I had returned from Germany late Saturday evening which gave me a wonderfully relaxed Sunday with Mark, a Monday with nothing on the calendar, a Tuesday full of interviews, so by Wednesday the 18th I had had a couple days to come home and get organized, ready to start teaching. 

While I don’t believe in jet lag = the assumption that for a couple days after transatlantic travel my body is still operating in a different time zone, I do acknowledge that spending a day that begins at 5:30 a.m. in Germany and ends some 24 hours later at 10:30 p.m. in Manhattan, KS – a day that is spent sitting and trying to sleep in a taxi, airplane seats, waiting areas and a car - takes its toll on a body that is closer to age 50 than 40.   I was dragging for a few days, taking delicious naps and generally taking it a easy.   It helped that the terrible heatwave which had gripped Manhattan the previous weeks had finally broken right before I arrived back in Kansas. 

My schedule this semester is very full, and it is still evolving:  since I started the piano semester six days before students went back to (public) school, some students were still on vacation which necessitated rescheduling their lessons.  Now that we have started and students are back in school, the reality of how realistic the piano schedule is for my students is starting to sink in.  I have already had requests to move lessons to a slightly different time to accommodate other family obligations during the school year.   Back-to-school nights temporarily mess with the schedule.  So far, I’ve been able to accommodate these requests.  

Other changes that are coming up:  I have particularly many transfer students this semester, and all transfer students start with twice-weekly 30-minute lessons until I am confident I can leave them alone with their assignment for an entire week and we switch to once-a-week 45-minute lessons.  There is no time limit on this transition: for some students it takes a few weeks, for some many months.  So there’ll be changes to my schedule throughout the semester, depending on how fast students transition.  I have future students waiting for a time slot to open so they can start lessons.  I have current students whom I am watching particularly carefully because they are not doing as well as they could and should because I may not be the best teacher for them.  If I determine that I in fact am not what they need I will approach the parents and suggest a change. 

But all in all, the semester is off to a good start and I have a pretty good idea of what my schedule will look like for the rest of the semester.  Busy.

That time, toward the end of July, when I wish I could just fast-forward to August 18 when the Fall Semester starts.  The time until then is so stressful because it holds so many unknowns:  I am not sure how many students will enroll this fall; I don’t yet have the schedules of the ones who will enroll; many parents do not yet have a schedule because especially sports don’t get scheduled until school starts. 

Of course I want the best schedule for everyone – their favorite time, siblings together, conveniently together of course, and so on.  I’ve been bugging Mark to see if there’s some kind of software to help with the scheduling but there are so many variables (on my part) that it just wouldn’t work.  There is scheduling software available, commercially - I googled – but most of them put the scheduling into the parents’ hands.  As much as parents may think that it should be either first-come-first-serve or work by some sort of seniority – that’s not how I schedule.  I want to pick and choose and reconsider and change until I feel that the schedule fits everyone, me included, as perfectly as possible.

In addition to the stress of the unknown, it’s been hot.  Hot and humid and miserable.  Yesterday was the first day in I can’t remember how long that Mark and I were able to ride our bikes.  Well, enjoy to ride our bikes. 

Hot means that we run the a/c which means that in regular intervals there is the noise from the blower (fan?) which is particularly noticeable at night.  We don’t sleep well. 

On top of everything else, I am going back to Germany the first two weeks in August, for the fifth time this year, this time to finalize the closing of my mother’s apartment.  She lived in that apartment for 37 years, I grew up in it.  Several years ago, when my mother and I discussed end-of-life issues and how she would like me to deal with things after her death (we had no idea that she would die so soon), I had already asked her to make sure her landlord knew that I would want to hold on to the apartment for a while after.  The idea of her dying and my having to close the apartment right away was unbearable.  She understood and accepted.  I found among her many many handwritten notes one she had written to herself, to that effect.

I am so very fortunate to have had Mark’s understanding and support with this.  One week after I arrive in Germany in August, it will have been exactly six months since her death.  She herself hadn’t been home in her apartment since about October or November when she left for what was meant to be her over-winter vacation in Turkey. 

It’ll be trying, and I expect emotional upheaval. 

Strangely, and this may be some weird survival technique, I don’t expect the stress from the preparations for the Fall Semester and the stress from the closing of my mother’s apartment to compound each other. On the contrary.  (And this is where it gets weird.)  I am good at completely focusing on one thing, by pushing other things aside.

I am already organizing, long-distance from here in the States, the apartment closing; and I will be working, long-distance, on the Fall Semester scheduling while in Germany.   When the stress from the piano preparations gets too much, I can take a break and take care of my mother’s apartment.  And the other way around.  Use either as a distraction from the other. 

I’ll be glad when it’s August 18.

I recently came across a cute little peom that, years ago, I enjoyed reading to my young students.  The poem is called “Dandelions everywhere” and was written by Aileen Fisher.  I had copied it onto a worksheet and included a coloring picture; that way they would be able to have it at home and hopefully re-read it or have it read to them, for the young ones who didn’t read just yet. 

Looking at it now, I realize, with sorrow, that it would probably be meaningless to the students I have here in the greater Kansas City area: sadly,  they have perfect lawns, with not a weed in sight.  I’m afraid to even try to share this poem with them, I don’t think I could bear their asking me, “What’s a dandelion?”