Serious musical enthusiasm

First, check out this link: www2.choralnet.org/268945.html

Back from your little virtual field trip? Good! Here's what I thought about it:

I think enthusiasm goes a long way-- maybe longer than we give it credit for. Okay, so maybe you don't always have perfect rhythm, and maybe you fall off the stand from laughing and end up rolling around on the floor at the end. The point is that you had a fabulous time doing it, and every so often you actually did what you set out to do.

I think all of us have more talent than we think we do. It's so easy to say, "No, I don't have enough formal training" or "That's too hard" instead of letting the music play and moving with it.

Or, you can stop trying to be philosophical and just enjoy a funny clip.

upstairs bedroom painting- DONE!

Hi everyone. Brit here, reporting on the remodeling progress of 2011. I have to say, Mom's pretty bad about blogging these days, but I think it's partially due to her needing to pay more attention to-- ahem-- her feline children. Anyhow, once the housemate moved out, the room she'd stayed in was cleared of furniture, so Mom finally decided to redo that room. Here's a picture of me supervising from the futon mattress, which she'd moved out so she could paint:

Mom always said she hated the pink walls and wanted to paint over them. Here's what they looked like before she painted. (The crud at the top of the wall is wallpaper glue that she spent FOREVER peeling off a little at a time. She said it really shredded her fingertips.)

Why did she feel the need to get rid of the wallpaper border? I think she'd say, "Is that a rhetorical question?" Think "pseudo-Southwestern meets attempted floral". Here's the final version, the room all decked out in "Soft Jade":

Now, crazy Mom that she is, she's going to paint the OTHER upstairs bedroom, and then the hallway. Then she promises she's done painting for a while. Until she tackles the dining room wallpaper (two layers), that is . . .

Trip to Ireland

Ireland West Virginia, that is. Yesterday I went to the Irish Spring Festival, about an hour and a half south of my house. During most of the year, the population of Ireland, West Virginia is 60 (seriously). The week of St. Patrick's Day, though, they host a big festival that includes kite flying, road bowling, rubber duck races (not sure what's Irish about rubber duckies), and the reason I came:

Collette and I took a road trip to participate in the harp workshop, put on by Harping for Humanity. I tried to get a picture of the whole group, but I couldn't. The harps in the middle were built by the man standing near them, and behind him is a Venezuelan harp (not sure how he got that on the plane from Venezuela). Most people had lap harps or small Irish harps. My harp was the giant of the group (it's in the back at the left in the photo). Fourteen of us played at the workshop, including a woman who has lost almost all movement in her left hand but still manages to play. Pretty impressive. After the workshop, we had a potluck lunch and then put on a brief concert.

Before the concert, though, there was a parade! Most of the leprechauns were pretty young:

Toddlers should not be handed candy and told to throw it at people. Just sayin'.

Post? Post? What is "post"?

Okay, okay, I've been a total blogger slacker the past few months. Here are my excuses, in no particular order:

1) Teaching early morning seminary has sapped every ounce of energy out of me in the evening when I would normally blog.
2) My digital camera busted, and blog entries without pictures are boring (um, kinda like this one).
3) My cats have been hogging the computer-- okay, maybe not.

I realized a couple of months ago that I'm way more limited on time than I thought I was. After several consecutive evenings of not getting to bed until 11 PM and then getting up at 4:30 the next morning, I thought, "Something has to change." That, combined with some General Conference talks, got me thinking about my Facebook usage and how I was kind of obssessing over being on there and checking every single little new message.

How does this have anything to do with blogs? I think the connection is that the less I'm on the computer, the less stressed I feel. I only have so many hours in the day, and harp practicing is turning out to be more rewarding than blogging. Not that I won't blog at all, or read other blogs; just not nearly as often.

But I really will get a new digital camera someday, and I really will come up with some new, more enjoyable-to-read entries. Just not today. Sorry.

But I posted . . .

In which I finally learn to practice consistently

Two weeks of harp lessons and (drum roll please) . . . . .

I have practiced EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Okay, for some people that's not a big deal. For me, it's HUGE. To explain, let me describe the typical scene in my life when I was taking piano lessons in high school:

Setting: 6th period English class, last 15 minutes. Scene opens on Sheila, who is finishing whatever assignment is due by the end of the period.
Interior monologue: Hmm. Today's Thursday. I wonder what I'll do after I get my homework done after school? Wait a minute-- today's THURSDAY?!? I have a piano lesson in an hour and I haven't practiced since last Friday!

Cut to scene of Sheila rushing home, throwing her book bag on the living room floor, and frantically flipping through piano books. With only 20 minutes until the lesson, she has just enough time to sort of sight read through each piece, hoping her teacher won't notice that she continues to sight read through the lesson.

Nice, huh? I always intended to practice, but stuff got in the way. Stuff like homework. And boredom. And not wanting to play through pieces more than once. And nice weather outside. And the cat sitting there needing me to pet her. I knew my parents were spending a lot of money on lessons, and I really did like playing the piano. It was the sitting still and practicing the same thing over and over that I didn't like.

For a while I thought my piano teacher was fooled by my sight reading. That was until she said something along the lines of, "You know, Sheila, you'd be a much better pianist if you actually practiced rather than sight reading." Ouch. I got better about practicing when I had longer pieces to learn, but I still never practiced daily.

So now that I'm learning the harp-- and needing to develop a whole new set of finger reflexes, along with callouses-- I'm practicing daily. Yes, part of it is because it's fun, but another part is that I spent a great big chunk of change on the harp AND the lessons, and I want to be good at it. I want the piano reflexes that took years-- no, decades-- to develop NOW, even though I know that won't happen.

