Dress rehearsal tonight at the Wednesday practica. Overall, a resounding success. It's so fun to play for dancers, and they were looking great dancing to the 5/4 Cumparsita arrangement. S. told me afterwards, "I can never count in 5/4, but tonight I just went with what sounded like the beat, and it was great! Keep giving us those great beats!" Now we can; last night TML had a long, really productive rehearsal and a lot of things just started gelling. I walked into rehearsal feeling nervous and walked out feeling silly, happy, and musically pumped. Woohoo!

Tried out the boots tonight, too (I was wondering whether I would be able to play in them). I guess dancing in heels over the summer (since the left leg became stable enough for heels) has paid off: I actually feel comfortable playing in the boots. Amazing.

L.'s bass wouldn't fit in M.'s car, so I took it home for the night. Bonita immediately climbed up on it and made it her new sleeping place. Now I just have to figure out how to teach school all day (oh geez, I think the asst. principal is observing me tomorrow), go to a long technology meeting, zip home and throw violin, bass, stand, outfit, dinner, and J. into the car, drive to L.'s, pick her up, drive to Biddeford, transfer all personnel and gear into M.'s car, and drive to MIT. And then breathe. And then change into the outfit. And then perform. And then dance for several hours. And then drive home. And then sleep for a few hours. And then get up and teach. Ack.

But it will be worth it.

Last night, pre-performance, Liz, Tina, and I agreed that the great thing about a [mostly] chick band is the getting ready in the bathroom part. We zipped ourselves into boots and wiggled into skirts and applied what seemed like a pile of makeup (to 3 girls who are usually clean-faced). ¡Tango Mucha Labia! Portland tango dancers distributed wax lips and took photos. The host band won the contest, as expected (and they deserved it), but we were relatively happy with our own performance. The first of many! It's fun to play with good musicians. It's even more fun to play with good musicians who are also crazy cool.

I danced a couple of torturously sensual sets with J. (who arrived from Providence just in time for our set) and ran into a dear friend from San Francisco, (which means I'll be going back down to Boston tonight for dinner + girl time and more dancing). At the end of the evening, we managed to cram 5 people, gear, and 4 instruments (including Liz's double bass) into Mike's SUV and very cozily made the drive back to the Biddeford Park-n-Ride, where I took the Portland crew (singing old faves like "Stairway to Heaven" to keep ourselves awake) home to our beds. I walked in the door of my house an hour and a half before I needed to be up for school, went to bed, woke up with the alarm clock, and wisely called in sick.

Whew. Good times.

Dancing until the wee hours and then driving 2 hours back to Portland is great, but now I'm all backwards. Home at 5:30 a.m., breakfast, and then to bed. Awake at 10:30 a.m., up at 11:00. And now eating lunch? Ack. Howevah, let's hear it for a body that lets me dance for 5 hours on not quite enough sleep, and then drive home afterwards. Feet are sore, even with gel pads. Toes got mangled a few times; the floor was very crowded.

It was so good to have dinner with A. The thought of having her close by again is very tempting, even though it would mean moving to Berkeley...

On the dancing front: first, holy crap. Body is working so well these days. D. used to tell me I wasn't dancing with my whole heart, like it was some kind of emotional problem. Nope, for me it was physical. Now that my body is working beautifully, I don't have to think about it anymore, and I can put my whole self into experiencing the feel of my partner. Wow. I had some amazing dances last night. I was hoping to have a good set with M., since I felt so good last night, but didn't feel a really strong connection there. I couldn't put my finger on why until he said goodbye at the end of the evening and I realized that, even though he's all smiles and banter, he has a wall up. I'm pretty sure it's a wall of the "let's have a great friendly relationship now that we're not dating, only I don't want to be too open because then you might think I like you more than I do" variety. I can't tell, but that's the feeling I got. Which is too bad, because it means our dances won't ever be really good.

