brian's birthday (295/365b)

for brian's birthday we celebrated by having as many tantrums as we could fit in the day.

also visiting the dentist. brian and i both went for checkups and we switched off staying with (very very cranky) felix.

also by finding out that henry's cello has "patentwirbeln" (that is, plastic pegs) that they don't make anymore and that they can no longer be fitted. so she would have to close up the enlarged holes, replace it with a wooden one and she "would *never*" just replace one, so it would *have to* be all 4 and that would cost nearly 900euros. hm. maybe not. let's see what the kunst uni says and how the insurance works on that.

and also by baking him a cake.

38!

tiniest candle in the world, henry made it with leftover beeswax.

my headache came back as soon as i finished my glass of champagne. i stayed up waiting for the oven to cook our banana muffins for tomorrow morning and they took over an hour... i think our oven is starting to die (or may be dead already.... :( )

oops! (294/365b)

in a great amount of efficiency i met with nadja at the university library to renew henry's cello. on the way there i was jostled getting out of the bus and dropped it and was worried i had knocked something apart, but i quickly checked it in the street, the sound post was up and the strings were all tense. the people in charge of the instrument library checked everything out gave it a good bill of health and i spent some time at the library before picking up theodore for his vorsingen.

he sang his solo well, each boy sang for 3 minutes, and then it was all over. i just listened through the door. it is unlikely that he is chosen, he would have needed to spend some time the last few weeks practicing projecting his voice in a larger hall.

Theodore went on to the abenteuerspielplatz, and I traded all the stuff I was carrying for Felix and Henry who were at  chorus. We showed Henry the downtown history museum for the last 20 minutes before it closed. At home Henry went to practice and noticed one of the pegs was broken clear off. Funny that not one of us had noticed before!

oops! can't save everything!

Mensch ärgere Dich nicht (293/365b)

Cold rainy days and long, dark, wet winter evenings means lots of indoor things like cards and board games and books. 

Mensch ärgere Dich nicht... i just wish my family would not fight with each other over the playing of this game...

no! you're not allowed to *say* you're sending me home!

popvox (292/365b)

kindergarten takes the month of february off, but i couldn't wait to be alone with my boy, so i took him out of kindergarten starting today. except that it was a monday full of monday stuff, and brian and i kept having to switch out who went where with whom.

i was supposed to leave for ingrid cz's pop-vox concert to get there at 7pm, but i was having so much fun reading with the kids that i ended up leaving at 6:55 and i squeaked into my seat right at 7:01. nina and centa and kris were in the row ahead of me and i got to watch them giggle and roll the backs of the heads as the guy in charge of the choir tried to get the crowd to stand up and clap along to the gospel music. he is a very entertaining character. ingrid's son stefan sang two solos very well. we opted out of the uncomfortable foyer champagne in favor of living room champagne.

relaxing after a very entertaining evening

opernredoute hangover (291/365b)

we only had to be up before 2pm to get theodore and henry back to the opera house for "alles tanzt" ... for the ball at the opera they remove all the seats in the house and cover the entire first floor with a gigantic dance floor, which we dance on all night, and the opera house likes to use it one more time for their yearly dancing family concert which always includes a very hungover orchestra and kids choir. i don't know how it is. last year we tried to get in but couldn't because we didn't feel like paying full price (for the four of us, 100euros for 45 minutes to see theodore sing two songs)... this year we didn't go, brian just dropped them off, barely awake.

the ball was fun but we (maybe just me) were low energy most of the night so i didn't dance as much as would have wanted to. we spent quite a bit of time in the greenroom for salonorchester, chatting and having snacks between sets which also happens to be the times where the other band is playing their set which is the swing/latin songs we normally dance to. still great fun.

