As you have boringly read in the past, I have done it again, I have bit off more than I can chew.
Suzuki Piano Teacher's Guild and Suzuki Association of Minnesota meetings are graffiti on my calendar.
Calvin is going to take a jazz piano lesson with a teacher at MacPhail and Mary wants "chord" guitar lessons there as well (read Taylor Swift. . . ) We start Monday, which means I had to move all the Monday studio lessons so that I can at least go to the first lesson.
Mary is a month away from making the gymnastics level four team, which will up her to eight hours a week of practice at a gym 20 minutes away.
Bill's job is going really great, I'm super happy for him. But, it's a big responsibility and I respect that he wants to do super job and that takes a lot of time. So, he's trying, but much of what he generally does around the house is falling upon me.
I feel like I'm at one of those cathartic moments in life where I wonder if I should really be teaching at all. Heaven knows it would be enough just to take care of my kids, husband and household. After taxes and childcare and piano tuning my income isn't terribly dramatic. Am I doing the right thing?
It's cloudy out and 40 degrees. The leaves are all blowing off the trees.
The kids are not little anymore. They can actually stay home by themselves for short periods of time. All the baby stuff is put away. Car chairs are cluttering up the garage. Mary's youth chair for the kitchen table is on the landing to the basement. She lost three teeth this week. She looks like a jack-o-lantern. Toys and puzzles are gathering dust as Calvin makes time for middle school homework and band practice. He's working on K. 545. I just can't believe it all.
Christmas is coming. There are only six lessons left before the Christmas recital. The train has left the station.
This year, Bill suggested that I skip the pre-Advent meltdown about doing too much for Christmas--baking, decorating, gifts, travel, practicing for church, writing cards and the infamous Christmas tea. He suggested I skip that annual tearful evening when I stew about what to cut back on this year--where we talk about it till the wee hours of the night.
Instead, he suggested, I should just go ahead and jump to the part where I do it all anyway and just enjoy it.
Maybe life is a little like that. Maybe we should just skip the meltdown and move ahead to doing what we want to do anyway. What we are going to do anyway. Just as an antique is worth exactly what you paid for it--ultimately we do what is important to us.
We stopped in a toy store last weekend. Eleven-year-old Calvin, Mr. ipad technology wiz, went gaga over a new wooden brio train set. "Look how cute." He is not so grown-up. I came down last Sunday morning to find him cuddled under a blanket on the sofa watching Thomas the Tank Engine cartoons. The same ones he watched when he was three and collecting those little engines for learning Lightly Row. Maybe I'm gonna buy him that wooden brio train set with the little logs on the back for learning K. 545.
Time marches on.
I'm gonna keep teaching, and parenting and accompanying and being chief operating officer of the Kotrba household. I'll try to skip the part where I melt down about it all. Instead I'll try to just jump ahead to the part where I do it all anyway and just enjoy the ride. In the end, for the most part I will do what is important to me.
I just happen to think a lot of things are important.
Sorry for the lack of blog entries. I still have a lot of boring and occasionally not so boring things to say. Thanks for checking back. And, blessings to you all as you make these same decisions about what is important to you and your family.
I have to go, I have something very important to do, right this minute, which is to tuck in my two kidos.
Then, I have something else VERY important to do, which is to go to bed.
Goodnight. Sleep tight.
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