asteroid B612

It's the last day of 2004, and I feel like I ought to say a few introspective things or something, but all I can think of is--WHAT!? Already?!. Deep, huh? Yikes. When I was a kid I used to feel a bit more apocalyptic at the end of a year, feeling very acutely that one thing was irrevocably ending and another door of unknowns was opening. And when you're a kid, years are bigger, because they're longer. I feel less so now. I'll got to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow, same as I always do while God continues to bless the orbiting of the planets and rising of the sun.

What is time, anyway? It's a construct that humans have made in order to help them organize the passing of their lives. It's the end of a year for me, but not for the Chinese. So it doesn't seem all that gigantic after all. I do enjoy the chance to celebrate. We do need holidays to help us mark time. And I do enjoy getting a new calendar sometime next week when they're 80% off.

Nevertheless, a significant marker along the march of time is made in our little world. And I'm thankful for a lot of things this past year. God continues to provide for us, no matter how faithless we may be. And He's given us a baby to look forward to. I have a wonderful husband. And I'm very content. All these things and many more are huge blessings that I don't deserve, and I can only praise the Lord for His continued goodness, faithfulness, and mercy.

And I think I'll go to bed early tonight, because this baby He gave me sure does wear me out. :-) So Happy New Year!!!

On to happier things. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of people over Christmas!!! (Actually, I did take one, but it turned out all blurry.) But we did go to the park where I took Sam's senior pictures on my Pentax, and I snapped a few cute ones of Lu, too. So when I get those developed and if they have turned out well, I'll scan a couple in. One thing we want to get before the advent of Elvis is a nicer digital camera.

Okay. So first off is the result of my adventure in soldering. A finicky iron and lack of knowledge ended up in a ornament that looks more suited for a tree in Who-ville, but hey, I'm going to be proud of it.

Then to prove that it snowed. I caught some on my sleeve, since I couldn't really get an effective picture of the snow falling.

Well, my poor pregnant body could only take so much holiday cheer before it crashed. I inaugurated week 12 of my pregnancy with Barf Fest 2004, after a morning sickness-free first trimester. It was just a bug. It's gone now. But Sunday night I threw up more than I ever have in my life in one episode. I've never gotten beyond food before. But the last few times were food free, I don't know what I was barfing. I know--you really wanted to hear all that.

We had a great time with Sam and Luisa. And I was doing my best to stay calm and relaxed and do what I needed to do at a reasonable pace, but having company in one's teeny apt will always carry some amount of stress, even if you're enjoying them. And I had to be the mom and make sure everyone was fed, and I had to make Christmas happen. You know, Santa doesn't bring it in a big red bag. The mom makes it.

My left eye was twitching all week. And Sunday night my body couldn't take it anymore. So I've spent the last two days resting (Sam and Lu left early Monday morning) and feel much better this morning. It's kind of frustrating. I feel like a wimp. I was trying to keep a reasonable pace and to rest often. Life is busy, and I can't just sit around while I'm pregnant. It's a little freaky. I just don't know how my body is going to react to anything. I'm a little nervous about this next semester--it's my last semester and I've got a lot to do. And what's more: despite my post a few days ago, I agreed to teach another course next sem at local university. It was last minute, and I don't really want to, but we could really use the money. This course could basically pay for Elvis.

Happy thing: Monday morning I had a regularly scheduled doctor's appointment, and we got to hear the heartbeat! So cool! It went "whoop, whoop, whoop."

It snowed.

For the first time since the 1980s, it snowed in New Orleans. For the first time in New Orleans history, it snowed on Christmas! (That is, since weather records have been kept in this city.) No kidding. It was sleeting this morning, and this afternoon it got just cold enough for big, white fluffy flakes to fall from the sky and melt on the sidewalk. A thin layer of snow and ornate snowflakes on my black velvet blazer stand as further testimony. Truly amazing. We're all excited to have a nice week of winter.

It's been a fun C'mas. We had presents this morning. I got Scrabble, Pictionary, and tangrams in the games category. Chris picked me up some fun CDs and a picnic basket at a yard sale. Sam gave me a fondue pot. Woohoo! My g'ma got me a couple of CDs including a lullabye CD for Elvis, which upon listening to Chris and I teared up a little. Awww.

We spent the day at the Hamiltons having a British C'mas dinner, complete with flaming plum pudding and crackers with paper crowns. Very pleasant.

Can't wait for next C'mas which we'll get share with Bambino!

Phwew. Sam and Lu made it. They got to their gate in plenty of time and got here just fine. See? All that worrying paid off.

Today we loaded up for the last round of C'mas shopping. Chris and I kept taking them surreptitiously to help them pick out gifts for eachother and for us. We managed to get everything at Barnes and Noble and Target. Woohoo! No traipsing around malls! In fact, I think I've successively avoided the mall entirely this C'mas season, and I didn't even order anything online.

