This week was another week that ended up being unexpectedly busy. Back in the pre-COVID days I would get surprised by calm weeks. Now I get surprised by busy weeks.
A few things combined to make this week busy.
1. I had a Symphony Concert on Friday with two rehearsals earlier in the week.
2. Each of the kids and Brandon had a doctors appt or therapy session scheduled.
3. Work ended up more demanding than I had anticipated.
My boss took time off work this week for the National Conference for Marriage and Family Therapists. The other therapists in my office had pretty light schedules this week so I assumed that meant I'd have a nice easy work week.
I know better now.
Work started out low-key. The office was blissfully quiet on Monday. I was able to get a lot of things done without many distractions.
At home we had a good day with Homeschool stuff. We've gotten into a good routine with school.
In the late afternoon I took Veronica to her Physical Therapy appointment to help her with her toe walking. The therapists work with her really well. They had lots of fun exercises for her to do to practice using her heels.
At some point Lydia drew this cool picture of a dragon attack. (I think she stay up drawing it and showed it to me Tuesday morning.)
Instead I worked on the slideshow that I'd been volunteered to make for the Symphony Concert. The Symphony always has a slide show before their concerts. It has instructions for the audience to remain quiet and to silence phones. There's also some info about the soloists and the music. Amy Toft asked me if I'd be willing to put together the slideshow. I agreed.
A few weeks later we got word that our concert would have to be completely virtual. We would still be on stage together, but there would be no in-person audience. The slideshow would run for 15 minutes before the performance. Since the at-home audience wouldn't have a program I would need to put info from the program onto the slideshow. This made the project bigger, but still doable.
While I worked on that, Brandon and the kids were working on putting together a robot. This is one of the things we got with our homeschool supply money.
I took Derrick to Speech therapy in the afternoon. I've been thinking about what I'm good at I've decided one of the things I'm good at is making sure kids have the therapy they need. At work I help parents get their kids scheduled for therapy and at home I make sure my kids get the therapy they need.
Tuesday night was my rehearsal for the Magic Valley Symphony. I'd had to miss rehearsal the week before because I'd been working as a poll worker. So this was my first rehearsal in two weeks. But I actually felt really on top of things. I'd been practicing at home and had listened to each of the songs repeatedly.
Rehearsal went really well. Two weeks ago the director had handed me a new bow that he'd found in the music room. This one had much more horse hair than the one I'd been given at the beginning of the season. It was so much fun to play with that better bow.
I came home from the rehearsal in such a good mood. I'd been having a bit of a blah day, but rehearsal gave me so much energy.
And boy did I need that energy on Wednesday. I did so much on Wednesday.
I'd planned to work my usual 2.5 hours on Wednesday, but on Tuesday afternoon Charlotte had shown me that one of her teeth wasn't looking right. It looked like it was missing a filling. I wasn't sure if it was a baby tooth or permanent so I called the dentist's office and they scheduled an appointment for Wednesday morning. (Actually they'd tired to schedule on for Tuesday at the time Derrick had therapy and then Wednesday afternoon when I had another commitment so Wednesday morning was actually the best time.)
I realized that Wednesday was Veterans Day so there wouldn't be any mail that day anyway so it was okay to only work a little bit.
Wednesday Trip Away From Home #1
I still had to go into the office for about an hour to help another therapist with her billing. (My boss is really good at supporting other therapists with their private practices. One of the ways he helps is to have them meet with me if they have questions about the scheduling/billing software.) We got a complicated billing question all straightened out.
I had a timer set to go off at 9:30 so I'd remember to leave. It went off and I headed home to pick up Charlotte.
Wednesday Trip Away From Home #2
Charlotte and I went to the dentist which is thankfully pretty close to our house. (Close to my house is actually my #1 criteria when picking a dentist/therapist/doctor.) They did a quick x-ray and we could see that this was definitely a baby tooth with a grown up tooth right under it. The dentist said it would probably fall out on it's own in a few weeks, but we could pull it if we wanted. It wasn't hurting Charlotte so we decided to just leave it alone.
