Music and Video Stress

It's been an ongoing joke in the family - "Are you worried that you're going to run out of music to use in the videos?"

Well...

I'm far from out of music altogether but the well does seem to be drying up for the moment. I've been reduced to just hitting 'shuffle songs' on my ipod and seeing what random thing in the 7000+ songs there pop up that might give me an inspiration. This has worked in the past but it's really starting to get flat in there. And I have Hilton Head, Pittsburgh, and Michigan still to go from 2010. That's no 2009 epic but it's a lot of material that needs to be married to some good tunes.

What's missing?

I need some more good tropical sounding music for beach vacations - stuff that's not TOO cheesy. Yeah, I could bust out the Doug Cameron electric violin but that stuff is so lightweight it makes smooth jazz look like Wagner. And with each passing year, the Michael Gettel and assorted Narada stuff seems less and less relevant. It just seems almost dishonest to put stuff I haven't listened to since high school on movies about my 6-year-old daughter. And what I'm into now...well, the post-rock stuff can work for dramatic vistas, but it wasn't that kind of a summer - and even that stuff (as I've mentioned before on the blog) can really seem out of place when it explodes into feedback all over a family video. Mellow out, guys. Here's hoping for an Explosions in the Sky acoustic experiment. You reading this, guys? Prog...is hit or miss. I've really milked the Flower Kings catalog, but there are still several albums I need to get.

Which is just it. I need some new music. I need to fill up the back catalog of things I used to listen to that still have some meaning, I need to fill the holes in the inventory of things that are really working well, I need to get some new stuff altogether, and a lot of bands/artists that I love REALLY need to put out some new albums. I need a $500 shopping spree on iTunes and the time to listen to what I buy.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Oh well. Keep the music coming, everyone!

Matt

Facebook - Again

Steph has set up her and my facebook account so that blog posts automatically go there. I do sincerely thank her for that, it will probably bring slightly more traffic here. She also went in an answered some friend requests which had been sitting idle in my unused account for months. So I think I ought to restate briefly my facebook rant.

* I don't do facebook. I set up an account long ago to see what it was about and wasn't interested. I maintain my account because it's a good way to alert people about interesting stuff on the blog, especially when we're travelling. The blog is my primary means of disseminating info.

* If you tried to friend me and I never responded, don't take it personally. It doesn't mean I don't like you. It probably means I'd rather be your 'real' friend than your facebook friend. I think being a real friend is more meaningful. Send me an email, give me a call. Phones do still make calls, don't they?

* As mentioned above, any recent activity on my facebook account was undertaken by Steph and does not indicate a sudden conversion to the facebook nation. Again, not interested.

* For those who would like to know or need a review on WHY I don't do facebook, go to the blog, in the upper left corner, search 'facebook' and you will get the entire history of my thoughts on the matter.

* The entire history of our family travels is available at our Youtube page.

Hope all is well in your world, and God bless.

Matt

Transitions

Faith has had her first day of 1^st grade.  Went well.  It’s funny, our concerns for our kids are always social in nature.  She’ll do great learning-wise, there’s no doubt.  But considering the genetic stock she comes from, we desperately want her to not be miserable and an outcast….unless that’s what she chooses.  So hard to explain.  But I just want her (and the rest, when it’s time) to not dread school for social reasons.  I don’t want her to be the ‘popular girl’ – actually that would be worse than her being friendless…because then she’d have ZERO common ground with her parents.  But we want her to be as ‘normal’ as she chooses to be.  Which sounds really bad…but again, I have a lot of trouble explaining it.  Maybe the best way to say it is that I want her to be Faith.  I don’t want her to change herself to fit in, but I hope that who she is doesn’t make her so ‘different’ that it’s hard for her.  But this is just 1^st grade, and she can easily have an identity thrust on her by other kids now, and once that happens it’s nearly impossible to undo it.  So I am hoping that she finds a safe circle of friends wherein she can continue to grow and mature and become the person she’s meant to be.

 

Does that make sense?

