Day Four Hundred and Forty-Seven

I'm not sure #9 on this list is going to happen.  I wouldn't be too stressed out about this because there are other items on the list that probably aren't going to happen either, but this one has ramifications that make my head pound a bit.

(If you're looking for a funny blog post today, this ain't it.)

I have wanted to go to graduate school for years.  I know which school, and which degree I want.  I know professors there who want me to come (so I can accompany their students), I'm excited about the classes and the practicing, and it would be VERY good for my future job prospects.  But every year for the last five or six years something has gotten rather seriously in the way of applying - finances, schedule, life in general, always something.  I got a little more serious about the concept in the fall of 2008, and started taking private piano lessons at a local university so that I could get a program learned and memorized for my audition to get into the program.  That year was the "life just got so complicated I'm doing good to get my shoes on the right feet" year, and I quit lessons and dropped the graduate school plan entirely for a while.

Even though I hadn't gotten very far into my preparations, though, I had had the nagging sensation that something wasn't quite right about my ability to memorize.  I wrote it off to the fact that I've never been a strong memorizer (good sight-readers often aren't), and that as a professional accompanist, everything I play is with the music.  It was a reasonable enough explanation, and I didn't think much more about it until several months later when I started noticing that music wasn't the only place my memory was slipping.

I'd had one too many conversations where I heard a piece of information for what I thought was the first time, and someone would say, "Seriously?  I just told you that YESTERDAY!"  I would have no memory of the conversation.  Events stay in my head all right, but things I hear don't seem to be sticking very well.  This was distressing, but I wrote it off to stress (also a reasonable enough conclusion over the last couple of years), until a Facebook friend started chronicling her husband's recovery from a head injury, and all of a sudden this sounded very, very familiar.

At the beginning of December 2007, I managed (with my usual grace and style) to slip on the stairs in my house, landing so hard on my backside that I gave myself a concussion.  I didn't know this was even possible, but indeed it is - if you land on your butt hard enough, it jars your spinal cord which joggles your brain which smacks into your skull, and voilà!  Concussion!

I felt a little dizzy and cross-eyed, but went to work that evening anyway.  Work, in this case, was the senior recital of an oboe performance major at the college where I work, so that meant full concert attire, hair, makeup, high heels, and playing three major works in front of an audience.  I figured I'd be fine, and it wasn't until we got backstage and were waiting for our cue when I looked across the darkened backstage area and saw this:

 There is only one exit sign.  It is not normally fuzzy.  We had a problem.

Thankfully, the oboist's position at the end of the piano was just barely within the cut-off point where my vision went double, and we got through the performance with nothing more noticeable than a couple of trills in the Mozart concerto that weren't quite as clean as I'd have liked.

On the good side, I had a reputation for the next two years as "that one accompanist who played Katie Roberts' recital WITH A CONCUSSION!", spoken in awed tones.  (Yeah, OK, I kinda liked that.)  On the bad side ... it was a serious head injury, and almost exactly three years later, I am starting to realize just how serious it must have been.

I don't know what you do, when you're a musician and your memory gets slippery.  My job is nice that way, in that I don't have to memorize things.  But now that I've been paying more attention to this, I've started noticing that it seems like I'm sightreading a LOT these days, even on songs I thought I'd played before.  I had played them before.  I just forgot them.  Much of my free-lance work is due to my slightly uncanny sightreading abilities, so I have managed to keep my work going and do well at it.

But learn and memorize a full audition program, when a simple Chopin Ballade won't stay in my head?  I don't know.

I don't know.

On the bright side, I can read the whole Twilight series again for the first time!  (Or, going by what I've heard, maybe it'd be better to pretend I never read it in the first place?)

Day Four Hundred and Forty-Four

This is the view directly to the left of my office chair. I don't especially care for it, and not just because it's ugly.

I am a lot better at starting things than finishing them. I am actually quite amazed that I've accomplished as many things on this list as I have, since I have a lifelong propensity for starting projects that fizzle out, overwhelm me, or (in extreme cases) get thrown out half-sewn because I've changed dress sizes three times since cutting the darn thing out. This project, though, is going to HAVE to be finished since this is my office, and I can't leave it this way, because I would hate that even more than I hate painting.

I like the idea of painting. You know how in the movies, people buy these amazing little houses with wood floors and high ceilings and lovely wood-framed windows and fireplaces (of course they have to have a fireplace), and music plays and there's this golden-lit montage of them painting walls in rich shades of tomato red and butter yellow with their hair adorably tied up in bandanas, and the paint all comes out right and never gets spilled on the rug? THAT is what I envision.