Wednesday Trip Away From Home #3
We went back home and we did a little bit of school. Derrick came home from his behavioral therapy. (I'm so glad they pick him up and drop him off.) Then it was time to take Charlotte and Lydia to their 10 year old well child check up. Back when I scheduled this appt Nov 11th had seemed so far away, but it snuck up fast. We went to the doctors office (which is also close) and the girls had a good check up. They were both happy they didn't need a shot since we'd already taken care of that earlier in the fall.
Wednesday Trip Away From Home #4
I'd like to say we got back to school work when we came back home, but I'm not sure we did. I'm actually not sure what I did the rest of the afternoon. Maybe worked on the slideshow? At 5:45 I had to run back over to my office. We have a new therapist who was seeing her first client. She didn't have keys to the office yet. Since my boss was gone he wouldn't be there with the office already open. I'd offered to come over and open it up. So I ran over there with Derrick and got the office opened. Then we hurried back home so I could start making Sloppy Joes for dinner.
Wednesday Trip Away From Home #5
Brandon came home from work and we had dinner. Then I ran back over to the office so I could lock it up. The appointment was running long so I ended up getting out the laptop and working on some things.
Wednesday Trip Away From Home #6
Brandon was putting the kids to bed when I made it home around 7:30. After the kids were in bed Brandon and I went on a mini date/necessary errand. Brandon has been driving around his work truck, but it got stuck at Lowes on Monday. (There was a problem with the door lock or something.) He'd been able to pick up the truck, but had had to leave the Jeep at the parking lot when he got the truck. So he needed us to both drive to Lowes so he could drive the Jeep home and I could drive the Honda back.
We decided if we were going to do that after the kids were in bed, we might as well stop at Arctic Circle for some shakes. So we drove to Arctic Circle for our shakes and then ate them in the Lowes parking lot.
We drove the cars back home and I was THRILLED that I could finally stay home.
I finished up the slideshow and set it off for final review from Ted Hadley the Symphony Director and Amy Toft the Director of Publicity (and all around amazing woman.)
Thursday Trip Away From Home #1
I spent the whole morning at work. I was able to get a lot done. While I was there one of the therapists called to talk about a new client she had scheduled that afternoon. That client was an older man. She was a little worried about being in the office on her own with this client. Normally our boss would be in the office on Thursday afternoons so this isn't a normal problem. But this week it was a concern. Our Thursday afternoon receptionist had the day off (because we'd expected this to be a light week) I texted her to see if she could come in, but she couldn't make it. I offered to come in during the appointment.
Thursday Trip Away From Home #2
I went back home thinking this wouldn't be a problem at all. I could do school real fast with the three girls and get some things done before Derrick got home. Then I could work with him for a bit before I had to run back to work. This was totally going to work out.
And then Brandon called.
His work truck had run out of gas. He was a little embarrassed to tell his boss he was stranded again in the truck. So he asked me if I could come bring him gas. Of course I could do that, but I wasn't sure if we could rescue Brandon before it was time for Derrick to come home. So I texted Derrick's therapist and told her we might not be home on time today. She said that was fine.
I told the girls that today's homeschool lesson was "How to rescue someone who ran out of gas." We drove to the gas station with the gas can, but I couldn't get it open. It had about a gallon of gas in it so I called Brandon and told him we'd bring that to him and hopefully it would be enough to get him to a gas station.
Then we drove WAY out of town to find Brandon. He'd told me he was far south on Blue Lakes Blvd, but I hadn't realized just how south he was. At one point I called him and asked, "Wait, did you say north or south?" He confirmed I was going the right way. While we drove I told the kids about every time one of our cars broke down.
We found Brandon and he put the gas in the tank. He showed me that the truck gauge read that it had 1/4 gallon when he'd run out of gas. He said, "Bill wanted me to drive this truck so I could learn it's quirks. And I'm definitely learning the quirks."
Then I followed Brandon to a gas station. He said he made it just as the truck was running out of gas again. As soon as I knew Brandon was good I texted Derrick's therapist and told her I was on my way home. We made it back to the house 15 minutes after the normal drop off time.