 

Anyway, so far so good.  And meanwhile, I am entering day 6 of the 2010-2011 school year.  The real transition time.  Being at work feels normal now, and summer break is just a memory.  Which is good.  And now my mind starts the process of readjusting to a new flow of time.  It really takes this long for it to start happening.  It all has to do with the balance between being in the moment and looking ahead.  Summer is about the moment.  You enjoy the now, and there’s little thought to the calendar or the day of the week.  But now, back in the real world, you have to do a lot of planning ahead, and it changes the way time passes.  You look forward to things…which is great, and gets you through the tough spots, but then, if you look ahead too much to some future moment, you start to skate right by the now, and when the anticipated moment finally arrives, you can’t slow your perception down enough to enjoy it and you get bummed out.  At the same time, if you try to maintain the ‘here and now’ focus, the long days of work seem even longer and you get bummed about that.  So it’s a balancing act, and it takes a while to get it all straightened out.  Right now I’m feeling too far on the ‘time is zooming by’ side, and am trying to slow things down a bit, even if it means that work seems to take longer.

 

Wow.  Really loquacious this morning.  Anyway, keep checking in.

 

Matt  

 

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First weekend

Had a very nice weekend, puke notwithstanding. It looks like the weather is finally going to break by the end of the week and we could have temperatures low enough to warrant time spent outside intentionally again. And we can start shutting off the air in the evenings too...maybe. Gonna have to anyway what with our outrageous utility bill last month. Not pretty at all.
Money is tight. So tight that we had to face the reality and ditch our planned weekend trip to our favorite local RV park in September. There's just no way we can swing that. While it's no fun to make the 'grown-up' decision, it does feel good to do the right thing.
In work news, nothing to report. Tomorrow starts the first full week of teaching. I can't even call it a 'real week' yet, as I still am starting off with doing my first day stuff to the classes I haven't seen yet. But when I do finally get to the end of this week, it will actually be a small accomplishment, and I will almost be able to say that I'm back in the groove.
In other news, uploaded some recent travel vids to youtube - first new ones in a while, so check them out here: Now, 'recent' in my eyes is less than a year old...this is from Spring Break last year - still, pretty good. I am now almost ready to tackle the big travel trio from summer 2010 - Hilton Head, Pittsburgh, and Michigan. Stay tuned.
A lot of colleagues start their teaching year this week. Good luck everyone.
Stay tuned for news from Faith's first days of first grade!

Matt

Not bad so far

2 days in and nothing disastrous to report. It appears that the next big thing is Kindergarteners who can't stop telling me things. Ugh. Seriously, parents, make sure at SOME point your kid learns how to STOP talking before they get to the schools. Favor to me. Thanks.

The family is passing around a stomach bug right now, but I'm happy that we made it for quite a long time without major sicknesses.

It's time for the heat to stop. Fall, please come soon!

Matt

First Day Prayer

I thought about this last night and decided I should really post this. I go through some version of this every year.



God, thank you for the summer.

Thank you for putting me in a position to be able to spend so much time with all my family. Thank you for giving us the freedom to travel and experience new places, sights, and people. Thank you for all the memories which will continue to bind us together throughout our lives. Thank you for blessing me with a family in the first place - a family that is full of issues, weirdness, and struggle, but also full of love. Help me to continue to be the best father and husband I can be, and help me now to also return to being the best teacher, co-worker, and employee I can be. Thank you for giving me a job to go back to, and for making it a job that I truly enjoy. Help me compartmentalize my responsibilities so that one does not affect the other. Be with me and my family as we transition to a different way of living, but help us learn to enjoy and love the new realities as much as the old. Allow us to look forward to the next 'escape' without ignoring the small beauties and magic all around us every day. Let the wonder and joy of the day-to-day carry us through to the next big event.

Thank you God for the summer, and thank you for the upcoming Fall.

MS

Official Farewell to Summer

Summer is now done for me. It was a good one. Work begins anew. New challenges. That's the way I like to think of it - something potentially bad that I can turn into something good. Challenges.

