Bird!

Jackson has been obsessed with birds for a long time. He is very good at pointing them out, no matter how far away. Last summer we put a bird feeder on our back porch so Jackson would have more opportunities to look at birds. His interest recently extended to Big Bird (Bird! Bird!)- although he likes Elmo ("Mullmo") as well.

Recently while I drive in my car I have been listening to a playlist of songs that Cantico (the choir that I direct) will be singing at our next concert. One of these songs is a King's Singers arrangement of The Beatles' "Blackbird." This is Jackson's new favorite song. One day I was listening to it and every time it finished he would say, "Gen! Gen!" ("Again!") Now it is to the point that every time we get in the car he says, "Songs! Bird! Bird!"- meaning that he wants to hear "Blackbird." I have to admit it is a pretty awesome song.

Today I was listening to it on my laptop and seriously Jackson listened to it about 10 times in a row. If I tried to ignore his pleas to listen "gen!" then he broke out with tears and tantrums. So here is Jackson's new favorite song:

Getting into the Christmas Spirit

This Christmas season has been a bit stressful for me. I guess two-month-old baby + husband who works long hours + co-directing a ticketed concert for Cantico + directing/writing ward choir Christmas program = lots of stress and craziness. Two years ago at Christmas I was in a similar situation-- Jackson was only a month old. Although I had one less choir to deal with, I directed the ward choir program when he was only 3 weeks old. Another holiday season packed with excitement....

When you have a new baby during the holidays it seems like you end up sorting your traditions into "necessary" and "maybe next year" piles. There are a lot of smaller things that go by the wayside and the end result is usually not exactly "Martha Stewart." This Christmas has been no different. While Adelyn is two months old, I still feel like I'm decorating with one hand tied behind my back. (Oh wait, that's because I am. Well at least with one hand tied up holding baby.) So I publicly apologize that this year we are not making treat plates for our neighbors, decorating gingerbread houses, mailing Christmas cards or putting up lights on the outside of our house (although I still like to think that maybe Santa will do the lights when he comes... it just looks so sad and un-festive).

I have to admit that I spent the first part of December feeling a bit grinch-y. I had a lot going on and my main focus was survival. So many Christmas traditions seemed like just one more thing that creates extra work or an excuse for excess sugar. And who invented candy canes anyway? Do they have any idea what a sticky mess they make when given to a two-year-old? And why do my two older kids think that just because something is labeled "Christmas special" on TV, it means that they get to watch it regardless of how much TV they've already watched that day? (Oh yeah, they think that because mom is exhausted and has too much to do so she caves in.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not a scrooge at heart. I LOVED the Christmas season as a kid and I remember it being magical. I want it to be magical for my kids too, but I have come to the shocking realization that I am not... well, magic.

My mother had six children, so I'm sure that not every Christmas was picture-perfect at our house. If I think back, I think there were more years that our outside lights didn't make it up than years that they did. And we had a way of cherry-picking traditions at times (i.e. sometimes Christmas Eve was a festive dinner, sometimes it was pizza delivery). But I still remember loving it: they were always happy times, filled with love and warm memories.

Now, with the end of my slew of Christmas concerts, the Christmas season has officially kicked off for me. Things have become more calm and I have had more time to plan our family festivities. I started wrapping presents and checking items off my to-do list. My family is here (hooray!! hooray!!) and Dave has some days off work. (Honestly, I think whenever Dave has time off work that makes it a holiday for me.) But I still felt this yearning for that "Christmas magic" that I remember feeling as a child.

Yesterday I was driving in the car and I turned on the CD player. I felt irritated as I realized that once again I forgot to bring a Christmas CD out to the car. (How lame is it that I don't even have time to bring out a Christmas CD so I can feel festive while I drive around and run errands?) So I listened to the BYU Women's Chorus CD that was in. The song "Wondrous Love" came on:

"What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down
When I was sinking down, sinking down
When I was sinking down beneath God's righteous frown, Christ laid aside his crown for my soul."

It just struck me that this song is the essence of Christmas: Christ laid aside his crown- he came down from heaven, leaving his position as the Son of God, to become a helpless human baby- for my soul. I felt what an amazing gift it is-- that because of Christ we can return to God, in spite of all of our faults and human failings. I truly feel grateful for Christ and his willingness to lay aside his crown for me.

I'll be honest-- the worldly, materialistic part of me still wishes for a picture-perfect Christmas, filled with beautiful decorations, festive parties, handmade greeting cards and holiday cheer. A new baby definitely makes it more difficult to keep up with the "Martha Stewart" parts of Christmas. I just have to resign myself to the fact that, at least this year, our decorations, cards and other things will have to be on a lower scale (or nonexistent). [Who am I kidding? I'm not Martha Stewart even in a year when I don't have a baby.... =) Handmade greeting cards are not even on my list of aspirations... handmade caramel popcorn, maybe.]

I just try to remember that the very first Christmas was about a new baby. Even though they didn't have cameras to record it, I'm fairly certain it was not picture-perfect, despite what the artists who paint it would have you believe. The magic of Christmas is in spending time with those you love, sharing love with those who need it and remembering that Christ "laid aside his crown for my soul" --no elaborate decorations or handmade greeting cards required.