Thursday Trip Away From Home #3
I made something quick for lunch and then the kids and I did a very abbreviated school time. I was back at work before 2:00. It's kind of good that I was back at work because a client had emailed me with a question that ended up requiring a lot of attention.
Thursday Trip Away From Home #4
When I got back home Charlotte was waiting for me. I'd promised to go on a walk with her and Marcia so I could see the route that she likes to walk. So while everyone else watched a movie Charlotte and I went on a nice walk. It was a perfect fall day and we really liked going on a walk together.
Thursday Trip Away From Home #5
When we were back from our walk it was time for our usual Thursday afternoon activity - running errands. We only had two this day. We had to return library books and go to the dollar store. Returning books went okay, and really so did the dollar store - but as we walked into the dollar store I was a little embarrassed about the state of my kids. The girls had tangled hair, two of the kids weren't wearing coats, one had ripped pants, one was wearing mismatched shoes, another didn't have socks, one was wearing high water pants, and ALL of them needed deodorant. I later made a rule that I'm not taking them inside stores on Thursday if they haven't had baths on Wednesday night.
Thursday Trip Away From Home #6
We came home and I was relating hard to this meme.
So I made dinner. I think it was pancakes. I'm not sure.
I realized I had emails back from Ted and Amy with a few notes for the slide show. So I while the kids and Brandon cleaned up dinner I did the last few edits on the slide show. Then I sent it to the technicians from ISU who were helping with the concert.
It was time to get going to the concert dress rehearsal. I didn't realize it, but I was pretty ticked off at my family. I'd done SO MUCH for them all week and yet the house was a mess and none of the kids were wearing deodorant yet. It just felt like I'd accomplished nothing. So I left the house while huffing and puffing about everything that needed to be done.
Brandon made sure that the kids cleaned the bathrooms (they'd been so gross for days) and then had all the kids take baths (they had also been gross for days.) I'm so glad he did that.
The dress rehearsal went well. According to the original plan this would have been concert night #1. But since we couldn't have an audience it was just a rehearsal. We had some good laughs. The tech guys surprised us with canned applause at the end of one song.
But by the time we started the last song I was completely done. Our last song was the Finale from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. It's a song that requires a lot of concentration and energy. I didn't have either. When it was over I turned the section leader and said something like, "Well that didn't go well, but I'll bring it tomorrow."
I came home and crashed on the downstairs couch. I watched like 3 episodes of the West Wing. Matt Santos was elected president. YAY!
Since I had to go to work in the afternoon on Thursday I'd had to cancel a weekly zoom check in with Derrick's special ed teacher. So I made sure to send her this subtraction test that Derrick had done that week. Brandon said he did this without much help.
And we've finally made it to Friday which was only a slow day compared to the two days previously. I went to work and planned to work until about 11:30 like I would on a normal day. But I realized I needed to stay until a little after 12:00. Never again will I make the mistake of thinking work will be easy when my boss is gone for a week.
I came home and found Charlotte and Lydia painting the "Barbie Hospital" they had been constructing all week. This was a conglomeration of cardboard boxes that they'd glued together and then furnished to look like different hospital rooms. Both of them had the Barbies hold paint brushes and pretend to be the ones painting the rooms.
This is the waiting room. Lydia even painted a mural on the wall.
This is one of the exam room. Charlotte bought a barbie in a wheelchair with her birthday money. So this is the place that Barbie goes for Physical Therapy.
The hospital happens to have a veterinarian wing. This is the animal room.
Here are two rooms on top of each other. One is the pediatric area. And one is post-partum. 
After I took the pictures I walked away for a while. When I came back I noticed the Physical Therapist was working with the girl in the wheel chair.
When I was done with that I seriously did nothing. I just laid on the couch.
So yeah the creative side of Homeschool is going AMAZING!!!!
We had a lot to catch up on to finish the school work part of homeschool for the week. Charlotte and Lydia did their social studies on their own for the first time ever! Then we got through Language Arts and Writing with minimum whining.
