Pianissimo

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I play the flute in a community orchestra. I also play piano for a community choir. This sounds impressive until I say that the conductor is the same for both, the orchestra is small and enthusiastic at best, and the choir is tiny (but with a lot of heart).

A few years ago I decided that I needed a hobby. So, I started playing the flute again. Practiced like mad, and approached the local orchestra in a very scared state of mind. Like most things in my working and non-working life (it's a curse), this has evolved to my being board president of that growing-but-struggling group, and, after suggesting that the conductor couldn't really conduct both groups on the same night, playing piano for a growing-but-struggling choir. How do I get myself into these messes?

That said, I'm not sure what's gotten into my conductor lately. It's not a bad thing--he's trying to improve us musically (and we need that). But, really, I'm not in middle school and don't need lectures. I do understand dynamics, and can do them when I'm not trying to figure out what tempo you want us to do it this time, or wondering what the heck the strings are up to. And, really, it's not necessary to tell the choir to sing louder by telling the eight whole members that the orchestra members are amateurs and CAN'T play more quietly. I did play for another group this past summer, and I know that it doesn't have to be this way.

The long and short of it is that I'm really ready to move on. I want to be part of a better group. But, I like these people. While the conductor is looking for greatness, I kind of see it as a group of local musicians who like to get together and play. So, I'll stick around. It's fun. As board president, I have control of what we play. I can play first flute or second flute or piccolo or whatever-the-heck part I want. I might double up and play with another group, but, really, why give up a good gig? Pianissimo is a musical term, but keeping quiet about the group-related drama of it all is a pretty universally respected thing.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Our House

Is a very, very, very fine house
With one cat in the yard...

OK, OK, sorry! And, yes, I know the song says "two cats"--I'm working on it!

I haven't been around and blogging because (1) I succumbed to the pressure of worrying that people were actually reading my ramblings (including my husband), and (2) I've been suffering from my seasonal affliction.

No, I don't need a doctor. I need a decorator, and a budget of about $20,000. OK, I'd settle for the $1000 Trading Spaces makeover at this point and a couple of extra bodies to do the labor. You see, every few months, I get this nagging urge to move furniture. And, if you've ever read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," then you know how this is going to go. It's a chain reaction that results in moving, cleaning, scrubbing walls and baseboards, patching mysterious (and not-so-mysterious, since moving furniture means moving artwork) holes in walls, painting...well, you get the picture.

It usually starts innocuously. My mother-in-law is coming for Thanksgiving, along with my brother-in-law and his fiancèe, so I started thinking about where people were sleeping, where people were sitting, where people were eating, etc, etc. After that, the Christmas tree will need to go somewhere. This stream of thought then leads to the terrors of Internet Diagnosis. You know--I start visiting decorating websites and THINKING. Stewing. Mulling. Waking up at 3 a.m. and wrapping my brain around it. And, then, one day I give in to the urge and start pulling things around.

My husband doesn't like it when I do this. My twelve year old son, as oblivious as he is to most of what goes on around here, refused to help me on Monday because "Dad wouldn't like it." My husband says he wants it to look "lived in." Well, husband dear, the problem is that "lived in" around here means "cluttered and dirty, with nests of pet hair behind the sofa." At least the furniture moving results in seasonal housecleaning! Besides, you're the one who told me you wanted the Christmas tree in the living room this year.

So, why do I do it? Well, primarily because our family is slowly exiting the toddler/pre-school phase. As the big, chunky toys slowly meander out of our house (or, at least to the basement, since they're old enough to get it out themselves, or just go down there and play with it), it leaves SPACE. In the meantime, our needs change. We now need more room for hobbies and board games, rather than the vast floor space we needed when they were playing with Little People all over my kitchen floor. It's like one of those sliding puzzles--you move one piece, and that leaves a space into which you can now move something else.

