project day.... (121/365d)

mostly got done with all the projects we wrote on our list today. we would have done more but lego-playing got in the way - which is completely fine.

jackie came over with vito (he's nearly turning 1! a fact which plays terrible tricks on my mind), and we all played ball, and had pumpkin pie and cream.

we read robin hood - on to the last section

very very close to done!

Centa invited us to fancy G&T evening, so we sat around and gabbed until very late. a lot of me complaining that brian can't defend his dislike of flaubert. #snoberism

so pretty but now i need sleep.

Silent tea-party (120/365d)

finished flaubert's parrot in the quiet, early hours of the morning.

the noise level - although far from what it could be given the number and average age of the people in the house, has been a bit much for Centa lately, but luckily, she is creative and came up with a fun solution for everyone...

the

Silent tea-party of awesomeness.

telling jokes, and trying to laugh silently

no peaking until i'm done!

Don't forget to say write "please" and "thank you"
and i simply must tell centa that the cake is yummy.

she baked lemon cake with leftover lemon slices from making her first batch of elderflower champagne. everything was delicious and everyone was very happy

theodore makes a great running partner (119/365d)

we reversed the order a bit today. first we read robin hood, then had an all music morning, and then homework starting at noon.

henry played his bach prelude for mary (who then introduced us to the cellist enrico dindo - amazing!) over skype, which meant brian had to take his work meeting somewhere else. like on top of the now-ruined "fort"

music drove him out of his work room

pauli came over to talk about books and have tea. meanwhile centa made elderflower champagne and, since there were lots of lemons cut up in the making, a lemon cake. also meanwhile, the boys started the first harry potter movie. it's not scary. it's cool! ... 20 minutes after the movie ended and it's time for bed... "i'm going to sleep in mama's bed."

there was a bit of a movie intermission where theodore and i ran our 3rd day of 3rd week of couch to 5k, in the threat of rain.

capers (118/365d)

there was cranky morning of fighting over the fort which just meant i started taking it apart. that just led to them rebuilding it with team work, to spite me. which actually was perfect for me.

i finished the kids' video project, which was super adorable - it rendered for 2 hours. the title cards are too short (i know, i know) and there's a typo (a write-o) in one of them, but it's done, and i am pleased with the result, and will not fix it.

was aunt frieda's birthday today, and i called edward, sang happy birthday. edward showed her the video, and she laughed a few times, although we are not sure if she recognized the house/location.

me taking a picture of watching aunt frieda watch my youtube channel
on her NINETY-EIGHTH birthday

sound and video recordings for many hours (117/365d)

video with the eberles in the morning,
it felt early at 10am when i biked there with changes of clothes for 2 videos (and of course what i wore to bike) .... one of the videos has me singing. i didn't have my camera, but i pretended to sing for the camera at home.

la la la la la

after i got home i worked on composing, but after being musically uninspired, i was inspired to see how jacky and andi were, and they were totally up for a glass of wine after all the kids were asleep. of course, that wasn't till nearly 10pm, which brought us home at nearly 1am, but it was totally worth it to see them again (finally!)

simple saturday (116/365d)

woke up just in time for 11am organ lesson. by this time felix and brian have killed over 150 slugs and many snails. felix collects 2euros and 1 cent. 2 cents per slug and 1 cent per snail.

brian and felix ir for veggies at the farmers market with masks while i had garden coffee with michi... then i had the luxury of finishing my yasmina reza book in the apple tree (that i got on my last run with theodore at one of the book-drop places)

then we did virtual bridge with grandpapa... due to technological difficulties we played the first game with a computer bot that we thought was grandpapa and were sad that he didn't have his sound on. oops.

who's the dummy?

henry played me the entire prelude of the first cello suite!! I was very moved!

ran with theodore, at the top of kalvarienberg i saw nico - he didn't seem to recognize me but at the bottom he did, and we chatted. he likes all the same books i do, and he walked home with theodore and me and borrowed ethan fromme
(but sadly because of all my lallygagging and chatting i missed brigitta coming over to borrow a book)

theodore and i played lots of music together paul juon 1st bagatelle, telemann canonic sonata, vivaldi concerto

went to bed way too late after a bit of a work evening with brian.

fancy friday (115/365d)

woke up way too early.... read the beginning, and was very impressed by, flaubert's parrot

found out with mary that the piece i found for us yesterday was useless - well actually it's not really a piece for viola and cello, but rather a piece for piano and viola OR piano and cello. so we wasted a bit of time on that. meanwhile theodore had a skype lesson with elke, and it went absolutely great.

anyways, we decided today was "fancy friday" which meant dressing up for fancy dinner. What do you want for fancy dinner? Pizza.