Along with the soul-baring sensually immersive dances, I also had a few where I was wondering whether we were going to actually dance, or whether my partner was just going to clutch me on the floor. Very sketchy. One of those said after our set, "wow, it feels like we've been dancing for years." I replied, "yeah, I think that was a long set." Whoops! What he meant was "it feels like we know each other, because we danced so well together." I was thinking something slightly different. :-)

Side note: is hand-kissing back in style? After the third one last night I was starting to think, "yikes, maybe I should get out the hand salve and take care of these red knuckles, if they're going to be the recipient of so much attention..."

Talked to another teacher at school today. His wife was diagnosed with MS over the weekend. She's 40. So far it sounds like she'll be fine, because she's already saying (he says) things like "maybe this is a sign that I shouldn't be worrying so much about everything." I told him, "don't panic." Life goes on. And feel free to ask me about any wacky therapy, because I've probably tried it. :-) She's one step ahead of me in one area: she's already mentioned that maybe she should go see her psychologist. I've never gone to therapy, but I should have. D. didn't believe in shrinks, thought that he should be able to handle everything. He's not often wrong, but he was in that case. It's too much for anyone who cares about you, because they can't help you and they really, really want to. It's hard to watch. That's why I don't often tell my parents when I'm having a bad day/week/month MS-wise (fortunately, usually I'm fine). The look of panicked worry in my mom's eyes just isn't worth unburdening myself.

The ladies and gent of Tango Mucha Labia! The lips! The costumes! The staying up way too late at night!

Yup, I had to defend myself this week from verbal abuse...

Student: Since we leave early today, we should have break early.
Ms. Green: Nice try, but no.
Student: Ms. Green's a grumpy pants today.
Ms. Green: I am not a "grumpy pants."

I couldn't help it. I totally cracked up. So did the class.

Veterans' Day. Auburn, Alabama. College town of 32,000. Except on a big game day -- actually, on any game day. This one was against Georgia State and was televised. Overnight, a town of 150,000. The town reeking of beer and southern barbecue. Hearing the roaring in the stadium from the house. Cities of RVs everywhere. SUVs parked on every sidewalk. More people than tickets--those people just fire up the barbecue at the RV and watch the game on TV, drink, greet classmates, drink more. Southerners take these things seriously. Go Tigers.

I didn't get up early enough to go watch the marching band practice their halftime show. Next time.

Nutcracker starts next week and I'm not ready, and I keep trying to get ready and am continuously thwarted by things like grading, violin lessons, and parent-teacher conferences.

Oh, and Spanish. I decided to learn Spanish.

Because, clearly, I need something else to keep myself busy or I would just lounge around on the couch eating bonbons and watching TV. Well, if I had a TV. And if I knew what a bonbon was...the picture I've carried in my head all my life of a bonbon (maybe due to reading my great-grandfather's "First English Reader") is some kind of large foofy sweet, covered with coconut. I'm sure this is totally false.

Anyway, I'm learning Spanish, so my students who arrive during my 10:30 a.m. lunch break get to see me using Rosetta Stone online (free with my Portland Public Library card). In the morning I'm walking to school while saying "Este es un árbol grande. Esa es una casa grisa con una puerta verde." After this weekend my apartment will be completely covered in Post-It notes. Why all of this? I just bought a ticket to Buenos Aires for February break. No time to waste.

Some reasons to go to Argentina:
- to see friends
- to hear tons of live tango music
- to dance
- to buy shoes
- to see whether I could stand to stay there for longer, say for a couple of months
- to get away from Maine in February
- because my mobility is good, carpe diem, and all that

Whee. I think I might be slightly insane. But that might be good.

Este es un gato.
Este gato es al revés en mi regazo.
Este gato al revés es blanco y negro, y es muy bonito.
Este gato es...loco.
Este gato loco es un dragón de verdad.
Este gato piensa que es un perro.

HR was on my case last week because my conditional teaching certificate hasn't yet gone through for this year. I'm now in violation of a bunch of laws, they might start paying me substitute pay instead of teacher salary, blah blah blah. I told them that: (a) the State has my application, and (b) if they put me on sub pay, I'm quitting. Blech.

