ended 2016 with Papa Mama and all 4 sisters singing Ode To Joy in the Stefaniensaal with everyone else in our immediate family - and even some friends! - watching, and then clinking with champagne glasses saying "an die freude"

i think i have vicarious jetlag accumulated from 5 people who all spent 27hours of traveltime (with layovers) coming to visit me (mama, papa, edward, labeeby, peter!!!! <3 )

Loved going to the Waldkindergarten (outside all the time, no building kindergarten) winter song fest, wearing stilletos and my concert clothes under my skipants, on my way to play for physicist in Maribor.

thanks to yesterday yoga today was a buddha zen day of all the activities, kids concerts at an oldfolkshome, and cleaning for rainer and puk's arrival, and parent teacher meetings, and so so much more, all with.... OM.

I always feel so silly when I break a long streak of procrastination and find that the job wasn't even that difficult.

in the old days it was bubble bath and red wine in the evening and now it's epsom salt bath and a cappuccino at 8:30am.

Advent crafts and cookie baking in the Heilandkirche means the kids are tired out enough to leave them asleep so Brian got to go to a sci-fi movie and I got to go to the opera to see Gounod's Romeo et Juliette, complete with a hanging dead deer, wild hallucinations, cross-dressers, and ballet dancers.

The parallels between home and heart are clear: decluttering physically declutters the mind as well.

Happy Birthday to my wonderful traveling friend Manuela, who never forgets to remind me to update my blog!

i'm not sure what era this is since in the last 10 minutes my kids have played renaissance dance music, delivered me a telegram, and required a fingerprint password to gain access to their good behavior.

Got to go to an art gallery in which (among many many other things) there was a picture with me in it, and since somebody in advertising dropped some ball somewhere, there were almost no people there, so I got all the food and wine and one on one company with the photographer and organizers.

Thanksgiving day was spent as a big unwieldy club sandwich: cooking all morning, first (kind of audition) lesson with somebody special, kindergarten thanksgiving festival with 15 kids that i cooked for and organized, rehearsal, vegetarian buffet. food-music-food-music-food

Choreography with a (probably) broken tail bone... um... not today maybe tomorrow and definitely next week in Algeria, I promise.

Yoga is wonderful joyful elegant and I brought back a pair of concert stiletto heels from the clothing swap there, only to slip down the stairs once home, and discover that the lovely shoes are blue not black.

Crazy morning with 6 hour rehearsal did not delay me from going to a spontaneous concert in the evening and then on to swing dancing in the dark dangerous foggy depths of the stadtpark.

Oh my goodness, dinner with Manfred the day after Thanksgiving?

Since Centa will be in Zurich on the day, we are celebrating Thanksgiving (40+ people including our favorite Slovenians in town for 24hours just for this) with loads of food on a Saturday which is actually great for having guests since Thursday is generally an annoying day to have a party when nobody in the country has off.

Theodore and Henry played in their first orchestra rehearsal today, and Felix sat on a chair and slept through the whole entire thing, but even with a nap we didn't manage to wait up for Brian's return from London.

Drifting off alone is hard, but Brian's in London until late tomorrow, and I actively decided to go to sleep instead of staying up listening to this. #fakehashtag #irony

Got lots of free books walking home from the library today, at totally different bookshelves along the way, with cold drizzle falling on my frizzy hair and my fingers holding tight to the only strap left on my breaking-fraying tote bag.

better than finding five bucks on the side of the road randomly is discovering that you made veggie burgers and that they are all hot and snuggly from where you forgot them in the oven, and now that it's done being preheated you already have instadinner.

That moment where the doorbell rings, and, startled, you drop your clothes into the shower.

That day that when your oldest kid makes his own book with paper and staples, and for the author's name writes "by Mrs. Silence Dogood.

nothing quite like a nighttime forest full of laughing singing children with candles and lanterns and hot mulled wine.

Instead of going to a play about philosophy and psychology and religion and language I ended up at the Styrian parliament listening to politicians discuss philosophy and psychology and religion and language, with the end review being that the latter was more optimistic but less entertaining.

words cannot describe how i felt after the election news this morning, but the popular horror-suspense director has a match:

Spent three precious morning hours lining up trumps words and chain lyrics to video, and when it rendered, they didn't line up anymore, but who cares anyways.

