more insane monday (170/365c)

SUCH a beautiful day

brigitta and i played through gourzi and made a first tentative "recording" (so we could hear it and decide interpretation questions) in the morning

lots of monday stuff, including all the choirs, we all biked together and enjoyed the sun.

in the evening i took theodore and henry to a concert at the opera to hear somebody play the clarke sonata. the pianist was terrible, but there was a great general description of modern music (not for the clarke, for a truly modern piece) and the two kids were so good at listening to concert!

the description went as follows. first everyone in the audience was given a piece of paper. we got to experiment to see what noises we could make with the paper without actually destroying it (as in not folding, tearing, crumpling, etc) ... then we tried to see how silently we could exchange papers with our neighbor. then one of the performers (actually charley, who happens to be the conductor of henry's orchestra) walked from one end of the hall to the other telling us to first exchange the paper silently, then make the noise, then exchange our paper again in the time it took to walk. And the main instruction was to listen!

It was pretty brilliant!

so much music today! (169/365c)

we had our early afternoon house concert with nadja and friends. one adult student, and thomas and our family were there.

felix played too - he insisted on performing in pajamas

not a tutti section
vivaldi concerto with orchestra

thomas and i played a set of three robert fuchs duos.

felix dresses for the evening show
he was not the strangest dressed person there!
also, he has decided he knows how to read!

then we headed to see theodore and henry on stage in in a (typically strange) steirischer herbst production. Titled "No Apocalypse, Not Now" - strange enough that some parents left halfway through the 90minute show to get kebap.

a jewish folksong mashup with the "final countdown"

beginning of the show

end of the show

secret codes and ciphers (168/365c)

i thought it would be fun decoding wingdings with theodore - i wrote him a letter, kind of to enterain him and kid of to encourage him to write me back, but he got a bit frustrated. eventually his brothers joined in helping to decode. i was a bit mean, the letter had more T's and O's than E's. .... next time i'll make it more fair.

Henry, Felix, Theodore and Alvin.
Henry has one of his collected tottle bops.

jacky andi drove our kids to ilvy's birthday party in the rain, in a gorgeous nature-lovers paradise, a farm with a dedicated "party" house. felix came home with a stomach ache from eating too much ice cream

i had reherarsal with manfred's with nina and her family. nearly all the pieces we are playind have no viola parts so the two of us playing viola got to play 2nd violin for the schubert mass.

back at home later, i made cake downstairs in the kitchen for the house concert tomorrow while chatting with centa.

busy friday (167/365c)

brian in vienna all day. i met with a lady who plays the oboe named lydia to play some duets and her kid was home sick and promised to play with us but just cried when we played more than one note. so i left again. :(

i practiced with elke, and got out in time to bike to the school and see felix and henry walking home from school together, so happy. henry was taking such good care of felix my heart nearly burst.

i picked them all up from singschule and took them to get ice cream and then dropped them at the orpheum for a rehearsal for steirischer herbst.

felix is so excited about ilvy's birthday party tomorrow that he can barely get to sleep.

looks like the job interview went well...

brian got home right before the official end of the day.

cough cough (166/365c)

elke came to brigitta and my rehearsal at the stadtpfarrkirche to give us musical advice. it was quite magical.

brigitta also worked magic in felix's piano lesson, she really knows how to make him love to play piano beautifully.
i visited nina at work and delivered some of her flyers to the library at centa's university without finding centa, and without seeing any books - surreal to see a library full of people with empty shelves.

theodore loves to practice organ!

pauli and i played some arvo paert and then i biked over to the foersters to comb out jackie's hair and have some girl talk.

A+ for democracy (165/365c)

all the elternabende on one day, so brian did that and i hung out at home. lucky me, i got to avoid listening to all the lectures and voting whether the kids would have grades (felix's class gets grades this year already!)

centa is waylaid upon her arrival at home

a sad lost day (164/365c)

... i don't remember what happened today. brian had chorus, and i think i remember reading some "ghosts who went to school" to specifically henry and having the others gather around to listen too.. :)

i need AIR (163/365c)

felt a bit under the weather all day.
new bike for felix, really henry's old bike, which he suddenly objected to "giving" to felix when he got home.

i helped him pump up the tires.
and fixed the bell.

practiced henry's vivaldi cello concerto with mini orchestra. - nadja, thomas, theodore and me.

