#175 He Believes in Me

                                                                 Weekend I’d Forget

These events are in no particular order.

1. I ate nachos.

Hubby has a running list on his phone of places to go to eat. It ranges from local places to places in New York and LA. This is partially to due to watching far too many episodes of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, but also due to the fact that we love trying new places.

Since we were in the area, 10th Avenue Burrito ended up being our lunch option on Sunday. I had sworn off any form of Mexican food because of the 7-layer-nacho experience, but didn't want to be a party pooper.

I can't say that I have had a better nacho in my life. They are obviously homemade as they have a greasy delicious crunch to them that you just don't get out of the bag. They were loaded with cheese and meat and all other necessary nacho delights. I could have used a little more sour cream though, maybe some salsa, too.

The burritos, however, for which the restaurant is named, weren't all that. I ordered the chicken stir fry burrito thinking it would be a milder burrito.

No. Not at all.

I could only take about two bites because the spice was so overpowering. If you like spicy, I suppose you would be thrilled.

Our waitress was pretty horrible too, but I'll save you from that description and leave it for my Trip Advisor readers.

2. I cut my hair.

I have been cutting my hair every six to eight weeks for the past year, so that isn't so exciting. But I did get a completely different style and color this time. Blonde, even just highlights, have been too much upkeep for me so I decided to make a change. But apparently I can't resist color...so I asked my hair stylist to throw in a little purple.

My thoughts?

Where has this been all my life?

3. I celebrated the start of Spring Break.

I heard tell of the deliciousness of the Cucumber Basil Smash at Seasons 52. It tasted like I was drinking the healthiest cocktail ever, Prairie Organic Cucumber Vodka will do that, I suppose. I know what you're thinking--is that good thing or a bad thing? In this case it was definitely a good thing! If you are a cucumber fan, as I am, and can enjoy a hint of basil, this is a drink for you!

4. I went to see Cats with my SIL, Sam, and Jonathan.

If I hadn't been familiar with the music, I might have been a little confused. Afterwards I did a little reading and realized that because T.S.Eliot's book, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, is the inspiration and text of most of the show, Andrew Lloyd Webber was given permission by the Eliot Estate only to use the original poems as the text, which from the start of the show in 1981 caused confusion among cast members over the plot.

Regardless, the performance was well-done for a local theater group. The costumes and scenery looked comparable to any pictures I have seen of the show on Broadway.

5. I spoke to a woman with a 56-year-old brother with Down syndrome. She just so happened to be sitting behind us for the entire show.

Jonathan loves shows. He is, let's say, overly enthusiastic about them. He isn't disruptive, but he does like to bounce with excitement, gasp enthusiastically, and shake his dolls back and forth to the music. We've never had a problem in the theater (we have in church, but that is a different story for a different time), but I'm always overly cautious and as considerate as I can be of those around us. Translation: I spend half the night trying to make Jonathan 'like everyone else'.

Boo to that.

When the play finished, the woman behind us said, "Is he your brother?" She then told me of her brother, how he is nonverbal but would have been enjoying the show just as Jonathan did. We both felt it had been meant to be that she was behind us. I told her that I was one of Jonathan's guardians and she excitedly told me that she was for her brother also.

She gave me a positive outlook on what aging will be like for Jonathan.

Like everything else with those with Down syndrome, it looks like it will be awesome.

6. I took an obnoxious number of pictures with this cutie.

Speaking of obnoxious, I made the mistake of quoting the seahorse from Finding Nemo who says, "I'm obnoxious" when introducing himself to Nemo. To which Jonathan proceeded to say, "I'm obnoxious" for the entire ride home from the show. However, it slowly transformed from "I'm obnoxious" to "I'm noxious" to "I'm nauseous".

Thankfully, it was just an interpretation issue and not literal.

7. I was spoiled with a new violin by Hubby.

You might recall two years ago when I went with my friend, Amy, to help her pick out a violin. Ever since I came home from that experience, apparently, Hubby had been planning on having me return to the same violin shop.