The next couple of weeks are the worst of the year - not because of the actual job - this first couple of days is actually pretty easy for me. But just readjusting to the life of work. Once I'm there and work feels 'normal' again, then I will be ready to enjoy the normality of it all. But until then, into the unsettled transition.

With added routine often comes added blog posts - easier to get on here and talk about stuff when I have a regular time to do it. Keep checking in. And hopefully you can start to see some more recent videos appearing on the youtube page soon.

Love life, even the parts you may not like so much.

MS

And so it goes

Last day off for me today. Two days of inservice and then the kids roll in. My head has starting running a lot faster lately...but that's really more out of habit than anything else.

Faith is going off to 1st grade soon - mixed feelings about that. This is the beginning of school really becoming a bigger influence on her than we are - it's been said that you need to teach your kids what you can by the time they're six, because then they belong to everybody. So we hope we have done well to get her to this point. At the same time, we can start to see in her that she's ready to get more than she can get just here. And I'm eager to see her become a fuller person.

Also hoping the twins can blossom going to preschool soon. I'm not too worried about that, I think it will be GREAT for them. And I am really hopeful that Mari will develop some good confidence in her 'school' abilities and break through into real reading soon with daily practice in preschool. I think she'll be so much happier once she makes that leap.

Basically, all is well, time is marching on, and life is still very much fun. Here's to life!

MS

Summer winding down

This is my last week of freedom before it's back to the grind. My yearly trend towards less and less stress to start the school year is continuing. This is starting to seem easier and easier. Hooray! Once or twice through my opening-day routine in my mind and I feel ready to go. Good for me and for my family.

I will of course miss all the free family time, but I am eager to get 'used to it' again. And this year should also be less stressful because we know what to expect now from Steph's job. (I know, I know, I am tempting fate with all this optimism...) AND, the twins are really becoming much less high-maintenance....or at least a less physically demanding form of high-maintenance, which is also a good thing.

In addition, I am ready for fall. This string of 90 degree plus days with unbearable humidity MUST end. We feel trapped in the house and can't wait to get out.

It has been a good summer. Lots of medium-to-small scale travel. Plans in the works for 2011 and 2012. Hopes for trips beyond that. And, at least I feel like we've had some good home time as well. This past week just chilling at home has been really really nice. It has certainly made my thinking of transitioning back to work much more smooth.

Robby has developed an amazing interest in and knowledge of, his ABCs. Hannah too, but not nearly as obsessively as Robby. Robby has also gotten a lot mellower - he had a really bad run of 2-ism for a while there. Still has his moments, but seems to be able to step off the crazy train a lot sooner now. Mari is starting to put letters together and actually read simple words. We're trying to practice every day, and she does get frustrated, but we're being patient and trying to set her up for success. She thinks that all kids can read as well as Faith (who's reading at a 4th grade level) and so when she compares herself to Faith she thinks she's no good. Poor Took. Faith, meanwhile, has shown a big interest in learning about the states over the summer, and has in the last few months become a pretty good Mario Kart player. We're proud of her for both, for different reasons.

Anyway, all is well in the family. Finances are still ridiculously tight, but we're getting ridiculously good at managing them. Steph hasn't had a paycheck since May, but we've planned ahead and had the money put away. I am proud of us for managing things so well.

Anyway, time for lunch, gotta go.

MS

FINALLY, back home.

So so good to be back at last.

My workshop was positively amazing - one of the best education-related experiences of my life. Certainly the most unique, and quite possibly the oddest as well - but eye-opening and wonderful. I have a lot of work to do to implement some of these things into my own teaching, but I am looking forward to the challenge of doing so.

While I was away, I managed to get significantly more caught up on the backlog of family videos I needed to process. I can truly say that I am now less than a year behind. Actually getting completely up-to-date is unlikely, but I can live with the current lag.

So, just enough time to bask in the last days of summer before I go melt in my sauna of a classroom. I plan to make the most of it. Enjoy yourself everyone!

God bless,

MS