It's October now, and time for me to start looking at the Nutcracker again. The first year that I attempted the Nutcracker first violin part post-ms, my brain was way too overloaded. I couldn't read the music and get my fingers to move at the same time, so I memorized all 54 pages of it (1.5 to 2 hours worth). Comes in handy when you can't remember where you put your music. :-) Today I warmed up with the torturous scale passages in the Finale and then started in on the high position work in the Overture. The entire Overture is a huge first violin workout, but there are 2 specific places that are a major pain in the butt. They're both in high positions with weird finger motions, completely exposed, with the inside and outside players in octaves. Ack. I played through one section, relieved that it was going pretty well, and then decided to try playing the harder (and even higher) section. Until I couldn't figure out what note it would start on and realized that I had just played the harder section. And it didn't feel that bad. Wow.

K. asked me, in e-mail, if I get frustrated when I'm teaching. Um...yeah. I am, by nature, an extremely patient person (except sometimes I'm not patient with myself). But not when I'm tired. And these days I'm extremely tired. I am so tired that I get light-headed. I am so tired that I come home from school, needing food, and am sometimes too tired to actually eat. In a word: yikes. And then, when kids are throwing things, calling each other names, trying to do anything but work, and just generally being crappy, yes, I get frustrated. Especially when I didn't sleep enough because I was up late making an assignment to give them that they don't want to do because it involves actual work.

During these moments the appropriate response is to remind myself that I am just supposed to try my hardest to give these kids the resources to have a good educational experience, but I am also supposed to remember that I have no control over whether or not they'll take what I'm giving them. Recently I have not felt so appropriate because I'm exhausted, and am thinking, "why am I risking another relapse to teach high school?" Frustrated, yes. Depressed, a bit. Both made worse by lack of sleep.

I look around at the teachers in my school, a bunch of incredibly talented people who are also great teachers, great people, love kids, and really care about the quality of education. Thinking back to my less-than-great high school learning experiences (the coach who kept saying "Herk-es-no-vania" until I finally realized he was talking about "Herzegovina", the teacher who gave us the same multiple choice tests he'd been using since 1970...), I am pretty impressed and relieved that the PATHS teachers totally rock. Let's see, how do school systems attract great teachers?

- give them summers off. Yes, this is huge. Especially when summers are hot and sticky and schools are not air-conditioned.
- give them great pay except for the part when you're up all night grading or developing curriculum (kind of like programming in this regard, except that the teaching pay is worse).
- give them a nice 30-minute planning period every day, and then fill that time with meetings.
- make it really difficult to get certified because everybody in the state has problems doing the paperwork.
- make it expensive to get certified ($100 a year, plus $150 I get to pay each year to take a big test that says I can do math or read maps or whatever. I got almost a perfect score this year on the math and reading). $250 doesn't sound so bad until you remember that you're on a teacher salary. I did my budget this summer and realized that I don't have a choice: I have to teach violin and play gigs because I need that extra money to pay my mortgage.

And I have it good. Theoretically, I have 30 minutes to eat lunch with no duty, and if I weren't running around the building fixing computer problems and talking to students who arrive early, that would be a nice break time. Most schools don't even have a planning period. Teachers here don't have any duties. No hall monitors or lunchroom monitors. Small classes. I think about this and wonder, how does a regular high school teacher do it? I teach in the "country club" of schools (according to other Portland teachers), and I'm completely fried. Am totally in awe of teachers. Am understanding the beauty of true-false tests, though I still refuse to give them. Am encouraged by assistant principal to use "alternative forms of assessment" which, as far as I can see from his examples, means multiple choice tests??? (I [hope I] am sure that I'm simplifying, but I'm tired.) Am still wondering whether this will be my last year, because I just can't get this tired. I'd like a few more years of mobility, please, and more energy for violin students. And violin playing. Argh.

I've been working on a new weblog that I've been thinking about for a while (more details soon). CSS is beautiful. I am developing so many lesson plans to torture my students (oops, I mean "to expand their horizons") just from trying out new stuff. I am happily putting images on the backgrounds of <div>s (wheeeee!), and then...IE5 won't do it if the <div> also has content in it. Feh. Am considering punting on it, because I disapprove of making all of my text into images just for this browser when most people should be using Safari or Firefox on Mac instead of crappy IE? Hmmmm.