happy birthday to nina! (162/365c)

isabella came over to "bake" rumkugeln with us as goodbye presents to her friends as she moves to linz. she came to watch me play a mass in the morning at the dom.

henry reads us the recipe

went over to nina's to wish her a happy birthday but didn't stay long - early bedtime for me.

mushrooming (161/365c)

some mushrooms felix and i found when we were out hiking at hilmteich with manuela.

we did not identify these ones
but they sure looked weird

meanwhile, theodore and henry were at casting for the childrens' opera caliph storch. theodore got a part.

brian went opernclubbing with centa very late and wore one of theodore's t-shirts for the occasion. it was not THAT tight on him.... kids are growing up, soon theodore will be clubbing on his own ...

concentration (160/365c)

coffee with michi in the sun at lendplatz. she picked me up after a quick practice with brigitta.
i came home to find henry improvising at the piano.

voll-konzentriert

in the evening quintet had a very productive recording session, and all was well - we totally earned our cheese and wine.

new beginnings (161/365c)

met with brigitta early in the morning. we have so much work to do before next month!

centa and i picked up felix from school. centa brought him a yoyo. At first he was very angry, because today he had been told (incorrectly) that he would walk home on his own but then I realized i had to take him straight to his piano lesson. He became much less angry when Centa presented the yoyo to him and walked him to the stadtpfarrkirche hof and hung out while he did his homework.

felix's first piano lesson was magical, and afterwards we went to kathi's theater production which was just super great.

quintet rehearsal today, where we celebrated olena's breakup with champagne and very little rehearsing.


i didn't take a photo today, but a wrote a poem...
anfangen…

… the morning dew loses its
sparkle on your shoes
and leaves prints on the asphalt
now that your short cut has come to an end


friends across the way greet one another
but not you all alone with wet toes:
your feet cold in thick socks


A cry of a bird, a cock, a crow, or perhaps…


Once in a while you hear a sound
that makes you smile inward
and wonder if you alone
can hear the morning
or if you can only hear it because

You are alone.

-irma 19sep2019

is this actually allowed? (160/365c)

second lesson in as many days. elke had much to say, and i was there for much longer. we worked on the 3 pieces, op 26 by luise adolpha le beau.

biked kids to and from school, and nadja came. all of us played vivaldi together. we made a mini orchestra for his cello concerto he's been working on for months. after all the practicing, (now theodore has to practice 2 instruments! etc)  we went up schlossberg and picked figs.

Mama, is this actually allowed?
umm, not really
then why are we doing this?
because COLORS

we were actually waiting for brian to come back with theodore and henry because we had found a bookshelf on the side of the road and they brought it home.

they arrive and pose their best for the camera

on the schlossberg we laughed at the english on this informational sign....

i want my money back ... i paid to go to a black hole.
also, it was quite difficult to keep lying with my feets in the footmuff

nina came over, centa came home.

i should have taken a picture when the sun was shining (159/365c)

a lesson with elke, first in a long time. we worked on only 1 piece. she said to come back tomorrow.

picked up felix on my way home. we met pauli and had coffee and sat together in the sun (at the old suesse luisa, which is now called cafe lenz and isn't as nice but still has fabulous sun and fabulous coffee) while felix did his homework.

henry was supposed to have a lesson but i didn't confirm with nadja, so she didnt come. that upset henry just a little bit but he took it in stride. then, ingrid cz came by and chatted with brian, to try to get him to join her multi-layer-marketing company instead of finding a typical job, and meanwhile i put away the chess game, which turned out to be a disaster because henry had been waiting (first patiently for nadja, and now patiently for brian) to finish that game. he basically cried himself to sleep, and i felt so bad, because i really couldn't fix the problem that i created myself.

brian had choir and i had an evening to update my blog and chat with my dear papa on skype for the first time in a long time...

when you want to tear the wings off unicorns (158/365c)

theodore had first organ lesson today! brian and i took a whole hot dinner with us and picked everyone up from school. rice and curry and tomato salad .. even henry ate it, and then asked for a green salad when we got home

felix and i wrote a letter to grossmutter and then went to choir... he didn't want to stay again, but he did this time (after our talk last week he was more reasonable) and he was glad he did because he got one of those terrible weird plastic toys at the end - a purple flying unicorn with a jeweled crown. he waited an hour for it, because the first terrible toy he got he didn't like so much. he now hasn't decided conclusively whether he will tear the wings off (to have a "normal" unicorn) ... or not.