at the beginning:

early in the evening right when they opened the doors

and at the end:

at 4:30am ready for the last dance set

felix's acrobat show (290/365b)

for weeks he's been saying he wants to make an acrobat show today at 9:30am, and has invited lots of people. nobody is here at 9:30, and he doesn't want "just us" to watch, he wants people to pay. 1euro for adults 50cents for kids. at 11 zorah and andi show up, with the proper change, but no, he doesn't want to play acrobat now. he wants them to come back later. i try to reason with him. he is not to be reasoned with.

andi comes back in half an hour, but now henry wont play. the other half of the acrobat duo. felix offers him a euro if he will play. 2 euros... 3... 5... 10? 12? 13? He has 12 euros in the whole world. henry doesn't budge. i try to reason with him. he is not to be reasoned with. finally, felix does the show on his own, quite fun to watch too. then he plays them some piano pieces and tells me it's time to watch popeye. so we go downstairs and do that, and now it seems that everyone is happy.

popeye's musical nephews gets quite a few laughs

Then Brian and I got ready for opernredoute, including half a can of hairspray for brian's hair alone. ha ha. We were off at 4pm, and we'll be back tomorrow morning at around 6.

disorganized all around (289/365b)

i fell asleep with all this chaos around...
a child's birthday party where they had to divide gold coins amongst themselves...
an odd number, of various sizes

disorganized? hmm, what happened? it was friday. so i made soup, but felix didn't go to kindergarten. i was going to take him ice skating instead, but then i remembered i had a rehearsal here. but marielis went to the wrong place to rehearse, and so we changed our rehearsal for later but still didn't go ice skating. 

brian went to get the book for the kids birthday party present, and lo and behold, they had had it a few days ago, but now they were sold out, so he got a different one on theodore's recommendation and they already had that. my rehearsal was over quickly, so i went to the birthday party and brian went back to work. then i fell asleep on the couch there, and slept like a baby until the kids got back in from their treasure hunt. we stayed way too late.

a review of reznicek (288/365b)

the day started out horribly de ja vu. made kindergarten soup - again - and also the same kind. it was slippery. we got a call from the same lady, asking the same question about whether we could pick up her kids. But it quickly got better, because Brian shared the "state of the household" with me, that showed all the cool things we have been doing.

at 1am yesterday, i found this in a paper (pdf form of course, thanks to archive.org) from 1882

Gar nicht behagt, ja sogar ganz entschidenen Widerwillen erregt haben uns die drei Suitensaetze (Scherzo, Marcia funebre und Finale) des Herrn Emil von Reznicek aus Graz, deren Zulassen zu einer oeffentlichen Pruefung des Conservatoriums wir einfach unbegreiflich finden. -E Bernsdorf

(Not enthusiastic, in fact, I was decidedly disgusted with the three movements by Mr. Reznicek from Graz, whose very presence at this examination we could not begin to understand)

This is what I found when I was searching for because his daughter wrote in his biography, that the critique in the paper was "hervorragend" (outstanding) I wonder if that was just her little joke, because she knew her father was a great believer in irony.

I got a letter from Agnes from Japan today, and it was delightfully written, and I was so pleased.

Felix and Theodore and I went to go look at a museum exhibit, and we will surely be back. There was an entire room of treasure boxes. And more stuff. They even had a "globe of heaven" which was a (5 foot diameter) globe painted with gods and goddesses, not countries.

Our trio had a very tired rehearsal after a long commute. Mine cost 15euros and I came the long way round the city in a taxi. theirs took an hour, and they went directly through the city, and had to wait for police roadblocks, because there was some kind of demonstration down town. I got there before them even though I had forgotten to leave until after the rehearsal supposedly started, and I was only reminded to leave because I got a text saying they were in traffic. 

snowday of the worst kind (287/365b)

so tired this morning - have we gotten a proper good nights sleep in several days? but i made griessnockerlsuppe for kindergarten, packed it all up, sent brian and felix on their merry ways, and they came back an hour later, because the u-boot didn't make it up the hill in the snow and slush. ronja was crying that she wanted to go to kindergarten still. 