Yesterday afternoon I came home from school so completely fried that I called L. to cancel our 4:30 band rehearsal and fell into bed, fully clothed, at 3:30. A few hours (and several weird dreams) later, I awoke with enough energy to walk over to Shaw's and buy some fish for dinner. Then of course I couldn't get to sleep so I ended up staying up until the wee hours working on the new weblog. But today I feel functional. And I'm able to appreciate the small moments of success, when students start to understand a new concept, when they get excited about what they're doing and forget to take a break, and when they say, "Ms. Green, do you want to see the website I just made?" or "Hey, Ms. Green, I'm doing work today!" (My response: "Finally! Excellent! And I've managed not to strangle you for 2 weeks! Life is good.")

Tomorrow I'm giving them a "game day". They will all log on to some LAN game and try to kill each other (sadly, as in tango, this is not real life...). Meanwhile, I will try to unpack the tower of boxes in the conference room. Maybe I'll find the Photoshop serial number! Yup, this is true excitement. :-)

Bonita knocked my violin case (with violin inside it) off the bookshelf tonight. She knew I was pissed and streaked across the apartment to hide in the bathroom. I took off after her and found her ready for me, growling and hissing and two times her normal size. I couldn't pick her up (too many fangs and back claws), so I just leaned down and hissed right back at her. We went back and forth like that for about 10 seconds, until both of us cooled off a bit.

On the one hand, it was totally appropriate. On the other hand, I need to get out more.

I decided to start a weblog on violin technique, as a way for me to keep track of what I'm doing. It's now online at violinAlchemist.com. Maybe it will be useful to someone else on the Internet, and maybe not, but at least it will be useful for me. I'm hoping that having it online will make me consolidate my teaching notes (currently kept in many different notebooks, on scraps of paper, on backs of envelopes...) and actually keep making notes on teaching and refining my technique. Here goes!

Played a wedding up at the Maine Maritime Museum this afternoon. What a nice location--too bad it's October and FREEZING in the shade (which is where we were playing). Beautiful day, shivering musicians.

I've seen a lot of brides this summer. Ones who clearly could give me a lesson in how to use styling products, and ones who you knew slipped out of Tevas 2 minutes before walking down the aisle. Ones who cried and ones who were totally cool and composed (in one of them, the groom cried instead). But today's bride stands out because of The Smirk.

I have never seen an expression on a bride's face like the one I saw today. She maintained it through most of the ceremony, so I had plenty of time to figure out what it made me think of. If it hadn't been her own wedding, you would think that her expression meant "HA! Look at all of this ridiculousness. I can't believe how SILLY this all is. Let's ditch this and go have a beer at the pub." (think Betty Rizzo in "Grease") Meanwhile, the groom had assumed these very earnest-looking, Labrador Retriever eyebrows. Side by side, it was an interesting combination.

The ceremony was heartfelt, and both bride and groom started looking more normal after The Kiss. It's interesting how happiness and stress can duke it out on people's faces.

Once I woke up with half of me not moving. I feel very fortunate that I got that wakeup call at age 26, rather than at, say, age 70, because now I don't waste my days. If I'm going to wake up again one day the way I did in 2001, I want to know that the day before I didn't waste my day. Now every night before I go to sleep I make sure I'm at peace with the way my life went that day.

I have not wasted my day today. I have spent 8½ hours of it at school and 6½ hours of it dancing and playing the violin. Exhausted? Yes. Full of life? Absolutely. I will feel like crap tomorrow but it will have been so worth it. Did everyone else feel my happiness tonight? Did M. feel it when we danced? I felt so happy to dance with him (and felt a couple of other unpublishable things that make me sort of go "hrmph" at myself, but oh well. I will not squash them). :-)

HOWevah, even in the interest of not wasting one's day, one should not dance Tango for more than an hour wearing clogs, even if they are one's really swanky shiny red clogs, and even though one's dance shoes were forgotten blocks away in the trunk of one's car. But only if one would like to have some skin on the bottoms of one's feet afterwards.

