In a Jam

My sister thinks I might be dead due to my lack of blogging. She doesn't understand. The strawberries were ripe. Strawberries are heartless: they don't care what you have going on. Ripe is ripe and jam must be made, blog or no. You think this a minor point? Well, strawberry freezer jam can only be made one time a year when local berries are ripe. Those apple-sized berries from California? No taste. Only small local berries will do and the jam must last us the whole year.

So, the jam is now made. Blogging can resume. Okay, I exaggerate (which I never do) and the jam was not the only impediment. It might be that my daughter was preparing for some major recitals, playing four hours a day, and besides not being able to think straight due to piano music constantly in my ears, I was doing most of the barn chores alone to relieve her. Yet, it paid off.

It might be that we were at Suzuki Piano Camp for a week, hosting my other sister and nieces while we homeschoolers experienced what it was like to actually get up in the morning and haul our rears to a school and schedule. Boy, it was rough having to behave like the "real" world. I almost didn't make it. But again, it was worth it.

It might be the college visits. Hey, I hear all of us old people saying the same thing - we didn't go touring around visiting 95 colleges, interviewing professors, eating at the student center and being fêted by the admissions department. You went to your local university, on campus the first day of classes in the major selected by your high school counselor for you, AND YOU LIKED IT! (Or not, but you weren't about to complain.) You didn't study for the ACT and SAT and take them a bazillion times for a great score. You took it one time and resolved yourself to the fact you weren't as smart as you thought. Yes, times have changed.

Now, what else? Well, Lauren was admitted to a highly selective Governor's School for the Arts this summer and invited to play in a 10 Piano Concert in California. Anna won not only best of show in her last art contest (local) but also won the Congressional Art Competition for our district, which means her painting will hang in the Congressional tunnel at the Capitol Building for the next year. Exciting news!

Ah, and baseball season. What can I say? None of you warned me, and one sister KNEW, that it takes over your entire schedule. William, however, was pleased to see his name in the paper for the triple he hit.

Are we caught up yet?
Not really, so here are some notes:
Buffy, our oldest hen, died of old age. She just laid down one night on the hay and never got back up.

William is hatching many chickens. Who wants a rooster? Who knows someone that we can gift in the dark of night?

My dishwasher is broken. Has been for some time. This is also a cause for less blogging. I wash dishes by hand and use the racks for drying. Like the Beverly Hillbillies or something. I mean to get to the store to buy one, but no time.

My daughter's computer is broken. She uses mine. I will have to get up earlier.

My Internet connection has been constipated. I finally called the provider and they say that I had problems both inside and outside but the inside problems are now fixed. My problems are a low external signal. Funny how my Internet connection parallels my own energy levels. They want to know if I want to pay more for a higher speed connection. No, I just want the connection I am paying for now!

I apologize to several of you that have mentioned that I've left you with no lunch time reading material or that missed me. The longer I was away from blogging, the harder it became to jump back in. But enough people left kind comments, I knew I must find my way back out of the darkness. So here I am.

Dalcroze

In one week, William went from not wanting to play the piano to deciding that he would become a piano teacher so that he could have "Mr. Jeremy" as his boss. Mr. Jeremy is Dr. Jeremy Dittus who taught Dalcroze Eurhythmics at the Suzuki Piano Institute. And William loved the class. The fancy name is a method of teaching, literally, good rhythm, using experiential knowledge.

Using only his piano and singing voice, Jeremy had the younger class moving the whole hour, listening for when the music stopped and when it began again. The melody when up and then down again. He taught the idea of a musical phrase. William loved the movement and activity of the class. You can read more about it at http://www.dalcrozeusa.org/

The older kids took Eurhythmics at a higher level. The concepts presented in Lauren's class were well above my ability to understand. Who knew that there was a 9/16th time signature or a 12/16th? Not me. My music education didn't go much beyond 3/4 or 4/4 time. Particularly interesting to me was watching a bunch of (predominantly) white kids used to sitting still at a piano trying to use their bodies to find the rhythm of the music and feel the music.

One down side to this class is that I will have to do a week of listening to my own music to get the "Elevator" song out of my head. "Elevator, why don't you take me up, up, up, up, up....."

Farm Notes

Roxie and Chiron are getting along famously.

My new chickies are growing fast and I need to fix up a yard and some kind of roosting box for them. I still don't know what kind they are, and need to call the neighbor who gave them to me for that information.

Last year, I had some gourd or squash plants that never did turn out any produce. That's because they weren't gourd or squash at all, but hollyhocks. My sister identified them and said that it took them two years to bloom - this being that year. Sure enough, two days later, I have pink blooms.

I bought two bales of hay at $7 a bale to get us by until I can get some early next week. It has to "cure" before I can put new hay in my barn, or I run the risk of burning down the barn.

Really, I don't mostly mind the sound of cicadas nor am I freaked out when they land on me - except I really don't like them crawling up my neck. I feel for the people in the Bible plagued by locusts. I'm letting the big chickens free-range this week to go cicada hunting. All you can eat buffet!