Thunder Snow

Alas, sigh, bleat, moan, winter has finally arrived in our neck of the....lake . It is still weird, uncharacteristic weather though- it has been snowing/sleeting/raining for the last hour accompanied by nearly constant rolls of thunder and lightening. Daisy HATES it- she is lying on my feet with her face pressed into the computer cords and her eyes hidden-trembling-she hasn't been menaced by thunder in months, poor girly. Frank is more stoic, but he is right here in my tiny office too, and not on our bed hogging the whole thing as he usually does at this hour. He is not as scared, but he stays close to his people nonetheless in this situation.
Meanwhile, I am talking to my youngest son, who is in Japan for a year, on MSN. It is tomorrow morning over there. We live in such new and interesting times, with the Net.

When I was about 45 or 46, about 10 years ago, my two computer savvy offspring, aged 24 and 14 at the time, LITERALLY dragged me to the computer, sat me down, forced me to choose a name for hotmail and set up my first e-mail account. I am here to say that I had always said "I WILL NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVEN SWITCH ON A COMPUTER!!!!.They said,"Don't be silly, we know you, you will instantly become addicted and use it all the time.

Ten years later: I have two e-mail accounts (one for work, one for friends;) I look everything up on Google; read blogs; HAVE a blog; talk to my farflung kids and grand kids; use Vonage (Voice Over Internet Protocol) for long distance telephone; send e-cards; forward funny e-mails -judiciously; type up and print all written communication for my work, etc. shop on line, have a pay pal account,use a digital camera that I download to my computer, print my pics on line and hard copies as well. I also found our second DOG on-line through Pet-Finder.com, and drove 4 1/2 hours to pick her up. And, of course I do this all on my own, personal, not shared with anyone, spiffy new Samsung flat screen that I bought about a year ago

I guess the kids were right, LOL

Shawn

I never like the approach of Easter. My second child, my first son, died April 21, 1992, which, that year, was Easter Monday.There are days when I never consciously think about him at all; more often, he will come to mind in a way that makes me feel exactly as I did at the moment I heard he was dead. And now both the date itself, April 22 and Easter Monday seem like THAT day when they come around.

Nothing has ever been the same. I myself have changed profoundly, such that it would be impossible to imagine where I might have been had he lived.

And the changes in me are not bad, they just are. Some of them are even positive-I am a nicer person, I would say. But the journey from then to now has been a very dark, painful, scary, agonizing one that I would not wish on anyone.

Tonight, I want my little boy.

Cello Player of the Day: M.K.

At the moment I have 19-I was going to say "cello children" but actually four of them are adults. In my old city, which had a different demographic, I had about 15, two years ago when I left. I have been teaching in the new city for a year and a half and at the moment I am closed to new students, as I have as many as I want to have at the moment, although this may change. Getting students here has involved....nothing, on my part! It has been amazing: I guess my reputation preceded me-anyway, it is a better set-up in nearly every way here. First, there is my studio- everyone comments on how cozy it looks when they come in. There is a two piece bathroom right as you walk in- actually the studio is the entire ground floor of our three level townhouse, really, minus the laundry area and furnace room. There is a separate entrance at the front and a window and walkout to the teeny back yard. However, over the fence is the lake, and a public footpath, so if people waiting want to, they can go outside.

One corner is a play area, with toys, drawing materials,
books etc for siblings of the students and it is WELL used! Today I discovered this there-how cute!

Anyway, I am going to start a thrilling series called Cello Player of the Day.
They are in no particular order- just the order in which I get around to taking the photos.

Today's featured cello player is M.K.
She is 6 years old and has been playing cello since September 2005. Last year she had a year of violin, but decided at summer arts camp, where we had a 15 minute lesson every day for five days, that she was going to play cello instead. In the picture, she is playing French Folk Song, and we are working on looooong bow strokes. M. was hungry today- her lesson is at 11AM so she took a couple of french fry breaks, as you can see!

"Winter?" Dog Walk

Letters, Drugs

Ok, I can see how easy it is to let this go for several days-shame on me for feeling irritated when I go looking for up-dates on other blogs and wonder why it's taking so long.

I wrote a letter to my four year old grandson today. My daughter says that he answers the questions I "ask" in these letters. such as "How are you", or, "Is it raining where you live?" as she reads the letter out loud to him. This time I made sure to ask more interesting, four-ish questions.
He LOVES to get mail addressed especially to him. Todays topics were the dogs and why one of them hates the camera- complete with four pics, that I am going to try to post. Also Grandma's orchestra, because we have a concert this week-end. I put in a brochure, so he could see a picture.

It is hard to keep coming up with age appropriate, different things to say. Does anyone have any ideas?

My doctor and I are messing around with my anti-depressants- I am now on 75 mg of Effexor and have just cut the Prozac that I have been on for, count 'em, twelve years, from 40 to 20 mg.
It is a bit scary, especially reading about bad experiences that other people have had, but the Prozac had definitely stopped being very effective and toughing it out was not cutting it. I seem to have had a REALLY positive Effexor response so far, fingers crossed. I think she was wise to overlap the two drugs, rather than stopping the one before starting the other. Does anyone have any experience with that sort of thing? I am startlingly less depressed- it feels remarkably good to not feel bad.

Still NO snow, and here it is February 3rd! Maybe there really won't be any snow at all this year. You have to be a Canuck, (even a Southern Ontario one), to know how amazing this is!
I love it- it is like this huge reprieve. Even if it were to snow like crazy for the next 6 weeks, we still have missed about twelve weeks of it. Yahoo!

ack!

Man alive, I wish I were the instruction reading sort. Left a comment on one site, no problem, then felt all emboldened and left another one which I screwed up in some way so that if you click on the name it pops up a scary message that I may be trying to "TrickYou". Ack. Now I feel all hot and stupid and embarrassed and there it is for all the world to see, too. And I do not know how to fix it.
Sorry, I am not trying to trick you! Sheesh!
The only way I can see at this moment to fix this would be to erase the whole blog and start over.
I am going to bed and pulling the covers over my head!
I feel about 10 years old!