Monday morning rolled 'round and i baked a birthday cake for a friend, walked over in the freezing rain with two steaming hot foaming cappuccinos on a tray and a giant bouquet of flowers, only to discover she wasn't home.

this is gonna be hard to do in one sentence, but it's worth it, so here goes: Seeing me sitting there with a viola case, a man getting off the bus with a tiny yappy dog asked if i was a musician and then proceeded to ask if I knew "chain" holding the door open while asking if i had internet, pulled his shirt open to show me the tattoo presumably of the band's symbol, and finally jumped down the stairs to exit, which would have been funny enough by itself, but wait, more happened, because at the rehearsal i was going to we looked up the apparently australian band chain, and discovered that one of their more popular songs is "grab a snatch and hold it" which we thought could be donald trump's new campaign song, and then we laughed until we cried.

Reading a book about Ben Franklin and how he invented the Franklin stove and discovered he could save time and fuel and money by using his new invention, we asked "can you think of ways to save energy" and got this technically correct but not exactly expected response from Henry: "By walking instead of running, or by just sitting still and doing nothing."

Some days are just good days without being full of fancy stuff.

any day that includes scordatura (Rolla Serenata) is ok by me... well.... as long as its down not up.

Brian turned my strietzel dough into pizza crust today, so belated all saints day unbraided strietzel with tomato sauce and cheese it is, and that's ok, because i had a terrific time photographing centa's dress rehearsal for a world premier that is taking place above (otherwise completely not at all related to) a mcdonalds backroom where they keep crates and crates of meat. #runonsentencesandrunonhashtagsforthewin

Turns out, burning applesauce just a leeeetle bit makes it taste like a caramel apple, in a good way, and it then makes a delicious middle (sandwiched between 2 layers of whipped cream) of a cake for a joint general birthday cake, best enjoyed for breakfast.

Jackolantern day was super fun, and we didn't miss the candy, trickortreating, costumes or ghouls at all.

I always spend the extra daylight savings hour approximately 7 times before the day is over.

i hear y'all wanted details so i'll tell you my day included sleeping in until a friend brought over champagne and cake for breakfast and flowers (that were not for breakfast) and i made soup and bread and pulled together a reception for a concert of violin duos which was unofficially sold out, and then went to an entirely unrelated spontaneous cranium party that lasted until the second day of year 33.

How cute is being told "I want you to read The Value of Patience, NOW" in a really whiny voice?

Despite migrainatory tendencies, i am making myself a Refoškov and Chocolate birthday cake with which to stealth stock the reception after my Mozart-Martinu-H-H take two duo concert tomorrow night.

today i had to do makeup for a photoshoot with ma-new-bayand.

Went directly from one rehearsal to the other, where the first was in a rural unheated old stone pig stall and very cold and the second was in a modern concert hall, heated to the max, where the windows had a sign that said "Musizieren bei offenen Fenster ist verboten." <3contrasts

Excited that I get to go to Frankowitsch for the first time ever, don't know what it is, other than it is a "must see" in Graz and that I have to be ready to go at 9:30am.

I got news today that my quintet has been invited to visit Algeria on a diplomatic mission, and that we are accepting the invitation so now we need a name!

a white bag flying across the street american pie style elicited this comment and finger pointing from Henry: "Look at that white trash over there." #yeswhatyousaidistechnicallyfinebutpleasedontsaythatagain

i think it's cheating to just write that my fortune was "you know how to enthusiasm with your ideas" so i'll add that i got that fortune because i went to get drinks with nina because the concert we wanted to go to didn't have any tickets for us and while we were getting drinks i saw a guy with soup, but the soup at that restaurant was too spicy so we went to an asian fast food place where i got a veritable vat of ramen in a tratschy-evening which ended with a fortune cookie, the contents thereof have been aforementioned.

Waking up with a frosty quick run to the farmer's market with Brian is probably worth about 10 cups of coffee which brings my morning total today to 13. #artimathic

There's nothing quite as good as water, nuts, and raisins at over 5000 feet (Roßeck and Mugel peaks today with Anglo-Austrians)

fell asleep on the floor in front of the heater for the 3rd time in 3 days, and woke up, "as usual" stiff, cranky, and half hot half cold.

