over-scheduled (83/365b)

surprise!

we were a "gift" (english, not german) for the protestant bishop who is retiring from public service. after a rather long ceremony, for which we waited, happily confined in the cool basement game room away from the sun, we went out, found irmtraud (who was part of the ceremony) and played our favorite songs. i played on my other viola, from which i had unwound the gut (baroque) strings and rewound with old normal strings, one of which promptly unwound, and got worse and worse and harder and harder to play, going out of tune at every song. klaus had just had a jaw operation and was in unbelieveable pain (had no painkillers, because he couldn't play) the sun was beating down on us, in spite of the umbrellas, which weren't tall enough to put right over us, because our bows would hit them. and yet everyone said we played well, and lots of people asked for our card.

meanwhile i missed the kid's end-of-the-year choir concert, which was happening at the same time.

felix and ronja right up front.

then all of them, the foersters, my boys, and the richters went to a vegan festival. i was still doing music entertainment, and then there was breakdown and snacks in the sun before it was time to go home. i got home while it was still light but the kids were already asleep.

blueberries! (82/365b)

kids have been reminding me for a week that i'm taking them swimming today, and i didn't disappoint. we swam for a while, and then, since rehearsal was cancelled for today, and nina just happened by, and it was a beautiful day, we took our bikes on a 13km round trip and picked 9kg of blueberries. the way there was a repeat of yesterday - easy going and fun, just a few tricky-to-bike spots where we got a little nervous but everyone was doing a good job listening. the way back took 3 times as long, and we ended up walking the last 2km, since nobody wanted to be second in line on the bike. it makes sense, given the school, the swimming, the bike ride, and the sun.

i gave up and just headed off with nina alone, where phil and nina and i had dinner (we were full of blueberries, but blueberries are somehow not quite enough) the evening was nice and lasted long :)

picking

blueberries as big as grapes

i remember as a little girl, mary and i, probably 8 and 10, were picking blueberries, the tiny wild ones, on wachusett mountain, singing "ich armes welches teufli" in kanon, getting louder and louder, when the deep voice of a stranger said quietly, close by to us, "blueberries?" and one of us (i don't remember who) screamed, and the stranger was surprised by that reaction and went away shrugging his shoulders. i think we were both so embarrassed to be "caught" singing.

at home, there was a package with new strings waiting for me. when i put them on my viola i noticed a very tiny hairline crack in the middle, and got such anxiety from this new information that i couldn't sleep for several hours after that. i'll have to go find out what to do about that on monday....

perfect day (81/365b)

just a perfect family day. stayed home with felix. "no coffee now, mama, you said you were going to  clean up, so go clean up. look, here's a mess, and here's a mess." i wrote a nice long letter to my mama, and felix and i built with the polydrons. we were outside a lot too, it was such a nice day.

we also invented backwards and upsidedown football in the house. we have a very long kitchen, and we stand with our backs to each other at opposite ends of the room and try to get a goal (to the other wall) without the ball getting off the ground, using our heels to kick and looking down between our legs to see. it's not so easy!

 when the other kids got back, we were very relaxed, didn't go out of our way to find things to do. it was their last homework of the school year, and after that they wanted to play games,

so we did.

and hangout

and read

and eat lots of fruit
(and in the background an octagonal house for heart bear
and just a small amount of the artwork theodore and henry brought back from their school year)

and we took a lovely bikeride to rosenhain, after theodore's singschule, even though felix took a good hard fall on the way down the hill, and scraped his side and his leg really badly on the gravel. a really nice lady came running down the hill and took felix inside, cleaned his wounds, gave him a big bandaid, and an apple. he didn't speak a word, but afterwards, he told me he loved that lady.

in the evening, when all were fast asleep, brian and i went for a nice long walk, under what appeared would be a clear night, but as the sun finished setting and the sky got darker, more and more clouds appeared. we spoke of how scheduling can alleviate stress, but also cause stress.

morning museum date (80/365b)

Early morning with a big effort to get soup and bread to kindergarten on time. When I went to pick the kids up in the afternoon, there was no bread left, and the kids were fighting over the precious last crumbs... It had Za'atar on it, and I guess that's a special taste that left them wanting more.

