The Joys of Teaching

The first day back after a break is always a little rough. One of Dean's 8th grade percussionist was playing timpani while his band was sight reading a song. He raised his hand and asked, "Does a circle mean a whole note?" Seriously, I really couldn't make this stuff up.


I'm so glad that it's cold outside. Got a splitting headache and I'm going to bed in five minutes.

Early To Rise.....Again

So, yes, it is almost 5 in the morning and I've been up for about an hour and half. I was up this early yesterday, too. I think that all of the laying around and napping has filled my sleep needs, so I'm up at 3:30 surfing the internet. Thank goodness I have a laptop. When I woke up I was covered in sweat and had to change everything, but I think that means my fever broke. I sure hope so. I feel better right now, but I've been taking fever reducers every 4 hours for the past 24 hours so I can't tell if I'm actually better or if it's just the meds doing their job. My coughing is still getting worse. My guardian angel, Natasha, brought me some cough pills last night. I took one about 9:30 and was still coughing my head off at 11:00 so I took another one. That one seemed to do the trick. I'm coughing a little, just not constantly anymore. My throat is really sore from all the coughing though. I'm just ready to get out of bed and actually DO something. Hopefully I will be able to later day. I've been couped up in my house since Wednesday now!!!!

Sick Again.....

I think I got the flu from one of the grimy kids at school. I've spent the last three days in the bed with a fever. I'm freezing, then I'm burning up, and I have a cough that is getting worse instead of better. I was finally able to walk to the mailbox last night. I feel better right now, except for my throat, but I think that it is only because I've taken enough tylenol to sedate a horse. My nurse sister said it was ok for me to take all of this medicine, so I hope I don't end up needing a liver transplant. I just hope I'm done having a fever because laying in bed is getting old. And I'm getting lonely. I've had no contact with the outside world except for a brief visit from Sarah, Natasha, Allie, and Parker today. We sat outside in the sun to get our Vitamin D for the day, except it just made me tired again. And Parker threw a track ball at me and when I told him it hurt he said, "NO!" Apparently that is his new favorite word. And then he stole an apple from Sarah. It was pretty cute. I wish I was two again. You can tell people no whenever you want and steal people's fruit and get away with it. Oh Natasha, your kids are so entertaining!!! And thanks for bringing me all that stuff yesterday. My immune system thanks you, too.

The Joys of Teaching

I've got a doozie of a story today. During concert band today we were rehearsing our song, Angels We Have Heard on High, in the usual groundhog day fashion that is the concert band. I was in the middle of counting off the oboe player when I look over to the saxophone section and watch our very special saxophone player take the neck off of this sax, put the open end up to his nose, close off one of his nostrils and then blow into the sax neck with the open nostril. I was so appalled that I almost fell out of my chair!!!!!!! Now, this kid is so special that he can hardly write his name and he really doesn't do more than hold the saxophone. Most of the time he spends the class swabbing out his instrument and polishing the outside. A few minutes later he was putting the cork end of his neck into his ear. He did swab out the instrument after he blew his nose into it, so I guess that's a good thing. Don't worry, I've already had a glass of wine and I'm going to bed. Tomorrow is a new day - hopefully with fewer boogers.

I finally got some rechargeable batteries for my camera so I am finally able to post some pictures.The first picture is of my bedroom. I finally got the curtains in my room hung up and I got new bedding today. You can kinda see the crown moulding, too. I had some decorative pieces put in the corners. All of the moulding still needs to be caulked and painted and hopefully that will done before the end of the year.

Here is another view of the crown over the fire place.

Things have been so super busy lately. I can't wait for this week to be over so I can get some sleep. I guess I wasn't mentally prepared for the last month. It's just been one thing after another and I feel like I've spent the little free time I've had playing catch up. I'm so glad to have the middle school region tryouts over with and I'm looking forward to being finished with the high school tryouts, too. I woke up this morning singing the A major etude - I'm only a few more weeks away from needing to be committed. Last weekend I had some sort of freak 24 hour stomach virus and I missed the craft show where Natasha and I had a booth. Natasha had to work it by herself (she's awesome!) and we still have stuff to get rid of. If you need any Christmas cards or gifts please let one of us know!! We'll be able to take care of you. Between football games, concerts, makeup lessons because of marching band, migraines, craft shows, viruses, laundry, and bad clarinet playing - I'm pretty wiped.

The Joys of Teaching

We've been in a rut for the last few weeks. There's been a lot going on so I haven't found the students' dumb moments quite so endearing lately. Today was much better, though, so I couldn't get angry when one of my beginner french horn players acted like he had just started playing horn last week. That class is usually my best beginner class, except for this one kid that never practices. (No, it's not the kid that cries every class). So today in our warm up we were playing through a mini-chromatic scale that we'd been working on for a about a week and half. I can hear this one kid missing every note, so I asked him to play it for me. The first three notes are C-C#-D. He plays C then tries to put his trigger down on C# and D. For my non-musician friends, you don't put your trigger down on horn til you get up to G#. I said to him, "You don't need your trigger on any of these notes." So he tried again to no avail. I asked him if he had practiced at home on this and he said no so I sent him to the practice room to work it out and told him to come back when he had it worked out. I'm thinking he's going to be gone for 10 minutes. After 30 minutes I go check on him. I asked him to play it for me, so he starts playing and now he's not moving any valves at all. I showed him the fingerings and then he played it fine. I was confused as to why he couldn't do it earlier. Then he said, "I thought you said that there is no triggers on this?" I responded with, "Right, there's not." Then he asks me while wiggling his three valves, "Aren't these triggers?" So he thought he was going to be able to play 8 chromatic notes on an open partial. And he doesn't know his valves from his trigger. If the rest of the class wasn't awesome I would have really questioned my decision to teach music.