What actually happens is that I optimistically buy supplies, get all set up with my old newspapers and paintbrushes and tape, and enthusiastically start in on a random piece of wall. I step back to admire my work. I think, "Wow. That looks a lot darker than it did in the store." I paint some more. It looks better now, and I have good music playing, and it is starting to feel vaguely like the movie version of this project - look at me with my adorable bandana! (Ignore my horrid pink T-shirt and outdated jeans, please.) Here I am, painting away! Paint, paint, paint!

An hour passes. I am still painting away, on the same wall. Paint, paint, paint. This is not quite so fun any more. This bandana is making my head too hot, so I take it off. Why do I always think a brush will be better than a roller? I go and find the roller brush and the paint pan, and immediately spill paint on my clothes. I wipe it off the best I can and have a moment of relief that at least it didn't get on the carpet. I start rolling paint onto the wall - oh YES, now I remember why I don't like roller brushes: It's because I always start out too fast and it flips tiny drops of paint into my hair.

THIS WAS NOT IN THE MOVIE.

I paint with very bad grace for another five hours, and remember why I despise painting. I mutter foul imprecations against the people in Hollywood who find it amusing to depict home remodels which apparently only take 2.5 minutes, spill no paint except for the tiny dab of green on the heroine's perfectly smooth left cheek, and NEVER, not even ONCE, end up with our bedaubed young lady swearing at the mirror while she tries to comb dried paint out of her hair.

Painting party at my house, anyone? I will give you cookies.

Day Four Hundred and Forty-Three

I think I can safely say that I have started Item #15 (make a patchwork blanket for each child). This one will be for Boo - the idea was to start it when she was ten and finish it by the time she turned eleven. She had her eleven-and-a-halfth birthday last week, so unless I suddenly discover time travel, it'll be a little late.

She and I settled on a quilt pattern that comes out looking like square-edged puzzle pieces, all fitting together. It makes both of us happy - I like the way it doesn't make me do a whole bunch of curved edges (which would likely result in a blanket that's more three-dimensional than either of us have in mind), and she likes the way it will have a zillion different colors in it.

It has ninety-nine "squares", if you count each puzzle piece as a square. Each color is actually cut out in seven precisely sized rectangles and squares in order to create the final illusion of a solid interlocking puzzle. It is a lot of cutting. I'm OK with that, because part of me doesn't want to finish it too quickly (and with ninety more colors to cut out, I definitely won't be setting any speed records).

I know it just looks like a pile of colored fabric, pinned in stacks of matching pieces, and that's a completely valid way of looking at it. But I see so much more already, and it's not even sewn together yet. She loves all things sparkly and striped and speckled and spangled (I keep thinking of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem "Pied Beauty"), and the piles of fabric saved for this project reflect her tastes over and over.

I look at this pile and see the candy-corn nightgown I made her with Halloween fabric, bought on clearance, in the spring, just for fun.

I see the red dress I made for her first day of the fourth grade, and I wonder how much longer she will tolerate a dress for the first day of school.

I see the camo-and-butterflies cargo pants her exceptionally cool Aunt Boo (Boo's named after my sister) bought and sent in the mail for her sixth birthday.

I see the purple flannel nightgown that I just washed and folded, which she has not yet put away - I probably should remind her.

I see the pale pink and white flowers of one of my favorite-ever Easter dresses - I think it had a little white straw hat with it, when she would still tolerate being put in a hat for Easter Sunday.

The white material with brilliantly-colored fruit takes me back to her pre-school years, from a mix-and-match set of shirts and shorts I made for her. They lasted for years, since she kept getting taller but stayed the same size around. (I'm not kidding. She's eleven, and she can still wear a circle skirt I made for her in the first grade.)

The blue-and-white check with daisies dates back to her toddler years - did I make a matching hat? I remember a hat. It's possible ... Buddy hadn't come along yet, and there was still time then for sewing impossible things like hats.

The navy blue with gold stars takes me back to Boo as her two-year-old self - even then, I realized that this tiny little person was bursting with so much personality that gold stars only hinted at everything inside there, all that energy bouncing around in her little body and mind, flowing and bubbling and sparking out, in words upon words upon words.

