last week of school! FOREVER!

Well, probably not forever, I do plan on getting my Ph.D. some day.  I just found out that UTSA may be starting a new music psychology Ph.D. soon, so I'll have to keep my eye on that!

Today I was completely floored by a music therapy experience.  I was toward the end of a session with my bilingual PPCD kiddos, the group that receives music therapy in only English.  I brought a chicken puppet and some baby chick finger puppets so we could do a song called "Los Pollitos Dicen" that I had translated to English from Spanish.  When I got all the way through the song the first time, suddenly this cute little girl started singing the song in SPANISH and the whole rest of the class chimed in.  Why is this a big deal?  It's sort of pivotal to my paper, that you cannot suppress culture, that it's part of who we are, and by doing music therapy only in English with clients who speak another language is just not going to cut it any more.  I was seriously moved to tears on my way home because it was really beautiful.  

I'm going to go paint my living room - hooray!  The hubs I have been going round and round and round on colours and we've finally settled on cool for the living room and warm for the kitchen.  We've also chosen to use Benjamin Moore's Eco Spec, which has lower VOC's.  I'll post pics soon!

can't...stop...watching....

if I could only figure out a way to incorporate this song into a therapy session...

renovating a house is fun

(via AIM chat)

Me: so, if we pick paint colours today/tomorrow i can just go to the store myself

Hubby: do you want to get test colors?

Me: umm, sure.

Hubby: Ok, if you get test colors then when do you want to put them up and when would you want to pick and put up the final color?

Me: earliest I could do test colours would be Wednesday at 3:00pm.  I could also put them up right after that. I don't think that I have piano class on Thursday morning, so I could pick up final colour before noon and put up final colour after 3:00pm on Thursday.  Why?

Hubby: I don't think you could do test colors on Wednesday and then the final color Thursday, you have to take time to look at the samples in different light.

Me: OMG I am so not this anal.

Hubby: Then do you want to just skip the samples?

Me: Besides, blandy mcblanderson, how different could off-grey look in morning, noon, and evening light?

Hubby: You'd be surprised.

Renovations Day 2: A Tale of Two Oz Posts

The fence was down by the first day, as well as some post holes dug. The hubs even went all the way back to Frisco early in the morning to return the post-puller. There's a section in our driveway where there's a square hole where a post used to be, now all there is in the hole is a rotted post that was cut off at the level of the concrete.  We're now wanting a gate to go there, so he found a way to put a post there - with the help of an oz post that he would drive through the old wood.  To keep the top part together, he stuck a metal pipe so he could bang on it with a sledgehammer.  I was super nervous holding onto that thing. By the time we got the post mostly in the ground, the pipe was pretty mangled. So mangled, in fact that we couldn't get it back out of the post.

The hubs even went to the hardware store and got a bit for some saw tool he had and he tried to saw the metal out.  Unfortunately, the blade went SHINK! and split in two in oh, about the first two seconds.

So, he went BACK to Frisco and rented the post-puller again (we had this idea about 2:25 and the place closed at 3:00 and Frisco is definitely 30 minutes away...) and I went to the Lowe's in Plano to get another oz post.  He pulled out the old post and then spent the next half hour or so hammering the new post back in. We got around the previous problem by getting a heavier duty pipe as well as end caps for the pipe so that it would be more difficult to get stuck.  We also had the bright idea to shove some paper towels into the post hole in order to cushion the blow.  As you can see in the picture, it still took quite a beating.

I told him he was my hero for finally getting that thing in. (insert kate, sarah, and michelle giggling here)

Renovations: Day 1

Sweet friends showed up early to help us do stuff - Candace and I set to cleaning the place up and the boys left for Frisco to get a post puller to pull part of our fence down:
That is certainly not the best picture, but you can at least see the fence.  It took Candace and I all morning and two mimosas apiece to get the entire living room scrubbed, taped, and all the fixtures removed.

I knew Kate and Sarah were driving up and when they got there, Michelle jumped out of the car also!  I was so excited!  Once the trio of power arrived, I gave them a tour and then we all got to work and everything went MUCH more quickly.  We got the living room primed, as well as the
guest bath and finally after a dinner break, the master bedroom.  Two gallons of Kilz and many "that's what she said" jokes later, we finished for the day.

House Closing

We closed on our house this past Wednesday :)  it was supposed to be Tuesday, but we couldn't get funded because our signatures looked different than what they did on our IDs.  So, we had keys but couldn't go in the house, but we had a pizza party that night anyway.  Hooray house!