This house has its issues, too. We bought it when we had only one child, so three bedrooms meant that I had a nice guest room. The cathedral-ceilinged foyer was bright and architecturally pleasing after a couple of years in The 1900 House (a dingy-but-charming Cape Cod that had last been updated in about 1957). We never used the formal living room in our house in Virginia, so it didn't matter that this house didn't have one--the other rooms were bigger because of it. Well, fast forward two kids later, and I wouldn't complain if the renovation fairy dropped a two-story addition onto my house in the middle of the night. Besides, I need a place to put my piano. I now call the foyer "my fourth bedroom" (if it HAD a ceiling, then there'd be a ROOM up there). The rooms are too big to just push the furniture against the walls and say "Well, that's the only way it will go," but too small to really float the furniture and group it the way the decorators suggest. And, some of the rooms (the foyer/fourth bedroom, and the large-but-undefined-space side of the kitchen) have too many doors. So, I shuffle stuff around. My husband says I'm "fenging my shui" and, really, it DOES have that effect for a while.

I drove a friend of mine home on Saturday night. I had never been to her home, and, when we pulled up, I laughed and said, "Hey, it looks like mine!" She's been here, so we sat in her driveway for a while, grousing about what was wrong with our houses. Finally, she laughed in the middle of a complaint and said, "As if we really have anything to complain about!" And, the truth is, I don't. I have more house than many people do, and part of my problem is that we have just plain more furniture and stuff than it will hold. So, I declutter it, I shift it, I Freecycle what we don't want or use any more, and I have a good time doing it.

And that's my silver lining for today.

P.S. My friend Carrie and I seem to be on the same wavelength. Read her blog if you want a little decluttering inspiration.

The Fall Doldrums

Autumn in New England is a thing of beauty. It brings warm days and cold nights; a new wardrobe (or, at least, bringing out stuff I'm not sick of!); and, oh the colors!

Then comes fall.

Now, you ask, aren't "autumn" and "fall" one and the same? I suppose, technically speaking, they are. But, to me, autumn is a time of promise, while fall is the reality. In autumn, the children return to school, excited to start a fresh, new year. We go shopping for new school clothes, and they excitedly wait for it to be cold enough to wear their new acquisitions. Homework isn't so bad when you can race through it and then go outside until dark. It's fun to settle down for the evening with the older members of the family after the younger ones (whose late summer bedtimes are now curtailed) are in bed, either watching the new TV shows, or sitting by the fire working on a crochet project that was too big and bulky to work on in the summer. Long autumn Saturdays and Sundays bring soccer games and the slowing up of yardwork, as the cooler weather makes the weeds and grass stop growing faster than you can cut them down. The same cooler weather, and the onset of late-season vegetables, brings out the Dutch oven for some good old-fashioned pot roast or roast chicken (and then the soups that result from the leftovers). Yes, life is good in autumn.

Then the bloom wears off the rose--or the leaves fall off the trees, to be more exact. I spent most of Sunday cleaning up leaves and getting flower beds ready for winter. I went out this morning for about an hour, and then later this afternoon, again. Well, I think I did--it's covered with leaves already. The weather is gray and rainy. It's been down in the 30's on many mornings, so I guess it's time to pull out the winter coats and figure out where to put them. Daylight savings time ended this past weekend, and now the kids race outside to play for a bit before doing homework--it's 4:50 pm as I sit here writing this, and it's already dark out, so the kids are now stuck in the house.

Then, as I sat outside the middle school this afternoon (where I sit MOST afternoons these days), I thought I might have seen a flake. It wasn't--it's too warm and muggy this afternoon. But, for just a moment, I got excited, because, after all, winter is just around the corner. Every season has its beauties and, while I'll probably sit here complaining by mid-January, there's nothing more exciting than the first snow. And, I have that to look forward to.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Tradition!

I went to my polling place this morning, a little sad. Nostalgic, really. We moved to our rural Connecticut town in 1999. Until this morning, I had always voted in the old Town Hall, a tiny building built in 18-oh-something, with white clapboard sides, a pine floor, and a little pot-bellied stove providing whatever heat the warm bodies inside don't produce themselves. And, of course, old-fashioned lever-operated voting machines, complete with that satisfying "Click" when you open the curtain and finalize your vote. When I voted in the last presidential election, I stood in line with my then-toddler in tow, watching acquaintances and neighbors filter through, and feeling the heat ripple off of the wood stove as I stood by it in line. Sen. Dodd was behind me with his family and entourage, creating a bit of stir as he moved through the building. The process was ripe with small-town ambiance, and, even then, I appreciated that it really served to emphasize that governmental change and progress starts at the smallest, most local level and filters its way to the top.