Yesterday, the Maine Department of Education sent back my certificate renewal application with the following information:

"We are returning your check. Checks are not accepted for the CHRC renewal process. Please return your renewal application with the following:

• Non-refundable fee: $100...Make check payable to: Treasurer, State of Maine"

Excuse me for asking a silly question, but how do I make a check payable to "Treasurer, State of Maine" without it being a check?
Argh.

It's cold! Yay! It was 20° this morning when I awoke at 5:30, and I actually had to put on extra clothing before I started my daily physical therapy. Bonita, usually the one with the internal alarm clock that requires her to wake me up an hour and a half before my alarm goes off, didn't budge from her nest on the bed until it became obvious that I was really not coming back. Tonight, after Nutcracker rehearsal, I dropped off the pianist at her house and stopped by Shaw's to get some stuff for Thanksgiving. Nippy nose, the smell of the wreaths outside the supermarket, the wood racks filling the parking lot of Lib's Dairy Freeze, (empty now but soon to be filled with Christmas trees)...all of these things contributed to my Winter Fever (hmmmm, "Winter Fever"?) For the last 2 weeks I've been staring hopefully at the morning's white sky thinking "snow?" and dreaming of bushes covered with snow, icicles, cross-country skiing, and trying out the snowshoes Mom got me last Christmas that caused it to not snow for the rest of the winter. I. Can't. Wait. Pleasepleasepleaseplease snow! And could it be a storm with nice big, fluffy, satisfying flakes that drops at least a foot on us and then doesn't melt into slush afterwards? Please?

Expectations are funny things.

This year I expected Nutcracker to be much easier than last year. I expected to be able to play it with better technique, and therefore to sound better and to have an easier time than last year. After last night's dress rehearsal I realized that it won't be easier this year. It made me kind of panicky. And then of course when I'm sitting in a violin section full of people who can play well, I realize that I'm still a total charity case. And I HATE that. It really makes me want to shrivel up and just forget this silly idea of trying to play the violin again.

The depression hit today, hard core, and I hadn't even been eating sugar. Wow. Right after I had been trying to practice the Overture and feeling like suddenly my fingers were all over the place, like a whole summer of improvement had just been erased. I was wallowing in a combination of panic and total hopelessness. I held myself together during Thanksgiving dinner (at Ryan's new in-laws') but was a basket case the rest of the time. So I drove home, turned off my phone, lay down on the couch with Bonita and my laptop to do some more Rosetta Stone Spanish, and somewhere in the middle of "los caramelos están en la mano izquierda" I fell asleep for about 20 minutes. When I woke up I knew what I needed to do.

I made up a new violin exercise (actually more like a general mind control exercise modified for violin) and concentrated perfectly for an entire hour and a half. I improved the Overture 100%, and I realized just how stressed out I've been since school started. I mean, I knew I was completely busy but I didn't realize how much tension I was carrying all of the time. I also realized that having better technique doesn't mean that I don't have to practice the Nutcracker as much. Better technique is still different technique, different than last year and even different than my technique was pre-MS. So of course I have to practice because my fingers have never, ever played Nutcracker with this kind of great technique, even before I had a huge hole in my head.

And (E. says) no fair comparing myself to other people who just got the music 3 weeks ago and are playing it almost perfectly. I will probably never be able to do that and I need to just get over it. Ahem.

Four performances to go this weekend. I will practice my new exercise and keep myself in my perfect concentration zone and see what happens. And I think I will teach this exercise to one of my Monday evening students. It's just what he needs.

It's pretty hard to make me mad. But if you really want to piss me off, then be a teacher who trashes your student with a phrase like "you're hopeless", "anything would be better than that", or "I'm beginning to think that this [...] really sucks."

<rant>

That just happened to two people I know, in different cities. That is not teaching. If you do that, you can't possibly be a teacher, because when you agree to be a teacher you agree to respect the enormous privilege that being a teacher entails. Yes, it's a privilege for a student to learn from a great teacher, but it's just as much of a privilege to witness the personal improvement of a student who works hard, and it's a huge responsibility to take charge of a student's education in any area.