During kindergarten time, we went to the museum of natural history in downtown, to see the (s)exibit... the long running gallery showcasing all types of reproduction. Mostly it was stuff I had heard about at some point, but here it was all in one place, very vividly written, and shown. 

the poor mule has to look at the artwork depicting different types of cicada penises (stolen photo from online)

the school kids beat us home, where i stayed long enough to grab the car keys. a quick trip to kindergarten, and back, leaving felix with the foeresters, and getting home just in time for barbara to pick me up for rehearsal, which lasted not so terribly long. so spontaneously we just made a little snack evening (snacks courtesy of nina, elderflower champagne courtesy of centa)

and evening snack date

reading Yann Martel's Pear-Dialogue from Beatrice and Vergil

too tired for everything (79/365b)

the title says it all.

last day of swimming class (i spent my time waiting at tribeka with a decaf capuccino and my laptop, but there were no outlets so i had to work fast). kids very proud of their certificates, although Theodore's had his name spelled with no e. I promised to take them swimming myself at the end of the week.

picked up a free soccer ball from graz-verschenkt, the online group for people trying to get rid of stuff. she rescheduled 3 times, cancelled, and then scheduled again. the kids and i all biked together to get it, and they even made sure we brought the ball pump (she had written it needed air) ... the ball pump has been nowhere to be found for weeks, but facing the possibility of going to get a new ball which needed air, felix suddenly remembered he had hidden it in the bushes somewhere when he was mad once, and theodore suddenly remembered having once seen "something" orange and yellow there. yay for having our good old ball pump back.

radio helsinki, graz (78/365b)

I have no time for any more stuff on monday.... unless it's a radio interview at 7:30am. ok, i'll make time for that. :) little things went wrong before we started, the microphone didn't work right away, and things like that, but when it started things were fine. we took the first 15minutes or so to kind of warm up to answering questions, but then after that it was ok. i guess the u-boot (andi and the kids on the way to kindergarten) listened to the interview with glee.
radio helsinki is not in finland, it's a private indie radio station based in graz with an ear/skull-and-crossbones as symbol. the interviewer's show is called "coffee with willnauer" although he didn't have any coffee for us until we went out afterwards. i knew him from before, from when i went to a cabaret party in the bader's basement, right after moving to graz, but i doubt he remembered me from then. he was pretty funny, and a great talker.

barbara and irmtraud pre-interview and pre-coffee 

brian saved me from carrying my viola all around town in the rain by bringing it (and theodore's violin) straight to the conservatory. it gave me a little bit of time to have coffee with the people too, after the interview.

i wasn't ready to do anything specific lesson-wise, but that was ok, there's plenty of technical things to work on anyways. the next question was how to get all the stuff *home* again... 3 bikes, 3 people, 3 backpacks, two instruments, only one basket. somehow i balanced an instrument on the front and the back.

brian had dinner ready when we got home, and as soon as we were done eating i lay down and fell asleep. i've been really tired! i slept till pilates, went right there, came back, and went right back to sleep.

sometimes you don't want to... (77/365b)

i was just too tired to want to do anything.
quintet rehearsed again all morning, very productively, and then theodore had the last show of midsummer night's dream. i didn't go see it, though i could have. also it was barbara's last show at the opera. :( just not in the mood to be part of that. instead i hid in a coffee shop. meanwhile, brian and the others were at a bbq with kindergarten people, and i didn't want to do that either, so although we could have done that when theodore got done, and i picked him up, we chose to just go home and play fun stuff. we read some books, and together we finished the teenytiny metal earth dragonfly model. it turned out super cute. then it was a very long time bath night, and i fell asleep at 9pm reading to the kids. i can't seem to stay awake for anything. (yes, i remembered to take my iron pill) ;)

cute, huh?

we are the champions (76/365b)

we are the champions!
that's the song we recorded today. sophia played it with us for the first time early this morning (arrival at 9:15, too early!) we rehearsed it, recorded it, did makeup, video shooting, and then watched the football match between germany and sweden, part of the world cup. germany won in the last 20seconds of the game. it was very exciting to watch the game with a very invested german sitting beside us, shouting/crying when things went right/wrong.

best behind the scenes picture
balancing on the edge of the pool in stilettos, and no-one fell in.

a little bit of glam

i was unbelievably tired when i got home, it wasn't even 11pm yet, but i fell asleep in the car in the 15minutes it takes to drive home.