The Christmas Program-- and the close of my holiday performances (phew)

Sunday night I finished my 6th and final Christmas performance. Phew.... I played the Hallelujah Chorus on the organ for a Christmas concert. While I am quite capable at playing the organ, I'm a pianist- not "an organist"- by profession, so playing difficult music on the organ is always a bit nerve-wracking. Regardless, I got through the experience mostly unscathed. ;)

Sunday was also our ward choir Christmas program (not to be confused with my Cantico Christmas concert which was last Friday). Up until even two weeks ago, the ward choir Christmas program was striking fear into my heart. Ward choir in so many ways is always a crapshoot: you don't audition the singers, nobody has to come, everyone in the ward [church congregation] is busy with families and other church responsibilities. You don't have a ton of rehearsal time to begin with. And then pretty much every week you have a different configuration of people and you never know who is or isn't going to show up. That's a scary thing to face as a choir director and an admitted control freak.

I knew up front that the Christmas program was going to come soon after I had a baby so I decided that I was going to pare it way down and just choose really simple music this year. And I really fully intended to.... But I looked and looked and I just didn't find anything that really inspired me or that I felt like singing. So finally I threw caution to the wind and just chose music that I really loved. Some of it was very difficult for a non-audition church choir (think Mack Wilberg/Mormon Tabernacle Choir arrangement...), but I had an accompanist who could play it so I decided to do it anyway. It was challenging music. And about two weeks ago, I was thinking, "What have I done? There's no way we're going to pull off this music. The program is going to be a fiasco and it's going to be all my fault for choosing music that was just too difficult."

We barely pulled together our Mack Wilberg arrangement in time for our stake [multi-congregation] Christmas choir concert last week. But we pulled it off, even with our two main sopranos being either sick or out of town. On Saturday morning we had our final run-through rehearsal to prepare for our church program on Sunday. At that rehearsal something magical happened... it suddenly came together-- all of it. People knew their parts and we started making music. It touched me in a way that many choirs that are much more technically proficient haven't. These volunteer singers were singing to share their love of our Savior and joy at his birth. Their hard work over so many weeks had paid off: the result was beautiful.

Ward choir has its quirks. And I have to admit that sometimes it drives me crazy. There are days when I think that I just can't do this anymore-- one more rehearsal with only 6 people showing up and I'm just going to lose it. But then there are days like Sunday, when I realize how blessed I am to be directing a group of singers who, while they do not have extensive musical training, come together and give their all to make music that shares the message of God's love for us.

Coming Up for Air

So I guess my month of daily blog posting met an early demise. Maybe next year.... This past week has been full of craziness. The choir that I direct had its first two performances this week. They were both short 30-minute performances at other events (the Grotto Festival of Lights and the Festival of the Nativities in Vancouver). Between last-minute babysitting changes, memorizing music, planning for next season and trying to arrange all of the final details for our "big" concert this coming Friday, I have been in over my head (as I knew I would be... keep chanting to self "You can make it- you're almost there... You can make it- you're almost there."). So I'm taking a quick gulp of air before I submerge myself in concert preparations for the next week.

But the concert is going to be fabulous. If you're going to be in the area it's not too late to get tickets on our website. So, yes, this is what has been absorbing my time and postponing the commitment to paper of all of the blog posts forming in my head. You'll just have to wait in suspense for the next anxiously-anticipate post from K kid. (Humor me, here, okay?) ;)

A Chinese Garden Festival

Sundays... a day of rest... in theory, at least. But not in practice, at least if you're a musician. I love Sundays, mostly because it is the one day that Dave usually doesn't have work and we get to see a bit more of him than we usually do. But if you judge the success of a Sunday by the proportion of rest actually obtained, then my Sundays would be a miserable failure indeed.

Let's take this Sunday. The choir was singing in church, which means that we meet at 8:15 to run through the piece at the church. I am not a morning person, true, but without children 8:15 is a reasonable time to meet for a pre-church practice. But when you add kids (especially a nursing baby) into the equation, an 8:15 rehearsal becomes a figure of impossibility equivalent to trying to match my weight with a supermodel's or my figure with Barbie's... it just ain't gonna happen. But the perpetual optimist in me really believes that if something needs to happen I will just step it up and make it happen. And I probably would have if I didn't have kids. I came really close. I was ready. Jared and Camryn were ready. Dave was ready to take another car with Jackson later. But then Adelyn wanted to nurse. Now. (No ifs, ands or buts.) And Jackson had a fever, so there was the question of what to do with him for church. I succumbed to the gravitational pull of my kids' interminable needs and ended up walking into my 8:15 rehearsal at 8:28, hanging my head in embarrassment and mortification.

Then I was on to substitute for playing the organ for church. So after a mad dash to find someone to sit with the kids I rushed to the organ and tried to use the few minutes of prelude to run through the hymns I needed to play for the meeting. (This is all the more irritating because I had some beautiful prelude prepared from the wedding I played for the night before. But my limited practice time for the wedding- most of which happened with Adelyn on my lap nursing- did not allow time to prepare the hymns for the meeting, so I was left winging it.) Luckily my kids were abnormally well-behaved. At the end of the meeting Adelyn was still asleep, so I took the liberty of skipping Sunday School to practice the hymns for next week (when I am on to substitute again).

Between an interview and other miscellaneous stuff I didn't get home until an hour before choir. Mad dash to feed kids, pick up house and figure out what is most essential to work on during choir.... Big stress out as I realize how little time is left until the Christmas program... By the time choir is done and cleaned up, most of the afternoon is gone. 