Eco Chic, Vol. I

I followed the advice in Real Simple today for repurposing glass bottles and came up with a super sweet centerpiece. I have other pictures of the actual various bottles...beer and pasta, mostly, with a small Starbucks liquor bottle thrown in for kicks.

We close on our house on Earth Day, which I'm not taking as coincidence at all (and no we didn't plan it like that). Since we're doing renovations to the house, we're trying to be health-minded and do the extra research in order to find the paint/countertops/flooring that is sustainable/recycled/low VOC and whatnot. Sometimes we're creative about it, sometimes we totally steal the ideas from other cooler people who went green way before we were born (Like Ed Bagley, Jr.) but I do know this - we've been given the responsibility of redoing this house and we've got my mom's chemical sensitivities to take into consideration and just flat don't want to live in a house that does more harm to the planet than good. Also, when we decide to have kids this blog will get REAL interesting, and though they might get laughed at at school for having hummus and sprouts in their lunch pack, they'll know that the hubs and I are doing everything we can even now to keep them healthy by surrounding them with as natural stuff as we can.Plus, I'm sure we'll make mistakes along the way (I mean, so far I have the black thumb of death when it comes to gardening) but the point is for this to be a community effort and we can all learn from each other.

Our ever-growing list of things we want to do at said awesome abode are:

1. Recycle - you should've seen the look on the lady's face at City Hall when I told her I was really, REALLY excited that we wouldn't have to drive 15 minutes to recycle any more. This morning as I opened a new squeezy tube of toothpaste I also considered that we so easily think to recycle things in the kitchen but don't really think about all the boxes and plastic we toss in our bathroom receptacle. The solution is either dig through the trash, get TWO trash cans, or design something suitable. You know which one I'll pick. Yes yes, Nerd on both of those.

2. Compost - I used to compost with my dad when I was younger and I was at once totally grossed out by the coffee-puke smell and also fascinated by the process, especially when worms get involved. I've done some reading about this and seriously that's going to be the first thing I do when we move in - figure out where to compost in our yard so our dog doesn't roll in it (which is going to be tough, he loves disgusting stuff).

3. Play Chicken - We are seriously considering buying baby chicks and having our own chickens, and we're looking into our city's building code. Not a rooster, we don't want MORE chickens, and only 3. Why? Well, apparently chicken poo is good for the soil so we can, er, harvest that. Plus, fresh tasty eggs. Remember, I'm not vegan.

4. ORGANIC GARDENING! - I know I said I have the black thumb of death but grrrl, I can grow tomatoes like you wouldn't even believe. Or at least, I did last summer. My in-laws have this wonderful back yard where during the spring and summer when we visit they've been known to grab tomatoes, squash, herbs, and chives from the raised beds and throw them on the grill with the pork loin. Seriously, this stuff makes my toes tingle! I love nothing more than grabbing fresh fresh fresh herbs and throwing them into whatever we're cooking. We've got a bigger front yard than back yard, so figuring this part out will take some time, but I'm stoked. I think we have enough room/sunlight for a raised bed immediately behind our house, so we'll look into that first. The hubs wants to plant an avocado tree, tomato plants, onions, jalepenos and cilantro so we can have fresh guacamole and salsa in the Spring and Summer. See? He loves being married to a Latina :) Also, the lady who owned the house before us did the Tru Green stuff, but after talking about it, we decided we don't want to put a crapload of chemicals on our lawn. The hubs has ordered two organic gardening books from Amazon so far, I'll let you know what they are when they come in and if they're actually worth their salt.

So, there's a start. If anyone out there wants to post ideas, experiences, etc. I would LOVE to have good, green conversations, especially from people who have personal experiences with this because I've really just started this and haven't done a lot of research yet.

Ciao!

the last iPod update, maybe.

So today I called the TWU DPS and the conversation went like this:

Me: I am calling to see if someone's turned in a silver iPod with-
Copper: YES!
Me: WHAT!? Okay - does it have little black and white earphones with Koss written on the side?
Copper: Let me check.
[pause]
Copper: Does it have a yellow fish on it? And did you say GREEN earphones?
Me: No.

sigh.

starve a cold

My body is a funny thing.  It likes to take allergies and turn them into something dark and sinister, so last night I woke myself up coughing painfully and explosively at least five or six times during the night.  I'm mostly pissed because I have to cancel a camping trip that I was really excited about going on, but keeping my fellow campers up with my death rattle is no way for anyone to spend a Saturday night, really.