Derrick also did his social studies on his own. He is such a trooper with that. The program reads outload to him and he will dutifully sit through the lessons. I don't think he is taking in anything it says - but he goes through it anyway. When he was done with Social Studies I had him go right into MathSeeds. He is much more engaged in that. It was going over the difference between near and far and other directions like above and below. At first he didn't understand, but by the end of the level he knew what he was doing. Then I had him work on his writing assignment. We had to make an idea web about a specific day. I gave him the option to come up with ideas about Halloween, his birthday, or Christmas. He picked Christmas and spouted off tons of things about Christmas. I write for him and I could hardly keep up.
Veronica had already done social studies so we just had to finish her mathseeds and then do her writing work. That went well too.
The kids were done, but I was not. I had to document all the work we'd done. Documentation has been my least favorite part of our homeschool program. I have to take pictures of all the things we've done in the work books and upload the pictures to Google Classroom. It's super tedious.
Then I spent some time filling out my chart for what I hoped to do next week. This is also tedious, but I've found I like to do it on Friday afternoon so I don't have to think about school again until Monday.
It probably takes me about 2 hours to document everything and prepare for the next week. It's a lot of time.
Then I made pizza for dinner. I needed to be getting ready for the concert at the time we normally eat dinner so I had the kids eat early. This worked out well because Brandon got home 30 minutes early and so he was able to eat with us.
Then I hurried to change into my black concert outfit and went to the concert. I wasn't too worried about how I would look for the concert because I knew I wouldn't show up very well on camera anyway. But I still took a backstage selfie.
Here is the link to the concert if you want to watch it. It starts with 15 minutes of my slideshow. This was mostly copied and pasted from the program. But it was still a big job. I've repeatedly told Brandon that my least favorite job would be to be the person responsible for the credits at the end of a movie. I've said, "Can you imagine how hard it would be to get everyone's names right?" In the middle of working on this slideshow I realized that's what I was doing!
Since no one could see us while the slideshow was going we just started out on the stage. We started with Variations on a Shaker Melody by Aaron Copland. My previous experience with Copland was in high school when we attempted to play Rodeo (the Beef It's What's for Dinner Theme). I don't think we ever actually played it for a concert, but I remember practicing it. The bass part is pretty non-existant in Rodeo. The Variations on a Shaker Melody is similar. There wasn't much of a bass part. We actually don't even come in for the first 50 measures or so. But when we do come in it is beautiful I imagine we are the fog rolling in over the Appalachian Mountains.
Then we rest again for a while. The second time we come in is thrilling. I got emotional every time we played it along with the full Symphony. Filling so joyful while playing a beautiful song is what I love about making music. It's what kept me going for 8 years in school and it's what makes me so happy to be doing this again.
The second song was the Juilet's Waltz that we'd played in the first concert. This one featured a youth soloist. This was an easy song to play and I loved that I could do it without much concentration. Brandon and the kids were watching the live stream at home on the big screen. Derrick was enchanted by the soloist and went up and tried to hold her hand.
Our next song was probably my favorite of the night. It was Variation on a theme of Haydn by Braham's. It's the type of song I live for as a bass player. It had lots of quarter notes, but not a lot of fast parts. I can play every note. There were a few 8th notes that I wasn't quite quick enough for, but I faked it through those and was back in the game for the finale. This is the song that is now frequently stuck in my head.
And then it was on to the more difficult pieces of the night.
Our next song was a the Adagietto from Malher's 5th Symphony. It's a slow love song. Malher is hard and slow is hard and so this song was HARD. I had to mouth each count through the whole song. (I'm so glad I preform in a mask.) We had some difficulty getting going and the director actually stopped us when we weren't quite together. Then we tried again and didn't get the rhythm right in the 3rd measure. So we were stopped again! But on the third try everything came together perfectly. It was such a beautiful piece. The end has a really cool bass part where we sound so amazing. I'm so glad it worked out.
The next song was a Piano Concerto by Saint-Sans. This was another one with a youth soloist. She came out wearing a super sparkly dress. At home Charlotte thought the dress was amazing. Brandon said the pianists hands were amazing. He said they looked blurry on camera.