Schoolteachers' Guide to Writing Recommendations and Progress Reports

"is very social" --> distracts his classmates
"hones reflexes" --> plays Call of Duty at breaktime
"interested in diverse Web content" --> surfs Google images for porn
"has unique comments on course content" --> I don't understand what he's saying. Is he from this planet?
"understands classroom etiquette" --> if he throws LEGOs I will send him to the office
"retains childlike innocence" --> throws LEGOs (see above)
"provides unique descriptions of life events" --> says he was in the office when he comes back from break 20 minutes late reeking of cigarette smoke
"is disarmingly candid" --> "and then she was, like, 'take off your pants'. Dude, it was sick!"

Ayuh.

Who knows what possesses me to do these things?

Today was the annual Cider Day, the perfect way to finish off a beautiful Fall weekend. I love Maine in the Fall!

Everybody loves Maine in the Fall when it means that yummy apple treats abound! I brought this cake to 2 parties this week and it was mowed down both times. 'Tis the season.

Apple Upside-Down Cake (gluten free, and mostly dairy free)

Ingredients:

Topping:

3 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 Tbsp. brown sugar

Cake:

4 apples
1 lemon, (juice it and grate the peel)
3/4 c. olive oil (not extra virgin, please)
1/2 c. brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 c. brown rice flour
1/2 c. potato starch
1/4 c. tapioca flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Seeds of 2 large green cardamom pods, ground, or "a pinch" cardamom

Procedure:

Peel, core, and thinly slice apples. Mix with lemon juice. Set aside. (Use one of those apple peeler-corer-slicer things if you can, because it's soooooo fun).

Mix together oil, lemon peel, and sugar. Set aside.

In a large, ovenproof skillet (mine is a cast-iron pan that's about 8.5" at the bottom and fans out to 11.5" at the rim), melt butter and both sugars. Shake to coat bottom of pan evenly. Arrange apple slices to cover one layer deep. More than one layer of apples is hard to invert, so try at your own risk. I usually overlap mine a little, though.

While the pan is still warm, butter the sides of the pan.

Any apples that you didn't use should now be sliced into slivers.

Mix together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.

Now that you're completely covered with flour, put on an apron.

Turn on the mixer and beat the oil and the sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Beat in the dry ingredients, and then stir in the apples.

Pour batter into pan.

Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes.

Set pan on cooling rack for 10 minutes. Important: don't leave for more than 10 minutes in the pan, or the sugar will start to set and it will be hard to get the cake out of the pan without losing some of the topping.

"Flip" onto serving plate and let cool.

(please tell me that I will not get hits on this web site from people looking for underwear. Ahem.)

Ma. requested a practice CD of the 5/4 Cumparsita, so on Friday, I picked up L. after my last violin lesson and we made the 45-minute drive to Mi.'s house, where we spent several hours recording the version of Cumparsita in 5/4. It was great to keep doing takes of it, since we just kept getting tighter and tighter as a group.

After we were done, I was sitting on the couch noodling around on my solo version of Air on the G String and talking to L., not realizing that Mi. had turned the mic on and was recording. Here's the result. It's fun to listen to it, despite the intonation bloopers. At the beginning, I'm asking L. whether she'd just eaten something sugary. Nope, she was just happy to be hanging out playing beautiful music. As was I.

I recently asked both E. and L., "can you flirt? I've forgotten how." I used to be a huge flirt in middle school and high school, (a time in my life that I associate with being the least open and the most superficial--maybe why I don't flirt anymore?), but I seriously haven't flirted in years. This does not include interaction with the guy I ended up dating in college and with Dangerously Charming Man in California, whom I did not end up dating. But even talking to Dangerously Charming Man was not flirting--we were just having interesting conversations and shooting each other glances at the same time. Which was pretty much perfect for me.

L. said: "it has been documented" (?) that the most basic thing you can do to flirt is to smile and hold someone's gaze for 2 to 3 seconds. Huh. I tend to do this with L. anyway, but I tried it out right then. Damn is 2-3 seconds longer than I thought. Three times since that conversation I've had the opportunity to try it out on someone besides L. The first time I forgot that I should maybe be flirting until afterwards, and thought "darn it, I totally should have flirted with him! Argh!". The other two times, the thought crossed my mind and both times I could not do it. Once I'm in an interesting conversation with somebody, I'd rather just keep having that conversation. And holding a stranger's eye from across the room? Aiiiiieeeeeee! Too scary. I'm feeling like a total wuss. Maybe this is the result of being a woman in computing for so many years (not wanting other people to think I'm silly)? Or fear of rejection? What? What is it? Sigh.

