This week I was invited to The Banana’s Preschool to be a “guest musician” for their unit about music. I brought all sorts of instruments with me: my clarinet, flute, french horn, trumpet, my violin that I can’t play that has a broken string, and even my brother’s old, moldy saxophone that has some majorly leaky pads and really needs to be taken in to the instrument repair hospital. It was such a blast. I showed the kids all the instruments. We explored how many keys they had, how they made sound, and what they were made out of. I played a tiny bit on each instrument. The kids got to touch the instruments that were less breakable. They had such terrific questions for me, like, “Do you have any more instruments that you didn’t bring with you?” Why, yes my friends, I do. Because some people like knick knacks, and I like instruments! So I told them about all the instruments I left at home. And they told me about instruments they have in their houses that their families play. But my favorite part of all, was when I’d start to open an instrument case and I’d ask them what color they thought the next instrument would be, “Purple! Green! Orange! Pink!” I loved that their worlds were so colorful.
Last week, in a major technological glitch, I managed to loose every piano student’s entire music portfolio for the year. It happened when I plugged my iPod into my computer, and the computer thought it was my husband’s iPod, and somehow erased everything from my iPod, where I had been recording students for months. The actual explanation was of course a bit more technical than that, but basically that’s what happened, and that’s what I told my students when I had to break the news to them. I was beyond sick and stressed out about it. The students had been working so very hard on those portfolios, but in a true example of “process, not product,” each and every student was very graceful and gracious about the lost. They completely took it in stride. The little students just shrugged their shoulders and asked if they could keep recording music. (Of course!) The big students rolled their eyes and told me about times when similar things had happened to their iPods. Some said things like, “You didn’t actually push that sync button, did you? NEVER push the sync button!” Actually I didn’t specifically push the sync button, but the computer basically decided to sync me. Anyway, all is thankfully well in piano land.
Perhaps I should clarify that all my students were easy going about the loss of the student portfolios except for my son. Mr. SP was actually home when the mishap happened, so he knew about it right away. Then he heard me tell all my students about it all week long. When it came time for his actual piano lesson late in the week, he hopped up on the bench and asked me if I was going to tell him the “terrible news” that I’d been telling everyone else all week. So I launched into my terrible news speech. He asked if I could fix it and get the portfolios back. I said no. Then he burst into true blue ultra emotional tears and cried and cried and cried! I gave him a big hug and told him I was sorry. “It’s true! It’s true!” he sobbed. “You REALLY lost them.” He mourned all the songs he recorded. He grieved for the songs from his previous book that he recorded. He cried and cried and then finally he felt better. To be truthful, since he hadn’t ever gotten excited about recording anything, I had really no idea that it meant very much to him. But, that’s my surprisingly dramatic, emotional boy. Never a dull moment.
Last week on Wednesday I had parent teacher conferences in the very early morning before school. This meant that I hired a babysitter for the little kidlets, who also helped the big kid lets get on the bus while I drove to school and talked with the teachers. However, to make things further crazy before the sun even rose for the morning, Mr. SP developed a bacterial infection on his chin that was oozing like crazy, so he had to stay home from school for the day. I got back from conferences, paid the babysitter, snaggled and wrestled everyone at home into their snowsuits and stuck them into the car, called the vet to cancel the appointment for the cat to get an immunization since I wasn’t sure they would appreciate me dragging along a seven year old with an oozing face into their office, and drove The Banana to preschool. I drove home, picked up the library bag and a box and some things that had to go to the bank. I dropped the library books at the library book drop and took the package to the UPS store because a company mailed me something I didn’t order and I had to return it, and walked into the bank at 9:30 a.m. (Mr. SP and Mr. Trouble on Feet were in the car waiting). The teller asked me how I was doing. “Oh, it’s been a bit of a crazy morning, but I think it will slow down and get better now,” I said. The teller was a really nice guy, probably a few years younger than me. He looked at the clock and said that it was awfully early for things to be so crazy in the day. I told him about how I had four kids and all the things that had happened in the morning so far, and how it was really just a normal morning, but that the oozing bacterial infection made it a bit more hectic than usual. His eyes got bigger and bigger and huge and he finally said, “You do that almost every morning?’ And then it occurred to me that people with four kids probably don’t have a morning quite like that. No wonder I feel crazy sometimes.
YaYa spotted a male and female cardinal and a goldfinch in a bush next to our house yesterday. She was so excited.
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