I'm glad the piano player looked and sounded amazing, because all was not well in my area. This song had 4/4 time but we often went into subdivided measures. So it was really hard to keep track of whether the conductor was beating 4 beats to a measure or 8. I had notes all over my music. I also had to re-write the quarter rests in my music because this music was had French notations and the quarter rests looked like backward 8th rests. Oh and the bass music had cello parts written on it that I had to make notes not to play.
Basically I just followed the section leader and was grateful that most of our notes were just the low G.
And the soloist stole the show so no one was paying attention to the bass section anyway.
Our final song was the Finale from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I grew up with my dad playing classical music all the time, so I'm certain I'd heard this song before, but I honestly had no concept of how it should go. I had to listen to it on Youtube a lot. I imagined that the first musicians to play this music had to be super talented. Here they were handed a song no one had ever heard or played and they were supposed to learn it and play it well.
This was another song full of notes. There were sections that wanted notes played that were lower than a bass can actually play, (and lower than I'm used to reading) so I had to transpose those notes an octive higher. Then there were other sections with notes higher than basses usually play. So I had to write in the names of all those notes and find them on my string.
Playing the song was a whole other matter. It was a lot of technical work that I'm just not up. Second position. Crazy fast scale runs. Super fast 8th notes. Slurs with more that 3 notes. Maybe in a year or two I can do that stuff super fast, but I'm just not there. There was a whole section toward the end that I just followed my section leaders bowing, but didn't actually play anything.
But I did "Bring It." I was THERE for the deep notes. I was THERE for the fast notes (or at least pretending to play the fast notes.) And there were a few sections where I was THERE for the music. Gosh it's fun to play the bass.
And then we were done. The technical guys gave us another round of canned applause. I realized the house lights had been on during the whole concert. Usually it's dark out in the audience until the end of the concert. It honestly had felt like a rehearsal.
We turned in our music and then went home. We are done until January. At least I hope it's only January. Earlier in the day the governor had ordered Idaho back to Stage 2. That means instead of groups of 50 we can only have groups of 10. If our concert had been scheduled for Saturday night it might have been cancelled.
I drove home and my parents called me when I was close to my house. They'd watched the whole concert from North Carolina. They'd loved it. My dad told me "that deserves ice cream" which is what he always said after my concerts when I was a teenager. He said he'd transferred money into my bank account so I could go get me some ice cream.
Brandon had already put the kids to bed by the time I got home. We through about going to get ice cream in secret again, but decided not to. Instead we watched Enola Holms on Netflix. It was cute.
Saturday was a wonderful day. Our weather had been very back and forth. Monday and Tuesdy had been cold and a little snowy. Wednesday and Thursday were warmish, Friday was cold and kind of snowy/rainy, and Saturday was kind of clear and warm again. (Then it was rainy on Sunday.)
We spend the day getting back on top of the house. Brandon took the kids grocery shopping in the morning so I could have a quiet house to myself. I started some prep work for a project I'm doing for my dad. Brandon and the kids went to a park after the store (it was cool enough they didn't have to worry about the groceries right away.) At the park Veronica biffed it on the slide and ended up with a bloody lip. They came home and got her cleaned up. She has a few scratches, but nothing permanent.
After the food was put away we started work on the bedrooms and laundry. Charlotte and Lydia's room was in need of a complete overhaul. We'd decided that their bed needed to move away from the door to be on the opposite wall. This would make the room flow better. So we had to clean out from under the bed, move the dressers out, move the shelves, and then move the bed. We also removed about 1.5 bags of trash. In the process we found nearly all the socks that have disappeared lately. I went from having about 6 pairs of kids socks to having 20 pairs.
It took us several hours, but the end result was so worth it. Here is the bed now. It's so much easier to look in there and say, "Hey clean up that mess."
And here are the shelves. I forgot to get a picture of the closet with the other dresser.
I also came to the conclusion that the the kids do not need anymore toys. We have calico critters, LOL/OMG dolls, Barbies, legos, etc. So I brainstormed with the girls about some good "non-toy" gifts like curtains to ask for instead of toys. Santa will still probably bring them some toys. But Mom and Dad are not.