At this point Jared, handed me an important-looking packet of papers in his handwriting. He had issued me an invitation to "a Chinese Garden Festival" taking place at our house that very night! (I had lent out a bunch of greenery from our house as well as some white Christmas lights for the wedding the night before. Jared arranged the greenery, flower arrangements, etc. with white lights on them in our living room, thus creating the backdrop for his "Chinese Garden Festival." Why Chinese? I'm not sure... I guess it sounds more exciting than a just plain garden festival.) Complete with the invitation was a schedule of events (music, games, dinner, dancing, looking at lights, treat) and a list of music asking me if I would play and requiring my signature. (Even my own son can't invite me to an event without asking me to play for it. ;])

I was more than a little bit worn out by that point, but he was so excited about it that I didn't have much choice but to accept the invitation. So at 5:00 pm, Dave and I showed up to the Chinese Garden Festival. We walked around to look at the lights (it didn't take long), we sang songs for our music and then we all played Chinese Checkers before making dinner. After dinner we sang a few more songs, watched the kids dance and had a treat.

So I never was able to squeeze my nap in on Sunday. But I have to admit that despite the absence of nap time for mom, I had a good time. And I went to my very first "Chinese Garden Festival." Beat that, all you nap-takers. =]

Putting Things in Perspective

To put things in perspective from yesterday, I just wanted to post about a friend of mine from my choir who has been on my mind a lot recently. My friend Courtney is a fantastic musician- she went to BYU at the same time that I did and got her masters in vocal performance. She is also a wonderful, caring person and a great mom. She had her fourth baby 5 days after I had Adelyn. At our last choir rehearsal, we found out that earlier that day she had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. I just can't even imagine what it would be like to have a brand new baby with three older kids and then have a crisis like that hit on top of it all. It definitely makes my current challenge of trying to keep Jackson from pushing Adelyn too hard in her baby swing and dumping cereal on the floor a bit laughable to even call a "challenge."

Today at 5:30 a.m. she went in for surgery on the tumor. You can read more about it on her blog. I am praying really hard for her that things will go well. If you have any extra prayers to send her way, she could definitely use them. Meanwhile, I am thankful for good health and for her example of courage and good humor in incredibly difficult circumstances. My heart and thoughts are with you today, Courtney!

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Last Sunday we started ward choir again after my break to recover from having a baby. We got off to a bit of a rough start. We didn't have a lot of people and it was just kind of a tough rehearsal- I didn't feel like we accomplished a whole lot or like people enjoyed it. Today it was Sunday and again, the time had rolled around for choir. While ward choir director is one of my favorite jobs in the world and I LOVE it when things are going well, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with choir. I LOVE choosing music, directing the music, having rehearsals, the friends I make at rehearsals, putting together performances, teaching people about singing, and so on. But trying to recruit and get people to come is the bane of my existence. I HATE recruiting for choir. Mormons are notoriously busy with multiple callings, small children, extended family, community activities and such. Trying to convince people that they can find time for one more thing, especially on Sundays, can seem like an impossible task. All along my hope with choir has been that if I try and work hard enough and long enough, eventually we will get a consistent group of people to come and we will be able to not just sing a song or two for church, but progress as a group and get better... that we will be able to make beautiful music that expresses our love for the Lord, brings the Spirit into the meeting and touches people's hearts. But whenever we start to take steps toward that, it seems like things fall apart and we go back to having a "choir" of 6 or 7 people. I try not to take it personally when people don't come, but it is hard not to....

For a while I have been getting discouraged with choir because it seems like we have had more steps backward than forward and choir has been getting smaller, not bigger. Today I decided that I needed to at least make an effort to recruit for the Christmas program and call to remind people. (Note: I would rather get teeth pulled than have to call and try to get people to come to choir. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and nervous. And I take it personally when they say no.) I started calling people and the very first person I called said, "You know I love choir but I just need to spend that time with my family right now." What are you supposed to say to that? The next two people that I called were also "no"s. At that point I was about ready to just ask to be released from this calling. Why do they have me do this if all I am doing is torturing people, tearing them away from their families and making them suffer through one more Sunday meeting?

Regardless of my inauspicious start, I kept calling people and got a few "yes" responses. I quit calling people when Dave called me to eat lunch. He had cooked bacon, toast and omelets for lunch. (Did I mention that I love this man?) After filling my stomach with delicious, salty, greasy food I felt much better about life.     

By the time we finished eating it was almost time for choir, so I started getting chairs out and getting the music ready. At a typical choir practice, two or three people arrive by 2:05, with another couple coming by 2:10 and a few more at 2:15. Today we had 6 people here by 2:00. By 2:05 there were 14 people. And more and more people kept coming. We had 25 people at choir today, including some brand new people who I didn't even call! We had a great rehearsal, working on a piece to sing later this month and a couple of songs for Christmas. The choir sounded great! We had fun! We made progress! I love this calling! Someone from the choir had volunteered to bring treats so people stayed for a few minutes afterward to socialize and eat treats. It was an all-around great rehearsal and great day.

I always worry that when we have a good turnout like this people will assume that this means that they aren't needed and will stop coming (this has happened to me several times). But if they keep coming, think how awesome it would be...

Ward Choir Pick-Me-Up

After having several weeks of marginal numbers at ward choir rehearsal (think 7-8 people at a rehearsal-- that's not even a double quartet! Ouch!) we had a reasonable turnout last week and a really good turnout today. It's amazing how much more cheerful my whole Sunday is when people actually show up for choir and seem to enjoy it. Instead of dreading choir and wondering why I spend so much time on it when nobody even bothers to show up and it's just one more thing on people's schedules that they wish they could get out of, it was fun. We had people come, we practiced, we started sounding good... oh yeah, this is why I actually enjoy doing this job.

Now I am much more encouraged... maybe we will get past just begging people to come and having different people every week. And now planning Christmas music is much more happy... I'm not thinking, "Hmmmm... what can I do when I have different people each week and only 8 people at a time." =]

Getting Through Grunt Work

I've been avoiding my blog recently because of my "must catch up"syndrome. I want to finish some posts about our Alaska trip and some of our summer fun before it is part of the way-too-distant past. But that will have to wait....