recording session with eddie, left feeling a bit meh about the recording, it didn't seem to go as well as michael had wanted, but he didn't tell us very well what he wanted and he was pretty sick with a cold which made it less fun to sing. they may decide to scrap the whole thing and just use piano and singing. i think that would be a shame, but it's his song.

me and pauli

one of the viola and one to sing into

not quite happy with the result

great race pie-party (157/365c)

nina thoughtfully brought us croissants for breakfast... i was unprepared for breakfast, and was still so tired from staying out/up till nearly 2 last night.

awesome day for an awesome party. kids made a banner by mixing colors. it turned out so nice!

working together

professor fate and his "garage blower-upper"

the leslie special

i returned the car to jackie, and took a much-need solo walk the long way home afterwards.
how excited was felix about watching the great race and about the party?

this much!

centa and lukas and anna and phil and nina and me and brian were the adults and we mostly followed a "no talking while they are talking" rule. brian ended up popping a record entire bag of popcorn - i think we needed some salt after all the sugar.

before showtime

party was pie-rfect, although i think the kids were a bit oversugared and got a bit crazy at the end. i finished reading them to sleep just in time to say goodbye to all the guests. we finished cleaning everything up (except a final vacuuming) in 10 minutes of team-effort - a party record.

3 hour concert (156/365c)

woke up early to practice before biking to the carpool spot to get to my 9am rehearsal. back home for lunch... just enough time to eat, have a bath and change my clothes. (and removing all the vines from the reisingerhaus - the roof looks very different!)

kids were singing the aufsteirern concert, but i missed it because of my concert which was *3 hours long* - i called it!

from that they had "backstage" bracelet passes, which we pretended meant "backing day" passes.... lots of baking for the great great race party with PIE tomorrow...

preparing for blind baking

they made such beautiful designs... 

oh yeah, and for the concert, at the last minute, i had to borrow a car to take us there, which jackie was nice enough to lend us. after very late post-concertdinner (a very expensive (1/10 of our paycheck!) but pretty good vegan curry) i drove nadja and her sister sarah all the way home past the lkh and then myself. so happy to see my bed.

concert anxiety (155/365c)

looked out the window today, and noticed the ivy on the reisingerhaus being cut. WOW. some of it they removed but the rest we have to remove ourselves. it started raining as they chopped, i hope they chopped all of it.

this evening i got myself to past eggenberg, where i walked around the schloss for an hour alone, carrying my (very heavy) viola, and out to a lady i didn't know, so she could drive me to a rehearsal. it was very difficult to play under the conditions at hand... difficult music, and a conductor who seemed surprised when the orchestra made noise. it's gorgeous music, but i'm worried also the concert will be forever. we rehearsed for over three hours and didn't get through everything. we also didn't rehearse really very much, mostly just ran through things. got back pretty late, after car, tram, bus, walk.

back to our regular schedule(154/365c)

rehearsal with brigitta in the morning, we were so productive. lots of new music to learn in a few weeks.

met up with pauli and michael, first to sing together, and then to have coffee... my favorite moment was when michael needed to up the ante by pretending a huge stuffed animal lobster was a microphone so that he could get more into the moment.

fall ich wie regen

i picked up the great race at the library at the very last possible moment, they locked the door as i walked in, and i said i knew what i wanted, and they were patient but i COULDN'T find it - because they put it in the kids movies. It's not a kid's movie!

we had a nice serious chat with felix about general life things while the others were at singschule.

bribed him to sit still and talk by promising him to let him ride my bicycle when we got done.
he's almost big enough.

felix and i went home ahead, because the older ones stayed for more rehearsal, and when we got back, i found i had no key... next door to ingrid... brian beat me home though. centa and ingrid and i went to metro in the evening for a girls shopping night out. centa bought some alcohol for our upcoming great race party.

have a lice day (153/365c)

ewwww.... no school today.
spent literally ALL day shampooing and combing and washing and cleaning on repeat - it's the kind of washing/combing that they really can't do unattended or on their own, so direct supervision was necessary. turns out, after reading, most of that was unnecessary. oh well, it was cathartic anyways.

together, we made a good team, and we got all their homework and practicing and everything in anyways. just none of us felt like taking part in photos while we were combing out our hair and watching cartoons.

you, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful... (152/365c)

brian had two interviews
i practiced with my morning off
nice walk home with all the kids... next week each of their schedules will be wildly different.