Veronica and Derrick cleaned their rooms too. When all the bedrooms were done Brandon and I told the kids it was time for ice cream. Earlier in the day I'd said, "I may have earned ice cream last night, but the kids didn't yet." We'll now they'd earned it. We went through the drive through (because the lobby is closed to dining in.)
Then we parked in the super empty parking lot to eat the icecream.
Marcia had followed me outside when I went in for something. She'd wandered into the front yard when I was packing up the ladder. She acted like she wanted to run into the road, but came back when I called her. She followed me into the back yard and ran around there while I put away the ladder. I went back into the house and told Brandon, "Marcia has been so much better behaved lately, she came back right when I called her and didn't go into the road at all."
Then I completely forgot about Marcia.
I looked up some Christmas gifts online, I took a shower, Brandon made dinner and we ate it, I helped the kids take baths, nd we cleaned up dinner. Then we went downstairs to watch a live broadcast of ISU's presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I actually like this part of COVID. There is no way I would take my 4 kids to a live production of a Shakespeare play. But thanks to COVID and Youtube we were able to watch it from home. And the kids could talk as much as they wanted.
The play runs next weekend too so here is a link to when those performances are and how to view them. But be warned, this play is LONG. I wasn't quite prepared for how long it would be. It was nearly 2.5 hours with an intermission. The kids were mildly interested and I had to explain A LOT, but they kept watching it. Well most of them. Derrick put himself to bed after about 20 minutes.
At the intermission Charlotte asked, "Mom, do you know where Marcia is? I haven't seen her."
And I said, "Oh she's probably upstairs under the couch or something."
"No I looked there." Charlotte said.
"Well then she's probably under my bed."
"No I looked there too."
At this point Brandon, who was bored of the play anyway, offered to go look for Marcia upstairs.
About 10 minutes later I remembered that I'd left Marcia outside hours ago.
OOOPS!
Brandon went looking for her. The kids kept watching and were rewarded with the funny play within a play at the end. They really liked that part. When the play ended I put Charlotte and Lydia to bed. (Veronica had fallen asleep on the couch about an hour earlier.) I promised them I'd go drive around and look for Marcia.
I met up with Brandon and we drove around the neighborhood, but we didn't think we'd find her. She'd been gone for hours. Chances were she'd either been picked up by animal control, or was spending the night with some nice family that had found her.
I was feeling pretty bad. I kept imagining her barking at our door trying to tell us that she wanted to get back in and we'd completely ignored her. But then I remembered that all the windows had been open. We would have heard her bark. And I'd been working on the computer in the living room. If she'd been casually wandering around in the front yard I would have seen her. This was not a case of a poor abandoned dog giving up on her family. This was a sneaky escape attempt. She'd seen her opportunity and taken it.
I figured she deserved whatever fate she had and Brandon felt the same way. So we went home and slept soundly. (Though I did feel a little bad when it started to rain.)
In the morning the kids were freaking out. So I call the animal shelter and listened to the prerecorded message about when they opened (10:00 am on Monday) and what the number for Twin Falls Animal Control was. I call the animal control number and asked if they'd picked up a dog like Marcia. They said they had what looked like a "puppy German Shepard with a pink collar." That was Marcia.
I called back the animal shelter and left a message saying they had our dog and we'd be there to get her on Monday.
The kids were so relieved when I told them I'd found Marcia. I was glad she was safe and I was hoping she was learning a lesson from this.
We had in person church today - the governor's order is a Modified Stage 2 so church services and some other things are okay to have over 10 people. We had a high counsel speaker who ended up being really engaging. After church Brandon met with our brand new Elders Quorum President and was called to be the Secretary in the Elders Quorum. This is so great because one of the things he needs most is guy friends.
We had a wonderful afternoon. Brandon rough housed with the kids and I played Green Thumb with them. In the evening we read more from Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites. The kids are getting really into the book.
And now here we are at Sunday night. And I'm looking at a week that looks much less busy than last week. But I'm leery of saying that out loud.
Thanks for reading
Proof Reading
Picture of writers inc?
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think?