I really enjoy when my kids get out of school for the summer. I love the freedom of the schedule, the extra time together, being able to sleep in a little, going for fun outings, etc. But I think it really is about time for school to start again. We've done a lot this summer, but as the summer (and my pregnancy) progresses, my energy is waning. The kids are playing more Wii, we are eating more junk food, whining is getting louder, bedtimes are getting later and healthy home-cooked meals are getting rarer. The thought of having more structure to our schedule is actually beginning to sound like a pleasant change.

It doesn't help that the past few weeks I have been working on several projects for the choir that I assistant-direct. I (and the other behind-the scenes-people) have busy been preparing for auditions, scheduling a venue for our concert, ordering music and getting ready for our fall season to start. The unfortunate lot fell to me to make rehearsal CDs- mainly because I was the only person who had the equipment and know-how to do it (the person who used to make them left the group). So I have been spending hour upon hour painstakingly recording each part of each song, re-recording to fix mistakes, re-arranging the volume (so the part is louder than the accompaniment), exporting the files as mp3s, making a playlist to burn, burning the CDs one by one etc., etc., etc. (In fact, I am writing this post to pass time as I burn CDs.) In short, I have spent the last two weeks of my summer wasting weeks of sunshine on hours of nasty grunt work while my kids' brains are shriveling from too much TV. (To be fair, part of this has to do with exhaustion from pregnancy as well as the typical build up of household stuff on top of the choir tasks.)

Last night we finally had the auditions. It was very encouraging after weeks and weeks of work for what was beginning to feel like a "hypothetical" choir. We had a good turnout and some really great singers to choose from. It was great to see the returning singers at callbacks and enjoy the feeling of being amongst old friends -- some of them I haven't seen since our concert in May. But most of all, once we started singing and this actually became a "real" (vs. hypothetical, "being planned") choir, I remembered why I bother to do all this grunt work up front. There is something magical that happens when you get a group of good singers together and create music. There is such a rush of excitement and energy that comes from being with other people and working together to create something beautiful. Even though I'd had a busy, exhausting day, I felt a renewed burst of energy and enthusiasm for life.

It's always been a struggle as a mom to find the balance of caring for my children -and their practically insatiable demands of time and energy- with taking care of my own needs. Too often it seems that by the time I'm done taking care of only some of my "have-to-do's", my energy is sapped and doing anything interesting, fun or stimulating for me seems like way too much effort than it is worth. My own needs sometimes get pushed so far to the back burner that it's hard to even remember or think of what they might be.

I haven't found any magical answer. Finding balance is just plain difficult and I expect that it always will be... at least for the near future. But when I do get an opportunity to do something that helps me remember or resurrect the non-mommy side of myself, it makes the other responsibilities I have seem like less of a burden and more just like one of many facets of my life.

Why I Love Choir

Choir is one of those things in life that I am passionate about. How that came to be is a bit of a story.

I began singing in our church choir as a 10-year-old (my mom was the accompanist and I got dragged along). As a teenager I continued to sing and often played for choir. As a music major in college I was required to take 6 semesters of "ensemble credit." Given that pianists don't get to play in orchestras, I didn't play jazz, and "Keyboard in Ensemble" was the most horrendous time-sink 1 credit class from you-know-where (so I didn't want to take that any more than the two required semesters), I wasn't left with many options. So what was left to fill those credits? You guessed it, choir. So my love affair with choir began out of a sort of necessity. (As so many things in life do, I suppose....)

I arrived at BYU and decided that I was going to audition for Concert Choir. Mack Wilberg was the director of Concert Choir at the time and I recognized his name from a duet book that I had played as a kid and was like, "Cool. Yeah, I want to sing in choir with him. That sounds like fun." I am embarrassed to admit that at the time I had no idea that he was a rock star of the choir world. I also had no idea that since I was home-schooled through high-school and did not have any experience singing in anything other than ward choir, I basically had no chance (although I have to insert that had I gone to high school there STILL wasn't any choir at our local high school thanks to California budget cuts, so I still wouldn't have had any chance... but I diverge).

So I did the general audition and was politely told to try for Women's Chorus. By this time I had figured out that choir at BYU was a big deal, so I was happy to go for Women's Chorus. I had a great audition, the director loved that I was a piano major who could play for her, I made callbacks... and I didn't make it. I was kind of sad because two of my roommates did make it and I really wanted to be in it with them (both of them had sung in their high school's elite choir for several years). But I had to move on: I added non-audition choir for my ensemble credit and had to beg my way in because I was a girl.

Fast forward to winter semester. I was still irked at not getting in to Women's Chorus, so I tried out at mid-semester. I had a great audition, the director was really positive. I didn't make it. Another semester of non-audition choir for me. By this time I felt that I had done my time, so the next fall I was pretty confident that I would get in to Women's Chorus. I auditioned, it went great, the director was positive, I made callbacks... and I didn't get in. At that point I was stinkin' sick of non-audition choir and quite irritated. So I didn't take ensemble that semester- instead I took voice lessons. Winter semester of my sophomore year I auditioned for Women's Chorus for the 4th time and I finally made it in.

I still remember my first day of Women's Chorus. I took my seat and the director had them sing through a song they had sung the previous semester. We sang Aaron Copland's "Zion's Walls" and the sound just swept through me. I was hooked. In truth, I was hooked long before that. At one of the first university devotionals of my freshman year, BYU Singers sang a bunch of songs from their tour the previous summer. I had never heard a choir sound like that and I vowed that I was going to sing in that choir (or at least Concert Choir) before I left BYU. And so my endless string of auditions began.