Splendiferous Friday with everything a heart could desire including wine (after 3 days of running, as per my rule) music (a duo concert with thomas, where we played mozart, martinu and handel-halvorsen) and being unpopular enough that my cell-phone, which i left on by accident, did NOT ring the whole time we played.

lowpoint of the day was cleaning a spilled pot of soup off the street, but at least it happened after the dinner and not before. #fakehashtag #alwayslookonthebrightsideoflife

it was a gig, it was awesome, it was fun, we ate, we drank, we laughed, we played, it felt like we have known each other forever, we were complimented, we complemented, it was fancy, and it was COLD on the schlossberg.

Got to make a giant crafty poster thing out of 10 pages of Martinu because there is NOWHERE to turn pages. #fakehashtag #recycledikeaboxesifoundinadumpster

this is love.

happiness is watching great chamber music with your son's sleepy head on your shoulder and then walking the long way back hand in hand listening to him tell you which pieces he liked best and why.

when searching for missing mail with the usps, "Top Hat", "Cheese Grater", and "Bonsai Tree" are their examples to describe missing contents, but "photographic film" is not an option.

today was a day that required soup, so we made two kinds and ate them all up.

I think I'm in love with a quintet.

when you have children, "sleeping in" on saturday means waking up at 07:30 with 3 kids on top of you.

My fancy purse keeps ripping my pants in the back pocket area.

instead of trying to balance the apple rings on the wire oven rack to dry, i decided to hang them on the wire rack, making room for many more (which is important because our tree has so many many apples) and it also looks cool.

staying up till 2 talking to drew (hey that rhymes!) made me groggy enough to try to cook oatmeal dry  (hey that rhymes too!) this morning but it was totally worth it.

went with theodore to get him sized for a rather simple outfit in a gigantic house of 4 stories packed end-to-end with fanciful costumes of all shapes and sizes, and a cubic yard of seemingly-forgotten shoes standing right outside the door.

Found this while talking about love.

working on making an oasis of creativity out of an old stable.

probably a type of therapy to write with a quill pen you made from a feather you found on a morning run with your middle child.

when i say time is flying i mean like "just started prepping for a christmas concert in september" fast.

theodore took himself completely alone to school this morning #fakehashtag #wheredidthetimego?

how shall a girl decide in the morning when she has illy and cuban coffee to choose between?

There was once a man from St. Hall who died in the spring in the fall / 'Twould be a sad thing if he died in the spring, but he didn't: he died in the fall.

I made 4 gigantic vegetable strudels full of funny things like kohlrabi and butternut squash and lovage for kindergarten lunch (17 kids) today and they were all devoured.

life tonight is tea with friend and homemade elder-flower liqueur and these make-em-nows-because-they-are-so-goods.

And because all good things come in threes, Theodore told me "you can't re-pop popcorn, just like you can't re-pop a balloon" and, well, he is so right.

In my 1930's unabridged edition of Lincoln Steffen's autobiography, where he deals with issues about wealth, power and political corruption in examples that are horrifyingly relevant today, I found tucked between the pages a new price-tag from a $985.00 piece of lingerie.

In Graz so far, I've gotten more gigs through Theodore than through any effort from myself.

The latest in childhood cutenesses is from Felix, after being corrected in his misunderstanding that it isn't "My Body Lies Over the Ocean" then asking "Is it a toy Bunny or a real Bunny?"

When asked why Henry wanted to set his alarm clock for the middle of the night instead of for the morning, he answered in the only logical way: "I already know when the morning is, but without an alarm I won't know when the middle of  the night is."

It feels weirder to "be gone" and "be back" at the same time than it did to feel "new" a year ago.

Welcome back to Austria, the land of delicious coffee and cake, and the delightful river run to burn it all off.

early morning run, and two different drivers rolled down their windows to talk to me: the one said: "hey, slow down! you're goin' too fast!" and the other said: "are you ok? do you need a ride anywhere?" which made me wonder if perhaps you could guess which driver was male or female.

The BBC made a movie out of the Eroica symphony, and it's quite cute.

i'm suffering from post-party depression.

Theodore and Henry's first wedding "gig" for their Aunt Tara and new Uncle ShawnZ was a curious combination of stressful and fantastically fun.

