Some hurdles that were weighing on me heavily are past or going - we had our own good-bye slash birthday party Saturday night, and the Institute's good-bye party this coming Friday, for which I am most of the entertainment committee, is coming along nicely so my worries there are lifting too. I've started packing, hooray hooray (though today I was mostly packing Max's things, got a backache, and now hubby is online finding out things about cost per weight that mean we might have to repack - because there's one price up to 5 kg, one price up to 10kg, one price up to 20kg, and so it makes tons of sense to have the box be right up nestled close to the top weight in each category whereas right now one of them weighs 5.4, one weighs 12.3 - not cost-effective!).
Anyway, feeling as though I'm moving forward on what I should be moving forward on and therefore life is good.
Happy moments and in-the-moment moments in the last few days:
Thursday afternoon, 5 to 6 p.m., Sheila and Christoph and I (S and C are fellows at hubby's institute) practiced Mozart's canon (maybe he has several; this is the one that goes O du eselhafter Martin, O du martinischer Esel). I had been having tons of trouble - blithely said I'd do it but I thought I knew it and turned out I only knew the beginning. Finally I found an online keyboard and spent some time teaching myself the rest. But still, it was 2:30 Thursday, practice was at 5, and I really didn't know what I was doing. I was supposed to go babysit baby niece at 3 and then her mother called and said she'd be home herself after all, and so from 3 to 4:30 I practiced the thing and that made all the difference.
So I was pretty solid, and then Sheila and Christoph and I got together and we practiced it several a few times through, and then tried singing it as a canon in every possible constellation (1 and 1 and 1, 2 and 1 with different sets on the 2) but we kept ending up not together somehow, so we were doing this sort of sleuthing - where is the place we're messing up? Each of us took turns listening to the 2 others singing and couldn't find it. Finally, Christoph found the place in the very beginning where we were waiting two whole beats we weren't supposed to, and that fixed it.
We're still pretty much 99% positive not going to perform it for the institute party, because a. we would have had to practice a lot more and Christoph left that night and isn't coming back till an hour into the party; b. the thing has 4 parts and there were just 3 of us - we wanted more like 8 so everybody would have a buddy; c. it just really is complicated and we would have needed a lot of practice. But the practice was tremendous fun!
Another fun part was at our party on Saturday night, holding Fanny and going around to visit with different guests, and then spending a little time in the corner, me and Fanny, playing with the beautiful wooden Parcheesi board Felix gave Max for Christmas (the party was over at the institute and we had taken over the miniature pool table their aunt had given our boys for Christmas as well as various other games and things we had) - Fanny likes the Parcheesi because of the beautiful tiny color-coded pegs she can handle and do fine motor things with - very appropriate in an advanced sort of a way for an adroit little two-year-old.
Another nice thing was Saturday during the day, hubby was out at a conference all day (he had to give a lecture only hours before the party!) but I was a bit of a wreck in the beginning, quarreling with Felix after I had quarrelled with his father before he went off to the conference - and at some point I threw myself on Felix's mercy and said please, I'm a wreck and tired and worried about the party, can you help me and he really, truly did, he was wonderful and he helped in so many ways - was a sounding board, put together a dance music playlist, and then went over to help me carry things over and then set things up.
So that's all good. Yesterday in between waking up late (post party-cleanup) and having in-laws for late lunch (with Persian food leftovers from party, very yummy), I took the time to bike into the woods and have an hour-and-twenty-minute run. I should make that a separate post. I will in a second. Sadly, there was no time left to jump in the lake.
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