dropped, and the online Dalcroze classes Jared has been teaching are no longer running, so that would seem to simplify things.  Yet, we need to rework our group classes, increase some students' lesson lengths as they are advancing, and account for the new and unknown school routines with the kids and new professional orchestra gigs.

Jared is playing in two orchestras and is contracted for, I think, eleven concert cycles.  I am hired for one of the same orchestras and am contracted for six concert cycles.  This, then, creates some new childcare and scheduling issues, as the rehearsals are afternoons and evenings on school days, and will require not only supervision for our kids, but rescheduling of many lessons.  I have the added unknown of being on the sub list for two other ensembles, and I have no idea if I will get called, how frequently I might get called, and how far in advance I might get called.  We also have some more chamber music projects formulating in the wings, but nothing definite yet.  They might be a definite joy.

I am on "vacation" right now, but I mostly feel exhausted and overwhelmed.  I am behind on the clean&reorganize-the-tornado-sites-which-are-our-two-bedrooms-before-we-are-locked-into-the-fall-schedule project,  and I have had little opportunity for deeply restorative time in nature.  I will possibly feel better when I have the school year schedule better mapped out, but I can't really answer all my own questions until the kids have started their new schools and we have a sense of what this all looks like in practice.  I don't know what everyone's energy levels and co-regulation needs might look like with the new set up, and the Coke bottle effect is very real and sometimes explosive in our house.  The after-school hours are, by definition, the time we work to pay our rent...  Somehow it all seems poorly thought-out and vaguely impossible.   When will I see my kids?  How will we feed them dinner?  How will they go to bed while I am still teaching?  How will my necessary walks and violin practice fit into it all?

Eventually we will tip (or perhaps tump) over into the new routine and everyone will eventually stabilize.  Or we won't, and one or more of us will hit a crisis point and we will have to problem solve in new directions, and it will be just another crazy year thought up by someone whose long-term planning abilities are vague at best.  No one really knows, and it will somehow happen...

Terror and Recovery

 In between things we went out camping.  We had planned to go down toward the Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams area, but we pivoted on departure day on account of the record heat.  Instead we headed out to the coast, where the record heat was all of 77.

Given our abilities to do only first-come-first-served camping and the tightening of the reservation system in recent years, we headed out to a free, quiet, back-woods Washington Department of Natural Resources campground several unpaved miles off the beaten track.  We have camped there happily before.  When we arrived after a much-too-long journey with multiple grocery store detours, all nine spots were taken, as well as two additional unofficial spots.  However, I knew of another unofficial spot near campsite 1, and we made camp there.  

The following morning site 9 had opened up, and we moved so we would have a picnic table and a fire pit.  The kids had talked us into s'mores for the first time.  We spent the day out at the beach at Kalaloch, and returned in the evening to eat dinner, make s'mores and read a family chapter book in the tent before falling asleep.  We did not get to sleep early, as it was July 4, and the fireworks explosions from nearby private lands echoed through the forest until rather late.

Friday, we drove up along the Bogachiel River into the heat and dropped off Jared and E with their supplies for an overnight backpacking adventure into virgin rain forest.  Then the two little kids and I hauled out to the wild beach at Rialto and spent a lovely afternoon, cooking our dinner there where we were able to get more water at the Mora campground. The three of us returned to site 9 at Cottonwood around dusk, and I made my very first fire ever and helped the kids make s'mores.  We brushed teeth, cleaned up, and packed into the tent for the night.  After we read a story, I turned out the lantern and waited for sleep to come.  The kids conked right out, but for some reason, I was very awake.  

A little after eleven, I heard noisy,  deliberate footsteps coming along the gravel road, presumably headed to the outhouse.  Very shortly after the footsteps passed our site,  they suddenly doubled back, which got my attention. The footsteps then turned and walked into our campsite, right by us in the tent, and now I was on high alert. No longer was I lying in my sleeping bag with my back to the tent flap, trying to go to sleep. I turned around to face the flap, and I sat up with great intensity.  There were more unidentified noises in my campsite, and then a sudden loud crash - not a bullet, probably - maybe a metal or glass object being thrown or something bad happening to my car.  Directly after the crash, the footsteps ran away and then slowed on the other side od the shrubs.  Now I was terrified. I turned on the lantern in the tent and picked up my half-full metal water bottle for a blunt weapon.  Laurel woke up, but I was able to convince her to stay quiet, stay down, and stay behind me.  If we were going to be invaded, I was going to meet our attacker head on in the front line.

Now a car started cruising slowly around and around and around the circle where we were camped.  Maybe it was drunk local kids out looking for thoughtless fun... or this sort of behavior could be predatory.  It wasn't worth waiting around to find out, because the wrong decision could be fatal. I realized if these were the wrong campsite invadors, we could die in the next few minutes, and this felt shocking and intense.  People disappear under circumstances like these, and their bodies are never found.  All our other camping neighbors were in RVs, so I felt extremely vulnerable in a tent.  I had 911 cued up on my phone in my left hand and the metal bottle in my right hand. I did not call yet, as I did not want to draw attention to myself by talking into the phone, and I also realized that dispatch could take 45 minutes to get to us out there.  I would have to rely on my own actions to save us from possible death, along with whatever unseen forces of good might be sent to help in that dark place in response to my one-word supplication.  I was the general and the front line, and I had no team to back me up.  I have never once been so terrified or so focussed in my whole life.  As the strange car was cruising round and round, the loops were not long, maybe a minute each.  I used the far point of one loop to dash out into the dark and quickly inspect my vehicle to make sure it was operable.  All four tires looked intact.  I returned as quietly as possible to the tent amd quickly packed the essentials into my backpack  - wallet, phone, car keys.  I was still trying to make a plan.  The creepy car cruised by again slowly.  What if on one of these rounds they blocked my vehicle in and we had no escape route??? Were these people armed?  Was their first invasion of our campsite just a canvassing operation?  Were they trying to bait us?  On the next far point of the car's loop, I instructed Laurel to dive into the back seat of the car as quickly and quietly as possible, stay unbuckled, and leave the door open behind her.  Amazingly, she was able to follow all of these instructions to a T, which I would not typically expect, but it was essential in saving seconds, which was all we had to work with.  I flailed, then lifted Lazarus, still asleep in his sleeping bag, and hauled and tossed him into the car behind Laurel, closing the door as quickly and quietly as possible. I dashed back to the tent for my backpack, darted again to our vehicle, threw my bag into the passenger seat, scrambled over it to the driver's seat while pulling the passenger door closed behind me, and pulled out of our campaite as quickly as possible.  When I rounded the bend on the loop, the other car was probably 50 feet away and headed towards me.  I drove the bumpy, unpaved roads for miles out toward the main highway as quickly as I could.  Once we finally reached US 101, I determined that we had not been followed, at least not that far, so I paused to asked Laurel to buckle herself and Lazarus (this is what finally woke him up), and called 911 while I turned north to head for the nearest town of Forks, a 40 minute drive away.  

