An Adventure on Every Page!

Kaja's imagination is most active in the morning after breakfast. I always feel a little bit like a lazy mom, letting her play so long by herself, but I love to just sit with my coffee and watch her go! She's off in her own little world having "adventures" and the things she says and does are simply delightful!

This morning, as she does most mornings, she put on her favorite pair of shoes (that are still too big for her, so we can't wear them out yet) and announced "I'm going on an adventure now!"
Do you want to know where today's adventure is taking us? "To the LIBRARY!" Kaja set up an imaginary library by her bookshelves and is going back and forth, collecting a stack of books, "taking them home" to read them all out loud, then returning for another stack (we're still working on returning the books themselves to the library). She has most of her books memorized, and the few she doesn't know yet, she just wings it from the pictures, and that, too, is quite a show! I just love that her idea of an adventure is going to a place where she can read as much as she wants. She is currently working on book #19. And now she's pulled out another book with lots of words, and is calling me over to read with her. Warms my heart!

Orchestra Dreams

I'm told it's pretty typical to dream you show up to class only to discover there's an exam on material you haven't studied, or that you go to give a speech and you're up on stage completely naked, but I've never had any of those dreams. I have dreamed of being late for orchestra, though:

Last night I dreamed I was playing in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Except instead of Robert Chen, it was Pinchas Zukerman (one of my favorite violinists) in the concertmaster's chair, and I was sitting next to him! I'm not sure which I would be more nervous to play with...

Our conductor was a young, very dynamic Ricardo Muti look-alike, and we were playing some non-existent but very cool sounding modern piece (I swear, my unconscious brain is 100 times more musically creative than my conscious self. Either that or I have poor taste in music when I'm asleep!). It must have been a special rehearsal, because there were tons of people observing it.

We went on break, and somehow I ended up talking to former music director Daniel Barenboim, who was one of the observers. He asked me what I did for a living (an odd question, considering the circumstances), and I gave him my real-life answer (I teach theory on the weekends, but most days I stay home with my adorable baby girl). He seemed a little confused that I didn't mention playing in a professional orchestra, but was polite enough not to mention it. We ended up having a lovely conversation about teaching, and before I knew it, I was LATE for the second half of rehearsal!!!

As I was rushing back in (sure enough, they were already tuning!), who should greet me at the door but my former violin teacher Stefan Hersh! He scolded me for being irresponsible and told me I was fired. I tried to tell him I was talking to DANIEL BARENBOIM, but that didn't seem to impress him. Rats! I guess I'll never find out how the piece ended!

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This may be the most elaborate orchestra dream I've had, but it is by no means the first:

I remember when I was 12 years old, having a nightmare that I showed up to Youth Symphony, and just minutes before rehearsal started, I went to get out my instrument and opened the case to discover I had forgotten my bow! I could have redeemed the situation by finding someone with an extra bow I could borrow, except there was no time, and I was sitting in the front row with no way to be discreet. Mr. Tham (I've never been more afraid of a conductor than I was of him) was going to kill me!!! Thankfully I woke up before he could tear me asunder.

Of course, we won't go into the time when I showed up to a real rehearsal without my instrument! Talk about my worst nightmares come true! I was a soloist, too! But that's another story...

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So, what about you? Anyone else out there have strange orchestra dreams, or am I just completely neurotic?

It's like candy for my mouth! Oh wait...

There are some words that are just fun to say.

The word that came to mind (or rather, came to mouth) today was "Snuggles." It's my new nickname for my 4.5 month-old baby girl who is responding to the cooler weather by becoming very clingy (it's hard for me to complain when the solution is lots of baby hugs).

I then began wondering if similar words would be just as fun (what else is there to do when your hands are full of a cuddly baby?).

Wiggles: ends the same, but to me, it just wasn't as good.

This made me wonder if it was less the "-ggles" suffix, and more the vowel preceding it.

Puddles: This one makes me happy, but I wonder if I just really like puddles...

Bubbles: Again, very positive associations with this word. Who doesn't like bubbles???

Buckles: This one gives me pause. Buckles aren't as fun as puddles or bubbles. In fact they can be downright annoying when you're in a hurry, so no positive associations there. Also, the "ck" sound is a little harsh. Yet, it's still rolling off the tongue satisfactorily.

On a scale of 0-10, 0 being "axe" and 10 being "snuggles," I'd say this is an 8.

Puggles: NOW we're getting somewhere! Yep, definitely fun to say, and fun to play with. Hmm, we're back to our "-ggles" suffix. AND it has a "u!" Okay, I'm definitely sensing a pattern. I think words ending it "-uggles" are my favorite! This leads us to the ultimate, smile-every-time, fun to say, funnier to think about...

THE BUGGLES!!!

(video killed the radio star!)

Yep, can't stop smiling.

Heehee, Buggles. :D

I'm still alive, honest!!!

Okay, this is going to be a very quick post, because it's past my bedtime, and I have to be up early, but I knew that if I continued to put it off until tomorrow, I would never post again...

It has been nearly 3 months since my last post, and I am ashamed. In all fairness, during that time frame I managed to contract the swine flu, crash my computer's hard-drive,* and become so incredibly busy and stressed out, that I am actually extremely excited about having my wisdom teeth removed at the end of this month, because it means I will get a few days of rest! Seriously, I'm stoked. The only thing I am looking forward to more is getting married. Can't wait. Totally psyched. Surgery is gonna be AWESOME! I'm getting giddy thinking about it. Is that weird?

Anyway, those are some of the lame excuses for why I haven't posted in so long. It takes time and energy to write a thoughtful post,** and I don't have much of either of those things anymore. In fact, I seem to have less and less every year. My former Theory professor*** was right: "It only gets worse." Drat!

I would like to close this disjointed and eclectic post with two things that I learned today****:

1. The word "Backronym," as a definition for an acronym that was invented post-hoc for an already existing word. I thought it was an aptly clever term.

2. That grey eyes, despite appearing darker than blue eyes, actually have the least amount of melanin (aside from albinos). This helped to settle a few questions I have had for quite some time. Namely, why my eyes, while mostly gray, appear to change color depending on the light, or what I wear, and why many babies are born with grey eyes, which later change color. Respectively, the answers are that grey eyes, having so little pigmentation, tend to reflect surrounding colors and appear to change based on the environment, and babies are born with grey eyes because their eyes have not yet produced enough pigmentation to adjust to their genetically determined hue.*****

I like learning things. :)

* And lose all my awesome pictures from Sweden, which interrupted my little travelog, but don't worry, I eventually got those back, thank goodness!

** I try not to post things unless I think there's at least a remote chance that someone out there might be interested. If it's just for me, I can talk to myself. I do it all the time. And, in the ever insightful words of my sage of a father, "Nobody cares what I think."

*** Dr. FOLSE!

**** Thank you, Wikipedia.

***** Have you lost count of all these asterisks yet?