Being sick really messes with my head creatively.  My session on Thursday was uncharacteristically disorganized and overwhelming for me, partly due to cold meds and also because I can't breathe very well and when I can't breathe, I can't sing.  Like this morning, I woke completely without a voice and started panicking when it got to 9am and I had a 10:30 session looming.  I heated up a small cuppa soup, which gave me my voice back but during the session I had to get the kids singing then mouth the words.  I spent 11:00 - 2:30 in complete silence, drinking as much water as I could handle, and taking an hour and a half nap.  The kids in the afternoon class were in rare form, as they are every Friday, and I think being sick also helped me to relax and think a little bit, so the session went fairly well, even though I didn't particularly like the songs I was using.  

I'd been really a chaotic mess internally until yesterday I requested a relaxation from my professor who is a Guided Imagery and Music fellow, and it rocked my face off, and me back to center.  I hate to sound trite but gosh, I really love music.

Anyway.  We were going to go see the South Austin Jug Band tonight in Deep Ellum but nobody in the house is really up for it, and more importantly it's BATTLESTAR NIGHT!

hear that?

Storm sirens twice in two weeks?  It's my lucky April!

kinda like...

I decided today that getting a new house is much like being a bride.  Nobody in the bridal industry gives a rip that this dress is THE ONE and OMG I LOVE THESE SHOES and DON'T YOU THINK GELATO INSTEAD OF CAKE is just THE MOST?!  Much like, nobody cares that I'm setting up water and gas and getting a fence building permit in OUR VERY FIRST HOUSE THAT WE CLOSE ON NEXT WEEK because here baby, it happens every day.

Still.  I'm excited.  :)

you know what happens when you say "YES! I haven't gotten sick this year!"?

You get sick.  I think it all started when I took Jake for an hour-long walk down into the neighborhood where people were cleaning up their respective pieces of Destruction left over from last week.  There were lawnmowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers, and other bits of gas-powered allergy-inducing paraphernalia going to town.  I went to bed Sunday night with allergies and woke up with a sinus AND a respiratory infection.  What sucks about that is while I could skip my music history class and guitar lesson, I could not skip my music therapy sessions at 10:30 and at 2:30 because they're part of my thesis.  So, I went, then picked up stuff to make delicious cure-all chicken soup which I'm pretty sure rocked, even though I couldn't taste a darn thing.

Sleeping last night was hindered not only by my coughing and only bare ability to breathe but also by the fact that my dog has little nubbin feet and an elizabethan collar on at the moment. I took Jake to the dog park on Sunday to meet Nutmeg, a dog that belongs to some friends of mine.  He ran and ran and RAN around with her but also with an italian greyhound.  When I went to pick him up, I noticed he had ripped the pads on his paws - like, had little hangey bits of skin and was bleeding.  So the next morning we took him to the vet and they...made him look like that.  He's been wandering into walls and just stopping and whining like COME GET ME OFF OFF THIS THING I CAN'T MOVE and when the hubs put him in the crate last night he whined, turned his back to us, then kept whacking his left paw against the side of the crate in indignation. It was pretty hilarious, and also very sad so so we took pity on him and let him and the E-collar sleep in our room...first it was on his pillow in the corner and then sometime in the wee hours of the evening he jumped up on our bed (which i thought was funny, considering he couldn't get himself unstuck from the wall earlier in the day) and snuggled in right smack between us.

So anyway, today I dragged myself out of bed to get to piano class, then came home and fell asleep around 11am and just now woke up.  Don't be jealous, I feel like ass.

ketchup

The hubs and I woke to the sounds of tornado sirens going off at 3:30am last Thursday morning.  We jumped out of bed and turned on the TV and saw this:

So we grabbed the dog and huddled in the guest bathtub for about 30 minutes while the storm raged, the power flickered, and the hubs visually assessed the integrity of the structure we were huddled in.  Not a fun night.  We also live across from a firestation, so we heard sirens going off the whole rest of the night. The next day I was completely shattered, but I did snap some photos:

So yeah, it's been rather exciting around here.

iPod update

I asked my music history class this morning if anyone has seen an iPod floating around and turns out I left it in the student lounge during lunch.  Everyone in my class asked, "The silver one with the cool headphones?" Apparently lots of people saw it, one girl even moved it from beside the couch to the table...and then it sprouted legs.

Sigh.

time to get off our collective tushes and do something.

TxDOT is proposing a 6-lane highway looping the city of New Braunfels.  This is a developer-driven project that will increase urban sprawl from San Antonio to Austin.  The proposed project will cut through undeveloped land on top of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone as well as pristine farmland.  The resulting construction and development will do unimaginable harm to the environment as well as the heritage and tradition of the New Braunfels community.