mozart requiem (75/365b)

got to go for a nice walk with nina after breakfast this morning. i really needed it. fresh air and sunlight and such things. found theodore and henry on their way home from school and took them inside for a quick bite to eat before one last performance of david and goliath, from which i left directly to the requiem at the herz-jesu-kirche.

andrea's picture, that she used for advertising today's event
better than the ones i took for showing my kids in action.

i love run-throughs, except when they are directly before a concert: play the mozart requiem, run to the bathroom (where you wait in line because everyone also is going) and then play the mozart requiem again. UGG.

chorus warming up....
perspective makes the choir look mighty small.

walked back to isabella's place with her (right around the corner from the concert) and then walked slowly and with lots of effort to where pauli lives (far away, when one is carrying a giant bag and a viola case), and chatted with him about emotions, life, love, politics, books, music, feelings, yoga, and the religion of the coconut.

apprenticed to a pirate (74/365b)

pirate felix - self cut hair, self-cut clothes not pictured

i was awoken this morning to find that felix had cut holes in his pajama pants and cut the sleeves off his shirt (and was wearing those sleeve parts as anklets) so that he could be a pirate. he told me in no uncertain terms that i was to make him an eye patch immediately. i didn't think that was an early morning activity, but then he said please. so i did. off we went to kindergarten...

....except there was no kindergarten - kindergarten was canceled today, because they are having the kindergarten inspector in to look at the new place, and decide if they can be accepted as real. poor felix, all dressed up for kindergarten, and there was none. he stayed with the foersters while i went to meet up with renate in town, which was quite nice, although it was such a short meeting. she is dealing with the aftermath of a fire in one of the apartments that she rents out below the one her elderly mother lives in. started with a laptop.

thomas had tickets for the rehearsal for the opening of styriarte, the fux opern fest, so i went to that.
they played the baroque opera "julo ascanio" by j.j.fux but more interesting was that they basically recreated a big party that was given for some kaiser years ago. so the event started a few hours before the opera and went a few hours after. it included a very mini and modernized "baroque garden" complete with human sized dressed up bumblebee butterfly things with papermache human anatomy.

stolen from the styriarte website

stolen from the kleine zeitung

the opera itself was wonderful (except for the awful constantly moving projected psycadelic background) the singers were terrific. at the last minute thomas wrote that he had one extra ticket, so i called isabella, and she had a great time too. the baroque singing style is one she really loves. then there was a post concert reception under an unnaturally completely green sky, more music, more acting, and we talked about dreams until late and biked home. i was admittedly quite high on music when i got home, and noticed the biotrash had to be taken out tonight, so i started clipping the hedges in the rain, to the sound of an undulating car in a parking spot nearby.

midsummer night's dream picnic (73/365b)

finished reading "der vorleser" by b. schlink today - it was so sad that i wept and wept tears into my morning coffee. i had been planning on finishing a whole bunch of work. still working on my prologue for Ysaye's Harmonies du Soir, and also trying to catch up on my "daily" (haha) blog, and also of course practicing, photo editing, and housekeeping.

last evening show for the midsummer night's dream that theodore is in. michi has been saying for a long time she wants to go, and nina got special 1st row seats, and kris got back from his job in south africa and came too, in spite of being tired enough that he nearly fell over.

right before i left for the opera i cut myself nice and deep into my thumb.

good thing henry was around to give me a band-aid.

during intermission we had a little champagne picnic. only one champagne glass had to be sacrified. i was impressed kris stayed (awake) for the entire show.

outside the front door. :)
prost!

theodore and i went home happily home together, although we hadn't had the best of goodbyes... he had noticed when we dropped him off at the bus stop that we had a letter with us to mail, and he had been saying for over a month that he wanted to add something to the envelope before we mailed it, but i had decided that it was finally time to just mail it, and send another separate envelope. i want to write more mail anyways. i hate having ideas of things to write to people and never doing it. anyways, he was upset, but had calmed down by the time i took him home. he felt "unsafe" sitting on the seat of my bike while i pedaled, so we just walked my bike home, and went to sleep way too late.

happy 14th anniversary (72/365b)

we've been married for 14 years now.

anniversary midnight snack:
fried leftover polenta, the last of a bottle of lillet and some yums from our favorite foofoofarmer

it's hard to believe that we've been together for half my life, but so it is. 

and with kids, jobs, other things, sometimes anniversaries are barely acknowledged, but with or without acknowledgement, they come and go. tonight at 11:30pm after a very full day of swimming and rehearsals, and back-and-forths, and parent-teacher-conference, we finally saw each other with no distractions or any need for multitasking. how nice!