Singing in a BYU auditioned choir was one of the highlights of my University experience. I learned to really listen- to myself and others, to work together with other musicians and to be sensitive to musical nuance in a way that I never had before. I sang in Women's Chorus for 3 semesters. The happy end to my story would be to tell you that after all my determination and hard work I achieved my dream and finally was selected to sing in Concert Choir or BYU Singers. Which would indeed be very happy, except that it isn't true- I never did make either of the top choirs. I did make callbacks for Concert Choir with Dr. Wilberg in the fall of my junior year, but didn't make the final cut (it was his last year at BYU and record numbers of people auditioned). My senior year... let's just say it didn't happen. Why it didn't happen is a different story which will have to wait for a different post, but it involves fate and a boy.

So my dream didn't exactly work out how I had hoped. But I had an amazing choir experience which ignited a lasting passion for choral music. I had the chance to sing with Dr. Wilberg and Dr. Staheli (the director of BYU Singers) with the BYU combined choirs and learned so much from the short time I sang with them. I also had the chance to study conducting with Dr. Staheli later as a grad student. And my choral experience didn't stop when I left BYU. I sang with the Valparaiso Singers in California, with the Portland Mormon Choir and now I am the co-director of a new group called "Cantico: The Portland Chamber Singers."

So why do I like choir so much? What I love about being a musician is the chance to experience a musical work first-hand: to be in the driver's seat with the rush of sound in your face, to be part of it as it happens. The piano is my main instrument- and I love it- but it is very solitary. And it takes years or even decades of study before you can play really great works on the piano. With choir, yes it takes study and discipline, but it doesn't take nearly as long to get to a level where you can participate in really great music. In choir there is also the fun of working with other people and the challenge of surrendering self to the group: you have to come together as a unit and listen to each other as much as to yourself.

So to sum it up... I really love choir. And this was a really long rambling way to say that.

[Shameless Plug: If you like choir, you should come see our concert on May 16th: www.canticosingers.org]

Blown Over

Now that I have my rant out of my system and my psycho week has past, it's time for some perspective.

Observation #1: The name change for a choir was a good thing. The new name is better and more unique. And if I'm being completely honest, it probably wouldn't have been so last minute if I hadn't been so resistant to it at the beginning.

Observation #2: The flier looks much better now than my initial version did. So it turned out to be a good thing for the flier in the long run as well.

Observation #3: Nobody asked me to make the flier in the first place, let along single-handedly revamp it. This stress (like so much in my life) was self-imposed. There were plenty of people who were willing to help me with it if I hadn't been a control freak about it.

Observation #4: I think I sometimes am addicted to chaos, or at least to projects-- even manufacturing it/them for myself so I have a justification for not being perfect in other areas of my life.

So there you have it, Karen's psycho-analysis of the day. =] Right now Jackson is at that difficult stage where he is busy and destructive: he dumps cereal on the floor, he grabs my mouse and starts clicking while I am typing, he throws his food on the floor from his high chair, he opens my music binders and tries to rip music out, he takes off his diaper and walks around the house peeing on stuff until I catch him, he empties the diaper pail (leaving a trail of diapers behind him), he dumps the folded laundry over the stair railing, etc., etc., etc. If I just make an honest-to-goodness effort to do my job well (to keep the house clean, tidy and organized, meals prepared, laundry done) up against this kind of opposition I would (and do) fail miserably most of the time. BUT-- if I have a project!!!- this gives me an excuse for having me house look like it does. See, it's not because I'm incompetent and a bad housekeeper and don't watch my 15-month-old closely enough that my house is messy, oh no.... It's because I'm so busy with other, ahem, more important things, that I just don't have time to get to it. But if I weren't so busy with important things -let me assure you- I would shine just as brilliantly at my housekeeping as I do at everything else that I do. ;)

So at what point do you just admit defeat and say, "You know what... my house is a mess and even when my husband had a whole week off of work we didn't make a dent." Speaking of which, Jackson just walked in brushing his teeth with Jared's Pokemon toothbrush and proudly shaking the bottle of Camryn's fluoride pills. I think this is my signal to go.

Warning: Rant Ahead!

I don't want to let this blog turn into a mammoth grouching session, but the goal of being more positive will have to wait for another day (yes, this is going to mess up my goal of not procrastinating, but just ignore that for a moment).

This last week was seriously insane. Granted, a great deal of that was self-imposed (as usual, I know) but that doesn't change the fact that it was really stressful. On Tuesday night, we had rehearsal for the choir that I co-direct. At the end of the rehearsal, one of the board members brought up that she really thought we should change our name. She had a couple of decent reasons for this, but I personally like our name, had already finished designing our publicity materials a couple of weeks before, and didn't really relish the idea of redoing everything- especially because our first performance of the season was going to be on Friday night (yes, three days later).

Too make a long story short, after a day and half of intense negotiation I was overruled. Our name changed. Which was fine... the new name isn't bad- I actually like it, except that it basically blew my entire week. The new name for our group had an entirely different length and fit on the page. After all of the time spent in intense negotiations, I had exactly 24 hours in which to redesign and print our publicity materials so they would be ready to hand out at our first performance. I know I'm ranting here, but people who haven't done graphic design don't realize exactly how time-intensive it is. Even after I finished redesigning it, it took an additional 2-3 hours just to adjust technical things so it would print correctly (adjusting the margins, resizing for the smaller flier, saving in different formats, test printing, etc.).