it looks so pretty and nonthreatening from the kitchen window...

at least we had hot soup for us for whenever we felt like it.

the kids were all bewitched and fighting about every little thing. i think they must also be tired (yesterday was a late night after all)

work night with kris in the evening which was nice and productive. tribeka unfortunately closes at 8 so we had to defect to home, where theodore was still up and motivated to practice. kris listened to a song and commented: "yeah, yeah, pretty good." and aftewards he said "so while i was listening i noticed one violin sounded a bit screechy and the other one just sounded awful" .... huh.

that day you superglue your lips to your teeth (286/365b)

my goodness, today was a busy day. we had to cut things short to be able to get to everything on time.
let's see..

• made and packed soup for the kindergarten
• irma had a trio rehearsal
• brian worked
• irma picked up theodore and took him to the dentist
• brian picked up henry and took him to the dentist
• irma and the kids went shopping, then to the conservatory
• theodore had a mini session of mini strings, while irma tried vergeblich to warm herself.
• we rushed to theodore's bernstein rehearsal, where he was all alone because nobody else "could make it" andrea was very helpful showing him showmanship techniques to practice
• theodore went to the abenteuerspielplatz
• henry and irma were home and heated up soup
• felix came home with a broken lunch box, crying bitter tears. irma tried to super glue it and accidentally (trying to close the bottle) got some superglue on a tooth, which stuck to her lip. //facepalm //ohnonowmyfaceisstucktomyhand
• brian put felix to bed and went to chorus
• irma took theodore and henry to a concert to see antoine tamestit play a remarkably beautiful herold in italy with Manuela.
• i did 6 months of photo editing
• ok, i'm done i'm going to sleep
• but wait, here's one picture from trio rehearsal....

tired but happy after rehearsal

clueless on a monday (285/365b)

up way early today, to finish making soup for kindergarten, and putting it into thermal containers for them to eat there. we are in charge of everyone's soup at kindergarten for the whole rest of the week. it smelled so good that i had lentil soup for breakfast... that was a first for me!

when every one has gone home, and there's exactly one glass left in the bottle...

two movie nights in a row... this time it was centa's party, because her friend karin had found out that she had never seen "clueless" so we had to see it.... it was the perfect end to a very busy monday with all the lessons and extras we normally have.... plus

got my wallet back! i was super anxious on my way there, and the guy had a very thick accent so i wasn't sure exactly where we were meeting or when although i had repeated the information back to him several times to be extra sure. and i didn't want him to have to go through any more trouble for me. he was very very nice, and wanted me to count all the money in the wallet to make sure it was all there... which would have been fine, except i had NO IDEA how much was in it in the first place, and second of all i DIDN'T CARE if he had taken all of it, i just was happy to have my wallet back at all. hooray for people. not everyone is clueless.

toni erdmann (284/365b)

theodore won tickets from sending in the right answer to some thing, so off they went this morning to the opera, brian, theodore and henry. theodore almost didn't go... he had just started a tantrum about how he couldn't play this song on the piano because it sounded weird, and he couldn't leave until he had played the song correctly, and if it was correct why did it sound weird. when i said felix should go instead, he stopped throwing the tantrum and was dressed and out the door in 3 minutes flat.

felix and i had a wonderful time, reading, writing, playing, cooking. theodore made spaetzle when he got home. everyone was in a much better mood after some food....

chestnut cake with creamy frosting

after i made some cake, i got a phone call from a guy who said he had my wallet, and could he please give it back to me. i must have dropped it getting out of the bus on the way to rehearsal. i hadn't missed it yet. i will have to go find time tomorrow (on busy monday!) to pick it up.