(for henry's parent-teacher-conference, he got to fill out his own reportcard, saying how he felt about various aspects of school, learning, and specific curiculum points. we determined we were very proud of him. strangest thing, he noted "we didn't have books at home.".... so i went and got him a library card after swimming class, a day after getting theodore his own library card)

fete de la musique de (71/365b)

viola x4, marin marais/garth knox

all morning lessons.

all afternoon singing.

all evening concert.

(and it was hot)

the boys met me after chorus for the concert, which i promised would be an hour, but after a start that was 15min late, and 20 minutes of talking (in french), and 25 minutes of french songs, we were one item into the program... right around then, brian got there too, having left felix with centa for the evening (a very happy evening i heard it was) and there was still surely 2 hours to go. and our piece was last. i begged to get them to make a last minute change and they obliged. stopped for ice-cream on our way home. passed my pilates classmates on my way home, just finishing their class.

one more time, with feeling(70/365b)

second try, much worse

early early way too early 10am rehearsal with quintet, till 1pm

at 1:30, bus departure to the big cathedral on the hill in weiz, which was very beautiful, for a rehearsal for the schoepfung concert part two. again i put my camera down for the whales, and got the wrong movement, pressed the wrong buttons, and got a delightful half-a-second clip of andrea's feet. well, i'm fired from photos. the bus was not conducive to working. i had my laptop with me, but after a minute or two of the windy roads i was nauseous enough to give up.

in graz all was well. the mulberry tree on the mur is still being with gusto.

dancing in the street (69/365b)

very cute snowman sculpture

theodore is not here today. i missed him right away in the morning. he'll be back tomorrow, but i won't see him until monday morning. :(

i went to practice the marin marais with the other 3 violists, starting at 12:30. it felt so early though. for some reason i couldn't get motivated. 

then the opera sponsered a street festival, with ballet dancers doing modern interpretive dance to baroque music played on period instruments in various hidden spots around the city. waiting for brian, and the kids, i watched the same dance 3 times in a row, then got myself an ice cream cone and kept waiting. eventually they got there, and we walked on to watch some more. it was really terrific.

dancing on gravel, starting from the ground

quiet before the begin

then we found that the technical university had boats set up in the fountain area beim eisernen tor. we had to try them out. they went paddling on their own after a little gentle encouragement.

it's going to "woggle" but it's not going to sink.

paddling in the park

then a quick home and change for the concert and leave again.

andrea, our conductor, in full gala wear, with score, sitting on the ground relaxing before the concert starts
this is how music culture should be

i decided to video the violas playing the movement with the "whales" in it, and i did, and we played really well, but when i got done i found out i had pressed *stop* when we started to play and *start* when we were done, so i had the next movement recorded. not what i wanted. we went out afterwards, to see the mur river rounders play at an irish pub. it was loud. michi went home before midnight but i stayed till 1, and talked to lots of new people. i'm socially awkward at things like that, but i do like people watching, and there are lots of expats at irish pubs here.

more schoepfung (68/365b)

ouch! two days in a row, unrecorded on film. This one wasn't really one for recording. ... 7 hours of rehearsal. theodore left for a weekend trip with the abenteuerspielplatz. brian played frisbee. so it goes.

lost to the ages (67/365b)

quintet rehearsal, after which i just made it to the schoepfung probe - really love the creation oratorio so much. lost day. the only thing brian took a picture of was the signup-sheet for henry's parent-teacher-discussions. which was one better than i did.

quintet antics (66/365b)

doppelwendeltreppe

The morning was first a bit stressful, getting the Finnish boys all out the door at the right time to get to their bus on time. One of them forgot half of their luggage and had to go back. One of them asked "where the bathroom is" before we left, which confused me, as they have been sleeping here for 2 nights and 2 mornings.... hm. interesting.

I was supposed to meet Barbara right there and then, but some other things came up, so I spent an hour and a half walking around Moser. Then we met to take some quintet photos for our series about our quintet's favorite places in Graz. I wanted to have my picture taken in front of Paulustor, but instead I got confused and took my picture in front of the Burgtor. So much for being my favorite place, if I don't even recognize it. I changed my mind and showed Barbara the doppelwendeltreppe instead. 

