Piano Practice. Or Why Santa Might Not Come

I refuse to be a soccer mom, so I'm a Piano Mom. What does this mean, you ask?

It means yelling. Lots of it.

The Big Girl's teacher happens to be extremely good and effective. Which is kind of a pain in the ass because she expects results. And the parent is to attend lessons and supervise daily practice.

In my dream world, this is such a sweet experience where mother looks lovingly at her progeny exploring the wondrous world of music. She smiles up at me as she says, "Oh Mummy, Rachmaninoff was such a great representative of Russian Romanticism," and I say "Yes, dearest - Segei was also a dear friend of your great aunt Imogen, she would have loved to hear your Prelude in C sharp minor,".

The reality is, of course more like, "I HATE PIANO! I CAN'T DO IT!" sob sob sob.

"Well I paid for the lessons, so park it, Sunshine!"

"Why do I have to do this?"

"Because 'Jolly Old St. Nicholas' isn't going to play himself and you....stop it, Dog! Give that back!"

"Hooray! Charlie's got my music book!"

"Stop encouraging him! Rachael! Come here! No, YOU - SIT - Rachael, stop howling for ten minutes, PLEASE! Hands off the piano! Hands OFF! OFF! ....why are you covered in jam?"

......


"Let's play Jolly Old St. Nick for crying out loud!"

"I hate Jolly Old St. Nick"

"I'll tell him you said that,"

....

"Why are you crying?"



And we do this every. single. day.

New Moon: Ah-wooooooooo!

I went to the movie last night with my embarassing date who howled at the moon and screamed, "OMIGOD! IT'S EDWARD!" The energy of the throngs of breathless teens was palpable! I loved it!

So, I was thinking about the phenomenon that is Twilight. I only picked up the first book about a month ago - to see what all the fuss was about. I liked it. Yes, I did. So I read the next one.

It's an impossible love story with a ton of teenaged angst and a huge helping of the super-natural. What's not to like?

This is where the smug buzz-killers come in and say, "It's not good writing," or "The hype is ridiculous," or "Bella's a lunatic,"....all of which may be true, but ....

...honestly......so what?

Comparisons

Since it's been so long since I've had anything to say, I'd better freaking say something.

Imagine, if you will, that we are sitting across from each other at a cafe and run out of things to talk about. So - naturally, we'd start to talk about other people. If you don't do this, then stop reading, go back to being perfect, and the rest of us will talk about you after you've left.

When talking about other people, I've noticed that I either:

a) moan about them

b) compare myself to them

Both suck.

Complaining about someone ALWAYS comes back to you. I've experienced this so many times that Karma bitch-slaps me now. She's given up on gentle hints.

So how do you stop? Well, for the talking about other people thing, I imagine that they can hear what I'm saying. That usually makes me behave better. But once I get into a good story, I usually forget and start embellishing to the point that by the end of the story, the person I'm talking about actually set fire to his own pants to prove what an idiot he was.

According to this dude, there are better ways.

One bit of advice he gives is to avoid hero worship. I once thought these people were truly amazing. Then I went to work for them and I realized they were human beings and I was vastly disappointed. Yep, I was thirty-seven when I finally realized, "Oh my God! Spiderman isn't REAL?!?!"

And making them villains is also narrow-minded because everyone has some good - even if it's just to serve as a warning to others! When my teaching mentor was arrested for molesting his students, I learned that . . . therapy helps! Well, mostly that nothing's black and white.

One thing I'm getting way better at is comparing myself to myself. For example: I am so much slimmer now than I was when I was pregnant. I am so much saner now that I'm older and more confident about things. But there's the cringe effect of remembering when I actually said *that* out loud, or wore that dress that often counteracts my best intentions of self-comparison.

So what am I saying? Not much. But that's okay - because I'm not comparing myself to this blog.