When I decided I wanted to go to college for violin, I began the dreaded task of auditioning for schools. When auditioning for my top pick, in front of the associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia orchestra no less, I was advised to major in music education (which later caused me to switch to a music minor) and to get a new violin.

The best argument to get your parents to shell out cash on a new violin is to say the associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra told you to.

That was more years ago than I want to admit. I finished school. Time passed. I stopped playing. I played here and there. I stopped playing. I taught beginner violin lessons. I played for church. I stopped playing.

Until I decided enough was enough and started taking private lessons again.

This naturally spurned the desire for a new violin, but it also brought up realization of mistakes and improvements I needed to make in my playing.

It has been a little under a year and I am still going strong with taking lessons. I have learned so much more in this short amount of time than throughout all my high school or college years combined. Even though I would have said I'm not worth investing in a new violin, I have a husband who still wanted to do so.

My new violin is beautiful, it has character, history, and will only continue to help the progress I have begun. It is also a constant reminder of how much my Hubby not only loves me, but believes in me.

#151 He Attends Recitals

Weekend I’d Forget

When I was in sixth grade, my parents bought me a violin.

No wait.  It wasn't quite as simple as that.

When I was in sixth grade, I got a violin after months of pestering and promising my parents that I really, really, really wanted one.*

*I promise--I will quickly bring this to the year 2014 and my weekend.

My brothers carried on their lives perfectly content with only the piano lessons my mother had been giving us.  The boys wanted nothing to do with sitting down in front of an instrument and practicing over and over again.  In fact, my brother Joel told me recently that he would fast forward parts in movies with music just to ensure that my mother didn't hear it and tell him to practice.

I, on the other hand, complicated things by adding a second instrument.  Of course I never saw it that way, aside from the first two years of learning to hold it and make more than screaming cat sounds,

In many ways though, the violin shaped my high school years.  In the very beginning, one night a week my father took me to lessons at the mall.  I was the last lesson of the night and we often left the mall as all the stores were bringing their gates down and locking their doors.  One night turned into two nights which were spent between lessons, orchestra, and string ensemble.  The rest of the week I would practice for two to three hours a night.

Then I went to college and saw people who had been playing violin probably since they said their first words.  It wasn't their fault, but I eventually intimidated myself down from wanting to major in music performance, to majoring in music education, to finally minoring in music.

After I graduated, the violin remained in the case and was only pulled out if I was asked to play in church.

There was a series of events leading up to the present, but the straw that broke the camel's back was my recent unemployment.  It seemed like the perfect time to begin taking lessons again.  After attempting on my own to get back into my old practice habits, I knew I needed professional intervention and so for the last three months I have been taking lessons with a friend of the concert master* from my college orchestra.

*The concert master is the guy who stands up to begin the tuning of the orchestra.  He's the top violinist and the conductor's right hand man.

While I loved my college violin teacher I have learned so much more in the past three months than I did in three years of college.  The truth is, like I said in my last post, the information was all probably right there in front of me during that time, I just wasn't ready, mature, or smart enough to grab it and use it.

This weekend I went to see my new teacher perform in Princeton with a pianist and a singer.  He soloed five pieces with piano accompaniment and the last piece the three instruments played together.*

*Yes, it is unique for voice and violin to 'play' together.

Each song he played I thought was going to be 'the one' that I told him at the end was my favorite.  Then he started another which mesmerized me and had me wanting to rush home to practice.  There was a part in one song where he plucked the strings* with his left hand while bowing that had me shaking Hubby's elbow and looking up at him with a shocked, excited, goofball face.

*Pizzicato is when the violinist plucks the strings.  It is most often done with the right hand.

I left, as I often do from situations like this, inspired to do better, to reach higher, and believing that I can achieve more.

What what the best part of your weekend?

#90 He Says I'm His Favorite Violinist

Technical difficulties have lead me from having this post exactly the way I wanted it to then, nope no more.  So I'm going to try my best to recreate what once was.  If it doesn't feel authentic, that's why.

When I was in sixth grade I told my parents that I wanted to play the violin.