My thought was that Forks had motels, and maybe we could find a place with a locking door where we could spend the night.  And if I couldn't sleep while it was dark (likely, given the amount of panic in my nervous system at that moment), they might have a TV the kids could watch the following day while I got some sleep in the light.

Unfortunately every single place in Forks, (and I stopped by them all!) said No Vacancy.  Was this because it was a holiday weekend?  Or because it was late and all the proprietors had gone to bed?  So I decided to head south again.  

I thought of trying to pull into the Bogachiel State Park campground, since they should have a host, but they had a sign out front saying Campground Full.  Briefly turned up the road that follows the Bogachiel River with the idea we could just wait at the trail head for Jared and E to return.  But our designated meeting time was 14 or 15 hours away, and we had no water with us.  

So we drove the hour and a half back to Kalaloch in the National Park.  There is a nice day-use parking lot, frequented by park rangers and camp hosts,  either of whom I would be delighted to talk with in the wee hours.  We pulled into a spot around 1:15 am, and I only got out of the car once briefly to "find a shrub".  The stars were incredible, and the sound of the ocean lulling.  The kids went back to sleep, eventually with Laurel lying on the back seat under a towel  and Lazarus reclining in the passenger seat in his sleeping bag.  I knew we were safe enough here, but my body was still on high alert, and every little sound and movement sent new rounds of adrenaline coursing through my system, making me feel shakey and nauseous in response.  Sleeping was utterly out of the question. 

I remembered a night more than twenty years ago when I was at a summer program and watched a horror movie with friends (strictly because I did not have the skills to opt out, which I knew I should do). I spent the rest of the night lying in my bed in the dark, listening to my roommate sleeping, staring at the red light on the smoke detector, shaking at every small wisp of air.  This night felt worse, because the danger had been very, very real, but I also knew it would turn out better in the end for the same reason.  When the danger had been imaginary, there were no safe actions to take to send it away and calm my nervous system.  With real danger, I could work against it to bring us to safety, and no one would look askance if I talked to people to process the experience and get help.  

In the late 3:00's the quality of the sky began to change and there were fewer stars.  By 5:00, it was light, so I drove us over to one of the campground bathrooms, so Laurel and I could use the facilities.  Lazarus rolled over in his sleeping bag, handed me a tooth which had just fallen out of his mouth and went back to sleep.  I was exhausted and still not sure what to do.  I decided to drive a quarter of a mile down the road and park in front of tbe ranger station, as we had luck getting cell phone service there.  I started trying to get ahold of someone safe, because I really needed to talk to an adult.  In the end, I had text conversations with my mom in Central time, a dear friend in Eastern time, and eventually a friend in Renton.  It was good to talk through what had happened with sympathetic ears, and I ended up napping a non-consecutive 90 minutes or so in the brilliant sunshine pouring into the driver's seat.  By the end of the long night in the car, my back was throbbing, but it was far better than being dead. Once the kids were awake, we went back to the Kalaloch parking area and made breakfast at a picnic table.  Laurel noticed people getting in line at the ranger booth for first-come-first-serve campsites, and she convinced me to join them.  I have never been so relieved to plunk down $25 in my life.  After we were done with breakfast, we parked at C-1 and set out a few things in our site, and then went to play on the beach before our Bogachiel rendezvous.  I was not ready to go back to get our tent and gear from the previous campground without another adult.

Once we met Jared and E, I had Jared do the driving (something I rarely let him do), because I was so exhausted.  We collected our things at Cottonwood, and it felt therapeutic to be there in the daytime and walk the path I imagined for our unwelcome visitor the night before.  When we got back to C-1 at Kalaloch, Jared set up the tent, and the kids and I immediately fell into it for a nap in the daylight.  Jared woke me up 30 minutes later as orcas had been spotted from the bluff at the edge of the campground.  I sprang out of my sleeping bag and ran down the road.  Indeed, we saw three orcas spouting and showing their dorsal fins.  I had never seen orcas before, and it was a absolutely worth the wake up.  After a long watch, I collapsed back into slumber in the tent.  When I next awoke, it was evening light out, and Jared had a roaring fire in the grate and an elaborate dinner cooking at the table.   It was about the coziest feeling I could imagine, and felt very safe.

I knew that going to sleep in the dark in the tent would be difficult,  so I preemptively reorganized our sleeping geometry so that I could be right next to Jared.   Indeed, lying in the tent in the dark brought on high alert again, and I was glad of touching "safe skin" in order to calm enough to sleep again.

In fact, it took a week at home before I could go to sleep on my stomach again (my main method of going to sleep for the last year), and when we went back to Kalaloch the following week for two days, I still needed the next-to-Jared sleeping geometry to make it through the go-to-sleep-in-a-tent-in-the-dark hurdle.  Sleeping back at home after the second coast trip has been just fine.