Clearly I need to work on this.

My phone almost never rings during the evenings, but tonight it seemed like every time I raised my violin to start a section of The Bach Fugue that is Way Too Difficult for Me, the phone rang.

Phone calls I received tonight:

#1 and #2: from cellist playing at this Saturday's wedding: We've been requested to play "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing". Do I have the music? No. But I can probably play it by ear if I have 5 minutes to practice first; just tell me what key it's in.

#3: from L. : Should she buy 25 or 50 wax lips for people to wear to show their support for Tango Mucha Labia at the Battle of the Bands? Go with 50. You just can't have too many wax lips.

#4: from student: He can't go to the All-State auditions on November 17th because he has a class trip. Do I think he'll be ready for the auditions in Skowhegan on November 3rd? Well, we'll figure out how to get him ready in the next 2 weeks. Come early to lesson tomorrow so we can get some extra time in.

#5: from unknown: Hello, Victoria? Who? Victoria Green? No Victoria Green here, sorry. Most suspicious.

Unfortunately, words cannot describe the expression on my face when I turned from my lesson planning to see why Bonita was chirping behind me and found her almost at the top of my collapsible laundry rack, balancing on one of the ¼-inch horizontal dowels and looking confused (as usual) but rather pleased with herself. I waited for the inevitable moment: the floppy descent, from one dowel to the next, was very Slinky™-like.

Having perfect pitch is annoying when you replace the batteries in your doorbell and then it rings almost a half step sharp. I liked it so much better when it rang D to B-flat. Hrmph.

Having perfect pitch is fun when you're waiting for the MUNI in San Francisco listening to the "inbound" and "outbound" chimes: D down to A for outbound, and D up to F-sharp for inbound. Or was it the other way around? Either way, it always got the 3rd movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in my head.

Today I stopped by the Whole Grocer to get a few things after my chiropractor appointment. One guy who works there has this amazing mustache, one of those handlebar things that I just want to stare at because it looks so good on him, (and I'm not a mustache fan generally). As I got into the car, I was thinking, "that mustache really suits him." Then I thought, hold it, maybe it doesn't actually suit him--maybe I just think it does because of some assumption I have about him. Which made me think about assumptions people make based on dress, cars, hobbies, and all kinds of things. It's one of those things that I can't think about too much because I start getting all tangled up in what's real and what isn't, and what "real" means anyway. Kind of like when I stare at a word for a long time and start to forget what it means.

Sometimes I assume the worst, and I'm pleasantly surprised when something isn't as bad as I thought it would be (why does the movie "Titanic" come to mind?). Most of the time, though, I assume the best about people and I'm often disappointed. Isn't that a bummer? D. used to tell me that I was totally gullible, and I know I am.

My good assumptions about people and things often make me blue when they don't work out. Last year I assumed my year of teaching would suck, and it didn't, and that was a nice surprise. This year I assumed it would be easier, and it wasn't, and that made me stressed and depressed. But at least I realized my assumption had been wrong. It's when I don't realize I assumed wrong that I'm in the worst shape, because my sense of reality starts getting all warped and I don't know why. When I interviewed at Macromedia, my future manager told me that people worked hard, but it was 40 hours a week, people didn't want to burn you out, etc., etc. (Now I wonder what planet he was on). I took this comment to heart and it took me a long time to figure out that he was completely misled. But a lot of other people on the team were, too...talking one minute about all of these things they loved to do...until I realized that they didn't actually get to do those things anymore because they were working all the time. (If you love to surf so much, why is your surfboard in your cube at work?) I couldn't figure out why I was so stressed and depressed until I finally realized that it was because the reality of work didn't match the assumptions I had made based on my manager's comments.

All through my career at MACR I had a tough time reconciling what people said from what they actually did, and figuring out who was genuine and who wasn't. Teaching high school has really made me good at knowing what is BS and what isn't, thank goodness. But I still assume too many things, I think.

All of those disjointed thoughts from one mustache. Yeesh.

I was on the table for so long today at the chiropractor that my right arm fell asleep. It didn't feel asleep, so I didn't realize it until I reached down to grab my keys...and couldn't control my arm or my hand. Every time something like this happens I have one of those moments when I think "oh crap, not again..."