As I've mentioned before, our new middle school opened this year. Due to changes in the voting process, our polling place has been moved to the old middle school gym. My husband and I went there to vote this morning. We were handed our OCR forms and folders, went to our little plastic cubbies, cast our votes with black felt-tip markers, and then went to the next line, where we waited to insert our forms into the scanner. The space was large, and the whole process was fast and efficient, but there was no satisfying "Click." Still, although the pine floor and pot-bellied stove ambiance is a thing of the past, it's, all in all, still a small town. As I walked out, my son's old Cubmaster was there to hand me my "I Voted Today" sticker. And Chris Dodd was still behind us in line.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Live from New York...

When I was a teenager and in my 20's, I could tell you what was on TV most nights of the week on all of the major networks, and what was coming up in the near future. Now, with the proliferation of cable channels (do we still call them that?), and the fact that my zoning-out TV-of-choice is HGTV rather than network television, I couldn't tell you anything about any TV show that I don't specifically choose to watch. For the most part, I don't watch anything on NBC right now, so, I was a little out of the loop and a bit surprised to turn Saturday Night Live on this past weekend and find John McCain on the show.

I saw Sarah Palin on SNL a few weeks ago. She did the opening bit, sat and took it while they poked fun of her during Weekend Update, engaged in some witty repartee with Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin, and that was that. She was never NOT Sarah Palin, herself, the candidate-for-Vice-President. John McCain lampooning himself as a QVC host, though? I don't know. It bothered me on some level. Now, I know that John McCain hosted SNL before, so this wasn't his first foray into skit-based comedy. But, I just don't know...he's running for President. Really, I don't care what you do as a Senator. I don't care what you do after you lose (Bob Dole made a great SNL host!). But, is it wrong for me to want a presidential candidate to look...Presidential?

So, I pondered this Saturday night. I pondered it a little more yesterday. And, really, I pondered it until there was nothing left to ponder. I still don't know what bothered me about it. My sister mentioned that it's weird for her to see presidential candidates on David Letterman. But, really, that doesn't bother me. It's comforting to know that the person who wants to be at the helm of the country has a sense of humor. They laugh, they (like Palin on SNL) exchange a little witty repartee with Dave, but, all-in-all, it's a talk show, and they don't ever leave their personas at the door and tread the boards as something they are not (OK, OK...not they we know what they really are, anyway. As McCain says in his SNL backstage interview, politics and acting are joined at the hip).

So, overall, I guess it doesn't matter that it bothers me. And, as McCain says, "You do get a difference audience and a different exposure" by going on SNL than you're going to get with any talk show, even Letterman. If McCain making a fool of himself on SNL gets more 18-22 voters out to the polls tomorrow, then it's all good. It's a free country. A really free country, and SNL is one of the biggest examples of how free it is.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Mm Mm Good

My husband's birthday was on Tuesday, but, between weeknight activities and a his last-minute trip to D.C., we rescheduled it. So, since I'm getting ready to spend several hours making a cake and, later, coq au vin, I figured I'd pick on him for a bit!

My husband is a coffee snob. Now, he comes by it honorably because his dad was the ultimate coffee snob, ordering beans by mail and grinding his own back before Starbucks made it fashionable. I, on the other hand, grew up in a household where last night's coffee becomes this morning's coffee with a simple flick of the little red button (or, in a pan on the stove back in the olden days). Have I mentioned that I left my parents' home not liking coffee?

Early in our marriage, my husband started getting coffee through the mail. Every month the little Starbucks box would show up. The rise of internet ordering meant that he could tweak his monthly order, adding more or taking away depending on our usage, and switching out blends based on his current fancy. He took great pleasure in this tweaking and in grinding his own beans and raving about how good the coffee was.

Shortly after we moved to Connecticut, he got a letter from Starbucks, informing him that they would no longer be providing mail order services, and directing him to his "local" store. At that point, the "local" store was a good hour away. (My husband is also a former retail manager and is, therefore, a retail snob. Sometime I'll have to post about his rants on the shelf-stocking policy downfalls of Target.) Enter a month that included great rants and letters written to Starbucks. Ultimately, he switched his loyalty to Peet's, and now claims that Starbucks "tastes burnt and really isn't good coffee anyway."