Shifts in the Modern World

 At many points in my life I have felt very antagonistic towards routines, especially imposed routines and ideas about the goodness of routines. I have created small routines for myself, but they have been short term and very personal. I have been curious where this antipathy, or even fear, comes from. I think there is some large element of needing to follow my own flow and inspiration in learning and creating, which are not things that can be scheduled. I have a strong inner aversion to being locked in and stuck. I felt this in childhood at the start of a school year, just knowing what my school hours would be was both exciting and frightening. One of the strongest times I felt the inner push-back against being constricted was when I was offered a fourth day of teaching in Rochester. This was something I hoped for and needed, and when it came to the point of fruition, I could barely scrape myself off the couch for a couple of days on account of dread. I also have felt heavily pinched when it was time to do our school-year scheduling as an independent business. I have enjoyed the actual tetris problem and the creation of the schedule. But seeing the next 10 months of my life on paper feels like an overwhelming burden.

Yet, much to my surprise, something seems to have shifted for me, or at least be shifting, in the last few years. My inner free spirit has been less disappointed in acknowledging that the modern world is forced to run on calendars and clocks and diaries... Prior to last summer, the needs of the moment were so unpredictable, huge, and at times unmanageable, for a decade, that the idea of routines and schedules felt particularly odious. Yet things in my outer world have shifted, and there has been calm from the knowing of the immediate future brought on by routines. Everyone in our house struggles with transitions, as many people do, and for many of us, advanced warning (not the famous "5 minutes 'til we stop" adage), seems to help keep us even. I mean the sort of advanced warning where everyone knows what us going to happen day after day. This has been something that has been very difficult for me to create or even accept until it started shifting inside me with with no outside admonishments.  

This past Sunday, the first of our summer term, I was doing the weekly scheduling email to students and doing our traditional summer weekly whiteboard-ing of room assignments, and I had the sudden inspiration to add three daily items for the family with times attached. Two of the items were already going to be, but even my willingness to write them on the calander surprised me.

In response to this family scheduling, there has been some angsty pushback from the kid I predicted and difficulty with the selected numbers along with a certain comfort in knowing from the other kid predicted. And there has been some wailing from me about now that I created a schedule, why doesn't it just work. But I do think these are all just part of the birth pangs and life, really. Human bodies were created in an era without clocks beyond the sun, without calendars beyond the moon and stars, and without train schedules and time zones, with merely the relatively manageable tasks of finding the next meal in a forgiving climate... And death was inevitable sooner or later, as it still is.

...Last November before I got on the audition train, I was looking around our house and seeing with the eyes of an outsider that our serious physical chaos was an indicator of too much stuff jammed into our small physical space. Certain ways of being which work for many people have repeatedly proved themselves not to work in our house, and therefore solutions require material shift, not just being more organized or diligent or having better routines. I had identified several pieces of furniture and their contents which needed to leave for greener pastures and give us back space. 

 I had meant to get back to this project after the audition train dropped me off, but I just couldn't get up the nerve. However, I work on inspiration and surprise deadlines very effectively, and was given the sudden gift of that. We are going to have company staying with us next week, so I was able to look at our space with that in mind. A few major points stood out to Jared and me, and one of those aligns well with the get-rid-of-extraneous-furniture project.

That would be the bathroom. Anyone unfortunate enough to have been in our bathroom in the last couple of years will know that in addition to the endemic wall plaster peeling and sloped-the-wrong-way drainage, there were other major problems of our own creation. These centered around the large, black industrial shelving which blocked the tub and sink, and collected junk, junk, junk, junk, and garbahge.... Imagining our guests needing to use the bathroom in the middle of the night lent clarity to the next steps. Since Friday I took down, cleaned out, scrubbed, reinstalled and organized our beautiful, homemade glass-front medicine cabinet. I cleaned our light fixtures and Jares and I replaced the faulty bulbs. I installed two hanging racks with found items from our shed (which I think turned out quite charmingly) so the kids now have small, personal, designated places to keep their bathroom items in a way which can not physically collect the debris and slime that horizontal surfaces in our house seem to attract so strongly. I cleared off all three levels of the black shelves. This took an entire day, and the amount of nasty stuff left behind on the floor in its wake was... shocking. Jared, thank the good Lord, scrubbed the floor before I had a chance to get to it. I am so grateful, because I almost couldn't eat dinner or be up and about the cabin after picking through the garbage on the floor, as the lingering repulsion was so strong. Then yesterday, the eldest and I picked through the giant box which was for fabric scraps to be used in sewing and crafting projects. We saved a nice basket-full, found a lot of missing clothing items, filled a small trash bag with candy wrappers and a whole lot of other items too horrible to mention, and filled a giant trash bag with textile scraps which are slated for delivery to textile recycling tomorrow. I had to take a shower to wash off the filth of that box, and I also repaired the step stool my youngest still uses in the bathroom. The tub and shower and sink and toilet still need more scrubbing, and I need to replace our laundry basket with something more discrete and with a better form factor. I also need to finish making a towl rack out of salvaged lumber and railroad spikes I treated a few years ago and got side-tracked on. Those portions don't need to be completed before our guests arrive. Everyone is in shock at how large and relatively beautiful our bathroom is now, and Jared pointed out it should be easier to keep clean this way. The giant black industrial shelves left for a neighbor's garage last night and are no longer our problem.

...One of the items I added to the family schedule unexpectedly last Sunday is a daily family cleaning time. This is something I could only have dreamed of a couple of years ago. The last couple of days Jared has put this task force to great use, mobilizing to clean out huge piles of garbage from the living/kitchen/dining areas, vacuuming, scrubbing, and mopping.  

Last night, one child was handed the drawer from under the stove in the back yard, and who turned on some rap music and attacked it with a scraper, cleaning solutions, and scrubbers, to good result after about a half hour. Said cleaner was so happy with the result they proclaimed no need for video and game time and their love of spending all day outside and their desire to have an intensive year-round family cleaning schedule. While I know that was a short-lived euphoria, it was a nice moment.

Another child was less able to contribute as they suddenly had great angst about a chest of drawers which had changed hands some years ago - a transaction which I don't remember at all and have no way to fix. Based on other experiences, this great sadness may last some weeks. I can only offer my own adult theory that this sadness is brought about by so much change which has brought some happiness to this small human, even positive change, in our physical space in the last few days. 