Afterwards we drove back into our nice New Orleans and wound round through the neighborhoods to the corner of Bellecastle and Annunciation where the best po-boy joint in New Orleans is located. We stuffed our famished tummies with sizzling shrimp po-boys.

A nice nap. Cookies ahead. Thermometer dropping to a respectable Christmas temperature. Bring on the hot cider!

So I'll take a few minutes to blog while I'm waiting for my faculty account to be straightened out so that I can post my grades before noon. It was great teaching a class at local university. I'm tremendously grateful for the experience. But I highly do not recommend adjuncting while still a grad student with a full-time course load. It's a lot of work to put together a class for the first time, especially when it's a class for the first time, never having taught a class before. It was a good experience. I had a small class size, and it was a basic survey of material. I do feel that I still have a lot to learn about teaching and a lot to learn about music history before I can feel comfortable, though. Try as I might, it's difficult to get my head around all the details of a hundred year period of time enough to distill the details in a salient fashion. Sure, I can understand it for myself, but communicating it is another matter. It's easy just to slip into the Music History Parade that I went through/am going through as a student, rather than try to be creative. I'm glad for this experience, but I think I need to study a bit more before I teach again. I can't imagine these people who go on the market as fresh A.B.D.'s. I feel like I have so much more left to learn just to get to an adequate level. As soon as I post these grades, another chapter will be closed....

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Last night when I was commenting, I was feeling fit as a fiddle. I had a productive day, and at the end of it, I was feeling the euphoria of cookie dough for 4 different kinds all chilling in my fridge. Today I feel pregnant. I'm totally crashed. I can't go like crazy for days successively. I need to recover today. :)

My brother and sister come this evening. I'm such a worry wart. I kept calling them last night to make sure they didn't forget this or that. They must've been rolling their eyes when they saw my number pop up on the ID again. And my parting words "call me when you get to your gate, just so I know you made it to the airport on time!" Our mom isn't even this bad. But I am worried. They have to get themselves from their school party (it's never easy to tear oneself away from parties) to my aunt's house (an hour away) for my uncle to take them to the airport (another hour away) two hours before their flight leaves. I hope the holiday security lines aren't too bad. Listen to me! Stop!

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Grades are posted. Grocery store awaits.

I love living in a city that has a song about Christmas time in that city, sung by none other Louis Armstrong. I also love living in a city where even though Louis is an institution (our airport is even named after him! the Louis Armstrong International Airport) you can still here him on the radio every day. Why, as a matter of fact, he's singing right now as I type.

Anyway. It is Christmas time here in New Orleans. And last Saturday, I came to the shocking reality that I only have a week left. So I started my shopping. Today I must run a few more errands to finish the gift round-up and to obtain the last few supplies for home-made gifts. I also need to start my mad cookie dash. This is the only time of year that I feel obligated to make cookies. I'm going to use some as gifts this year, which is why I feel so driven to bake. I think I might also get my pasta started for Christmas Eve's big Italian seafood dinner. Everywhere I read says that shell fish should be avoided for pregnant women. How seriously do i take this? Is this like the caffeine thing? It's kind of cramping my style for Christmas Eve. Anyway. At any rate, we'll have some kind of fish for the main course--and if I can afford it, it'll be cod (baccala). I'm also make spaghetti with some kind of marinara sauce (with clams?--maybe I'll sautee them to serve on top), and ravioli stuffed with ricotta, mozarella, pine nuts, and shredded zucchini. Last year I did crab ravioli (so good!), but then there's the shell-fish thing again. Even if our seafood options are significantly reduced, it'll still be a yummy dinner.

(HEY! My song just came on the radio!! Right now as I type, Louis is singing "It's Christmas Time in New Orleans." How cool is that!?!?)

Tonight my parents head off to Germany to spend Christmas with my brother, and tomorrow my teenaged brother and sister, Sam and Luisa, are coming to spend Christmas with us. I'm getting really excited. Our family has a lot of fun Christmas traditions (like opening presents C'mas Eve night) and having a quiet, lazy C'mas day. A few years ago, my mom introduced the tradition of allowing us to pick out the most desired Junk Cereal (we couldn't have a favorite, because we were never allowed to have it) for C'mas morning. Last year (our first C'mas at home), Chris and I evaluated our respective family's traditions and came up with the synthesis that was uniquely ours. Italian dinner, movies, games (I'm still working on that one), and great music on the radio (wh. works at least while we still live in NOLA) for C'mas Eve. Presents on Christmas morning. This year, I'm getting junk cereal for Sam and Lu (partly because I don't know what else to serve them for b'fast) for the week, and pain au chocolat from our boulangerie for C'mas morning breakfast. Our church also does not have a C'mas Eve service, rather a C'mas morning service of lessons and carols. And we'll have C'mas dinner with the Hamiltons (our pastor and family), who are from the UK and give us a nice British C'mas dinner complete with flaming pudding. Maybe we'll make this dinner a tradition when we no longer have the Hamiltons to have Christmas with (perish the thought). C'mas is great fun this year, but we can't wait for next year when we have Elvis to share it with. Woohoo!