toni erdmann (alternative title: most awkward movie to watch with one's parents)

sometimes you get a movie out of the library and the last possible day to keep it out you still haven't watched it. the last time i did that was when i got zoolander out of the library, and then came home to find that i had actually borrowed zoolander 2 by accident, and then i didn't watch it, renewed it because i didn't have time to give it back, renewed it again, and then finally gave it back 5 days too late, didn't pay the fine because i just dropped it in the box, and had to bike back and forth to the train station to pick up my signature required certified mail, which was a bill from the city of graz, for my 2euros and 50eurocent library fine that i had accumulated.

this time we watched it in the first week... hurrah. we might have done that differently if we had known it was a 3hour movie, but we didn't, so sunday night at 8pm or quite a bit after by the time we started sounds good. then the movie was *weird* ...... seriously, weird. 

trains become interesting again when offered to other kids (283/365b)

barbara's kids came over for babysitting while jure got his small sea vessel license and barbara was rehearsing for salonorchester.

we couldn't quite get them to agree on playing *together* so the other two kids kind of played on their own, and our kids did their own thing too. i tried to make waffles, but for some strange reason they didn't work at all. no amount of fussing would make them stop sticking, or fluff up, or anything waffle-like. who cares, they tasted fine, and were a glorious vessel for honey anyways.

spiral ramp for the trains

with a ramp and everything.
felix just needs to walk softly near by

we went swing dancing at the playhouse lobby, intended kind of for families. bad moods had come back, they didn't want to let us dance, nor did they want to dance with us. kris and i made up a little dance which included sliding all over the floor intended to look like accidentally but really being controlled. i nearly died laughing.

the movers and the shakers

and the candlestick makers

and speaking of dying laughing, we had a trio rehearsal at night. at some point,
barbara asks marielis to play more, with strength and confidence, since we will have to fill a very large space on saturday. and marielis, with the cutest dimply smile says "then i will have to eat some potatoes"

irmtraud and klaus came down to say hello afterwards. klaus has hurt his *left* hand, falling on some of his fingers. he has to be ready to play in a week, so he is being very careful with is. i guess he just conducted the rehearsal today.

carcasonne evening (282/365b)

for two and a half hours i taught susi's kid jolanda how to count, read music notes, etc. for her upcoming test to get into gymnasium, after no proper elementary music education. my 2 day crash course (she came on wednesday) should (hopefully) get her through in 2 weeks...

while she was here, brian was at a concert with the three kids, and they came home screaming and pushing and crying. it was time to get to bed asap.

carcasonne in the evening until 2am with jackie and andi.....

people, game, wine and LOTS of popcorn

early bedtime for them, late for us... what could possibly go wrong? (281/365b)

we visited two different libraries today (stadtbibliothek and landesbibliothek) and had fun walking around the city, first with felix and theodore and then with felix and henry. henry is maturing so fast: it made my heart swell a little when he took care of checking his own books out.

two peas in a pod

bettina, another viola student at the konservatorium came over at 8pm to practice frank bridge's lamento. we did 25%playing and 75% talking. brian had a skype meeting with firehub at the same time. we worked like crazy to try to get the kids in bed and happy before then, but they stayed awake a little while longer. when i went up at nearly midnight brian was still working. yuck, late nights.

felix has a mind of his own... (280/365b)

a snapshot from a little video

felix has a mind of his own. he explained his own version of santa claus, including his death and his occasional present bringing, and quite muddled with some new testament ideas that he picked up somewhere. 

he also insisted on seeing a popeye cartoon that i don't know how to find, it's just "one with a boat" and he can't tell me any more than that. 

as of yesterday he has now started learning the piano. every day that he practices he gets to watch a popeye cartoon... but so far he has been quite adamant that is is always "the wrong one"

brian and kris went out swing dancing today, and i was determined to be asleep when they got back, but i wasn't of course. i stayed up as late as i dared talking to amanda. it was awesome. so much philosophy.

stay up as long as you want! (279/365b)

henry hasn't been much of a reader yet, but today he wanted to finish his book, and i told him he could stay up as long as he wanted as long as he was reading. he and theodore took that to heart. i hope they are not too cranky tomorrow morning. henry also wrote a letter on his own. i was impressed.