A third child enjoyed mopping while pretending to be a potato.

...Also this week, in addition to teaching ad rescheduling what seemed like endless cancelations, I selected, assigned, and sent around music for the July 8 week in-house group workshop. The younger group will do some Suzuki repertoire from books 1 and 2, some Bartok duets, and a Fiddle tune. The older group will do a Bach Chorale and two movements of the Corelli Christmas Concerto.  

I also made the finishing arrangements on a reading session tomorrow in which our new next-door cellist neighbor will be joining us and two others to play through the Schubert Cello Quintet for fun.

Today is the longest day of the year. We will do something to celebrate (the celebration is on the weekly schedule), but what, I don't know. Likely my wants-to-be-in-charge child will cook up an idea.

Anyway, if our guests of next week happen to he reading this, you will not think our house miraculously clean. It will merely be less awful than how it has been....

 

A Week of Ordinary Wonder - Radius, Five Miles

Our small storage shed had gotten completely unmanageable again - one could barely open the door. To reach anything one might be searching for required delicate climbing and balancing. Things were falling into the sinkhole of the middle, and certain containers had managed to disgorge their contents, due to their rakish angles. I knew it was time for a purge; knew what it would have to be; and I knew it would be painful....

As previously mentioned, this is the first school year out of the last decade or more, that felt doable. One piece of evidence for the current doable-ness is that almost without fail, I lie down at night and go to sleep in under 20 minutes. If I wake in the night to use the bathroom I go right back to sleep; I sleep until morning and then I am generally functional. Even during the months of audition preparation which had its own adrenaline kicks, the exhaustion of working so hard physically and mentally let me sleep soundly. This sleep trend surprised me, as based on the record of the previous decade, I assumed I had become a terrible sleeper, lying awake for hours despite extreme fatigue. In retrospect, the insomnia was clearly a sign of chronic stress, anxiety, and overwhelm....

The shed clean out which has been begging to happen was the outgrown kid clothes. We had saved everything from newborn on up. For one, we did not have a specific plan as to how many kids would wear them, and for another, I tend to be much more sentimental than practical, despite our space challenges. Our house was built for temporary war-time shelter, yet now we live in an age of the super-abundance of cheap and free and expendable stuff. To boot, I am a person who experiences extreme empathy for "stuff" in addition to living creatures and the inorganic parts of the Universe, so I worry about the afterlife of "stuff" when it leaves my care (although I don't always seem to manage to be careful with "stuff" in my care.)

During the nearly week-long term of the kid and baby clothes clean out project, the night time sleeplessness and anxiety returned on several occasions. The afternoon after donation morning, I felt beaten down, as if maybe I was getting sick. I wasn't, but I had used up all my emotional stores; I had to ask people to stop touching me, close my eyes to mess and patterns, cover my ears for normal noises, and had no motivation for anything and instead took a rare nap and shower.

It would have been "easier" to drop it all off at the neighborhood Goodwill rather than sorting and sunning out the stains and selecting individual neighbor recipients, but I could not. I needed to have faces and names to go with the hope for a good afterlife of all the things.

Now that it is over, I don't know that I feel particularly more sad - it was mostly the anticipation and the touching things and reliving memories that was hard. It is awfully nice to walk into the shed without tripping or climbing.  

A few other tidbits from the accidentally incredible last week, which are rewrites of stories I had put elsewhere:

Lazarus and Laurel and I read a book from the library several times called Wallace's Lists. Wallace is a mouse, and one of his lists is the ingredients for onion soup, which he cooked near the end of the book. At Lazarus's impetus, he copied the list onto a sheet of paper and hung it on the fridge with two magnets, just like Wallace. Then he and I cooked up a batch, and he ate it for dinner twice. This was notable, because Lazarus rarely writes, and he rarely tries new foods.

...Friday night was first time ever for anyone in our house to see the aurora. Visible to the naked eye, even in our heavily light-polluted sky, it was quite the nearly-midnight party on our block. Lots of neighbors were out for the incredible and once-in-a-lifetime show, and we invited one neighbors to join us on our roof, though she declined. 

A few years ago there was a potential possibility of seeing the aurora borealis here, so we and the local relatives had driven out to a state park east of the worst of the light pollution well after dark, parked outside the locked gate, and hiked in looking for views to the north. The younger ones in our party gave up rather vociferously after maybe an hour due to it being quite chilly and dank out, not to mention dark and boring. I learned later that some people spotted it who had waited until after 2:00 am.

So this coming to us was way easier. And it came in force. At the peak, the sky was probably 70% covered.  What a wonder of magnetism and fission...

The kids have been ordering bread several times a week on my grocery stopovers on foot, and I thought it might be interesting and economical to give those who were interested an insight into the process. Lazarus helped me make a batch, and I think he now has an appreciation for the Israelites leaving Egypt without time for their bread to rise at the first Passover. He declined to get his hands into the kneading part, which was no surprise, but he does love timers, so he was happy to set the 30 minute alarm and keep me posted frequently on my minutes and seconds. The multiple rises in the sun on the hood of the car in the driveway were fun, too, and he enjoyed checking the thermometer and reporting back on the current temperature....

Jared had gotten an email from a church we wish we attended but do not (in Seattle) that those coming in on Saturday morning would need to plan for road closures as the POTUS would be in town. Now, I have never seen Air Force One in flight and thought this might be a good opportunity to view it. I looked up several news pieces and learned that the president was slated to land at SeaTac at 5:50 pm on Friday and fly out at 1:35 on Saturday. And also that there would be a hold on the airspace starting 30 minutes before landing and take off.

[Sometimes all the area flight traffic uses the runways north to south, and sometimes uses the runways south to north, I presume, based on weather conditions.] I visually ascertained that Friday was running south to north. From our roof, we can see the SeaTac control tower 5 miles WSW from us and can see planes approaching or departing the north end of the runways. Thus, the Friday prospects were going to be tricky in terms of visibility from home. I took the kids to the library for a specific event at 4:00 and returned home by 5:40. I could not discern any hold on air traffic as we had flyovers around that time from Alaska Airlines, Delta, and Condor - the green and white striped German airline. In confusion I gave up looking and carried on with the evening.