There are some "teachers" who think that telling a student with "no talent" the honest truth is a good thing, because it will save the student the heartache of pursuing something that they're no good at. That is gatekeeping, not teaching. A real teacher knows that any student will be able to achieve a high level of proficiency, given a certain amount of time. The trick is figuring out how to help that student improve most quickly. This is what I think about at night--did I give the right lesson? Am I doing things in the right sequence for this student? How can I describe a technique to this student in a way that will make sense to him? How can I do right by this student?

So when I hear a teacher say "you're hopeless" to a student, I hear it as a total cop-out. A teacher takes what a student is already good at and figures out how to use that ability to improve some other area, which means that a teacher always has to be looking for the good in a student as well as for the things that need improvement. What a huge challenge! Every student has a different background and is good at different things. Harsh words from a teacher mean that the teacher wasn't looking for the good, and that means that no matter how much knowledge that teacher has, the student won't improve as quickly as she could.

In the case of both of my friends, I know the words they received were not just unnecessarily harsh, but also untrue. No teacher, no matter how great a musician/composer/dancer/thinker, should be allowed to take an open, eager mind and squash it with one sentence. That person should not be allowed to teach.

</rant>

Oooooh, I am still so mad that I can't even form coherent sentences. Feh.

Let's hear it for concentration exercises. Tonight I kept myself supremely relaxed. It was much easier than I thought. Still am not playing the Overture perfectly, but it's not horrible.

I talked to G. tonight. What a great violinist he is! And in January, I get to be his student! Yay.

When your passenger finishes thanking you for continuing to drive her home after all of the Nutcracker performances and finishes detailing the terrible state of her husband's eyes (can barely see, having cataract surgery, etc., etc.), and then says "but if it snows next weekend, I'll have him drive us to and from the shows so you don't have to worry about driving," what is the appropriate response?

"But my car has heated seats" ???

Hmmmm. Maybe this is a case for delaying the bodywork on Maurice Cavalier so I can continue to drive Mom's swanky Saab for another weekend.

Over and over again I see the same thing:
- my life gets really bad
- my life gets an order of magnitude better than it was before it was really bad

Why is it always like that?

After my Nutcracker freak-out, I played 3 of the best performances I'd ever played, and felt great. I was totally focused, calm, relaxed, had good mobility. All of this was thanks to the exercise that I created on Thanksgiving. This week I've tried it with 6 of my violin students, and it's like a miracle pill. Every single student made amazing improvement in less than 2 minutes. I just wrote about it on Violin Alchemist.

I really need to start talking to a neuroscientist about some of my weirder teaching techniques. With this one, I experimented a lot and discovered that this exact sequence of eye movements is the one that gets me the most relaxed. I have no idea why. I'm sure there's some interesting explanation for it.

When D. came to visit last July, he watched me teach a violin lesson. Afterwards he told me that the questions I ask my students surprised him. It's true, I do sometimes ask my students weird, open-ended questions about what they're doing.

When taking teacher training for Suzuki violin, one of the things that's stressed is the importance of asking very detailed questions that you know the student can always answer correctly. "Creating a 'no-fail' environment" is how it's worded, I think. I agree, it's very important to concoct the right question in order to get the answer that you want. Sometimes, though, I know the question I want but I don't actually know the answer I want. For a long time I agonized over this. What I've recently realized is that sometimes it really is the question that's important because it starts a thought process in a student. I don't necessarily care if they give me the "right" answer.

I often ask violin students questions like, "OK, on a scale of 1 to 10, how loose was your left thumb when you played that?" I really don't care whether the student thinks it was an 8 and I think it was a 2. If the student thinks it's a 9 then I say, "can you take it to 11?" "I thought you said 1 to 10!" (these kids haven't seen Spinal Tap...) And then we start getting goofy and into 3 decimal places and all heck breaks loose, but that student has focused his mind on being aware of a specific technical point and assigning a rating to it. After getting to a 10 on the student's scale, I'll ask a student to take that 10 and pretend it's a 4 on a new scale.