theodore finishing his narnia book

henry finishing his flat stanley book

i ended up staying home all day by accident. i had places i wanted to go, and things to do, and some got done, just not anything outside. i signed up for doyoyoga with no premeditation, don't even know how i found it. let's see how long i can do yoga every day if it's really only 10 minutes. every time i do any yoga i wonder why i ever have long stretches (haha, "stretches") of time where i don't do any. it's so easy to feel so good.

finished reading elegance of the hedgehog.... on goodreads it told me that i had read it a few weeks before we moved out of the us, and that i didn't like it. i added a star to my rating. i just don't know how i could have forgotten the book so thoroughly, except for the last 50 pages.
henry finished his second flat stanley book and wrote a letter all on his own.

if you play a recital and nobody comes to hear it... (278/365b)

lessons in the morning to get ready for the recital in the evening. then lots of back and forth, home, chorus, everywhere i went i took theodore's violin and my viola with me.

in all the mess, brian met the lady who had stopped by a few years ago, when we first moved here, who had rung the doorbell while i was practicing to say that i played viola very nicely, and who my sister thanked and said goodbye to. anyways, she stopped by again, and left a business card this time. it seems she also plays the violin and lives around the corner. coolio.

theodore and i played our recital to a public of our family, and one friend of another student. that is exactly a grand total of three, plus one teacher, 1 accompanist, and 4 performers. it went well and we (except theodore) went out for a drink afterwards until they kicked us out of the coffee shop.

then another nice long chat with my dear brother peter.

it was so adorable to see him trying to practice the first 3 arpeggios in chopin's 1st etude on aunt frieda's out of tune baby grand

lazy and a little bit cranky (277/365b)

somehow the kids were in a terrible mood all afternoon, no matter what we did. delicious food, nice walk, lots of attention, all the rest.

i'm trying on nina's homemade koala hat
henry's photobombing our selfie
theodore is taking much needed space for himself in the background.

nina came over before i even had gotten out of bed (since i somehow decided to be lazy after a night of being up often with felix who had an earache) ..... kris came after. 

very subdued day, except for a very exciting moment trying to siphon water from a bowl to a cup with all the ways we could think of. yay science. the bowl was so full because we had tried to dome the meniscus on top, but couldn't because the table wasn't level enough. yay science.

a day of learning (276/365b)

very early morning, up to have a nice long chat with brian, where we learned a lot about each other

theodore and i went to practice our pieces for monday with christian the pianist.
wrote a poem about graffiti that i quite loved

tried jackfruit for the first time, it was weirdly pulled-pork like, just like everyone says.

read some elegance of the hedgehog, i can't remember if i've read it before!

moved books downstairs, so that we had room in our bookshelves upstairs. we still don't have room, but it's bearable now, temporarily.

took a nap after barely getting through "many moons"... sometimes i just can't help falling asleep while i'm reading to the kids - the words start swimming on the page, even in the middle of the day, when i feel that i have plenty of energy

the evening was the best part. a bit of my fair lady, a bit of chatting with peter in england, and a bit of the turnip fairytale with the turnip man russian doll.

everyone has to work together to harvest the turnip, even the mouse

choosing emoticons requires concentration

paper cup telephones (275/365b)

every kid at one point or another tries to make a telephone out of paper cups.
but we don't have paper cups
so our kids had to make their own cups.
of course, it didn't work so well, so tomorrow i'll sacrifice some coffee cans or something like that.