Saturday morning I again ascertained that flights were using the runways south to north, which would make a take off visible from our roof. Around noon I checked some news outlets for updates and learned that Air Force One had landed at 4:50 on Friday, an hour early. Thus the hold and the landing had all happened whilst I was inside the library.

Shortly after, it occurred to me that there might be a generalized flight tracker online by which I could confirm an airspace hold. Indeed, I found such. At 1:30, we had a county sherrif helicopter (one of four operated by King County) fly over our neighborhood east to west. I caught it on the flight tracker as it headed to SeaTac, circled, and landed. After that all planes at SeaTac, Renton Municipal, and King County International/Boeing Field (all within approximately 5 or fewer miles of us by air) seemed to be stationary, so I calculated the hold as starting at 1:32. At 2:03 all five of us were on the roof when E pointed and said, "There it is!" And the giant, official behemoth lumbered skyward off the north end of the runway, continued north to approximately I-90, and banked east for its next destination in New England....

That same day after the first ever batch of wheat bread made by Lazarus and me was done, and we had witnessed Air Force One in flight, we went to the beach for another round of the game/adventure run by E. Due to unsual temps in the mid-80s and clear skies, this adventure was also meant to involve the water, unlike the previous Sunday's beach game/adventure which was held in a steady 49 degrees under a grey and gusty sky.

Lazarus was feeling skeptical of sunscreen and hats and planned to sit in the car, but he eventually agreed to go for a walk in the woods with me. Thus the two of us had our own wild adventure in the 20 acres south of the parking lot, which I had never explored more than the initial margin.  

A goodly chunk of the land is privately owned, recently sold, thoroughly surveyed, and slated for a housing development, which many people are protesting with the Burien City Council. It was a wonderful and very wild adventure but also sad, knowing this tract of heavily forested hills and gullies may soon be only a memory.

We took some more-used trails where we saw a man mountain biking on a unicycle in addition to the more traditional dog walkers. Then we took some very much less used trails where we got deliciously lost, crossed creeks balancing on fallen logs, scrambled up and down steep cliffs hanging on to branches and roots for dear life, and traipsed through a proper swamp where we both sunk into mud up to our knees, and my left shoe squelched off and had to be dug out. It was such a quicksand-y sort of place that I wasn't sure I could get my shoe back. Until we found another running creek in which to wash off, I had to hike in one unbelievably muddy shoe and one unbelievably muddy sock, because the wet humous on the rescued shoe was so thick, there was no hope of doing anything about the laces.

Once we eventually made it down to the beach by following any trail joints we met in a general downstream direction (not entirely simple in the winding, overgrown 'possum trails), I happily waded in the ocean fully clothed and shod up to my knees, and Lazarus did the same up to his waist. 

Jared meantime, had been at the beach all along with the other two and was wading more sensibly barefoot and in shorts.

Enviable Homes and Gardens

 For some reason I was feeling particularly snarky yesterday, so I picked up the latest Better Homes and Gardens out of the magazine basket specifically to bark at it.  

...Good grief, that one throw pillow on the sofa cost more than all the furniture in my living room put together!

...Clearly these people don't have kids - what would I do with all these white walls and furnishings?

...Oh hey, they didn't need any closet space so they turned this nice storage area into a little play hideout for the toddler with coordinating colors. Big house, eh?

...Oh hey, this lovely, large, lush English garden with inspiring quotes- what is their budget for help like???

...Ooh, edgy black for a modern lake house. Maybe if we painted our house black we'd feel more relaxed, too.

...Hey, they took out all their cabinets and went to open shelving. Now they get to wash the dust off all their kitchen items before they use them each time. Cool!

Then I got inspired to write an article about my own decorating choices...

The Ballances were lucky to find this truly lovely little World War II home in the summer of 2017. With its wood floors and good bones, sold as is, they knew that with some sweat equity, cash, and a lot of help from the older generation, they had a real keeper. Once the house was in working order, the home decor and furnishings have slowly evolved along with their growing family and home business.

Below, Mrs. Ballance highlights some particular favorites in the current decorating scheme.

"For the bedroom, I snagged this lovely second hand table from the side of the road and found the perfect spot for it by my cozy south-facing window. For some extra whimsy, I stacked it up with a huge pile of mixed clothes and fabric swatches, some books, and quite a bit of varied trash. My inner treasure seeker loves knowing that a functional sewing machine is coyly hidden beneath the piles, and it makes the perfect nesting spot for our cat NASA, who is the only one still able to make it far enough to look out the window.

Don't you love this darling gas fire place from Sweden? It has such charm and was one of the major selling points of the house. We really planned our living room around it, setting baskets of instrument cases and cascading stacks of school papers on either side, stuffing a few wigs and other costume pieces beneath it, and topping it with large plastic dinosaurs and broken markers. For an added touch of homey-ness, we turned the nearby chairs with their backs to it.

This gliding rocker here is a real conversation piece. The springs on the seat broke, and we repaired it with some gimpy hardware found at a home improvement store. The cushions were destroyed over the lifetimes of several cats, so I made lovely new ones in a dashing blue and white pattern. For added warmth, I sewed the seat cushion cover a wee bit to small so the green foam inside peeks out adorably. We set it in this awkward corner to cheer up the room, next to a large plastic litter box. Instead of fulfilling its old-fashioned function of rocking the little ones to sleep, it has had an updated and exciting use as a giant clean laundry pile for the last eight months. Bonus, our cats really love it, and argue over whose turn it is on top of the throne.