showing their brother the way

we very much like the charlie chaplin shadow and the quote

maria came over with gabriel for a while, and i told her all about not being able to find an eye doctor at the last minute, just to get a signature that said they were ok to be in a show. she tells me a name of a doctor i hadn't called yet... i called, and was told they had JUST had a cancellation, how fast can i get there? in 12 minutes, we were there, by taxi. we then waited 45 minutes to see the doctor. for some reason i find that funny.
but even funnier is the differences between theodore's and henry's reactions to the eye doctor questions...

theodore reads: 5 pointed star, a not quite new moon, a large capital letter B and an elephant. The doctor smiled wryly and asked African or Indian? Theodore said seriously he couldn't tell from the ears.
henry tried to read the first line D A B O V  R as a word, but since he couldn't decide what that word was, other what it might mean, he just didn't say anything at all aloud until i specified he just had to say the letters one at a time. They are all signed up to be a part of steirischer herbst '19

at home, theodore complained that his head itched... yup. he had head lice... and so did all 5 of us. we stayed up till past 11 combing and washing and combing and washing. yuck.

first day of school (151/365c)

brian just barely slept, his flixbus arrived in graz at 3am and the kids were up and excitedly awake at 6am ready for the first day of school. 

on no sleep. i also had a huge bag and more things to carry.

Henry and Theodore showing Felix the way

Felix's grin is nearly splitting him in two

we picked felix up after two hours and opened his schultuete, and listened to a very excited kid tell us that "the first hour passed like 1 minute and the second hour passed like 10 minutes..."

... very happy till he got to choir. there he is separated from the older two kids, who have both graduated to the older group. he didn't know anybody there, and he just played outside until it was time to go home.i was quite grumpy about that.

meanwhile i had gone with the older two to carla and where henry fell in love with a jacket and i didn't buy it because i didn't have enough cash. with brian, i went back a half an hour later, and and did buy it. they seemed to think it was a bit funny that i was back with a different set of people, and buying different things and having someone else pay, but they kept their thoughts to themselves.

i thought it would be nice to play chess with brian tonight, but it turned into the longest chess game ever, and i essentially just gave up out of impatience (my story - if he wants his side told he should keep his own blaaag)

oh stuff and fluff (150/365c)

a small percentage of stuff waiting to be carried to school tomorrow

the kids and i were very extremely excited that brian is coming home tomorrow. and centa and i filled felix's schultüte with all the best stuff we could find. we tried to keep things relaxed - played some cards, cleaned up a bit, that kind of stuff.

last chance for little projects before school begins (149/365c)

shopping early in the morning for oatmeal. kids did checklist while i was out. ate and left.

nina brought us a baguette and centa and nina and felix and i tried to sing "soldier, marry me some day" and we mixed more paints. next up, organize a bob ross party

Felix is preparing his schultüte for monday

the next bob ross?

jackie and andi were having a pretty bad day and so was michi. sometimes i say i'm having not such a good day just so i don't say too many good things to somebody feeling kind of meh.

bought "bookshelves" - the kids were very excited about that and suddenly also about the strickliesl.

started reading the 21 balloons aloud - so far it's just fantastic.

you can mix any color, including flesh tones (148/365c)

early in the morning, i still had quite a bad headache. at 9:05 i suddenly realized they had to be back in town for the next singschule thing. so i biked them all there and we made it in plenty of time. then back by way of the farmers market.

i was glad to be back home for coffee.

felix and i picked them up too, and stopped at the craft store to buy magenta, yellow and cyan paint. when we got back home (freezing and wet from the sudden rain) i mixed colors for a long time until nina and centa arrived simultaneously. we had tea, and centa went and got last minute things for felix's schultuete (which we will finish decorating tomorrow)

henry and i cooked together, i showed him how to make pancakes, because that's what he wanted for dinner.

happiness for dinner

really really really no mushrooms (147/365c)

if ingrid cz can't find them nobody can. she took us for a beautiful walk in Hart bei Graz, in a completely forsaken gorgeous woods. We were in a hurry because Theodore and Henry had their first singschule appointment of the school year today.

what if you went looking for fungi and all you got was a perfect walk on a gorgeous day?

she even brought us home with her and fed us dinner, such yummy food, and stefan got to take a break and eat with us. then she even drove us into town because we missed the last possible bus/tram connection.

