Wait, Did I Remember To Put Sleeping and Eating In the Schedule?

Projects completed this week (besides the usual work, chauffeur duties, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and rehearsals for S&P and Voci):

• Two Peter Pan rehearsals at B's school (co-music director)
• Attempted retrieval of M's cell phone, which was confiscated on Monday when it rang in French class. The school has instituted a new rule that confiscated phones have to be picked up by a parent. Of course, when I showed up on Wednesday afternoon, no one could find the phone. M did get it back yesterday.
• One rehearsal for Annie at M's school. I helped out in costumes--none of the other moms on duty that day could tie a tie. I only had to stay for the first hour or so, but when I went to pick up M at 6:30, I had to wait until 7:10 before he finally appeared. Fortunately, Voci rehearsal is only five minutes from my house, so I still made it on time.
• Two dozen cupcakes baked, filled, and frosted last night. Four will be included with a dinner I'm bringing to some friends [see below], and the rest are for S&P retreat on Saturday. (Vanilla with raspberry filling and buttercream icing.)
• Apartment in Rome booked for July (had to dig out the fax machine that's been stored in our garage for the last four or five years)

Projects in progress:

• Making dinner tonight for a friend who's just had surgery. I will make potato soup and pick up a loaf of bread this afternoon before taking B to ballet class.
• Organizing B's group to audition for Orinda Idol. The signup deadline is next week, and B and her best friend L (who sang together in the last two competitions) waited until this week to decide they wanted to try again. L's mom wasn't thrilled by the idea, but B really wanted to do it, so she's going along with it. After several phone calls between the girls, they finally decided who they wanted to join them this year. They talked with their friends yesterday, and I finally had a spare minute last night to e-mail the moms. Both moms got back to me within half an hour with positive responses! (It appears that a lot of moms are online between 10:00 and 11:00 pm.)
• Picking suitable music for the Orinda Idol group. I have been collecting pieces for the last couple of months, but not knowing who would be singing, I have some SSA and some SSAA pieces. Now to figure out what will work with the group we have.
• Baking (scheduled for tonight after ballet) and decorating (scheduled for tomorrow night after retreat) B's birthday cake for Sunday.
• Putting together the treasure hunt for B's birthday party on Sunday. Most of the clues are prepared on my computer, but not yet printed out. Two clues still need some work before Sunday. I have no idea if the clues are too easy or two hard for these girls.
• Prepping for S&P retreat tomorrow. I'm temporarily the alto section leader (until D returns in the fall), so I have to run the alto sectional. As assistant conductor, I get to run the SA sectional that follows. (At least the cupcakes for lunch are already done.) Retreat is 10:00-4:00, which pretty much wipes out the entire day.

Accordian Effect

You know how traffic often slows down, then speeds up, then slows down again? Tonight felt like that. I rushed to get out of the door to a 7:00 rehearsal at someone's house, then sat around for fifteen minutes after I arrived. (With good reason--the third member of our trio was rushing to get the music copied, and backed her car into another one, which delayed her arrival.) Once everyone was there, we went through our piece a couple of times, then at 7:45 two of us had to rush out to another rehearsal at someone else's house. All members of the octet arrived around the same time, so we rehearsed that piece until 8:30, then I had to rush out the door again to pick up DH at the BART station. (He was returning from a trip to Sweden, and quite understandably didn't want to end his seventeen-hour trip by sitting at the BART station waiting for me.) Naturally, I got there early, and ended up waiting for HIM.

Where Did It Go?

How did it get to be Wednesday already? Time has just flown by. Saturday was choir retreat, followed by dinner at a friend's house. The kids and DH cleaned house while I was at retreat. I started my share of the cleaning when we finally got home at 11:15 pm, and finished it up Sunday morning. A quick pickup rehearsal at my house, a playdate for B, and suddenly the weekend was over.

Monday the kids were out early, so I took them to get their annual physicals done. M is officially the same height as I am now. Both kids are continuing on their tall (75th to 95th percentile) and skinny (50th percentile) growth trajectories. On Tuesday I had a doctor's appointment, and today I got up two hours earlier than usual to take DH to the BART station (he had a morning flight to catch, and I couldn't both take him to the airport and get the kids to school on time). Tonight Voci is singing at a bookstore, so it'll be a scramble to get dressed and into Berkeley after M's piano lesson. I'm thinking McD's would be a good stop for dinner :-)

Death March

Weekends just fly by around here! On Saturday, DH had to go to a work retreat, so he wasn't able to take M to The Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford). Fortunately, my parents are here for Thanksgiving, and my dad was interested in attending. So, we left the house at 10:00 am on Saturday, dropped B off for her pre-ballet class (she's a teaching assistant), then parked the car on campus. I got M and Dad started in the right direction, then Mom and I walked back to the ballet school to pick up B (on game days, parking in Berkeley is at a premium, so I didn't want to move the car). The three of us then walked to lunch, walked back to the car, and walked back to the ballet school for Nutcracker rehearsal. Finally, a last trip to the car (we hiked over four miles that day), where we hung out until the game was over. After a quick trip to Costco to pick up pizza and groceries, we finally arrived home around 5:30.

It was a good weekend for our football teams: Cal beat Stanford, and Harvard beat Yale :-)

Yesterday, we raked a small mountain of leaves. The green bin was stuffed full, and we had five or six bags of leaves left over, which are now parked next to my compost pile. After a quick trip to the grocery store, my sister came over for dinner, then I sprinted out the door to Voci rehearsal. It's a lot more rushed when rehearsal starts at 7:00 rather than 7:30--I was still scrambling to get my music in order during the first half of the rehearsal!

Burying a pet on a sunny day

Just got back from a dress rehearsal for the S&P concert. Rehearsal went pretty smoothly, although I'm not used to being the "human pitch pipe." We'll see how it goes this weekend--I might back out of that role in the future.

The weather was beautiful today! Before I left to pick up the kids from school, I took Otto (the big tortoise) out of his winter home in the garage, and put him outside to walk around in the sun.

We also buried B's tortoise, Augie, who died while we were on vacation. I was ready to bury her at Grandma's house, but B and M both insisted that we bury the tortoise at our house, on a nice sunny day. So, yes, after Christmas, we drove home from Southern California with a dead tortoise in our cooler. The body has been in the garage freezer since then, waiting for the perfect day.

I spent 1 1/2 hours outside today, pulling up weeds in the back yard. There are two main kinds of weeds in the our back yard: one with rounded, deeply serrated leaves, and one with little round leaves. The ones with little round leaves are usually a pain to pull up, but today was just the right time. The ground was still damp from last week's rains, and the weeds very thoughtfully sprouted flower stalks that made perfect handles for pulling them out of the ground.