Happy Birthday Felix (65/365b)

kept felix home from kindergarten this morning, and just had fun with my five year old. he's so sweet, picking raspberries in the garden, helping me around the house, drawing, reading and singing. and in the afternoon i did have to take theodore and henry to swim class, and brian got some one-on-one time with the little man.

snack time between swimming and singing

in the span of the 10 minutes it takes to walk from andreas hofer platz to hauptplatz, the wind picked up, knocked over some street signs, and entirely cleared the busiest street in graz by pelting sheets of rain at it. i've never seen a storm come in so fast. the middle of the afternoon in the summer was cold, dark and empty.

dark as dusk.

so felix's birthday picnic was moved to the brunnenhof. 

theodore spent hours and hours making felix a present - 10 painted corks he drilled holes into, to make a pet snake on a cord to pull around after felix. he was so excited to see felix's reaction he nearly unwrapped the present himself.

centa was already at the hof, she had gotten there just before the deluge. manuela got there a bit later.

we had cake and presents and sang.

i made the 5 candle out of beeswax.
centa got felix some roses.
there was no light for photos without flash

family

one big hit was that each kid got a fan to paint... that had to be done right away.

concentration

colors

right in the church next door was where the finnish choir was singing their concert, and we stayed for that. only centa and i stayed until the very end. and then i stayed until the finnish boys were done having their dinner and had sung a few fun spontaneous acapella songs. that was super nice. brian came to pick us up, bringing a jacket for me. i can't believe we still need a jacket so close to midsummer's eve.

mother and son in concert (64/365b)

lots of stuff for a single day. theodore and i were playing in elke's student recital today, and we both had some private time to prepare for that. theodore and henry did singing too. and i had to go get presents for felix's birthday tomorrow. somehow the back and forths on trams, buses, bikes and by foot all worked, and we played a lovely concert, although felix started crying right before i played so brian didn't get to hear me.

waiting to play

i played Bridge's Lament for two violas with Bettina, played Vieuxtemp Elegie, and Theodore played a tarantella.

brian and i took the kids home and i left directly to pilates, which left me very tired and sore, and I went out for drinks afterwards, but right as mine arrived, I got a text from Brian that meant I had to quickly get the car and pick up the Finnish boys. cantores minores is a choir from helsinki that is doing a tour of austria right now, and graz is their first stop. we are hosting 4 of the 60 boys for the next two nights. They were fun and friendly, and we left them on their own. we made bets about how long they would stay up, but they went to bed at 11pm on the dot without either of us saying a word.

carried felix home in concert dress, barefoot. :)

fathers day (63/365b)

austrian father's day is different from american father's day. of course, all kids in schools make father's day gifts by pre-set rules, which are cute, but at some point, if you have two kids who do the same class you get the same present two years in a row. Felix, however, after making his gift at kindergarten, was so excited about making a present for Brian that he drew him an entire coloring book and wrapped it all on his own, weeks ago. They were up early and excited to be sharing gifts with their papa.

early!

brian had some friends from vienna over to visit, with their daughter. felix kept picking berries and flower petals to put in the adults' wine glasses. i made bread and cake, without knowing that they don't eat gluten. oops. :( nina wanted a holunder flower for a cake, and there was exactly one left on our elderflower tree, so i leaned far out of my window with some great tool and got it down for her. 

retro (62/365b)

a day without camera, because i didn't charge it.

i played for the school's first communion today... one of the other moms had said that last year she had been so hung over that she could barely stand, due to weird extenuating circumstances, although she doesn't really party or drink. and this year, after "yesterday's" 3am homecoming and the beginnings of a severe migraine, i wasn't much better. i really did hold my hand in front of my eyes and cry "the sun, it burns" ... then i cried and cried during the ceremony, and set off the big strong manly artist guy sitting at the keyboard too. first he gave me a handkerchief, and then i caught him red eyed and emotional. afterwards we had oblaten cake in the garden, and i used theodore's instax camera to capture some cool little prints.

godmother extraordinaire.

strawberries in the strawberry bowl, flowers we stole from the ball, the candle centa made, theodore's necktie, and the oblaten cake, and of course theodore himself.

