i miss brian :( (23/365c)

should have been lazy sunday, but there were 4 hours of zauberfloete instead. lots of corrections and last minute changes. everything has to be said twice - because there are 2 people playing each role. i basically have no idea what happened at home all day - lots of games i guess, and a ton of drawing.

brian let me know he went for a run with his friends but sent me a photo of himself with this dude

meeting ronald reagan on a run in the rain in budapest

last time king roger (22/365c)

i had the urge at 5:30am to start cleaning everything. sometimes sleep deprivation makes me a little tiny bit neurotic. i promissed the kids croissants for breakfast and invited nina. she was happy i meant 10am not 7am, but i didn't even arrive myself until 11am because i ran into a lady from the frauenorchester on my way home from forgetting everything needed to do early in the morning. turns out she is also a little bit cool-forgotten-composers obsessed, and has been writing to the same musicoligst as i have about reznicek. strange coincidence.

one of the things i did this morning was pick up tickets for theodore's last krol roger performance for me, nina and isabella. in the mail, henry got a birthday present from my mama: opera glasses, so he and mary went too - stehplaetze. (i still had a 6 hour zauberfloete rehearsal sandwiched in here somehow)

we did an ultra mini celebration
sang happy birthday to the tune of the william tell overture
stuck a candle into a bread that henry made at a workshop at the sorger bakery and shaped into a butterfly

a little bit steam punk?

viewing the table-side  dance performance through opera glasses
(they don't focus that close!)

the opera was excellent, theodore did a great job, i think we all enjoyed ourselves.

meanwhile centa home with felix and agnes, microwaving ice cubes ("it's ok, we already made new ice, but it's not ready yet")

early morning, late night (21/365c)

i head to leave really really really early in the morning, so i could pick up the kids from wienerstrasse, bring them home, get them ready for school, and then walk with them to school with felix (who's a bit slower of course) so we could all do the first communion music rehearsal with henry's class.

at home i drew myself a bubble bath and that was exactly when mary and agnes arrived. oh it was so lovely to see them again, all fresh from their sleep on the night train. also it made logistics much easier. i went to see marko play his nirvana show again (at lendwirbel, and somehow at 4pm) .... mary took the kids to abenteuerspielplatz which turned out to be closed. i had thought the nirvana concert was going to be much too loud for kids, and i was right - but that didn't stop many many people from bringing their kids and putting them in the front row to watch, right by the speakers. pauli found me there and he knew 2 of the band members too - small graz world!

mary and the kids found us there, and i taught them when to jump up and down and yell "HEEEEY" which we did for one song and thankfully the concert ended there and we didn't have to worry about long term hearing loss. Agnes remarked that it was "just like jingle bells" (consider a heavy metal version of jingle bells)

theodore played for possible consideration for a music scholarship at the conservatory. results dont come in until next month.

one more zauberfloete rehearsal, there were 4 musicians there this time.

trying to reach tante lala to wish her a happy birthday
it didn't work. :(
well anyways, happy belated birthday if you read this, tante lala!

i'm not a very good logistics manager (20/365c)

Brian leaves for Hungary boo hoo. :(
early let out from school to get to more tosca rehearsals.

zorah and felix "cooking" with stones, bricks, and mud, instead of eating real food.

theodore and henry and ronja eating real food up in the tree house.

i was so excited to have the opportunity to play the zauberfloete, but when i got there it seemed i got stuck in the student pile on a list somehow and so i was playing with 17 year olds, and there were exactly 2 of them who bothered to come to the rehearsal. lucky me. i just had to organize last minute babysitting, which ended up being pretty inconvenient for jackie and andi and turned into a sleep over at their place. (i had originally thought mary would be arriving on the 2nd, but she had told me she was in krakow *until* the 2nd and would then take the night train, which means she will arrive tomorrow. 10 panicked text messages later, i felt a little bit chagrined)
the crowning moment of rehearsal was when the director commented that "theodore is a genius, where does that come from?"

Since I had neither husband nor kids i had no excuse not to get to sleep nice and early. but pauli called while i was at rehearsal so i headed over there for some late-night tea-time and chatting. that was quite nice.

day off on the riegersburg (19/365c)

Manuela and Dorian picked me up nice and early to go climb up the side of the Riegersburg. There were one or two tiny stressful moments, but the rest of it was just glorious, and the day was breathtakingly beautiful. Only downside of the gorgeous weather and the national holiday was that there were a lot of people out.

my one moment where i took a break and dared take my camera out of my backpack.
Manuela was in full on concentration mode.

we walked around the burg for a while after we got to the top, and then headed to the one Buschenschank in the area that was open.

just the dessert would have been plenty of food, but we had wine and a full dinner before these pretties got to us.

meanwhile Brian took the kids to frisbee practice, and after everything we all met at lendwirbel.

to the non-stop sound of 2 hours of african drumming

we hung out for hours in the street playing football and when it was late and we were way overtired we walked very slowly home. went to bed feeling sick and with a headache ugg but i was in such a good mood from climbing!

wine and work (18/365c)

brian went with felix to the kindergarten and spent the day walking around andritz on a kind of field trip for the school-aged kids.

felix leading the pack

i went and picked up the big kids at school at 9am and took them to their first tosca rehearsal. they came home on their own, a bit before i came home from my music lesson. i dragged my feet going, for some reason i didn't want to at all. it turned out ok, but i haven't really had a lot of time to practice recently, and sometimes it feels a bit futile.


in the evening barbara and i made silly videos for our instagram page and drank some very good wine.

starting work

barbara is anti-pasta, so here are some antipasti

sad day (18/365c)

baby sat michi's kid for a few hours this morning. meanwhile i was weeping on the phone when the kindergarten called to tell me that my own child was being cranky and could i think of a good solution for them? regardless i was sad and weepy all day anyways, and i gave up on the second kindergarten phone call in the afternoon, because i started crying again. ugg.

i planted things all morning, and lots of the afternoon. next up, weeding, but who has the time for that? brian took the older kids to see the final concert of the competition. theodore wasn't playing but he finally got his certificate of winning a first prize in his age group. i'm still proud. :)

at the stefanieensaal

closeup selfie