The first chorus thing was a workshop for other chorus teachers, so felix and i stayed to watch. it was pretty interesting. they did sing warm-ups for the entire hour.

we walked the slow way around and got ice-cream. we got there just as a new girl started for her first time. i think the people behind us thought we were slow, but really she had to be explained how to put in a new thing of ice-cream when one was too low, how to put stamps on the loyalty cards, she had to look up in a little book what was in each flavor of ice-cream and everything. by the time we left the shop the line had spilled way into the street.

we walked them to the next singschuhle appointment and let them get themselves home. we stopped for groceries and made chinese noodles for dinner. i thought it would be a smash hit, but they were so tired from their long hike that they had little enthusiasm for food and i had quite the headache. we watched a movie, Go West, and i fell asleep during it. I guess they must have put themselves to bed.

where are the wild things? (146/365c)

centa got home early, which was a nice change of pace. jackie came over with her kids, and all 5 of our combined children disappeared to play together however they wanted. they made the baby a crown and put it on his head while he slept (the crown was supposed to be for them, but they made it too small)

king vito
reminds me a bit of max from "where the wild things are"

brigitta stopped by to pick up some music, and i took a photo of her for publicity. i quickly edited it and sent it off. she apparently didn't like it very much because she scheduled an appointment with a "real" photographer for the next day. oh well.

a quick manuela visit (145/365c)

i had so many things planned for this morning, but none of them happened. i was going to go back to eggenberg, visit friends, have other people come over. but instead we had lots of good times at home, and at the playground. good enough for me.

before she leaves on a long trip to france, manuela visited.

looking for the countries we have coins from 

showing manuela the fastest checkmates

bedtime was later than i wanted, so i gave up on reading stories. when felix got annoyed by that, somebody pointed out that i didn't say manuela wouldn't read any stories. they were right, so she did. :)

walking in the rain (144/365c)

wonderful breakfast time this morning after lots of snuggles. they were so sweet when they heard i stayed up too late last night. and they were astonished too: "we can have oatmeal AND cake?"
theodore and i wrote letters to grossmutter, and then we went to deliver them, and it started to rain. we found a child-size desk and carried it almost all the way home, and then had the brilliant idea to wheel it home which made the last 50ft of the journey quite easy. i wish i had a photo of that. i don't know what to do with the desk though - we have too much stuff, and no walls.

we got books out of the library and went shopping for ingredients to make an "omama" dinner (because for some nostalgic reason i really wanted to make cucumber sauce with potatoes a la omama. - i swore i had written down how she made it, but when i looked through my old journal from 2007 and 2008 i couldn't find it. though it made me even more nostalgic)

felix discovers multiplicities of himself in the mirror at bedtime
(way after bedtime, i read stories till 10:15pm)
(we really need to start adjusting before school begins in a week) 

i went to the scherbe and celebrated jackies birthday while the kids were at the playground running around in the rain. they were so happy they didn't want to leave. i biked home with a case of wine on the back of my bike, and in the case were hidden some stickers that are a present for felix. he promptly opened the case when we got home, and asked me if i knew there were some stickers there. i told them they weren't for him. won't he be surprised next monday?

up to date on the blog behind on yoga. win some, lose some (143/365c)

spent a lot of time today getting caught up on my blog diary thing. i had been behind since sting took over my life at the beginnng of june. it took all day, and now it is well past 1am and i'm still going strong and today is really today and that feels good.

we had croissants that nina brought over with homemade jam and coffee, and centa worked on her thesis and theodore worked on his project

which right now is copying a mcguffy reader

and after noon, after a few repeat coffees and wonderful vitamin d outdoor time, we made dinner and cleaned up. cleaning up i noticed a calendar for events at schloss eggenberg, and one of them was today for kids, a creative workshop, so i rushed everyone out the door

playing or cleaning?

the "creative" part of the workshop was a little silly, coloring in pre-stenciled masks, but the kids loved it, and the tour of the museum was well worth it. unfortunately i left my card there by accident so i'll have to go back. we came back in the rain, and it had suddenly gotten cold.

writing letters with henry and felix(142/365c)

how lovely today was...

the best moments for parents are when kids say something like "will you help me do this?" and then you say "yes" and then it actually works out. Henry took an old broken fountain pen, and we sawed the thing apart, and hot glued a special (gold and silver, he says) feather to the end, after carefully cutting it to the right size to fit and then he wrote a letter to Granny with it.

just wonderful

and Felix caught the letter-writing bug and wrote a LOT of text

to grandpapa