Fancy hats, jackets, dandelion decorations, and place settings and pizza.

After a successful online class, Centa teaches Henry the double windsor

Felix made the dough all by himself.
I made the sauce with sundried tomatos and got really angry that my new-ish mixer no longer works AT all because of a 0.25cent piece of plastic is worn down. i wrote a very trite very negative amazon review and didn't feel better at all.

tried to play a bit of siegl with mary but we couldn't get the technology to work. we tried to pretend we were men to trick skype into acknowledging us, but it didn't work.

...hung out with red wine and centa, who was in a great mood after being reconnected with real people over zoom for class.

fort-uitously(114/365d)

some homework was done in a huge blanket fort. but not all....

theodore on top of the table/blanket fort

the other two in the dark with headlamps:

felix

and henry, side by side.

nina called and asked if i felt like some quiche on the balcony in the sun 1 meter apart, and i was overjoyed. i left brian in charge of food and kids and went over there. i got a second chance to wave up at nina when theodore and i went for our run this evening. it was a very nice run.

we got back just in time for the online wiki meeting in the evening, where i got to wave to nina for the third time.

mary and i uploaded a bach improvisational piece to youtube and planned some more recording for tomorrow of a piece i found for viola and cello....

let's pretend .... (113/365d)

switched with brian for the morning, he did kids homework with them, and i did computer work. wrote my introduction for Paul Juon's Mysteries for Cello, and emailed the nypl about rights... dry stuff like that.

when that was all done, we switched again. we read a lot, "the white deer" (thurber) and "mistress masham's repose" (t.h. white) (both truly very very weird) centa made title cards for our silent movie so i can finally finish that (yay, more computer work :[ ) unhappily there was very little music today. but we have a full program planned for tomorrow.... we'll see how that goes.

one of the cards.....

henry and felix made a blanket/pillow/table fort that made them very happy to play in, and i got to hear them play let's pretend - they were the second richest people in the world - they got that way by reporting for a paper, then they read one of the papers that the richest people had gotten a fine (of maybe like 2000 dollars or something else a lot) "for something" and now they were officially the richest. what jubilation!

soup for dinner, and henry even ate it! always happy when that works.
and felix's official highlight of the day was a race that he and henry did from one side of the house and with their legs tied together. (not to each other, each one had their own ribbon)

nothing special is also special (112/365d)

according to felix, we didn't do anything "special" today.
.....but i find just having a beautiful day of no special stuff special in its own right.

like sitting outside in the sun reading robin hood all together...

...under the hazelnuts...

...with daisies in my ears...

...or biking around the block while brian runs. or playing duets with irma. or listening to kabalevsky while doing homework. or reading more books with agnes over skype.

funga alfia *stamp stamp* (111/365d)

split research time with kids doing homework time. we used lots of hours of the day doing necessary culling of old school papers with the kids - it took some time because they saved the stickers from their long done homework papers... carefully removing each sticker and putting it on a transparency sheet for using another time for something else.

we accidentally bothered centa while she was teaching by stamping upstairs, oops. our stamping was practicing body rhythm for singschule. it was super fun to practice, but i don't envy andrea having to watch 90 3 minute videos of kids singing and stamping.

i really didn't  want to, but i ran with theodore ending our 2nd week of couch to 5k successfully.

we got back from running just in time to watch a live stream of a confrence interview of women composers smythe and clarke with centa... we didn't learn much new stuff, and the performance part afterwards of composer "henry love" (actually hilde loewe's pseudonym) was pretty terrible so we turned it off... a singer who wasnt a singer singing with her back to the camera, playing piano parts she hadn't finished yet, with a piano she hasn't been able to have tuned....... yeah no.

