Sunny Saturday

It was the Saturday I needed.

It started late as usual. I woke up to meet my amiga Megan for our weekly pre-baby class breakfast. We say 7:45am, but as everyone knows 7:45 am means 8:15 Danny time. Unless it's 7:45 in his car, which means 7:57, Danny time. Fortunately, Megan runs on my time too.

Baby class was wonderful today. It is truly amazing how much they learn with only one hour of instruction each week. The 0-3 year olds have mostly started to shake each others' hands, walk and keep a steady beat, and are willing to play most of our activities. In one of our classes, many of the children began singing!

It was a Hands Hands Fingers Thumb reading today, so I could drum on a drum while I read.

While the teaching is fun, the most rewarding thing about the class is making connections with babies who are just so open to coming to you and sit in your lap for an activity. I have tons of baby friends who I want in my studio one day. hmm [rubs hands together and furls eyebrow]

After SP, I was blessed with the cancellation of my ASTA presentation run-through because poor Jessica is sick. :( Instead, we went to Fricano's Deli for a Jessica (Her signature sandwich is basically the turkey special on sourdough with extra mayo and tomato).

Priscilla and I were still running on Danny time as we drove North on I-35 to take our music teacher certification exam. We got there just in time for the proctor to say, "The call time was 30 minutes ago, but I understand how traffic and things happen." My translation is: I still have not learned my lesson, don't you see why I am always late?!

There were only four of us in the room stuffed into a small corner of an otherwise normally sized classroom in Pflugerville. The other tester was probably a want to be band teacher. My evidence was two-fold:

(1) He admitted to having trouble with cursive when we had to copy a statement

(2) He was tapping his foot to the musical examples to see if there was a ritardando.

Being the jerk that I am, my goal in every stupid standardized music test is to be a snot-nose. Two and a half years ago, I was the jerk that finished my theory diagnostic exam in the first 15 minutes and left the room with 50-60 annoyed pairs of eyes. (I have to assert my superiority as a Music Educator when I can. Silly performance majors.)

Today, my goal was to finish the whole exam before the listening was over. I succeeded. As the final listening example was finishing, I folded up my answer sheet and placed it perfectly behind my answer booklet and raised my hand as if to say, I am so done with this stupid test. It was also refreshing to show a probable future assistant band teacher who was obviously superior, the yankee string teacher...yeah, that's right.

Okay. That's not completely true. I was mostly motivated by the fact that it was beautiful outside and I had no tolerance for sitting in a room taking a stupid test for any longer than I needed to. Besides, I have a Vitamin-D deficiency. The sun would stimulate my skin's vitamin D production and therefore give me a better state of mind and thicker hair.

Speaking of which, I got a hair cut today. There are few things that intimidate me in life; among them are:

-Knowing how to iron and sew buttons

-Pianists

-Yogi's/alexander technique teachers/acupuncturists

-Haircuts and my hair

Whenever I get a haircut, it is often a really uncomfortable experience for all. Since Potsdam, Julie has made fun of my look of disgust when my hair is being cut. This is probably the same look that Annalise says I make when I'm deep in thought. Let me try to recreate it.

The reason behind it is because I have had a history of really bad haircuts. My hair is just so thick and straight that there is only so much that you can do with it, plus I have an awful cowlick. Hair people always try to do something to it like leave it long or cut it too short, etc. It's just awful.

Here's my strategy. I always hope that one day some magical hair stylist (stuck at Supercuts hahaha) will come up with some way to cut my hair that is different.

"What do you want us to do today?"

"Um...I want a haircut, it's just so thick on the sides."

"What do you normally do?"

"Um...I guess I get it buzzed, a 2, 3, or 4."

"Well, they are all different, how about a three?"

"Ok..."

"What do you want me to do on top? Trim it? Take off an inch?"

"I dunno, what do you think will look best?"

"Well, everybody likes something different. It's up to you."

"Maybe you can just blend it so it looks good."

"Ok."

It always turns out the same. [sigh] My life of monotony.

**P.S. Connor got here five minutes ago and is now forced to watch me type until I finish this one.

After my haircut, we made glorious plans to go to the park at Mueller! Annalise came to pick me up on her cool new scooter! It was frightening and I didn't have a helmet. Apparently, I do this thing during turning that makes Annalise nervous. Instead of leaning into the turn, I do the direct opposite. It is supposedly a really bad thing, but we made it safely, someway, somehow.

Here she is on her scoot!

While there, we met up with Charlie and played this game called Kanjam that he said was invented in Buffalo, NY with a frisbee and two trash-can-like objects. I can literally think of two guys standing around stoned by two public trash cans inventing this game. It was basically horseshoes with frisbees. Ridiculousness.

Anyhew, long story short. I enjoyed a day in the sun and outdoors and feel completely supercharged for this coming week! I need to wrap it up so Connor doesn't get too disgusted with me. It's ok, I have reinforced him on a variable interval reinforcement schedule, so he can go pretty long without a food reward.

Goodnight readers, and enjoy the rest of your sun on SUNday! (no pun intended-Connor: really?, Me: no. i lied.)

PPS. Kathy, I know you're reading. Please subscribe.