What I'm noticing is that I can sit still and focus better than I ever could in high school. I still have a crazy life, but since everything about the harp is new to me (well, except for reading the notes), it's a nice change to sit and practice. I also know I can't fake my way through this time. My sweet sight reading skills can't compensate for the finger strength that can only come if I practice every day. My teacher isn't going to roll her eyes or be disappointed if I don't practice, but I will be disappointed with myself.

Hmm. Where would I be if I'd practiced regularly on piano lo those many years ago . . . ? Now ask me when the last time was that I picked up my flute.

Bathroom remodel: done!!

Let's remind everyone what the bathroom looked like back in 2009, when I started this project. All I REALLY wanted to do was remove the ugly wallpaper (not pictured because I couldn't download the picture for some reason). Then I decided I also needed to deal with the linoleum issue:




Since I was going to tile, I also replaced the toilet, which was a big water waster anyhow. Here's the finished product (Brit decided to model the use of the litter box as an extra bonus):

I don't have a picture of the old light fixture, but for any readers who remember the San Jose house, picture that. If you don't know the San Jose house, picture 70's era frosted glass globes, hanging from chains suspended from plant hooks in the ceiling. This light fixture is MUCH better!

Ah, the faucet. It doesn't look all that impressive here in final form, but it almost deserves its own blog entry. Let's just say that circa 1946 plumbing doesn't come out easily. Special wrenches, WD-40, a blow torch, and finally a hacksaw were what it took. Who knew my across the street neighbor would have not one but FOUR pipe wrenches in his shed? Good to know. So to whoever buys my house next, be grateful I updated for you.

Why did I take a picture of the doorway? Look at that beautiful transition piece! So something I learned in this project is that Lowe's never has the right size piece of anything for an old house. When I tiled, I raised the floor 3/4 of an inch. The deepest transition piece at Lowe's was 3/8 of an inch. The tile guy just stared at me and said he couldn't help. Hurray for the wood shop that COULD help me and build exactly what I needed! I will definitely use them again. Look what great work they did!

Note: Oak is very hard. Drill bits to create nail holes can break easily. How many drill bits does it take to install a transition? In this case, three. One is embedded in this transition, and therefore the history of this house, forever.

Second note: There are biting insects living in my lawn. I found out when I was kneeling on the lawn to drill the holes in the transition. That's right, my friends: serious sacrifice for the remodel. Yup.

For those who want a better picture of the whole product, sorry. Too small a space, too unskilled a camera user. You'll have to come see for yourself.

Now it's time to paint the upstairs bedrooms . . .

The Dork Dot

I just realized this afternoon that today marks my TWENTIETH anniversary of entering the MTC (Missionary Training Center, for any non-Mormon readers). Whoa! TWENTY YEARS?!? How did that time pass by so fast?

My ward had fast and testimony meeting this morning (rather than last week on the 4th), and one of the full-time missionaries got up to bear his testimony. As he spoke, I thought about how amazing missions are. Here's this young 19-year-old (okay, maybe almost 21) fired up about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, spending all day every day teaching about it and basically living and serving others like Christ did. The part that's most amazing to me is that missions happen right at the point where you're making key life decisions and really figuring out who you are as an adult. Missions are key in shaping that.

Then I started thinking about missionaries from MY mission (lo, so many years ago-- see above) and wondering what they're lives are like now. And of course I started thinking about what my life has turned into in the past 20 years since I entered the MTC. I've come a long, long way from the scared little sister missionary trying to find her new companion in a sea of white shirts and ties.

So back to the title of this entry: I'm not sure if they still do this, but when I entered the MTC, someone greeted me at the door and put a little dot on my shirt collar (I was wearing a floral jumper-- stylin', no?). That way everyone who saw me would know I was a brand-new missionary and go out of their way to help me. We called the sticker the dork dot. It found its way to the back of my mission name tag, and that tag is in a box somewhere now.

After I got my dork dot, my family and I got ushered into a huge auditorium. I don't remember what we did, mainly because I was really nervous and emotional, but I'm pretty sure we listened to the MTC president welcome us, and I'm pretty sure we sang "Called to Serve" (later known, thanks to a mission companion, as "The Missionary Fight Song"-- we clapped it sometimes instead of singing it). I do know that a few years later, when I was dropping off one of my BYU roommates at the MTC, we all sang "Called to Serve" before the missionaries left out one door and families left out the other. My other friends who were there all spoke a different language-- Spanish (Miriam), French (me), Dutch (Felix)-- so we sang the hymn in our languages. The new missionary sang in English. A poor, scared elder sitting right in front of us turned and looked at us in horror. I could read his thoughts on his face: "Oh NO! Everybody else already knows their mission language! I'm behind and it's only day one!"

Back on track with my story: When all the new missionaries left the auditorium, I remember filing through some lines, picking up my name tag, picking up some books and my Missionary Guide, things like that. Mostly I remember seeing nothing but white shirts. My thought, "What if I'm the only sister missionary in the entire building? Where's my companion? What if I can't find her?"

Fortunately, I found Soeur Tollestrup just fine, and we had a fabulous MTC experience, leading into the best mission ever.

One last thought: a couple of months into my mission, when things weren't going as amazingly as I'd hoped, a sister missionary who was just getting ready to go back home was staying overnight in our apartment. Here's the comment that stayed with me: "I had a perfect mission. Not perfect in the sense that nothing bad happened, but perfect in the sense that it was exactly what I needed to have happen for me." I think that describes life pretty well, too.