his and hers after-dark drink
it's not the normal stereotype though:
irma wanted a beer and brian wanted the white wine
the stereotype of irma taking the photo and brian coding for "one more minute" remained accurate.

a day of only fun stuff (110/365d)

i baked a rhubarb cake this morning, and set up a video for quintet in the basement where i attempted to play viola while doing yoga. i needed brian's help to press the buttons. i was quite a bit selfconscious, but that's the nature of the beast.

while we were in the basement we heard the strains of music from upstairs and found everyone else playing "when i'm sixtyfour" as a string quartet (missing the viola) with felix on djembe so i joined in and, as henry wrote in his corona journal, "it was very fun".

a brief moment where they looked at a book of 1000 german words
and tried to determine how many of them are "wrong" 

sunday rainy day around-the-block bridge - whoever's the dummy has to run around the block with brian, where brian gets the most workout of all of us... it also changes the bidding process, depending on who wants to go for a run or not. by the time we finished it was raining, and theodore and brian came home soaked.

we read robin hood and laughed a lot.

i composed some weird song stuff, i'm going to try to finish a new song this week.

kids moved their beds into the attic. before everyone was all asleep felix was back downstairs in my bed, telling me he was scared of a tom and jerry cartoon (that he saw last year). we did some psycho mumbojumbo (it's just a drawing, you can rip up the monster) until he fell asleep .... Brian and I watched "desk set" and laughed at the 50's computer technology.

while apple blossoms bloomed and fell (109/365d)

brian went to the farmers' market, and they were selling plants again, so we got many things for our garden and planted them. I thought it would rain imminently all day but it didn't until 10pm. it's beautiful out now, and we needed the rain.

can you find all the kids?

i drank my morning coffee in the blossoming apple tree... this was my view...

looking down

looking over the roof of the house

theodore and i went on our run project, and because of the threat of rain there were many fewer people than normal along our paths, which was quite nice.

i learned a LOT from watching some counterpoint and harmony music theory lessons.
asparagas with tofu (a la the great chef rozanne gold) for dinner and then more digging for the children

skyped with agnes and read two books with her.

we watched living planet, and felix didn't want to watch the polar bear eat a seal and i remember having the exact same visceral reaction as a child.

unfortunately for today, i totally forgot that we had wanted to do "silly saturday" where we dress up silly and have silly hair. centa did, but we didn't and that's too bad. next time we have to set a reminder alarm or something. otherwise the days all are too much the same, even in their loveliness.

true paradise is spring time without obligations (108/365d)

read nate the great over skype with agnes, all four of us were crowded around the piano, where i had my computer set up to record and practice.

i recorded tons and tons of stuff, including igor brezget's newly written "coronantidote #7" for which i recorded the viola and two violin parts. it turned out pretty good, i think. also i gave up recording the riegger elegy because i kept messing up and i just asked brigitta to do it for me. she sent me a recording over whatsapp and i was done with my part 10 minutes later. It's not even terrible.

we all read robin hood outside on the sun bench after henry took charge of lunch (oven-toasted cheese sandwiches with basil from the garden)

centa made a very pretty flower arrangment... the lilacs are already blooming. the whole garden smells so good!

 so pretty!

 while i was inside recording and working there was lots of digging for theodore, henry and felix, who are busy trying to build an underground room/cave.... the hole is less dangerous now. before it was just deep enough to trip into by accident. now it's a good 3 or 4 feet deep and you can't miss it anymore. they really really really needed a bath!

our lives are a bit digital (107/365d)

man oh man what a cranky morning, but thank goodness it got better.

we made lots of spaghetti for dinner and ate outside in the sun. for felix's schoolwork he was supposed to do a blind taste-test of various veggies, and out of solidarity we all did it too. they all found that quite grand.

caroline sent me a video of her kids and my kids playing chamber music together... a thing we hadn't done much as children despite living a town apart. 

transatlantic pajama chamber music

and i got confirmation that the very niche-market that is viola music is publishing my typesetting of that Riegger Elegie that i did a few weeks ago.

i have a lot of tabs open.....
....next up, record!