They are good memories. We've had some happy times and hard times since then, and there are surely more of each ahead, as there are in any given set of days and months and years. But the memories make me smile, and I have hope - real hope - that this blanket will keep her warm in better days and months and years ahead.

Day Four Hundred and Forty-Two

And there's recipe #16 - Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls! They have no calories at all, you can tell just by looking at them.


I got the recipe 10 or 12 years ago from a Secret Santa, and since it was a secret she didn't put her name on it ... and as a result I have no freakin' clue where I got the recipe. So, Secret Santa from the late 1990's, if you recognize this candy, thanks - they were great!


Real butter, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and chocolate chips. It hardly seems difficult enough to consider it an actual recipe, but since it's a pain in the backside to dip anything more complicated than a strawberry in melted chocolate, I'm counting it.



I should have had Item #8 be "try 100 new recipes". I'm sorry to be almost finished with it! I mean, not that I can't still try new recipes ... it's just that after I finish the item, I no longer have any rational reason to post pictures of them.

Day Four Hundred and Thirty-Seven

I still have two more biographies to read. The ones I find that I most want to read, though, aren't written - they are the stories of my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and their great-grandparents. The genealogical research I've been doing lately just makes me want to know more and more about these people, the Franks and Janes and Georges and Jacobs and the lone Narcissa. So much is forgotten when time passes, with only names and dates left.

I don't feel like I'm just a name and a date, but I suppose I am.

And I imagine they didn't feel like they were just names and dates, and indeed they were not.

I expected this research to be exciting and interesting, and it has been both. I guess I wasn't quite prepared for the bittersweet experience of meeting all these dead people and wondering who they were.

Day Four Hundred and Thirty-Three

Or, Things For Which This Project Has Made Me Thankful.


1. Friends, old and new, who've suggested recipes as varied as Yorkshire pudding, clam chowder, borscht, and Eggs Benedict, writing in from locations as varied as (respectively) New Zealand, Minnesota, Washington State, and England.

2. Frederic Chopin. He amazes me more every year. And he's DEAD, so that's pretty impressive.

3. The fact that I am not allergic to any foods, which means I can try cooking anything I can stand the taste of.

4. I have a house to organize. Not everybody does, and I know this.

5. I have the kind of brain that thinks it's fun to do algebra. (Hey, I consider this a plus - don't laugh!)

6. I haven't gone to the Space Needle with the kids yet, but I'm really glad I still live close enough to Seattle put it on the list!

7. I am thankful for tulips. I love them, love them, love them.

8. I love it that I live in a part of the country where it's possible to go to the opera, the beach, a wonderful art museum, a 5-mile hike (or 50 if I wanted), and any number of photo-taking expeditions - all within 75 miles of my house.

9. I am thankful that my body, while it is a little tweaky and unpredictable, is generally healthy enough to at least consider swimming, cycling, running, and hiking.

10. I am thankful that I put #55 on the list. I will freely admit that I wish I could bring a bottle of good Scotch to today's festivities and spend the evening nursing along a glass of it, but not drinking was the right choice for this point in my life.

11. I am thankful that even though I haven't done too well with #59 (monthly self-exams), I am thankful that I have so far been spared the spectre of cancer that has hit my family so many times. And if I end up with it, I'll be thankful for good health care.

12. I am thankful for all the fun pictures I've gotten to take in the course of this project!

13. I'm really glad I got motivated about learning to quilt. That has been a huge amount of fun, even if I'm not very good at it yet.

14. I am very thankful that I managed not to kill my antique rose.

15. And I am thankful for you, my readers. I know who many of you are, but not all, and that makes it fun too - I like thinking that there are a few people out there I've never met who get a chuckle or a good idea out of what I write. Thank you for reading - we're almost halfway there!


Happy Thanksgiving!

- Bee

Day Four Hundred and Thirty

Now, this doesn't LOOK like the toy-infested craft-swamped book-filled lair that is my family room (Item #14), since it is in fact an upstairs closet. But I'm counting it as work in the general direction of that project, since there is significant overlap between what's in this closet and what's in the family room as far as games and random decorative items. Getting this area in order makes it so (hopefully) some of the items from the family room will actually have a place to go.

I spent a few hours on this today and made good progress. I did the five shelves completely, but couldn't bring myself to address the three boxes under the shelves. They have been there, with very little taken out or put into them, since moving here in 2000. I shudder to think what might be there, or how long it will take to decide what to do with it. For now, I am calling this a good day's work: