It's so, so, so beautiful today. Perfect weather. Biking to the farmers' market today, it really felt like Fall. After 6½ hours at school moving furniture and installing computers, it really felt like Fall. Maybe if I take a nap now I'll have enough energy to take a little bike ride this evening. Yay! Fall!

Now that my tenant has moved out, with his cats, I have a mouse problem. I keep all of my stufff in jars in the cupboards, so there's not much for them to eat, but they leave droppings and do things like eat entire boxes of crayons, and certain places in my house are just starting to smell like...mouse.

Bonita is not a mouser; no front claws, can't see very well, etc. I saw a mouse run across the living room and she kind of trotted after it, looking interested. That's it. So I bought mousetraps. I set 2 of them today. And tonight, as I was relaxing on the couch with Bonita, I heard the trap under the sink snap. And then 3 or 4 thumps. And then silence.

It was so, so, horrible. I mean, I set the trap to kill a mouse but the sound of it happening? It was too much. Bonita looked alarmed, trying to figure out why I was so agitated. I was literally sniffling and whimpering and not wanting to look under the sink.

I looked under the sink. The trap wasn't exactly where I'd put it, which made it more horrible, and I couldn't see the mouse at first, but there it was, little and fuzzy and gray and [I think] dead. I closed the cupboard door and lay on the floor and bawled. Finally I pulled myself together but I just can't take the trap out tonight. I'm not a mouser either, I guess.

When B. and I were dating, we drowned a baby possum he had caught in a trap. A whole family was living in his garage walls. It seemed the humane thing to do since releasing a baby possum somewhere in the country would just kill it slowly. But I still think about it and get sad. I know, I know, they chew wires and it's dangerous but still I hate having to kill things.

I'm sure there is a huge mouse family living in my house and I've just killed one mouse. The thought of having to do it however many more times is making me start to cry again. But the thought of getting used to killing, even mice, is scary too. Like part of me would have to die to be able to do it without feeling anything.

Blech.

School is starting, my room isn't quite done, I don't have all of my curricula, I don't have enough batteries for those darn robots, I have too many violin and viola students, and what am I stressing out about? Finding mice in my mousetraps. I thought maybe I could get used to it, but it's been three mice now and now I can't even look at an empty mousetrap without shuddering. Argh.

I confessed this at school today and the Welding instructor described a mousetrap design that he thought I would like better, involving a bucket of water, a coat hanger, a wood strip, and a tin can. I have to try it because I cannot live in constant dread of finding a mouse in the Jaws of Death. Sniffle.

Yesterday was teachers' day to get classrooms ready for kids. Except that I happen to be the Building Technology Coordinator. I got to school at around 7:00 a.m., but didn't actually get into my classroom until 3:30, after spending most of the day running around fixing computer problems in everybody else's classrooms. Thank goodness I had spent all of Saturday getting my classroom mostly together.

Today was our first day with students. Wow, is it nice to already have handouts for the first Java assignment, and demos for the students to watch. Also nice to have second-year students who are being well-behaved and helpful to the first-years.

In each session we made some lists on the board of things that helped people learn, things that didn't, and characteristics of good teachers. I told my students that the "good teachers" list is for me to hang on my bulletin board at my desk so that in the middle of February I can remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing. One student said "can I just write down 'Valerie Green'? You're my favorite teacher ever..." I thought teenagers didn't say that stuff in front of their peers?? It was cute, though.

One thing I want to do this year is try to cultivate more of a group feeling in the room. It's hard to do when everybody's at a computer, so this year I set up a ring of desks away from the computer desks. It's officially the "Food Zone", but also the place we all sat in today at the beginning of each class, interviewing each other and talking about the class. It felt good. I will keep working on this.

Now, to finish my syllabi for tomorrow.

One of my viola students burst into lesson today so excited about her viola playing. Last week I had given her a 10-minute "get into The Zone" warmup, when she would "sniff & toss" (I need to write a post about that), put on the Forehead, and play Twinkle variations while checking in with loose knees, loose armpits/shoulders, and loose caves in both of her hands. Wow, I need to post about the Caves, too. I am way behind on Violin Alchemist.

A few students think the Forehead is weird and don't want to spend 10 minutes on a Zone Warmup. I actually wasn't sure whether this particular student would do it, but I assigned it because it was exactly what she needed. She really did it. And now she's hooked. "This is the first time I feel like playing viola is really easy" she said. And you can tell by looking at her when she plays. She looks beautiful, like she can really handle that big instrument.

Some kids grin, some look peaceful all of a sudden, and some get this little smirk of "woohooooo!" on their faces when this happens, and I love seeing it. That moment when playing violin or viola becomes relaxing? It means that from then on it can be there for them for the rest of their lives.

The word "eerie" always looks weird to me when capitalized.

This year on the first day of school I handed out notebooks and
explained that we would begin class with 2 pages of "brain drain"--
longhand writing about whatever. For some kids it's hard to write a
sentence, never mind 2 pages. I'm doing it along with the class.
There are still a fair amount of moaning about it, but most students
have been good about it. One student remarked that he felt more
relaxed afterwards, and one showed me 4 sentences in the middle of
"garbage", detailing exactly what he would do in class that day.
These are good things. Just seeing a student be able to write more
quickly the next week is fun.

Yesterday I arrived in class a few minutes after the bell, hurrying
up from the Main Office. I opened the door to the class and was met
with...absolute silence. A class of students with notebooks open,
writing. It was very strange. But in a good way.

I just changed my Mac password at home. On Monday, I will change my network password at school.

I've used the same, excellent (in the sense that it's hard to crack) password for years. Almost 8 years, actually. It had to do with Dom. Tonight I changed it to something more self-affirming. I find that I enjoy typing it when I log in or use sudo in the UNIX shell.

Last weekend, in a conversation that took place far too late at night after a long day, Dom and I decided that there wasn't any way that we can pursue a relationship. He's still not sure whether he wants to be with me, and that indecision kills me, making me depressed and crabby, which makes him not sure whether he wants to be with me...etc.

So: done. Wow. Done. After a long, long time that included living with him for a month while I was fresh out of the hospital. Just thinking about it now it's kind of mind-boggling. But it's weird--typing the new password does make me feel a lot better. It's an affirmation. In a password. I am such a geek. Sheesh.

C & L's wedding on Sunday was so, so, SO fabulous. Rock Gardens Inn in Sebastopol, right on the water (ocean breezes causing my bow to be more airborne than usual at times), sunny, clear. The Hot Club played for dinner and dancing. Love their violinist--he sounds great.

I was getting the claustrophobic feeling I get when I've been around a lot of people for several hours, so I went to drink some water and walk along the rocks. As I went around a corner, I saw this cute, rustic wooden swing, parked in the rocks facing the ocean. So perfect! I sat down to bask in the sun--two thin wool sweaters were not quite enough for mid-September--and a few minutes later, along came P, the Hot Club violinist. He had the same reaction as I'd had when he came around the corner and spotted the swing. Fortunately there was room for two, so we sat and swang (?) and talked shop until we heard the Hot Club starting up again.

That evening, Mike and I finished taking down the PA, got everything back into his truck, and then he said he needed to just hang out for a minute. "Come with me," I said, and sat on the swing for the second time that day. I then realized that of course there was room for two on that swing--it was obviously a Sunset Swing! Duh. We stayed there until the stars were out, and then headed for Portland.

Later I realized, wow, today I sat on a swing in a totally romantic, secluded, picturesque spot with two different men, one whom I barely know and one whom I love because I Heart My Band, but neither of whom is a romantic interest. And it was so wonderful to be able to sit and enjoy those moments without the Romantic Interest Jitters.

Yesterday one of the students in my morning class said he was going to start a petition to get our daily two pages down to one page. I told him he could try it, but I would veto it, because one page is too comfortable. You can get to the end of one page without too much trouble, I said, but the second page is what stretches you. I said, there are going to be a lot of times in this class when you're sure that you can't think of anything else--you've tried to figure something out and you can't, you're trying to get the right design for something and it's just not working. You've thought of the same things over and over and they don't work. And then, if you keep going past that point, you will think of something new, some new answer that you never thought of. There will be times in your life when you feel like you can't go on. And then you will pick yourself up and go on. I want you to get used to being a little uncomfortable, every day, so you can get used to pushing through it.

Then I wondered if maybe that was too much to lay on them at 8:05 a.m., but they seemed to get it.

I volunteered from 11-4 today for the Bike Coalition, valet parking people's bikes at the fair. After 4 I wandered around a bit, thinking I was glad I'd finally gotten to the fair this year. Next year I want to go for the whole weekend. There were so many nice crafts there; [un]fortunately I was limited by what I could fit in my purple bike bag. I parked 4 miles from the fair and rode the Brompton in, and boy did I feel the almost constant uphill climb on the way back to my car in the evening, with 16-inch wheels and a bag full of goodies plus a few pounds of grass-fed beef for stew. Yay.

Today, in addition to some Christmas gifts for family, I bought myself the first gift I've bought in a long time. I didn't need it. It was expensive, a beautiful turned wood bowl, polished, shaped out of cherry with little black smudges marring the grain. "Some people think those are flaws" said the man who made the bowls, smiling. I told him I liked them because they were different. I almost bought a bigger bowl, so it could serve several guests salad for a dinner--because something that beautiful should be used for company. And then I realized that I wanted to use that beautiful thing every day, for me.

Next year I want to come for more of the fair, so I can see more of the demos and go to talks. But this year my favorite thing was sitting outside the Rabbit Barn, across from the woman who was sitting at a beautiful wooden spinning wheel. The wheel was so well-balanced and silent that you wouldn't even know it was moving, except that you could see her foot gently pumping the treadle. Once I got over enjoying how easy she made it look, I noticed the large, fluffy, impossibly darling Angora rabbit in her lap. Wait a second...every once in a while she would stop, pull some more fur out of the rabbit until she had a handful, and then continue spinning. Wow. I said "wow" a lot today.

At the end of the summer, I hired carpenter (and fellow tango-dancer) P. to finish up the downstairs apartment. I also hired P. to be my partner and assistant at an upcoming TML gig, where I will also be teaching a dance lesson. P. and I agreed that we should get together on Thursday and dance a bit, since we've hardly danced together since May. Playing all the time with TML means I don't dance much at milongas anymore!

Well, Thursday came and I was into day 4 of The Plague that has been sweeping the schools and I really needed to sleep, not dance, but when I came home late from school and saw that P. had painted both of the downstairs living rooms while I was at school and that I had to leave right then anyway in order to meet him on time...I went. We danced for 2 hours. We agreed today that it was great--we both felt like we'd accomplished a lot. For the first time in a long time, I missed dancing tango regularly.

Back at home, I opened one of the 9 books on teaching the creative process that I had gotten out of the library on Wednesday and almost immediately found a section about how difficult it is to switch from the left brain to the right brain. I have this problem all the time when teaching violin--it's hard to feel something and simultaneously describe it logically, and after I've taught for a few hours I have to get myself back into "The Forehead" --maybe that is the right brain?--before I can really play well.

I had a nice 2 hours of right-brain dancing on Thursday night. I've missed that, and I've missed violin now that school is in full swing and I have hardly any time to feed myself, let alone practice. Now I'm thinking about a book I read a while back on ADD and how some people with ADD have to do art every day to keep themselves relaxed. I feel the same way about playing the violin, and I'm suddenly wondering whether I can exercise the brains of my high school students with art. Next week I was planning to start doing exercises from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, anyway. Now I am doubly resolved to do so.

Maybe I'm on the right side of the brain right now, because my left brain just took a look at this post that was supposed to be about how much faster my feet are, even since May, even when I'm tired and sick. But look what happened! I'm talking about brains and art instead. Hrmph. :-)

It did fleetingly cross my mind that probably playing video games is also a right-brain activity, but for my students that's a slippery slope.

I just bailed from the proposed Thursday night book group to discuss Calling in 'The One'. I just couldn't give up my only free weeknight. I can't decide whether this means that I'm avoiding trying to attract my soul mate or whether it means I'm too busy. And is my packed schedule going to mean that I can never fit anyone else in except my students and my band? Gawd, I hope not, because to have extra time would mean giving up high school teaching, violin teaching, or TML, all of which add to my life in many amazing, satisfying ways. But I think it is a little true that having my full life (except slighly less full in the summers, barring home improvement and crazy permaculture projects) does put a lot of men off. But maybe it's not my fault that the same guys who are attracted by the things I do end up being upset with me for not having more time. Argh. See, this is why I hate thinking about this stuff.

On the other hand, my life must be pretty great right now if I can be worrying about something this silly. Knocking on wood.

When Dom was visiting this summer, he asked me to sew up a seam on one of his soccer jerseys. For some reason, my sewing machine just wouldn't do it. I was pretty surprised since I've sewn some pretty tough materials on it, but I thought maybe these newfangled rubber-like polyesters were finally too much for my 1940s Singer.

Today I sat down for a few minutes to sew some darts in a knit top I bought for tango, and ran into the same problem. Sewing machine would not sew this stuff. Everything seemed fine--the tension was right, it was oiled. I sewed a line of stitches on a test piece of cotton. Perfect. But it wouldn't do the knit. Hmmm.

For some reason, as I was fooling with threading the needle yet again after the thread had broken, I thought: is the needle in backwards? Does it even matter? There's a right way to put the needle in, but it's not obvious which way is the right way and the instruction book is so old that I put it somewhere in a "safe place" 10 years ago and...well, haven't looked at it recently. I unscrewed the needle, turned it around, screwed it back in, and tried again. Perfect stitches.

So, it wasn't Dom's shirt, and it wasn't my machine, it was that I've been sewing with the needle in backwards for...how long? It's a wicked good thing that I'm not tempted to take this as some kind of metaphor for my life. Yessah.