the one thing we can't do online though... is excercise, so theodore and i hit the pavement again.

a day with happy children (106/365d)

what a lovely day! henry made crafts with mary and agnes and i did homework and reading with each of them. we signed theodore up for goodreads with his own email addess.

measured the string exactly.

we played tons and tons of music, including sending a video of theodore and henry's parts of a piece to caroline in america so her two kids can play it with us, split-screen style.

we read lots of robin hood and laughed and laughed at him and friar tuck going backwards and forward over the stream.

we were, however, all up way too late.

cold and windy book day (105/365d)

for some reason i was beyond normal tired today. i was happy to just play lots of bridge and stay mostly inside, it was cold and windy despite the sun. Homework was done early, music practicing late.

Read Master Jacob, a play based on a Howard Pyle story from a book that Centa magicked here.
Generally, there was a lot of reading, the best part of which was me curled up on the couch with Henry, him reading aloud to me from the Museum House Ghosts after leaning on me while i read Julian Barnes. Also I read the red badge of courage from cover to cover, a classic that i felt i knew from having heard so much about it but was still surprised to find it a very "enjoyable" read.
We didn't find time for Robin Hood though, unfortunately. Bed time story was the beginning of Thurber's White Deer.

Also I found that archive.org has opened its archive to borrow any book at any time, and that makes it possible to get all kinds of books in the weird uncanny valley of copyright - still under copyright, long out of print, and impossible to find. it's a bit worse for music and i've been running into that problem over and over again in research. but with this archive.org thing i even found some books by barbara picard that i was never able to find easily, or old-fashioned but cool children's books that are too young to be available free.

maybe if we didn't stare at the sun so much we wouldn't have any ghosts in the museum....

easter monday (104/365d)

Easter Monday breakfast was Nina cake and coffee

so soft and fluffy and such good milchschaum

Theodore and I went for our couch to 5k run today, it's so fun to run with him and have him keep time on a stopwatch. we "ran into" Henry and Felix on their way back from the the forest on the Mur.

...and we played lots of bridge, morning, noon, and night.

easter (103/365d)

started with baking the easterbread while the kids had baths. i dropped one perfect roll into garlic oil and we ate it while skyping with rainer and peter

set the table then walked to nina's house to wave and say hi and then along the mur until we were all really hungry. we got a LOT of weird looks for being dressed up, since everyone knows there's nowhere to go.

at nina's, keeping our distance

on the mur.
i took a blurry photo of all of us, but centa took this one

on our way home, henry pointed out that brian had gone back to get my camera on purpose to hide the eggs, and i squeezed his hand hard and told him not to tell my secrets. felix was very excited about the easter egg hunt ... they were all found before dinner despite brian making some very clever hiding places.

in a broom

behind some handles

in the lawnmower....

dinner was all yummy food, the confit veggies were a great idea! fennel and beets and leeks.

then centa and i drank coffee with ingrid, chatting to each other over the fence while i staked up raspberries. centa shared an epic chocolate covered egg with ingrid and karli.

one of these packs a punch!

then i read with felix and fell asleep, while he read to me. when i woke up it was nearly bedtime, and we thought we'd play a hand of bridge, but then we suddenly heard a strange noise of a burgler.....

who turned out to be nina, saying hi to us, and keeping her distance on the couch with some wine.

the day before easter (102/365d)

great teamwork on a beautiful day...
started like this....

goood moorning!

then we we colored eggs and made easterbread. i made a glorious (and way too decadent) souffle with the 10 egg whites that were not quite perfectly separated out of the 20 we got from taking the 20 yolks for the bread... yes, our easter bread takes TWENTY egg yolks.

 reading ducks, newburyport

 30 eggs

 painting eggs with centa

 we played with legos and theodore and i went for a run.

for more cooking, i made confit of various vegetables, as an experiment to see how that turns out for tradition, since i have always tried to replace the protein and centerpiece aspect of easter ham, and actually eggs are tons of protein and the easter bread is always pretty much a centerpiece, so why not confit some vegetables the day before?

and of course we did lots of cleaning
and we recorded and i mixed (for 4 hours) the miserere so we have a chorus of all family voices cross-continental and international.

finished name of the rose

and after theodore and i went for our run, we started an easter fire, and whisper-sang dona nobis pacem so as not to bother the neighbors with song or noise enough for them to call the fire department.

getting ready for the weekend (101/365d)

Henry and Felix both ended up in our bed this evening, and this morning I was awoken way too early with a knee in my face and no blankets, so I got up and read another couple chapters of the Name of the Rose (which is becoming a pretty tedious read but that's ok)

Then, while Brian went to the farmers market and the spar all by himself for all the food for the feast weekend, I had virtual coffee time with Nina.

