Things I’ve Recently Learned

Here are some things I’ve recently been learning:

• My cello vibrato is actually happening! I’m so happy! It took me more than five YEARS to figure it out and I thought it might not actually ever happen.
• We’ve had a lot of cold weather, and while it hasn’t been as cold as it can be, it has been really cold for a really long time (except for the last couple of days, it was just really cold all month). While this kind of weather always makes our dishwasher freeze up, we have a plan for that. At the beginning of January during the first cold snap, we disassemble the front panel next to the floor so the warm air from the kitchen can flow under the dishwasher and fight against the cold air from the edge of the house (it’s an old house, and the edges are drafty). When it freezes up, we run a space heater in front of the dishwasher, and voila, after a little bit things are running smoothly again. We had never had any pipes freeze in our house in the fifteen years we have lived here, but this week the dishwasher unfroze and drained into the sink, and then the sink sadly did not drain. We tried a space heater under the cupboard below the sink, but no luck. Finally the next day we tried running the sauna downstairs and letting the air into a storage area where the pipe is next to the basement wall, and tada! Things cleared up. It really couldn’t have been prevented. The ground was just too cold down there. Needless to say, I am so happy to have a functional kitchen sink back. Even though it was only unusable for about 24 hours, that’s a long time for a family to be without a sink, and I learned how much I value a functioning kitchen. It’s amazing how many times a day I normally use the sink and don’t even think about it.
• I learned how to cook wild rice. Yum.
• I made cinnamon rolls and tried out the technique of cutting the rolled log of dough with a string to make the individual rolls, rather than a knife. It was really slick!
• I noticed a little trend on social media where musicians of all ages and levels are documenting their progress for 100 days of practicing. While I’m not sharing my practicing on social media, I have begun a new and difficult piano piece, and I’m really excited about seeing where it is at in 100 days of practice. I’m only on day five, but already there is so much tangible progress from day one. Practicing is truly amazing when you really break it down and think about it.
• Speaking of the piano, the pedals on my piano were getting more and more loose this week. I knew there was a wedge somewhere under the keyboard that braces it more snugly, but I couldn’t quite seem to locate it, and as I was crawling around down there, the entire pedal apparatus dropped right down to the ground with a small crash! Heavens! Mr. TOF and I were about to start his viola practice, but we spent 30 minutes under the piano in uncomfortable positions, learning how to reassemble the pedals. After a lot of teamwork we got it all put back together, which was great because I avoided making an emergency call to my terrific piano tuner.