"My favorite thing is turning off the lights in the living room before bed," my husband said, "because it means we have our own space together."

The best bachelorette party in the word ends with flowers in everyone's hair at a contra dance waltzing in a giant circle around the bride-to-be.

after coming back from picking up the five big round rental tables for tara's wedding, and strapping them safely down into the trailer, brian and his dad had to leave again, to look for the four that somehow fell out in the half-mile driveway.

This might not be scientifically accurate, but my skin is the absolute happiest when it is soaking up the sunshine.

Looked through a multi-generation and an attic's-worth of books and discovered there's a lot of esoteric overlap between Brian's and my childhoods, even across time and space - THAT is the power of CLASSICS.

i do not work for the company or get any kickbacks for saying so, i just really truly think TAZA makes the best chocolate in the world.

Hitchhiker on the side of the rural highway in Pennsylvania is not strange sight, unless he is *laying down* on the shoulder, on a very dark stretch of road, and playboy posing.

Otto Siegl has not been accepted to have his own english-language wikipedia page ......... yet.

henry got rope burns on the backs of both of his knees. :-/

i hate saying good-bye in every conceivable situation.

According to my dentist, IF I should ever chip a tiny corner of tooth on a peach again (the pit, not the fruit part like the hygienist originally speculated) AND I was in a remote location far from dentists (like out in the woods camping) THEN an excellent tool to file down the sharpness is the striking side of a box of matches ("you can google youtube videos" she suggested cheerfully)

Brian ran his 2016th km for the year 2016 today, and I happened to be running with him when he crossed his new-years-resolution finish line.

watched singin in the rain today while outside in the rain with umbrellas. <3

I bought a holga (at 11pm on willhaben (austrian craigslist) for 5euros from a lady who's leaving the country for good early tomorrow morning on the bike 5km each way in the rain with giant cross-sky lightnighstrikes)! :)

If you're going away for six weeks, it is the time to use kitchen things up, which makes for clever taste combinations (asian style tofu with turkish tahini + italian style pasta + grilled veggies + austrian almost-ripe-just-had-to-pick-them-before-we-leave tomato salad = yum).

on hyper sleep-deprived over-caffeinated overdrive for 3 days, but still behind on all the things i need (read: want) to do.

have no working light, no working gears, no working brain, so manuela walked me home, just so i was spared being taking a taxi (which henry thinks brian and i pay every year, "we have to pay our taxis")

You are surrounded by various accents around the country in a party full of strangers, and suddenly, one of them (more than a trifle ironically) says "fakebook."

lost a pair of socks today, but in single-sock increments.

woke up this morning to a stick, a pocket knife and a theodore asking me if i can please help him finish a spoon, so i had wood shavings in my eyes before i got out of bed because of course i said yes.

how did i decide to volunteer to manage the waldkindergarten endofseasonfestival when i am neither a constant people person or a coordinator and i have no idea what kind of festival people want or are used to?

flash floods and thundershowers didnt stop me from craigslisting a keyboard or picking flowers or hiking or singing or enjoying coffee outside or visiting friends or working on my gardenhut.

I'm making ribbon dancers as we speak.

It's when you're on your hands and knees linseedoiling antique floor boards with a tiny brush that you start anthropomorphising the trees and plants that gave you the wood and the oil, and how disturbing these simple tasks could be.

Does thinking about happiness ever make you sad?

Trump (thankfully!) did not come up in a discussion about America following a reading from Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Big Country" that I did.

I'm a bit scared of water, and I'm also a bit scared to let my kids know that about me, so I pretend I'm not, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of the whole water-in-your-face thing.