Perhaps it was boredom that sprung about the desire to want to tackle another instrument in addition to the piano which I had been studying for several years, or perhaps it was the fact that I have never been one for hobbies such as sports, dance, or any activity that required a lot of movement that could result in my being out of breath.

Today I'm still shocked that my mom said yes.  Not because she is an unmovable ogre who refused to let me pursue different hobbies, but because when asked why I wanted to play the violin my answer was: "Because it's pretty".

Looking back I suppose I'm lucky she didn't say, "The moon is pretty too, would you like to go there?"

But the joke is on her.  I would have agreed, eagerly.

It's hard to express to parents how much they have to push their child to stay devoted to an instrument during the beginning stages of learning it.  While today I am the one who can play Bach and Vivaldi concertos on the violin, my mother is the one who gave life to the passion that vibrates from my strings.

I began learning the violin through a video course and it was painful, wonderful, strange, and perfect all rolled up together.  Given the chance today, I don't think I would choose a different way to have learned.

My mother sat through every lesson with me, insisting that I follow every order of the conductor while persistently correcting my errors.  Lesson learned?  If your child wants to learn a difficult instrument, and you want them to stick to it, you should probably plan on learning it too.

After two years of learning with the TV in front of me and my mother spitting out corrections from behind, it became time to establish contact with me, my violin, and a real person.  Quite shocking to my mother and myself, the violin teacher at my local mall pronounced me to be no longer a beginner, but at an intermediate level.  She dropped me in the middle of the Suzuki method books and within months had me auditioning for an orchestra an hour away from my home.  After a crushing defeat in my first audition, I was sure my life was over.  Most girls my age were crying over boys and I was crying because I didn't make it in an orchestra after only a few months of real instruction.

By the end of that year, the perfect orchestra for me came my way: an orchestra a half hour from my home comprised primarily of retired senior citizens.  The better part of three years was spent in their company and I wouldn't have traded it for any more advanced placement available.

I wish I could tell you that this story gets exceptionally better here.  That I advanced and amazed.  But the rest truly isn't so fascinating.  Music was my only passion at the time, other than my hubby who I had been going with for a little over a year.  It was only natural that I went on to study music with aspirations of becoming a professional violinist.  I studied at a fantastic college with extremely talented instructors, including but certainly not limited to, my private violin instructor, Michael Ludwig.  He directed my course in music, and with a great sense of practicality and kindness he gave me a mental picture of what life as a struggling musician would be like.

That said, I slowly let go of my grip on the dream of becoming a professional violinist.  While music still held a place of importance in my life, it slipped little by little down from a place of prominence.

This leads me to ultimately why I began writing this post in the first place.  Recently, I had to have my violin repaired because it had a crack in it.

This is not something that any violinist ever wants to see in their instrument that cost more than their first car did.  In my mind, this discovery equated to what a mother would feel like if she stood by and watched her five-year-old climb onto the staircase banister, then slide down, and crack his/her head on the hardwood floors.

"How on earth did I let that happen right in front of me?"

I don't know what the mother would chalk it up to, but for me I could only think one thing: neglect.  A lack of attention to the instrument that had once dominated my entire life led to this.  It could very easily have been just one of those random things that happens, like the time in college when my bridge snapped in half as I was tuning my violin.  Unfortunately, I wouldn't let myself get away with such an easy out.

By the way, the bridge snapping in half was not a fun experience either.  Just in case you were wondering.  I consider it one of the top five scariest moments in my life.

While most musicians in limbo might return with wild excitement to their instruments after being inspired by a performance of Itzahk Perlman or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, this crack in my violin impacted me greater than either of those could.

It was a wake up call that I needed to make this old friend a part of my life again.  It had slipped away to a place so far removed that it grew comfortable to ignore.  I'm trying this time around to still play with purpose as I did before, but also for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of those around me.  I'm playing now for the love of the art of making music, and even for that dreamy teenager who thought she would become professional one day.  I play this time in hopes that the next time my violin needs repairing it is because of too much attention it has been receiving, rather than neglect.