"it would be the *coolest* thing if i could have two, so i could be like in the old movies" -theodore

is't jet-lag, m'lady, or mayhap unrelated anxiety? (274/365b)

shortly before midnight

my goodness i was tired. after waking up at 3:30 this morning, wide awake, i finished reading my book about "mindset" that manuela gave me, and got ready for trio rehearsal. after dinner, the other kids went off to singschule, and felix and i lay down for a few minutes which turned into a few hours. we woke up at bedtime, disoriented... so felix and i just stayed up for a while together... which amounted to about midnight.

extra special time with henry (273/365b)

trio rehearsal this morning, and then a lesson with elke. nina came by and left while i was gone, and came back again after i got back. the kids headed to the playground promising to be back "by 5" ... at 5 they weren't back, so i went to get them, where they were happily playing with no plans to leave right then. felix was out with ronja's family, and theodore went to his first opera rehearsal where he is really singing, so henry and i got to hang out together for the evening. i taught him how to play pitch, and he finished reading his first (very short) chapter book, about flat stanley and was so very excited by that.

asking for help chosing trump when stuck with it

practicing exercises even though he doesn't like them.

not so badly jetlagged (272/365b)

card out, right back out, and right back in

today we just caught up on our routine logistics. school and such. i practiced a lot. centa presented us with the turnip man russian doll, who is pretty much exactly the same as i remember from childhood, except also different, as handpainted things are wont to be.

i saved all my computer stuff for 7pm when brian went to chorus, but ended up mostly talking to lydia.

no school cuz we're flying instead (271/365b)

yay, we skipped a stupid crazy monday!
instead we spent the first part in amsterdam airport. my precious coffee leaked from the bottom of the stupid paper cup.

theodore, henry and felix, four hours at the gate

got home, and found centa waiting for us with soup. and ingrid brought us over a huge fruit salad. we lit the advent wreath, celebrated christmas for the last time, singing and unwrapping the last of the presents.

we spent our waiting time in contrasty black and white, because i felt like keeping the settings after doing a photo shoot of kafka's emergency exit.

a door to nowhere
please keep clear

the waiting game is not so fun for some

yet we always find stuff to amuse

life gives lemons to some and to some it give limes

but we never get the waiting blues

just goodbyes (270/365b)

flew out today. packed all morning. teary after lunch (nobody wanted to leave or to say goodbye) returned the rental car. tried to get some rest on the redeye. got briefly distracted by descriptions of very interesting airbnb's.

skymag

chasing the light (269/365b)

everyone from today, including cesar and his friend cheyenne.

gorgeous perfect balmy day outside, but most i spent inside. henry had an earache, shawn and katie came to visit, we couldn't take grandma outside. got a family photo inside, and that was fine, then i went out and took some farm impressions.

finally captured henry riding the tractor with gramp after 3 days of missing them every time.

coming up the driveway

starting a fire with tante tara

we left the party and the fire early, first to try to look through the telescope at some planets, but the telescope tripod didn't work and we gave up. then then to contra dance, which was great, even though i caused some chaos switching roles halfway through the dance. as my dance partner put it: "it's 2019 and still they're trying to fix us."

at home brian's mom and i did yoga with adrienne to aid in fixing congestion, and there were a few laughs in there, and it felt really good, and i felt really connected.

christmas with grandma (268/365b)

we got to celebrate christmas again. it hasn't been very festive in maryland, there's too much going on there with caring for grandma and all, but today we sang some jingle bells and had pancakes for breakfast. there was another treasure hunt, this one was a bit harder than yesterday, and even more fun. i wanted to go too, but then i decided i didn't want to intrude on all the fun.

something for everyone.

new pajamas

overlook (267/365b)

one of the highlights of the surroundings where we are in maryland is the hike up to the overlook, which is an cliff-like outcropping of rocks looking over harper's ferry in west virginia. the farm grounds directly abut the state park, and the hike is fun and new-england-esque.

resting on the way up. "the sofa"

felix running with lucy the dog

henry my avid tree hugger

an information break at the old naval battery

tara with rusty

theodore at the top

harper's ferry across the waters

as soon as we got back, tara took them all for the first of 3 treasure hunts she had organized for them for the next three days. henry had found the first clue under his bed last night. but there were two more clues under the bed for the other two. by chance each kid found the one meant for them.