I shook it out, and by the time I got to the grocery store it was feeling pretty normal, but just in case it was a harbinger of another relapse, I decided to go do something fun during my possible "last day." Up to swing on the swings on the Eastern Prom. The sun was setting, shining across the bay onto South Portland and Fort Gorges, Fall leaves all glowing. The cold wind bit my ears and made me sniffly. I think that's the nicest swingset in Portland.

There are crappy teaching days. And then there are days like today, when one of my students e-mailed me (paraphrased): "hi ms. green this is <>. i got suspended so i wont be in school until next Thursday but could you email me my Hangman.java file so I can work on it at home? im really starting to like java and applets and stuff."

Yes, sure, I can e-mail you your files (plus the handouts I gave in class), once I peel my jaw off my desk.

Then my 4:00 student came 30 minutes early so we had a nice long lesson, in which he demonstrated a totally new, relaxed left hand. He is suddenly playing double stops like nobody's business. Yessss!

And then my 4:30 student came in with lovely loose knees and when I showed her how the bow balances between her thumb and pinky, she drew the bow across the string and said, "Oh! More beautiful!"

Yeah. Teaching days really don't get any better than this.

I have a fairly high threshold for embarrassment, which may be why I've had few classroom management issues teaching high school. Actually, I was starting to think I couldn't be embarrassed anymore, which seemed a little weird. Nope, Phil managed it today as we were sitting listening to the Music class's afternoon concert.

"So, I found out something about you this weekend." "Oh yeah? What's that?" "You have perfect pitch." "How did you find that out?" "M. said you did." "How did he remember that?" "He said he had a huge crush on you in high school." "WHAT? He did not." "Yep, that's what he said."

<pause>

Me: "Wow, I didn't think it was possible to embarrass me, but I am totally turning red."
Phil: "Good thing it's dark in here."

Yeah.

I hate shopping for clothes. I really, really hate it, and this is why I usually only have maybe 1 pair of pants that fit and look OK at any given time. I've been doing better than usual (due to post-breakup Retail Therapy) and am proud to report that I now have 3 pairs that look OK, and 3 that are only a little weird so I can still wear them to school. Anyway, I hate shopping for clothes. I even hate shopping for fabric now because all Portland has is Jo-Ann Fabrics. I'm going to have to go to Boston or NYC to find any interesting stuff.

Today, after braving horizontal rain to buy some things at the farmers' market, I went clothes shopping. I did not want to go shopping. I wanted to have tea and cornmeal-apple flapjacks on the couch while petting Bonita and writing a bass part for Romanza de Barrio. But I was under orders from L. to go find something appropriate to wear for Tango Mucha Labia's performance on Thursday night at MIT. I believe she said something like "You're playing this sexy violin and then I look over there and you're dressed like...a mechanic." (I didn't think this was quite fair, because I happened to be dressed much worse than usual, wearing a terrible outfit featuring a "Portland Arts & Technology High School" forest green polo shirt that looks horrible on every woman, but it was clean, so... and plus, our PATHS mechanics are hot! Anyway.)

So, off I went to find something that was 1) not black, 2) not white, and 3) not 2 sizes too large. I added 4) can play the violin in it, and 5) in a color that doesn't make me look sick.

I bought: one top in black beaded mesh over pink satin that, luckily, goes with the black skirt I got in the tango clothing swap, and one pair of black calf-length zip-up stiletto boots. Picture a lady in baggy red nylon warmups, a blue rubber slicker, and a brown plaid hat walking around trying on calf-length stiletto boots, and you'll understand why I was getting some weird looks.

Now I totally get why my friend E. has a gazillion different pairs of shoes. I'm all about these boots. These boots have flipped the switch that turns me into High Maintenance Glamour Puss. In these boots I totally feel like I am going to go out and kick some ass. These boots are going to make me apply eye makeup. Yow. On Thursday I will be in full costume.

It occurred to me, back home in my velour warmups and ratty-yet-comfy sweater, that I dress in costume every day, but usually it's the costume of Relaxed Computer Teacher or Heidi Of The Mountains Meets L. L. Bean. It's kind of fun to have another costume.

Took the ol' Brompton out for a spin today. Maybe not the best day for a bike ride. I think I was almost going backwards at one point as I was trying to cross Tukey's Bridge.

Watching the gulls ride the crazy gusts, I was wondering whether they were thinking "Wheeeeeee!" or "Oh CRAP!" Huh.