In our sweet little bathroom, we made a bold decorating choice to match the peeling plaster: an industrial, three level, black metal shelving unit. This is where we keep our basket of wash cloths, with added decor such as wadded up papers and dirty socks, plus all manner of interesting potions, both in containers and smeared directly on shelves, along with table knives and old paint brushes for application. Also, look at this darling nude Barbie in a diving pose with her nose balanced delicately on an art brush sticking up out of the brown cardboard box of textile scraps, candy wrappers, and dirty pajamas. Additionally, this fabulous shelf gives you a feeling of Tetris when you need to get to the sink or tub, bringing back that fun '80s vibe.

Look at this sweet closet in the back bedroom. It's due for an update, but the current decor choices are awfully fun. The clothes pole has this nice sag on it, due to the weight of so many unworn clothes. The lovely second-hand dresser with sticky drawers and a paint drip holds another batch of unworn clothes. It's all meant to hide behind this white, geometric sheer curtain, hemmed with purple thread, but the current exciting spray of stuff animals and wilderness backpacks keeps the curtain at peek-a-boo status. It' such a fun hiding place for my youngest who climbs in by stepping on the corner of that whimsical table in the south-facing window, and allows her to swipe hidden items stacked in exciting piles atop the old family wardrobe tucked into the adjacent awkward corner, also brimming with unworn clothes. So many possibilities!

Our kitchen is particularly nostalgic. We retained the original floor plan, but of course modern refrigerators don't fit in the old nooks, so ours is relegated to the laundry room. We have a modern ikea-style cabinet in its place. But more fun is this solid L-shaped pole holding up the roof. We have mounted a fun recycling bag hanger made from reclaimed parts and acrylic paint and also hang our aprons from an historic hook. The homemade pot rack, which we are quite proud of, will only hit you on the head if you are over 5 foot 7, and the cabinet doors stay open to give you a little peekaboo at the packed in assemblage behind. But best of all is this vintage rolling dishwasher with the broken wheel, peeling linoleum, and the front casing removed to give a better view of the water works. It conveniently rolls back and forth at a jaunty angle to block either the sink or the stove in the sweet little galley, and reminds one of all those fun grocery runs with a lurching cart and items sliding off the top. So nostalgic!

Really, though, the pride and joy of our decorating scheme is this antique, blue hutch, which belonged to my great-grandmother Mildred back in Missouri. It was a drab brown when she had it, and was used as a display for her fine dishes. It was really due for an update, so we have renamed it the Hutch of Doom. It is now home to our CD and DVD collection, our business papers, a giant tote of crayons, unused cables, batteries and matches, board games, library items, mega blocks, construction paper, and all manner of odds and ends stuffed here and there. For added design function, there are three full-sized cellos in their cases, which get used in various orders each day, loving packed in the narrow aisle between the doors of the hutch and the back of the tall love seat, delicately rearranged several times a day while not crushing the cables and box for our internet, sweetly tucked into the corner."

We hope these fun decorating ideas will lend some inspiration to those of you with executive functioning challenges and those whose responsibilities and sentiments lend to a more lassez faire approach to selecting pieces and arrangements to enliven your environment. Go for the gold and your home may be featured in our next edition of Enviable Homes and Gardens!

Astronomy Moment

 My apologies to the half of my tiny readership who already heard this story in person.  I was so tickled that I decided I had to write it down...

When we departed April 5th for Austin, all flights to Texas were full-to-bursting with eclipse-watchers-hopeful.  On account of this, we did not get a direct flight but connected through Dallas.

Our Dallas to Austin leg was, of course, very short, and I was seated in the aisle across from my kids.  To my right was a very quiet fellow, probably in his 60s who looked to be British,  based on the periodicals he was reading and his reserved manner.  In the window seat was a talkative and flamboyant young American fellow who was chasing the eclipse and had a whole lot to say to the quiet fellow about all kinds of things, especially on the topics of accommodations and food.  After we landed and were waiting to de-plane, the British gentleman turned to me to make some small talk, and mentioned that this would be his sixth total eclipse.

I replied: "You must have a real interest in astronomy. "

"Yes," he said quietly, "I am a physicist...", then added almost as an afterthought, "an astrophysicist."

He then said, "I have a question for your kids.  How far does the moon move away from the earth in a year?"

I glanced at them and answered, "I don't think they are going to talk to you, but the answer is an inch and a half."

He looked gobsmacked, and replied, "Yes, it's 3.8 centimeters."  He went on to detail several wild guesses he had gotten from others in response to this question.

The reason I happened to know this small piece of astronomical data is that earlier in the week, I had watched a couple of videos about solar eclipses with the kids so they could understand what was going on when we would see it.  As it is, the moon has a very slightly elliptical orbit, and so when the moon is on the slightly-closer-to-Earth phase, any eclipse created will be a total eclipse.  When it is in the slightly-further-from-Earth phase, eclipses will be annular.  (You can Google that or have a look on YouTube if you aren't sure what that means. )  The moon's slow drift from Earth towards a mathematically dual orbit system means that at some point in the extremely distant future, it will not ever be close enough to Earth to create total eclipses, and all eclipses from then on will be annular.  This drift occurs at the previously stated approximately  1 1/2 inches per year.  

This British astrophysicist could have asked me almost any other question relevant to his field, and I would have been absolutely stumped,  but I happened to have been pondering that one random fact at that time, making me appear to know way more about his field than he would have expected.

He is going to Spain in 2026 to see the total eclipse there, but he is not going to Alaska in 2033, because, as he reported,  "I am not that crazy."

Train Tracks

Sometimes life is sailing along on one track and I am positive my life will always be that way.  This is the track, the only track.  Suddenly I have an opportunity to switch trains at a station.  I find myself on a different track headed somewhere else.  Now this is the Only Track.  I will be on this train for the rest of my life - no question. Without warning one day, that train derails, and I can't even find another train to board.   Can't go back to the first train.  Don't even know what sort of train to look for....

This has been the first school year in a decade or more where things felt stable - where I wasn't completely losing my mind.  There are various reasons for that, and I can't necessarily articulate them all.  I would not have said at various points in the moment that I was losing my mind, but I don't always notice things like that until months or years after the fact.  It takes a long while of figurative rumination to reach such conclusions. Suffice it to say that it has been really challenging and exhausting for a long while.