felix standing on the swing

un-gigged and redoutted (61/365b)

performing surgery on himself

felix is one that would rather remove a splinter or a tick himself than let an adult do it, although when he had the tick in his eye, he was very brave and let us carefully and slowly remove it. he also would rather put on his own bandaids, and measure out his own medicine. that's just the kind of kid he is.

so when i awoke, he was at the side of my bed, carefully unwrapping his bandage, checking his wound, cleaning it, and then after i gave him a new bandage, he unwrapped that one so that he could wind it "better." the wound is not that horrible, but very deep, and i just am worried about it opening again or getting infected - better safe than sorry.

he did stay home from kindergarten though, and we had just a calm friday morning with a nina visit and some garden work. 

the evening though! it was pouring rain when i went to my gig at the dom (the big cathedral on the hill in the heart of town) which turned out to be a non-gig, since i apparently had never sent the text message to confirm i would play and they had gone on to hire a second person in my stead. back again, completely drenched, to find centa in her fancy clothes going out to the ball that i had said i might or might not make it to because of my gig. so off i go to change into something else. more pouring down rain.

isabella, the theology student that i met at an art gallery a few months ago, also invited me to the ball at the last minute, so i got to say that of course i would go, since i was actually already dressed up to go.

off we went to listen to weird and wonderful music, including chamber music in various forms, an 8-piece cello ensemble, a strange but unbelievably gorgeous acapella group accompanied by 8 saxaphone players, us scream-singing along to songs from rocky horror picture show and ending with lindy hop dancing to a big band swing orchestra until 3am. we chose to walk back, since it was cool out and had stopped raining. it was like zeno's paradox - the way home just kept getting longer and longer instead of shorter and shorter, and centa was wearing heels, and i was wearing my nice dancing shoes, and we were tired and have early mornings tomorrow, but we DID get home, and we had a wonderful time. would do it again!

both old and new (60/365b)

caution, analogue photographer at work
(isolette ii)

spent hours and hours after picking this up from willhaben trying to get it to work. in fact, i pored over youtube and old manuals without any useful information for the actual problem i was having. i finally figured it out all on my own that there is one teeny mechanical flaw that is easily worked around, and now it works charmingly.

i would have film for it, but the place i walked into to get film thoroughly ignored me for over 5 straight minutes, even though i had my money and wallet in my hand, and then i left without film without so much as a response to my goodbye. i knew i should have left my invisibility cloak at home.

there were two mini rehearsals back to back. one was with 3 other violists for a very strange concert arrangment by garth knox of marin marais' la folia. the rehearsal was basically a gigantic viola joke. we moved the rehearsal to later at one of the violists' house, because the portier at the konservatory had scheduled us for the wrong day. then we came late, and got out our music and two of us had the same part (which means one of us had the wrong part) so the person whose house it was printed a new copy, namely of the exact same part we already had two of, so then she printed the right one. then another one of the violist stood in the wrong place (we are arranged 1, 2, 3, 4, so she had no excuse) and then when i had to leave early to get to my next rehearsal, i couldn't figure out how to open the door.

the other one was our quintet, meeting without sophia, and we ran through some new stuff. one was summertime, with a very strange viola solo in it, also a bit like a viola joke, very not-jazzy, if i play it correctly, it sounds like a classical musician who sounds uncomfortable with jazz.

when felix got home from kindergarten his hand was heavily bandaged. he had cut himself very deeply with his pocket knife trying to "schnitz" (whittle) a "log" ..... i can only imagine.

work wednesday (59/365b)

my work is playing around, but that doesn't mean there's no effort involved....
.....

the whole morning, barbara and i brainstormed for new projects, quintet and beyond. i'm excited there may be trips coming up, and concert series, and music projects galore.

.....

the afternoon was just homework and singing and all the fun things rolled into one. fritz leaned over the fence at 6pm with his arms full of rhubarb... there is a cake in his future. later i found one stalk had fallen to the ground before it reached me, and i tried to throw it up to henry in the window, but it landed in the plum tree instead where it will just have to stay.

....

the evening was philip and i fiddle jamming - i still have a long way to go to get up to speed enough for the whole band.

henry was so excited to make a painting on an old board.

the exact quote running upstairs was:
"i love when there is artwork that i am going to do"