Brian returns
(I interupt my jit.si meeting to run and get my camera and memory card)

I made garlic pumpkin soup for dinner (it's a fasting day, after all) and we ate outside and I enjoyed the sunshine and read a bit more while Centa and the kids painted eggs that had been blown out. Henry kicked Felix's soccer ball back onto the roof, so it's stuck there for the time being.

We all went on a walk together, but Henry wanted to go back sooner than everyone else so Brian and he went back. Felix and Theodore and I walked on, spurred and motivated by the pedometer that Felix has been wanting to try for ages and the other two finally let him wear today. He was running ahead and back again, running in place, generally hopping and skipping. More steps, more steps!

At home we started a massive clean-up action, which went pretty well but somehow riled the kids up enough that they didn't fall asleep until 10:30 and now I'm pretty much exhausted too.

bumblee day (100/365d)

foersters visited during bridge to drop off lego. all plans for the day go directly out the window.
today was bumblee day, which we found out when we opened a letter from tante lala. that's the day in our family that the little kids tell the adults what to do.

Happy Bumblee Day!

foersters visited right after we scheduled our day with all kinds of ideas and had just started to play bridge ... they dropped off some letters (ronja wrote "ihr seid die einzigen die ich vermisse!") and a huge package of their own lego for us to borrow, since that's what my three play with when we visit there.

when we opened the box, all plans for the day go directly out the window. now it was lego time all day. they barely made use of their incredible power until bed time - at which point they got to stay up very very late with story after story.

theodore and i did do ourselves good and went for a walk/run (first day of couch to 5k for us) and dropped off some books for the foersters as an exchange.

we made ourselves a beautiful last supper evening with incense and candlelight where we looked at oil paintings of the passion story by Wilhelm Thöny and had rye bread and wine. theodore tasted and made a face (and he generally has a very forgiving palate)

afterwards i got a chance to talk to my parents over skype while brian and centa read all those stories.

together time is important! and alone time is important! (98/365d)

in the morning we chatted with didipatz and agnes, and then played postmaster first before ending up at the real postoffice to send mail to agnes. they have reduced hours there, because of legal reasons, but i think it just would make more crowds not smaller crowds... i don't quite get it.

i got a long chance to read on my own (name of the rose) while the kids biked to and hiked up jakobsleiter...

some more spring cleaning with children in bed and then we rewarded ourselves with a movie...

waiting for the teakettle

 a new(ish) movie ("the big sick") until almost the end. we were too tired for the last 20 minutes.

family meeting (98/365d)

bridge and family meeting this morning, where we decided exactly when and for what hazelnuts go into the jar (like stars on a chart) and when they come back out at what rate. it really improved everybody's mood for the whole day - can't argue with success!

we had dinner outside, salads and lentils and nockerln (felix's new "favorite" food) and afterwards

brian decided it was too nice to stay inside and work, so he and theodore went up the plabutsch and henry felix and i went up the kalvarienberg. henry carried everything, camera, two pairs of (pretty big and heavy) binoculars and water. i felt a bit bad and a bit silly too that my camera didn't have a memory card in it. we tried to find our house with binoculars but couldn't. i'm not sure it's actually visible from that angle. we were very happy biking there and back. they played football when we got back, and i wrote a new wikipedia entry for Fidelis Zitterbart.

brian's phone had a memory card
we're somewhere in that blurred background vista

made curry and couscous for dinner. henry cooked for himself: just plain tofu.

Finished around the world in 80 days. ... punctually: precisely at 9:00pm.

a day of mostly nothing(97/365d)

A family meeting gone bad this morning, ending with a bit of a shouting match.