In the autumn, E was off to the same school for the second year and better settled in; Jared and I still had L and L home with us.  I had a larger teaching load than ever before, but I also recognized that I was at my limit and turned away further inquiries.  I had scheduled that load in such a way that I had this lovely morning gap in which to fulfill the following missions: morning constitutional including daily grocery stop for the immediate requests, prepping and looking through various activities and projects to do with L and L which could be rightly construed as education, and two or three hours to just be with them - to work through those projects at their own pace in their own time with joy and no hurry.  We explored math and reading and violin and piano and science and art for the most part, and it was lovely and collaborative and really rich.  We had found a really comfortable groove...

Last summer Jared and I played a chamber concert as we have done the last several summers, and it was such a strong reminder of how much I like playing the violin and want to play more of it with others at a similar level. Between times, projects of that nature are somewhat of a rarity, due to coordinating far-flung personnel and the logistics of drumming up an audience.  It is an intensive labor of love, which rarely pays much, if at all.

Then there is a vague background dissatisfaction in my life, a scratch which is not itched by practicing "for fun", teaching the violin, or other creative pursuits. It is the wish to play the violin, well, with and for others, in an appreciative setting.  This is what I trained for, really from my youngest years and up through my masters degree.  Teaching was always an interest and part of the imagined equation, but the performing part was always central, and this is not the essay to go into how and why that may have derailed.  Maybe that's better left for ponderings and wanderings and journals and the proverbial therapist's office.

Also last autumn, a former classmate made a joke about no one wanting to sit next to her, as the two chairs to her right were open in the Seattle Symphony.   Jared suggested I could take up the viola and play the audition.   I really didn't want to play that much viola, so rejected the idea out of hand.  But not long after, multiple violin spots came open, and with Jared's urging, I decided, on December 19th, to take the violin audition.  He also wisely suggested I could not do everything and would need to cut back in other areas.

So, I began preparing carefully, with great focus and intention,  spending between three and nine hours a day in my practice room, six days a week.  I collected the audition materials.  I designed an intensive, stretching, and apropos scale, arpeggio, tone, and vibrato program for myself.  I scoured recordings for tempo and expressive choices.  I recorded myself frequently and analyzed the results to plan specific attacks on unsatisfactory bits.  I problem solved and asked unending questions of my playing. I spent hours using the metronome and drone in so many creative and challenging ways.  I played for people at home and over the internet for experience and feedback.  I tackled every challenge that came my way, not "hoping and praying" my way through the hard spots as I had spent my previous life doing.  I watched lectures and demonstrations online.  I had four people help me with my resume and four people help me with my pre-audition recording.  I made phone calls (a challenge for me) and communicated via email with many people until I found someone to prescribe and help me trial an anti-anxiety medication for the actual event.  I invested everything, and I started to get results.   I learned so much, I embodied so many things I had previously only known intellectually,  and I was excited to see where I could go with this.  Despite my years spent preparing for and attending conservatory, I had never focussed so single-mindedly on one project, and it was an incredible ride.

On March 3rd, one month prior to the actual audition week, I learned I had not been invited.  I had logged probably 400 hours of work by then, and even more hours of focus and intention, and that train wasn't going to just vanish in a poof of smoke.  But... I was not still riding it to its destination.  The first twenty-four hours of disappointment were overwhelmingly intense and I canceled some teaching that the grief would not allow me to fulfill.  Then it took three or so weeks to sort of gain a new footing.  I was not worried about the emotional rollercoaster this go round; I knew it would settle in time.   That is one of the huge blessings of age, because my younger self would not have yet noticed the train pattern and really thought that there would be no other trains ever and been utterly hopeless.   (On a related note, I have read that it may be now thought that certain types of brains don't finish the growing/connecting/pruning sequence until around age 35, as opposed to the more common age of 25, and that really makes me wonder a few things looking back...)

In the ensuing month, I have practiced dramatically less, but thankfully I have also not been handed a ticket for a train I rode a decade ago where even the thought of the expectation of practice made me vaguely angry.  What to practice has been a bit of an issue...  And how to balance time with my kids with my interest in actually playing the violin while working full time has been a bit of an issue... There has been some slow movement towards those hard-to-schedule, hard-to-recruit-audiences, hard-to-get-paid chamber concerts.  There have been some new personal contacts made and slow progress towards getting myself on the sub lists for the local ensembles.  There has been slow progress towards getting back into a richer environmental routine with L and L.  And... the smaller L has been registered for Kindergarten next year.  There is much wondering on my part as to how that will affect the larger L in the fall.  No real conclusions have been made on any front.

I am not sorry at all I took that audition train.  I learned so much about playing the violin, about practicing, and really about teaching.   I also learned about how mythical the US cultural idea of doing it yourself or pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is.  Instead, I found a group of incredible people around me supporting, teaching, and assisting, and I discovered with my eyes wide open just how communal any single success really is.  It is easy to buy into the John Wayne myth of our culture when you are younger and can't see privilege yet.  It seems that maybe real community isn't about conformity or following the same sets of social rules, but about seeing people for who they are and supporting each other anyway.

Portent

The morning was pleasantly cool when I stepped outside my shelter.  The cicadas and crickets and birds were singing their morning songs,  and the mourning doves were calling, as they do after dawn.  The sky was blue in patches with a light breeze.  As I went about my morning roundbout, past a creek, through stands of trees, along patches of grass and wildflowers, the gentle breeze blew in more clouds, and the air grew thicker, heavier, and wetter.  After some time, I returned to my dwelling and remained there, tending to the inside chores until the middle of the day. 

When I again stepped out of my shelter into the clear patch near my dwelling, the sun was not at its zenith yet, but it rode high.  The clouds roiling the sky portended rain,  but just now they were pleasant, blocking some of the heat of the day and changing the light constantly.  As noon approached, it did start to get noticeably darker, as if it might rain, but the clouds had not thickened.  Then evening came on rather suddenly.  It was definitely an evening sort of light, but the shadows did not grow long.  Birds and crickets and frogs sang their evening songs and it grew duskier and duskier.  The light was not right, the timing was not right, but it was not yet stormy.  The familiar felt quite strange, as if I were waiting for the unknown, and all my senses prickled.  Something frightening and unusual was happening: the whole world was falling asleep at noon.  