The final NB Outer Loop Proposal can be viewed here.  The stated goal of designating the corridor now is to plan traffic concerns 30 years from now, but there is no guarantee that TxDOT will wait 30 years to complete this.  If approved, they can build it how and when they want in a way that benefits TxDOT most, not the community.

Things to consider:

- How will the loop effect the environment, particularly sections on top of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone and across the Guadalupe River?

- What impact will the new development this loop brings have on the heritage, tradition, and community of New Braunfels and surrounding areas?

- It is well known that TxDOT is in enormous debt and has adopted the policy of tolling all new highway construction.  Will TxDOT be building the NB loop as a toll road to route traffic from I-10 to I-35 or will it be a part of the greater trans-Texas corridor network?

How you can help:

- SPREAD THE WORD about the loop proposal and the townhall meetings going on in NB.

- Write letters to the City Council and the County Commissioners voicing your opposition.

- Write letters to the editor of the Herald-Zeitung.

- Research TxDOT, highway construction, toll roads, environmental impact, developer motivation, etc. as much as possible so we can make the best arguments to city officials.

This proposal is clearly not the most responsible way to account for future grown in the NB area.

Also check this out - the Citizens' Alliance for Smart Expansion

Interestingly, Robert Redford has also recently submitted a film to Sundance that is definitely worth checking out. Click here for the trailer.

thinker..

after a full 30-minutes of facebook stalking new friends, I found this quote:

"Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil.  The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small dirty object.  It is better to forget about yourself altogether."

C.S. Lewis

I wish I had found that quote in middle school.

grrr

i lost the hook-ey up thing for my iPod, so i went to Target and bought another one, and now i've lost my iPod.  it must be the end of the school year or something...

Rainy days and Mondays rock my face off

So, I survived today, and not even by just barely, which was totally rad and unexpected.  I woke up at 6am, showered and got ready for a music history exam in Denton at 8 which I ACED and then drove to Lewisville to do music therapy with a new group of cutie-pie PPCD kids, then drove back to Denton for an SAMT officer's meeting and guitar lesson, drove BACK to Lewisville for music therapy session #2 (at this point I'm asking myself why the hell I chose to write a thesis instead of a lazy professional paper), vented with my mentor for about an hour, then drove BACK to Denton to revise the SAMT constitution, order pizza, and preside over an SAMT meeting.  Totally drove like 120 miles today.  Now all I want to do is let my brain melt in front of Gossip Girl.

for Daina

Dude girl you are so right I am totally remiss in *not* writing about my 104-degree fevered, almost-3-year-old nephew on the spring break trip and how I had to rethink my whole wanting-to-have-kids thing. Except, he really was cute looking for Easter eggs and that time we wanted pizza and then he took a bite of pizza, spit it out, and said, "I want eggs." and then after you made him eggs pushed his plate back and said "I want apple."  

But seriously, I do envy your patience, girl - you are an incredibly wonderful, loving, fun mother and Michael should be nicer to you ;)

bored...

I was not tagged, but here you go anyway:

10 years ago:  I was 15.  I just unearthed that journal.  And then I burned it.

Things on my to-do list today:

read and outline chapters for music history exam on Monday

pick up mom from airport

pick up agency approval letter from Lillie J.

pack another box 

SAMT stuff

workout (1km swim!)

If I were suddenly made a billionaire, I would:

go on a very long adventure that would end in a house in Spain

pay off my student loans

do everything to my mom's house she wants done

get a girl puppy that actually LIKES to snuggle

donate

invest

I don't know - I had a hard time wrapping my brain around what $50K a year looks like.

Three of my bad habits are:

1. PROCRASTINATION - although I'm starting to not so much see this as a bad habit, just a habit that I have to accomodate for.

2. not reading my Bible

3. driving while texting (working on it)

Five jobs I've had:

1. Restaurant Hostess

2. Music Librarian for LHB

3. Waitress at Jolly Cooper's in London

4. Swim teacher for babies

5. Personal assistant for musician/producer in Austin

Five things people don't know about me:

1. I have a plantar's wart on the bottom of my right foot that I tried to get frozen then burned off and it keeps coming back.  I hate to get pedicures because it grosses me out and I'm pretty sure the Asian girls talk about me and my nasty foot in Korean and then laugh at me.

2. I have a horrendous weakness for french fries

3. I won a John Phillip Sousa award for musical excellence in high school, which is ironic because though he may have been the world's first rock star, I still hate his stupid music.

4. I actually like Dallas, I just pretend I don't so I sound cooler.

5. I am an excellent friend, it just takes awhile to get to know me 'cos I have some silly walls up.  But, who doesn't.