This week I reached a new level of "the answer doesn't matter" when I asked a student "which side of you is more relaxed? The left or the right?" He said, "the right". I was thinking the left. But I thought, huh, actually it might not matter whether his answer was "correct", because I'm only asking him to get him to think about it. I then said, "OK, now as you play that again, can you let your left side be as relaxed as your right side is?" And you know what? Both sides became more relaxed. His mind was on it.

The longer I teach violin, the more time I spend on creating self-awareness and teaching students how to listen to all kinds of different parts of their bodies, not just their fingers, because the day will come when they don't have a teacher to do the analysis for them. I spent so many years as a violinist trying to get my fingers to do the right things when I could have done it more quickly by concentrating on my shoulder, or my back, or my knees. It occurs to me that I'd also like to create this kind of awareness of process with my high school students, and it's something we talked about today, briefly, when I attended a conference on strategies for improving literacy. Watching yourself learn can make you learn more quickly and easily. And sometimes being aware will help you more in the long run than being "right" the first time.

When I lived in the Mission I used to do my laundry at the corner of 25th and Guerrero. If I returned to take my laundry out of the dryer a little early, I would read the various ads people had placed on the bulletin board. For people who were renting out rooms in their houses, the standard line was "no drogas ni vicios". "No vicios" always seemed kind of quaint to me. Well, no major vices here, and all of my drugs are legal.

I stopped taking Avonex for MS several years ago now, when I decided that alternative therapies were making me feel great, and then I'd take the Avonex and feel weak and achey and horrible and finally I decided that if I had the choice between 10 crappy years on Avonex and 5 great years without Avonex, I'd take the 5 years. It was still scary, but what I did do when I quit the Avonex was to replace it with other stuff. Chiropractic. Acupuncture. Supplements. Here in Portland I haven't found an acupuncturist who's as good as the one I went to in Alameda, and I recently stopped going to the chiropractor for the same reason, which made me take a careful look at how to keep myself healthy and to reexamine my supplements.

Disclaimer: Blah blah blah, I am not a doctor, and thus you clearly cannot trust me to be telling you anything real about diet or supplements. Do not use this material as a substitute for sound medical advice. Howevah, note that my internist got my mom to start taking Omega 3 capsules.

Anti-Inflammation Tonic #1
I use this to improve my mobility, to relax me, and to treat tendonitis. I don't have tendonitis from typing on my laptop anymore now that I use this formula. Tango Mucha Labia's accordion player also uses this formula for tendonitis, so there you go! Endorsed by 2 members of Tango Mucha Labia!

2 capsules O-Mega-Zen3 vegan Omega 3 supplement
200 mg. chelated magnesium (so far, I like Solgar brand the best)

Repeat as necessary. O-Mega-Zen3 is made from algae and will make you understand that fish don't taste like fish. They taste like algae. :-) 2 capsules of O-Mega-Zen3 gives me the same results as 4 or more capsules of every other brand I've tried. They're very good quality. I have to order them online since the local stores don't carry them.

Anti-Inflammation Tonic #2
For really bad cases of tendonitis, wash down Tonic #1 with a cup of oat straw tea. You can buy oat straw at the health food store. Pour boiling water over it and let it steep for a while. This is very mild and safe to use.

Digestive Enzymes
Now only when I get itchy from something I ate. It doesn't happen often anymore. Friends remember how skinny I was; I started taking these when I moved back to Maine and almost immediately gained 10 pounds. The Rainbow Light brand (double strength) is the only one that made my hives go away overnight.

More Omega-3
I used to take flax oil twice a day in the early days, and boy does that stuff taste terrible. I still shudder when I think of it, and it always triggers a gag reflex. There's a hazelnut-flavored version I started using this year that is almost palatable, though, and when I mix it into my morning oatmeal I actually prefer it to plain oatmeal. Highly recommended.