Suddenly the brightest part of the sky fell dark, and night was upon us.  Directly overhead, where the sun had been only a few moments ago, a frightening black circle appeared with pale, glowing tongues of white flame streaming away.  The sky had  turned to night, and Jupiter appeared high overhead.  Grey shadows cast about, and cool, quiet stillness covered the ground.  I was frozen in place, frozen in this moment.  Was this a sign?  Was this the end of all things?  Was this a visitation?  Was this a dream?  I could not tell what I felt.  Terror?  Fascination?  Joy?  Complete peace? Trembling, that I was.  I could not take my eyes off the black, streaming orb above me.  The image flamed in my mind, and eternity stretched out behind and before....

...I know not how long I had been locked in gaze at this terrifying wonder (seconds?  minutes?  hours?), when suddenly it flashed bright - blindingly, brilliantly bright. The black thing was gone.  The landscape got lighter and lighter: another dawn in the middle of the day, as the clouds roiled onward.  The world woke from its trance, and the light changed back by degrees, to that of a cloudy noon. The storm never came, though a few raindrops fell.

The sky and the animals and plants returned to their ancient routines, but the world would never be the same again.  Something terrible, dramatic, mysterious, and magical had happened.  I did not know what yet, but it clearly had some meaning to be learned with an open heart.

*********

Yesterday I saw for the first (and possibly only) time a total eclipse, and I tried to think really hard about what it would be like to experience that in a pre-scientific, pre-industrial culture.  Even with all the information about what would happen and the cameras and the pinhole viewers, and the special eclipse glasses, it was still shocking and deeply moving.

Real Things

 Yesterday Jared and I plus L and L drove up to the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle to visit the violin shop.  I have been to our lovely one-man violin shop in our neighborhood many times with little things, but Jared and I had some business with our concert instruments to attend to.  When that's the case, we go to the place where the proprietor has previously worked in the big shops in Chicago and London and who, when the LA Phil found their stolen Strad waterlogged and falling apart in an alley, send it to him for restoration. 

It's an old Victorian neighborhood with small yards, big trees, old brick store fronts, and a cliff-front view of the Sound.  No parking lots, you just find an empty spot along a quiet residential street.  The shop is old, and quite an ugly box from the outside.  The downstairs is the store front.  The proprietor lives in the upstairs.  The shop is a meandering and haphazard set of rooms flowing here and there, remodeled bit by bit over probably mote than a century to meet the needs of the year.  Some rooms are higher and some are lower.  The furniture is a comfortable mismatch of antiques and newer things, all made from real, sturdy, solid wood and glass.  There is none of the popular, slick, grey and white Scandinavian styling with MCM throwbacks, horizontal striping, and the angular tropical plant thrown in for good measure. Thr place is filled with real art - paintings, drawings, old prints, very real things collected slowly over time.  Nothing is thrown together to create an impression - it's the history of interwoven lives.  No canned music assaults the senses, a rarity in any business now.  The only screens are in the business office, a room off to the side, stuffed with file drawers, random odds and ends, and a computer.

There are four people working the shop.  Front desk/office manager/keeps-things-running is a fabulously friendly and kind person who remembers all repeat customers and loves to see the kids come in. With her incredible skill, she sews up the business end of things while the three nerds in the workshop make magic with old wood, inherited from retired makers, and harvested once upon a time in the Mittenwald area of southern Germany.

That high-ceilinged workshop, with a couple of windows into the back alley, is the heart of the operation.  No carpets there ,but.lots of stains and wood shavings.  Workbenches, padded cello gurneys, violins and violas (or pieces thereof) hanging by their scrolls from sturdy wires, drawers and racks of woodworking tools, measuring devices, magnifying glasses, small burners with pots of hot water and hide glue, paint brushes, bridge jacks...  There are the three fellows in there, wearing aprons, doing real things to real objects with their hands, just as people have done for centuries and centuries and centuries.  There is a camaraderie amongst them as they work on their various projects- the two younger fellows in their 30s or 40s and the grey-haired, unassuming, but quick and focussed giant-in-his-field.  

He started working in the shop at 12, when it was owned by his predecessor, earning money to help pay for his violin studies.  After working in some of the biggest shops in the world, he came back to this quiet neighborhood when Seattle was a smaller, quirkier place, and bought the business when the previous owner retired.  Not only the LA Phil, but people from all over the world send him their gnarliest and most valuable projects; he sits at the workbench with his midas touch and makes scraps of wood sing.  It seems like a wonderful life.

What has it got in its pocketses?

This is what I currently have in my coat pockets:

In my left pocket I have a loop end bolt that I picked up when it fell off the laundry line after its nut went missing.  I put it in my coat pocket so as to keep track of it until such a time as I get around to finding a new nut.  Later it was joined by the pink glass bead with its half a metal liner, found on the living room floor while vacuuming.   The intention was to not lose it until I found the button box.  Meanwhile, it became clear that while I am walking, I'd best put the loop of the bolt around the tip of my left pinky, with the small opening facing into my hand, so that I can move the bead around on the stalk with my thumb while I go on my daily walk.  

The right pocket contains a shell fragment from the beach that a child handed me for safekeeping, and I immediately recognized a small, smooth depression fit for rubbing with my right thumb.  This one gets used simultaneous while walking.

In addition, my frequent stops at the smaller grocery on my walk for daily requested kid rations sometimes finds me picking up a small packet of my old favorites - peanut M&Ms.  They seemed expensive to me back in my Cleveland days at 75c a unit.  They cost even more now, and my inner 22-year-old is horrified at the extravagance.  If I do eat the contents of one of these packets on the return trip, I fold the empty envelope into even eighths and place it in my left pocket until such a time as I find the proper receptacle.