First a nice lady gave me a present of some fabric, which I then sewed into a skirt, which I now can't wear, because I lack a coordinating top.

life seemed to go by in slow motion today, but now that it's over, it seems like time flew - house concert of mozart martinu and handel-halvorsen and reception and lots of wonderful supporting people.

a picture perfect day, with baking a new kind of cake (with Manuela) and swimming (with my family and Manuela) and practicing for my house-concert (with Manuela as audience and Thomas as compatriot) and songs and bubble-baths and wine and strings of beautiful origami butterflies (that Centa made out of special paper that was practically fabric) and and and and and.

july is confusing me: no sooner have i put away all our winter things, and have sweat myself through 2 outfits a day, the temperature drops extremely and i have to take out my down quilt to sleep.

really hate the disney story i found in an old children's bedtime stories book about mickey practicing the piano every day and all his friends telling him he sounds so nice, but then plays in front of people who "really know music" he's panned, and immediately vows to never touch the piano again.

went to a yoga session with a teacher who told us that getting our heads to the floor would feel totally awesome, but that most of us wouldn't be able to do it, but that we should not be jealous of the people around us who had their heads on the floor, because they might just be more flexible but not necessarily happier, but still, they would be feeling totally awesome right now, because they got their heads to the floor.

when a fanny-pack isn't cool enough, but you need to run hands free with keys and wallet, try a winter glove, packed with your stuff strung on a child's belt around your middle with your shirt over it.

I just sent the "final" floor plan for our wedding to the park ranger in charge of our event... August 6th is coming so quickly!

our lovely garden party, planned and hosted by centa, went off from 2pm to 10pm without a hitch, but with homemade elderflower champagne and so much delicious dessert and so many new people to meet.

our bathtub is in the basement which only has a door to the outside, which means i got to (had to) run through the rain in the dark after a bath.

One of my patients told me he was turning 91 at the end of the month when I honestly thought he was no older than 65, which obviously made his day.

It's bedtime and I have writer's block.

if absence makes the heart grow fonder, then maybe silence makes the conversations deeper.

coffee: you have the same mouth-feel, same bitter taste, and none of the caffeine withdrawal symptoms of your decaf counterpart, so i think i'll stick with you.

some days you don't even think in complete

Met a violist from the Graz Opera Orchestra today, and he originally played in the Worcester Youth Orchestra.

I could mention the flash thunderstorms we've been having off and on all day, but that isn't really all that interesting in the scheme of things.

it's time to point out that half of 2016's months have passed!

went ice-skating and magic-carpet dragging in our socks on the wooden floor today, after convincing the kids that they were "allowed" to vacuum and sweep the floor under the rug first.

in the pre-school 1st-grade parents meeting, the teacher pointed out they were lucky to have an even split of exactly 9 boys and 9 girls attending next year, and one of the parents asked "how many kids will be in the class this year?"

Fell asleep on the grass in the sun at the playground, while Felix played in the sandbox, only to wake up and find Felix asleep on the grass next to me. <3

A late-night run with my special dear, just in under the wire to count for today, was delineated at half-time by the ringing of midnight church bells.

Sundays in Graz are extra quiet - no gas powered motors (except cars) allowed and nearly all stores are closed.

"If you don't tell me about yourself, I only know about you what I can tell from looking at you," said the stranger to me, ("And what can you tell me from looking at me?") followed by, "Three things: that you're here (mmhmm), that you like art (yes, we're in an art gallery) and that you're pregnant. (umm, no)" Ouch.

my favorite moment at the opening of the styriarte festival, was the singer/viola da gamba player in sunglasses doing scarborough faire while a beautifully dressed woman mimed/performed/translated into sign language.

i don't want to at all, but somehow i have to fit a daily run into today, or i can't have wine all weekend - the rule being that i only drink wine on any given day if i have run for the last 3 days straight.

Bike wheel got stuck in a streetcar track and made me fall (lucky! i only broke a shoe) but I still got to the opera (Carmen, gorgeously set in a museum) on time to buy €3.50 standing room tickets, from which you can't read the supertitles, but who cares, since I know it by heart anyways.

A butterfly "made perfect" by a pin through it is staring at me from its place on my shelf and makes me question if, perhaps, it was the ephemeral quality that made the butterfly perfect in the first place.

when you show up to yoga un-showered with paint still on your arms, be aware that there is a possibility that you may not be going to a concert or the theater directly thereafter (glad that Manuela came and hung out with a wine and cheese evening at home instead).

I painted 70 nails today - 10 on my toes, and 60 on hands and feet of all three of my boys.

The answer to "why would Brian buy Irma whiskey?" is clearly because on a twelfth anniversary, one requires twelve year old scotch, or, in Brian's words "because 12, 16, and 20 are the whiskey years." <3