It has wound up being a very project-y summer.
But before all that started, June was so very full of music, that I was exhausted and so very done by its end. On June 1st Jared and I played a concert with Seattle Chamber Orchestra. The following weekend we played a pair of chamber concerts with students of a piano teacher we know. We also had our end-of-year studio recital, which I did the programs and good chunk of the accompanying for, not to mention the set up and clean up. I also ended playing the last two subscription sets of the season with the Seattle Symphony, RATHER last minute, and then Jared and I took our full-length duo program on its first outting to our neighborhood retirement home. Oh, I also took an audition for a permanent violin spot in the North Corner Chamber Orchestra. And I did the group matching, scheduling, music selection, transcriptions, and communications for our annual July strings camp, while also finishing up my school year teaching and doing the summer lesson scheduling and starting those. The kids all finished school mid-month, and one of them flew to Texas for a week. There were also friend things, a planned camping attempt that turned into a visit to Oregon family instead, and medical appointments.
That brings us to July, in which another kid went to Texas, we had our strings camp including park concert, Jared and I played our duo concert at the wine shop, we read some quartets with friends, we actually went camping for two nights, we were treated to most of the Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer Festival concerts, we canceled our 20th anniversary trip sans kids due to a sick kid (first trip together in ten years 😭,) I went to the dentist twice, two kids went to VBS, we taught lots of lessons, more friend stuff, and my first giant physical project started.
That project was the reorganization and cleaning out of the back bedroom.
(It should be remembered that aside from the storage shed and two teaching studios on our property which have very specific uses, our 1942 cabin contains 480 square feet, housing currently 5 people, 2 cats, and unfortunately a 21st century volume of material possessions. As younger people grow up, needs change, and that means creative reorganization of that small space to meet the requirements of the moment. I will also mention that we do have to put sections of group class into our kitchen a couple days a week, as well.)
The back bedroom "remodel" cost me $57 plus untold sweat equity, time, and decision making. $40 was for the loft bed for Laurel, $10 was for the cube book shelf that would fit atop her dresser under the loft, and $7 was for the twin sheet set. The nearly new mattress was free, and everything else, including the curtains around her new private pod was made from things we already owned. I moved lots of furniture, scrubbed floors, measured and puzzled and measured and puzzled again, disassembled built-in hardware in the closet, threw away two full trash bags of garbage, sent another bag to textile recycling, gave away bags of things to the Neighborhood Buy Nothing and Goodwill, and found a buyer for a very giant, no-longer used 1980s themed doll house. So very much sweeping and vacuuming and organizing. The back bedroom feels good, clean, usable and more spacious than before. We currently have three people and a cat sleeping in it. Including the "closet", the room is rather precisely 161 inches long and 116 inches wide, for an approximate square footage of 129 feet. It is the larger of the two bedrooms. (The front bedroom is 6 inches shorter and 4 inches narrower, which makes a noticeable difference when tetris-ing furniture options with nearly no margin.) I have absolutely used over and over the collaborative proactive solutions Plan B process- such valuable life skills!- to work through making decisions which accommodate all the varied needs in our house.
Yesterday, I started on what promises to be the bigger project. This project will involve subdividing the living room into living room plus private bedroom pod for my eldest. So far I have spent $0 on it, as we acquired a second loft bed and mattress from the neighborhood Buy Nothing and plan to wall off the area with a large bookcase from the front bedroom and the Hutch of Doom. I will end up spending some money on it eventually, as I will need to aquire materials for making and hanging curtains around it, at the very least. The sweat equity and decision making and cleaning out are going to be more massive, more time consuming and more difficult on this one.
But... as I started unloading the Hutch of Doom in preparation for rotating it 90 degrees, I found the missing first disc of the two-disc set I returned to the library two years ago without ever watching it, and took it back to the library, as well. I am vaguely hopeful that we will find the set of car/house keys lost in our living room on July 31st of 2020. It will be fairly messy and chaotic in the house for another week or two as this project moves through phases in a crowded and in-use space. This project is slated to make more space in the front bedroom so that Jared has a place to store AND PRACTICE his three cellos and actually have a functional location for his clothes (don't even ask how they are having to be piecemeal stored right now, because you would be too depressed to find out.)
Those are the two largest projects which I am in charge of. This last week I also spent many hours on the Fall lesson/group class scheduling tetris for our business and am awaiting complaints and approvals to publish the final draft. There is another smaller, quieter project I have been working on alongside which can be discussed in due time, and another three house projects I'd love to get to, but can live without...
Jared and his dad are in charge of another entirely different Big Project. It was meant to be a simple reroof- newfangled tarpaper and shingle replacement- taking hopefully three days while I was busy teaching at the Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute the first week of August. But as they got into it, it grew to massive proportions. It now has included removing, rebuilding and replacing all the rafters and eaves and front porch overhang, putting in new insulation and venting, and cutting and placing new sheeting before the roofing part can be gotten to. In addition to many hours of solo work Jared has done, he and his dad have worked together all day and well into the evening 11 days so far, and his dad is coming back tomorrow for more...
Needless to say, the other camping trips to Mt. Saint Helens and Kalaloch Beach we had blocked out time for this summer for are out, but hopefully we should make it through the rapidly approaching school year without roof leaks and with people able to sleep and have the desired levels of privacy in ways that are needed, and people in this house will have better ways to manage their own stuff without getting in each other's way as much...
I tell you (ironically, while lounging in bed and typing this out!): there is no rest for the weary.
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