When I finally finished it I got a "Hey, that looks really good." Which would be lovely... except that I just wasted my entire week (the week that Dave had off, no less!) on this stupid name/flier/printing drama which could have been entirely avoided if we had stuck with the old name. Doesn't that merit a little bit above and beyond your normal validation for good work?

I suppose a fair amount of my irritation might actually be due to the fact that while Dave "had the week off" with forced a shutdown, he basically worked from home 6 hours a day. Between the two, we didn't get any big projects done, we didn't go anywhere exciting... we just saw a little bit more of Dave than usual. (I know, I shouldn't complain-- that in itself is a good thing. Besides, these days, the fact that he has a job at all is a thing to be grateful for, right?) But it's hard not to lament the uneventful passing of a full week of "paid time off"...

So, here is the famous flier which ate a week of my time. Now would be a good time for validation. Feel free to insert comments about how amazing, beautiful and professional-looking it is and how great I am for saving the group so much money by doing it myself. Any comments about how I really just made it harder for myself by being a control freak about it and not delegating you can just keep to yourself. ;) If you really want brownie points, tell me that you are definitely going to come and see the concert and you've got to have tickets, based solely, of course, on how fabulous our flier looks.

The Weather Outside is Frightful...

Right now I'm trying not to be bummed. I'm looking outside my bedroom window at a gorgeous winter wonderland of trees dusted with fresh powdery snow. Which would be lovely... except... the a cappella choir that I co-direct was supposed to sing in a concert at the Grotto tonight, but the concert is canceled. The Grotto is closed because of snow so the concert is off. This is after we already canceled our earlier concert at Zoolights.

This morning our ward choir had a rehearsal for our Christmas program. The rehearsal went great- we have an amazing guest flute player, we are really well-prepared and it will be awesome... except that it might not happen. The prospects are pretty grim, actually. Both of the wards in our town that meet in the morning in are canceled and ours, which meets in the afternoon, might also be canceled- for the second week in a row- if the weather is bad tomorrow. And the snow keeps coming down....

It really is beautiful and I wish I could sit back and enjoy it instead of worrying if all of that work and planning is going to go to waste-- for the second day in a row. I'm 2 for 3 so far with performances getting canceled this weekend. Can it just stop snowing long enough for us to get to church and do the ward choir program? Pretty please?

Professionalism

Grrr... I've been writing this post and trying to finish it for over a week. I'm posting it... FINALLY!
...
Since October I have been assistant director and a singer in a choir that was organized by one of my old friends from school: a small group of twelve people getting ready to sing a short a cappella Christmas concert at a local Cathedral Christmas festival thingy. Most of us are former singers in a college choir or some other active musical group who have had to move music to the back burner for a while because of other pursuits (like children, families, jobs and otherwise "real life"). So basically the idea is that we are all trying to get our musical fix crammed in between the overwhelming busy-ness of everyday life. We have been rehearsing on an evening for 3 hours every other week, preparing for this Christmas festival and a couple of other minor gigs.

When my friend first called me and invited me to participate I really wasn't sure if I had time for another commitment. Much as I love to sing in choirs, I'm already directing the ward choir and can hardly get my laundry folded within a week of it getting washed, let alone have my brain in place to be second in command for a choir that actually wants to try to do challenging repertoire. But the practicing every other week was the clincher for me- I decided I could handle that small of a time commitment and should at least give it a shot.

And so I did. It has been so great to be singing and directing choir again (much as I love ward choir, it's not exactly the same thing...). I didn't realize how much I missed singing until I had it back again. A few weeks ago we had an amazing rehearsal. We have one piece that my friend is directing that is a lot harder than the others. We really buckled down to work on the difficult passages, fix the tuning issues and lock the piece in to place. It was an intense session, but the result was so worth it: there is something amazing that happens when you get a group of people together, you set aside egos and just work to be completely unified and in tune with the others in the group.

But, two weeks in between rehearsals is a long time... and by the last rehearsal before our first concert things were rough again and I was getting flustered. We had very little time and a lot to cover. It didn't help that I had had a crazy week with different commitments almost every single night as well as rehearsals during the day on some days and I had raced off that night after getting a babysitter with nary a moment to gather my thoughts. We were rehearsing one of my pieces and came to a spot where the singers wanted to know what I wanted: did I want a pause with a breath or to continue straight through. A fair enough question... and as I stood there, in front of everyone, on the spot, I didn't have the faintest idea what the answer to that question was. I was sure that I had an opinion- or would have one if I had time to think about it- but at the moment all I could muster was to stammer, look stupid and say, "Uh, you know what, I really don't have any idea right now."

In retrospect, this wasn't such a very big deal, but at the time I felt mortified. I went home bemoaning the fact that now that I have children I have lost my brain and all of my former professionalism with it. What is it about having children that makes it so impossible to be organized, well-prepared and "together"? At what point did I go from being the uber-professional piano teacher to one who gets stressed out with 2 students? But I digress....

We did get through our rehearsal and even our first two performances. On the first Saturday of December we had our first performance at a festival that displays Nativity scenes. Our first piece is a processional that we sing as we walk in. This went quite smoothly until I realized that in a few bars I was supposed to deftly move out in front to the music stand, conduct the last few bars of the piece and be in place to conduct the choir for the next piece. This in itself was not unsettling except for the fact that the music stand, instead of being a few feet away where it was when we rehearsed, was down in the audience in a row of benches-- not exactly a place to which I could deftly slip out. No matter, I slipped out the back of the group, went down the steps, got into place, laid down my music and lifted my arms to the choir... and for some reason unbeknownst to me (and perhaps to the singers for that matter) at the end of the section they stopped... mid-song. It was just before the ending and maybe they thought I was gesturing for them to stop. So we had an unplanned and uncalled for and um, quite dramatic pause before I was able to bring them in to sing the final lines of the song.