The loot pile under the tree is growing. (always exciting.) I feel like such a kid. Sneaking peaks and shakes to try to figure out what Chris got me, but still holding back a tad, because I want the surprise! I'm also such a kid in that when I get Chris something obviously shaped (like a book, or CD, or DVD) I wrap it in another box so that he couldn't possibly tell. He really should do that for me, because I'm the one that sneaks shakes, and he doesn't. Or maybe he does and he's so sneaky that I don't know. I just assume that if I'm going to shake everyone will, so I have to protect them from themselves. We WILL have surprises on Christmas morning.

I've decided to email Christmas letter this year. I've been enjoying very much receiving all the letters and pictures from my friends and family. But due to the large cost of doing cards, letter, and pictures all with first-class postage, I think I'll email as many as I can. I really hate to do that. I enjoy the Real Deal, and think it's worth it. I've taken to just sending postcards intsead of emails to friends. There's nothing like seeing your friend's familiar penmanship oozing their personality in a reply note. Maybe with more planning at cost-effectiveness I can return to Real Cards next year.

I have a TON left to do before Sam and Lu get here, and before Christmas. So blogging may be non-existent this week. So until next time....

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Peyton Manning (some NFL football player I have never heard of but now know as a real, nice guy) was Santa to the students at the school where Chris teaches. All the teachers and students had a limit of $20 to spend on books at Barnes and Noble. So, this morning, they loaded up the school buses and took the boys shopping. (It's an all-boys school.) I went along, too, to see Chris in his element (without actually having to go to school) and to help with crowd control (i.e. guarding the entrance to the CD section--off limits). I got to pick out a book, too. I got a little book on cookies full of great recipes that my mom has and that I'm always pining for this time of year. Since the cookie book is a bargain deal, it was super cheap, and I had enough left over to pick up Umberto Eco's newest novel now in paperback, Baudolino. I enjoyed The Name of the Rose, the novel for which he is probably most famous, at least in the English speaking world. Though I must say, TNotR's ending was a little disappointing to me, because the reason I liked it was how well it got into the mind and rhythm of monastic life. The scene where the youth-protagonist stands in front of the cathedral door for the first time and is overcome by the carvings of the Last Judgement is priceless! It's his historical imagination in that moment that is simply brilliant. So when the book turns into a murder mystery, it's a little disappointing, but then, that is what makes us continue to turn the pages. He's not Proust, after all. And if you think about Eco as a semiotician, the ending to TNotR is rather interesting. So anyway. After I make dozens of cookies, I'm looking forward to curling up with Baudolino and dipping into another corner of the postmodern, medieval historical imagination of Umberto Eco.

I just got an email with the news that my first piano teacher died.

I doubt there was any musician in Eastern Iowa (and beyond!) who she did not touch somehow. What an energetic, generous, caring teacher!

Going to her house was extremely memorable. Walking up the sidewalk with big trees in the front yard (crunching leaves in the fall, treading carefully around icy patches in the winter). She had a big porch and in the summer had huge hanging baskets of impatiens (or were they geraniums?). At the end of the porch was the perfect porch swing on which to sit and dream while my friend finished her lesson. Inside was an entry way with a bench facing sliding wooden doors, which opened between lessons to reveal two Steinway grand pianos side by side. The one of the right sitting next to the big picture window was for the students.

She taught me solid musicianship and was sensitive to my burgeoning interests. It's thanks to her that I play the piano in church every Sunday.

My last year of highschool, my class had our Christmas party in Independence. Restless, we decided to walk around and carol at everyone's house we knew. We came to her house and sang "O Jesu sweet" by Bach in perfect 4 part harmony. She was thrilled: "I've never had carolers sing in 4 part harmony before!"

One year she had a piano trio come for an evening. She invited a bunch of us music students from Cono. We sat on the stairs and afterwards had pizza and enjoyed lively conversaton.

My last lesson with her, and probably the last time I ever saw her, we played a piece by Chopin for two pianos. I didn't play it great, but we got the point across and had a lot of fun.

*I always feel like I should get a sticker when I successively parallel park. Today, I not only did the Perfect 3 Point Parallel Park, but I did it on the left hand side! In my car with no power steering!!! I ought to get something for that!

It's taken me a long time to warm up to this parallel parking thing (especially since I don't have power steering). But you can only live in the city for so long before you have to succumb and figure out how to do it.

*Did I mention that our Christmas tree is perfect!

*I'm always amazed at how much great stuff you can find at the craft store! Stuff I would never think of looking for there. Like Hershey kisses with red and green wrappers, which my Walmart did NOT have!

*I'm turning into an awkward shape. I can't wear most of my pants except for ones that make me look like a gangsta. Are there pre-maternity clothes out there? I'm mean...ones that are for between now and when you can really fill them out?