He's mellowed a bit over the years. He orders it pre-ground now, rather than grinding his own. He figures that he uses it fast enough, and Peet's grinds it just prior to delivery, so it's a toss-up. Last year his trusty old coffee pot at work died (yes, you read that right--he made his own coffee at work), and he decided that he would discontinue the tradition. I bought him a new stainless thermos for Christmas, and now he gets up early, brews it, and takes it with him. He could fill up a big travel mug with it and take it all (I would!), but he doesn't. So, every morning when I go downstairs, there's at least one large mug of freshly-brewed coffee left in the carafe for me to drink while I chivvy the kids out the door to school.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Girl's Best Friend

We've had four dogs since we were married, all of them Schipperkes. They've brought us varying degrees of joy and sadness over the years, including one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make.

Sabot, our first dog, our pre-children baby, was a cute little puppy that we bought at the local pet store. We took her to puppy school and, later, obedience training; we read all of the books; we socialized her; and, yet, at about a year old, when she matured, she started developing aggressive tendencies (translation: she bit people). Since then, we've learned all about the negative side of buying a pet store dog--she was loving to us, and we loved her, but she had fear aggression, the worst kind, as it's psychological as opposed to habitual or territorial, and, ultimately, we had to have Sabot put to sleep when she was seven years old. I still miss that dog and feel an overwhelming sense of failure when I think about her.

During the time we had Sabot, before her problems became obvious and STILL pre-children, we adopted our second dog, Laars. Laars was a rescue who had been abandoned outside a vet's office. He shared our lives for four very short years, when he slammed his 22 lb bulk against the screen door in our new/old home ("The 1900 House") in Connecticut, popped the latch, and was hit by a car moments later. We still miss that dog, too, but for different reasons--he was truly one of the sweetest, gentlest, and most loving dogs I've ever had the pleasure to share my life with, and he was taken from us far too soon.

Our third dog came to us by chance. We were consulting with Schipperke Rescue when we were deciding what to do about Sabot. Maverick was a nine year old dog who'd already been returned to rescue by the first family who adopted him. Unfortunately, the husband abused him, and the wife had to return him. His injured leg developed arthritis, which was really his only health issue up until old age caught up with him. He was our dog for 6-1/2 years, when on a cold January morning, shortly after his sixteenth birthday, he took off (yes, a dog who had to be carried down the steps to go outdoors somehow managed to pick up and mosey off in the sunset in the 30 seconds my husband got distracted by a screaming child). My last vivid memory of him was the week before. I took him for a walk out to the mailbox on a brisk, grey, wintry afternoon. His legs were stiff and, as he limped back up the driveway, he stopped, turned his nose into the wind, and closed his eyes, almost like he was imagining himself running into it. Maverick's first owners gave him up to rescue when they had a baby. Well, he made it through TWO babies with us, and I think he did just fine, don't you? We were happy to have shared our lives with him, and he clearly enjoyed living with us and "his" cats.


And that brings me to my current dog. I say "my" because, oddly enough, this is the first dog to have totally latched onto me. Sabot gave fairly equivalent affection to both my husband and me; Laars just plain loved everyone with two legs (he chased cats, though, and took great pleasure in it); Maverick liked us all, two-legged and four-legged alike, in his big-hearted way, but worshipped the ground my husband walked on. So, now, out of the blue, I have a dog. We adopted Berry right after Maverick died. We'd been working with the rescue organization for over a month to adopt a senior dog as a companion to Maverick. Black Bear was a 10 year old Schipperke with Addison's disease, placed into rescue by her owners because they moved and could only keep two dogs (I note that they appear to have kept the two that didn't have the expensive medical condition). As my husband says every month when we go to the drug store and pay $100 for her medication, "What price, love?" We redubbed her "Blackberry," a much more feminine name, but not different enough to confuse her Senior Dogginess, and, really, do you know how many Schipperkes there are named "Bear"? Berry has been with us for almost two years now. While it took her a while to get used to kids and to make friends with our cat, she's now a much-loved member of the family. She's even decided that it's probably not a good use of her time to sit by the door pining for me when I go out--after all, she might miss some errant crumb of food dropped by some other member of the family. During the day, the cat follows her around, and she follows me. Sometimes I feel like a drum major leading a parade--I have to be careful not to turn around too quickly, or I'll trip over a pile of black animals.


(This photo is as bad as it is because every time I backed up to take the shot, they followed me! But, it gives you a good idea of the view from where I am.)

And that's my silver lining for today.