Ignoring that and a few other minor glitches, the performance went quite well. It was actually a relief to get through a full performance and to realize that we didn't completely fall apart if something unexpected happened. There was one piece where one section had a botched entrance and I was afraid we were going to lose it- but to my amazement we held on, pulled it together and finished the song well. Maybe that is what professionalism is all about, right? Taking the funky things that inevitably happen, making the best of them and keeping things going as smoothly as possible.

At least that is what I try to tell myself. But part of me still struggles with feeling like everything I do is half-baked, by the seat of my pants. It's hard to feel professional and "together" when I sit down to work in my office -which I have neatly organized several times- and cannot even find a pen, let alone the floor (which is buried in piles of paper scraps and sundry bits of litter from several uninvited "guest artists"). I like to plan and prepare and feel in control, but too often parenting makes my life feel like a series of reactions to unplanned events and catastrophes. And did I mention interruptions? I can't start a project- let alone finish one- without being interrupted, usually several times. I feel like a can hardly keep a coherent train of thought sometimes amidst all of the environmental noise, chaos and alternate demands for my attention.

So is it any wonder that sometimes I feel less confident in my artistic and professional abilities than I once did? Is it any wonder that despite wanting to teach piano again, the thought of having a piano studio fills me with dread and trepidation?

Part of me says that this is a natural consequence of parenting- that this is just a phase and season in life that requires patience and will eventually pass. But part of me screams in rebellion: "NO!!! I'm really not a slob and I can prove it! I CAN BE ORGANIZED!! I can be neat and tidy! I could get things done, once upon a time..." But part of me secretly wonders, "Maybe I really am I slob. Maybe I'm just using this as an excuse and a cover to protect myself from having to face my own incompetence." Maybe it's too late to be up blogging. Or maybe I'm really just annoyed with my printer and that is making me wax woeful about my life.

(Can I just say that I am really annoyed that I have been trying to print a document for 30 minutes and despite the fact that the printer is plugged in to the computer and the computer shows that the printer has been sent the job the stupid thing won't print! Do you know how many hours of my life have been wasted by malfunctioning or half-functioning computer equipment? And crappy software that is slow and doesn't do what it's supposed to do? Can I just say that I should probably stop complaining and go to bed?) =]

A Ray of Hope

Today was our second week of ward choir since our break for the summer. And for the second time, WE HAD A REALLY GOOD TURNOUT!!!!!!! We had over 20 people!!!! Not to sound excited or anything, but there may actually be hope for ward choir. One of the pieces we are working on we started before summer break, but we just limped along for weeks, trying to do the best we could with 5-7 people. Now we are cruising along, making great progress. The choir sounds good, it is fun, the music sounds great-- I even have an official accompanist now, after a year of directing the ward choir (and actually not just one, but TWO, one of whom is a fabulous organist). I am in heaven!

At the end of the summer I was dreading the start of choir and the endless pleas and petitions to get people to just TRY coming, even just ONCE. I was dreading getting my house ready and the music ready and spending half my Sunday morning only to have a handful of people show up and to never know if we would have enough people to sing when we were scheduled. I felt like I had tried everything I possibly could, but to no avail, so I decided to make one last-ditch effort. At the beginning of September I decided to try the Sunday-School answer to a problem: I fasted and prayed. I know that may seem like an odd thing to fast about, but I was pretty much emotionally at the end of my rope with choir. Not to say that I haven't done other things like emailing and calling too, but I've emailed and called before and not gotten 20 people. So, call it what you will-- an answer to prayer or a fortunate coincidence-- something is different. And as for me, I probably won't wait a whole year before I fast about a something that's bothering me next time. =]

In other news, after making it to church in the middle of the opening song last week (YES!!! A new early record for us!!! That shouldn't be so hard when our church is at 2:00 pm...), today we were back to arriving just in time to wait in the foyer until the end of the sacrament. It really bothers me to be late to church. It bothers me even more when we finally get inside the chapel and it is a missionary farewell and every single seat is taken so the deacons have to set up new seats for me and my kids while I stand there at the back of the cultural hall, squirming inside as I'm sure the bishop and high council speaker can see me and must be thinking, "Who is that family in the back that is coming in so late? Good grief, the meeting's at 2:00 pm, for crying out loud! Could you please be a little louder setting up those folding chairs?" It really does bother me to be late for church. I think being late shows a lack of reverence, a lack of planning and misplaced priorities. So you would think if it bothered me so much I could figure out how to not be late week after week. I don't have an excuse. I know that if you really try hard enough and plan ahead and if it's enough of a priority you can CHOOSE to be on time. At least in theory....

In our efforts to make it to Sacrament Meeting before the closing hymn, Jackson didn't get fed solid foods before we left. Even the cheese stick and cheerios I fed him during church wouldn't cut it- he was still hungry. Luckily, I had some baby food in the diaper bag, so during Sunday School I headed to the mother's lounge where I did my best to hold Jackson on my lap and feed him pureed peaches without adding lovely orange accents to my Sunday outfit.

I made it back for the end of Sunday School and Relief Society. I took my spot at the back with another fellow pre-nursery mom. Anytime I set him down to play Jackson crawled as fast as he could for the front of the room. After a couple of times of this I resigned myself to a squirming, flailing baby on my lap. During Relief Society, I leaned over to my friend and whispered, "If only we had a Relief Society play-yard back here at the back of the room to keep kids that crawl contained." She then had a brilliant idea: we used folding chairs to make a makeshift "play-yard," fencing Jackson in. This worked fabulously for a few minutes until Jackson pulled himself up on one of the chairs and discovered that they made a beautiful, resonant sound when you whack the seat (yes, he does have musical genes). I spent the rest of Relief Society trying to prevent an enthusiastic re-enactment of "The Little Drummer Boy."