Fixed my bruised psyche at virtual coffee time with Nina. 

Nice homework time even though technically it's easter vacation and there would be no school.

Henry and Felix got out the radio and put batteries in it and discovered that small shops will be open again after Easter.

taking a polaroid for grossmutter

dinner (soup and toasts that henry made) outside again, such nice weather. a little more around the world in 80 days, henry was even more disappointed that we didn't make it to the end of the movie. one more hour to go, but we saved it for tomorrow.

palm sunday doesn't feel like palm sunday (96/365d)

such a nice little reading time in bed with me and henry this morning - he had had a bad dream at night and come to snuggle. he read the (very abridged) version of around the world in 80 days, and i promised him that tonight we could watch the movie.

it was so nice and warm and sunny outside, and we all read robin hood on the sun bench. too sunny for felix so he sat on the ground in the shade of the rose bush.

brian and all three boys went for a run while i attempted again to transcribe the ballad of sally ann so i can play it with the buffaloes. i didn't hear the doorbell, or my phone. but brian told nina she could go in, the gate was open, and she said she was already outside sitting at the picnic table. thus it was till i heard a plaintive calling of "iiiirma" ... yay!

tea time with nina and centa's fabulous fancy cookies

as delicious as they are pretty

after palm sunday tea time, with croissants and cookies and very careful 1m distance, i walked nina back home, and even got to stop and wave at phil at his new place.

home again we started the movie, and brian made popcorn, but it got too late to watch the whole thing. henry was a bit dissapointed.

i got a chance during bedtime to catch up with manuela.

a very photogenic saturday (95/365d)

Farmers market in the morning with Theodore and masks and ordnungswache. Later in the afternoon Brian got a new mask of his very own at the door of the grocery store. After that, at akdag, there was no 1m distance or facemasks in the tiny and very crowded store.

masks and security

for quintet promotion purposes, barbara wanted a short video of me cutting and throwing a lemon, so I set up the camera, and centa threw lemons at me which I then cut and threw at brian. it was very amusing. The leftover lemons had to be used, so Centa and Henry and Felix made very fancy cookies for tomorrow. 

after two organ lessons on zoom, we started a movie project with the kids: so fun when we finally got started - lots of preparation for on-screen pranks. we mixed a liter of vinegar with 2 cups of baking soda for one prank. Then I stopped filming and got to clean lots of stuff with ensuing slush.

on a whim, i wrote out and typeset and edited an Elegy for Viola and Piano (that I found by chance in the digital archives of the ny public library) by a man named... "Wallingford Constantine Riegger" - wow, what a name!

went for a short run around the block with brian, and then chatted with nick while brian ran farther on his own.

reading an antique herb book (one of the props) before get

chef felix is going to get pranked

card break

i vant to be alloane (94/365d)

Since they have been having a difficult time not distracting each other while doing homework we had the brilliant idea of splitting the three kids up and doing their work with one adult. That worked pretty well! there was much practicing and music playing, and family football. A lot of the day though I stole away for myself, because I really needed to be alone.

After everyone was asleep Brian and I went out for a long walk. We found Felix awake and quiet and sad at home asking "where were you?" ... So at 11:30pm we had a snuggle party.

mother and child

der nöck doesn't solve all problems (93/365d)

the day started and ended with hermann prey's singing of Carl Loewe's Der Nöck.... 

phew, what a day... so much fussiness in the children and general crankiness, although we got to sleep in and everyone seemed totally happy early in the morning.... then things kind of went slowly off the rails... and now, sitting here in the evening, i am left wondering... what did happen today? and what made it seem so rotten?

only good stuff.. we drew, ,went for walks,picked bärlauch for our supper, and we played music, and all the other things that make us generally happy, but i guess it's not always enough. all the kids said their thorn was "so much fighting" but..... they were also all actively involved at some point. i guess some change must be made. ... one fun thing was making thunderstorms using our new rainstick and centa's thunder-machine that i glued back together with henry turning on and off the lights.

finished watching the show fleabag with very dry champagne. disappointing last 3 episodes, but overall we had a good time watching.

Brian's review of the show:
1 drink needed per episode