We concluded our Sunday with a lovely formal dinner of Waffles, sausage and scrambled eggs. The kids couldn't have been more thrilled with filet mignon.

Catching Up

I've been meaning to write a blog post for a couple of days now and I've been sitting in front of my computer to do it for over an hour now. Instead, I have spent that hour dinking with features on my blog rather than actually writing something useful (not that what I write is actually useful, per se, but writing seems more useful than dinking with blog features).

So a couple of updates. After being on the market since April, our home finally sold!! [For those who have been out of the loop for a while, we didn't move far -just to another home in the same town.] After nearly 5 months of making do without most of my furniture, which was left behind in our other house to "stage" it, I have couches again!!!! It's a huge relief to finally have it sold, not to mention that it is nice to not have to always be going over there to water the plants and check for realtor cards. The sale closed just before Labor Day weekend.

Last week my dad had a week-long training in Portland, so my mom flew up with him and they stayed with us for the week. This stay was very opportunely timed: Mom came up to visit just as I was getting all of my furniture and decorating stuff back. So we spent the whole week working like maniacs to unpack boxes, hang pictures and decorate. Umm, actually, to be more accurate, my mom worked like a maniac to unpack boxes, hang pictures and decorate. I did exactly what I usually do, which is to... to... work like a maniac so my house can be a disaster and I can be several loads behind in folding laundry. Except that my mom was here, so my house was not a disaster and I was just behind in folding laundry. The trip went by way too quickly. While we didn't quite finish the entire house, we did more than I could have done in 6 months by myself, including a major excavation/organization of the pit that also functions as my upstairs office. (Thank you mom, you are amazing!) What with my mom providing skilled labor and my dad providing rice pudding in the evening, it was a pleasant week and I was sad to see them go on Friday.

On Saturday we attacked the backyard. Dave dug, leveled and set up the trampoline. I pulled out the weeds in the border and the garden box that were taller than I was. Jared and Camryn played ball or pretended to help and Jackson happily ate dirt, despite Camryn being assigned to make sure he didn't.

Did I mention that we have gone from being tidy yard people to having a "Rogers" backyard? (No offense, mom and dad. For the uninitiated, in a Rogers backyard you let the weeds grow until they are about 2-3 feet high and then you mow them down with the lawnmower until the lawnmower hits something and dies. Then the weeds keep growing until you decide to replace the lawnmower.) At our old house we carefully, lovingly planted and maintained our beautifully landscaped-and-designed-by-me backyard. Since moving here, we wait until the weeds are taller than I am and then figure we'd better go clean them up before they turn into man-eating creatures. I was going to take pictures of our bounteous "crop" of weeds, but then thought better of it. It doesn't help that our backyard is a full two stories below the main floor of the house... it is easier to care about maintaining something when you look at it on a regular basis.

After several hours of working in the yard, Dave had to do some reports for work, so I took the kids to OMSI (the Portland science museum) with Ranell. We had a great trip and got take-out from a great local Hawaiian restaurant, Bamboo Grove, on the way home.

So on to Sunday. With Sunday came the return of Ward Choir after taking the summer off. At the beginning of the summer I was starting to get really frustrated with choir: our attendance was stuck at about 6 people per rehearsal despite my best efforts to recruit. After the summer break I decided to make a renewed effort at increasing choir attendance. My latest brainchild was to have a ward choir potluck to try to get more people to come try it out. I advertised in the ward bulletin. I even mailed out personal, hand-made cards inviting 40 different people to come (this is a lot coming from a person that is as non-craftsy as I am). But, because of a multitude of perpetual distractions (translation: 3 children needing 3 meals a day and clean clothes), the invitations didn't get mailed out until the week of. This didn't worry me- after all we didn't need EVERYONE to come. And then, after I had mailed out the invitations, I realized that I had scheduled our ward choir potluck to overlap with the BYU game. And not just any BYU game... the first time in several years that BYU was playing in the Northwest, in Seattle... the game that half the men in our ward were driving to Seattle to see. Yes. What luck. Needless to say, we did not have a great turnout (Translation: There were four adults besides myself there. My own husband didn't even come, although, to his credit, he missed it because of work and not the BYU game.) So I was a little bit worried at how our first choir rehearsal would go on Sunday. We actually had a reasonably good turnout with several new people. It went well and was very encouraging.

After choir I quickly got the kids ready for church, promising myself for the umpteenth time that we really could be on time to 2:00pm church. We did actually make it there during the opening song, which is better than most weeks. I had decided to shake off my usual "mommy-sensible" style and break out a pair of new shoes that I had only worn once. They are really cute- black, flirty, open-toed, open back high heels- and not only are they real Steve Maddens, but I got them at Ross for $18. Score! (I love the triumph of a good deal.) I didn't realize until I was on my way into church, balancing the huge diaper bag, my purse and my 22 pound baby (at this point I decided it would be advantageous to leave my scriptures in the car) that maybe there was a good reason that this cute pair of 4-inch open back heels had not previously gotten a lot of use. Despite the rush to be on time, I slowly tottered my way into church, careful to not upset my load by any sudden movements.

So there you have it... we finished our weekend off with Schnitzel for dinner and a huge, fat pile o' dishes that we conveniently left until Monday.