Merry Christmas from the Kaes Family!

This is a summary of what the Kaes family did this year. It's a brief summary and only hits the highlights. I made it. We call it our Christmas card.

Create your own free photo slideshow

Song of Today

Theme Song for October 11

Awkward Chambers

I call elevators awkward chambers. It seems that anything that you say outside of an elevator automatically becomes awkward once in the elevator amongst other passengers. Likewise, anything that you might say that would be awkward outside of an elevator becomes exponentially more awkward once you’re inside the elevator. I had one of the latter moments yesterday morning after musicology class.

The lovely young horn player I’m assigned to accompany this year and I were sitting outside of the elevator on the bench. (In a comfortable silence) He spoke up. “So…how’s piano stuff going?” To which I replied, “Good.” And then remembered something. It’s actually not going that well because I was recently injured in a four-car rear-ending. So I proceeded to explain what had happened. I saw it as a business move. If I told him I was injured, three weeks from now (hypothetically speaking) when he wants me to have the whole of a Hindemith sonata learned to accompany him at a jury, which he won’t- he’s a very reasonable fellow, but supposing he did, then I could say to him, “Well, I hope you remember that I was injured and that is why I only have the first movement learned and so I hope that is enough and I’m dearly sorry for any inconvenience.” I was explaining the particulars of the incident to him in my foresight, just as the elevator approached level 2 and opened for us to board. As we were stepping onto the awkward chamber, I was saying, “So, yeah, the police wanted to give me the ticket.” At which point all heads turned toward us. Four strangers can become highly attentive in less than eight square feet of cage-like space. He replied “That doesn’t make sense. If you’re the third car in a four car accident, why should you get a ticket?” The strangers visibly relaxed. To which I answered, “Yeah, but I didn’t get the ticket after all. My mom showed up and she’s half-black.” The poor horn player didn’t know what to say so he said the age-old, “That’s random.” And one of the passengers giggled nervously.

 I should explain the giggling passenger here. He is not simply some stranger as I put it before. He is a freshman jazzer. What kind of instrumentalist he is, I can’t remember, but I do know he has taken a particular shine to me. He uses my name more often than is normal for conversation and very enthusiastically makes observations about small things to me non-stop when we are in the same elevator together. In fact, I met this chortling jazzer on the elevator and happen to do most of my getting to know him on the same said elevator.

            I had dropped a bomb that I couldn’t possibly diffuse in the time it takes to get from floor 3 to floor 5. What I meant when I said, “My mom showed up and she’s half-black,” was that my mom advocated for me in front of the police in a persistent manner characteristic of her upbringing. .  If you’ve ever seen a cougar mother bravely protecting her cubs, you know how intimidating it can be.  Imagine that sort of feline advocacy mixed with the matronly protective instinct of a bear and you’ve got what we refer to as “Rambo Mama.” Usually that line at the end of my car accident story (yes, I have used it previously) gets a knowing nod or a chuckle or both, but not from my horn player. I’m convinced it’s the affect of the awkward chamber.  We stepped off on floor five and parted ways without another word.  

Beginnings of Christmas

Christmas time began a couple of weeks ago for me. I have a substantial list of all of the Christmas carols and holiday songs my students want to learn for the season. Now I have to buy, copy, print, and arrange all of these songs for each of them taking note of their respective levels and abilities. All of this has to be done before the middle of October so that they have plenty of time to learn their holiday repertoire. Yes, it's not even Halloween yet and we're already starting on Christmas. Let the games begin. (And may the odds be ever in our favor.)

P.S. I'm sharing this document that I spent the morning putting together. If you haven't seen color music before, you should. It's easy to make, and it's great for pre-readers. This is one of at least two Christmas carols I am going to arrange in color music for my littlest guys so that they too can participate in the Christmas recital this year. I see no reason anyone should be left out of a recital because there are no pieces arranged for their level when color music is so accessible for them and in my power to create.

Teaching Fiasco

My last piano student of the night dropped one of her books in the gutter outside our house as she was putting them in the car. Her mom and I tried to fish it out by laying on the sidewalk and lowering various makeshift implements attached to the end of a broomhandle down under the grate including tongs and a metal skewer. Amidst side-splitting laughter, we resorted to attaching duct tape sticky side out to the top of the broom handle. She watched while I jabbed one of the pages with the taped handle and tried to lift the book, successfully tearing the page out. Luckily it was the page my student had to practice this week because we never did get the book out. In a last ditch effort we tried to scoot the book onto a shovel with the end of the broom handle, closing the book. Glancing at the front of the book, I read the title in bold lettering, "My First Piano Adventure." 

Eeeeeeee! <----Because that's what this feels like.

You know that feeling when someone you don’t know very well says, “Hey, your name.” That’s the best feeling ever. It’s kind of makes me want to crouch down really low and jump up in the air as high as I can just to release the joy that I feel welling up in my heart.

When someone says “Hey, Kailey,” to me even though we don’t know each other very well, I act cool. I don’t want to seem like their recognition of my existence and remembrance of my name just made my day so I say, “Hi, how’s it goin’” while I look them in the eye.

This just happened today on an elevator (I like to call them awkward chambers), and it was awesome, but I won’t tell Miss R that her observance of my humanity just rocked my socks off. 

The Story of the Ford Focus and the River Trip

I wrote this story down for a writing class assignment, but I cut and pasted this excerpt here and changed the beginning. Hopefully all of the facts have remained the same from the first telling. 

While we were in the Czech Republic, we took a family canoe trip along the Vltava River, camping on the shore at night. Borrowing a Ford Focus from our friend Eliška's mother, we traveled from where we were staying in Trutnov, a tiny mountain town, to our destination at the Vltava River. Ivan, Eliška's mother's boyfriend from Trutnov (as distinct from her Prague boyfriend), took my parents for a test drive, speaking in Czech while Eliška interpreted. The Focus was safe, the drivers were safe, and we drove away, excitedly awaiting our arrival at our destination about six hours later. Not long into our drive, the manual Focus stopped shifting down. Eliška called her mother, telling her that the car would no longer shift into third gear. Replying in rapid, bubbly Czech, Anna Nováková, announced nonchalantly that this meant we no longer had first or second gear, or reverse, for that manner. She then instructed that those driving should not stop at all, especially not on a hill. Verifying that Anna knew the effects these actions would have on her clutch, we continued on our trip to the Vltava at breakneck speed, pedestrians yielding to American-made car flying through the crosswalk. We arrived safely, and, digging up our rain gear, carefully put it on before exiting the smoking vehicle. It was cold. We set up our tents, three of them, one of which we borrowed from Eliška's father. It had no fly. A puddle formed on the tent floor shortly after we pitched it, and everyone under the age of forty piled into one tent that night. Setbacks are only potential stories. A plan was formed for the retrieval of the little Ford Focus after we arrived, by canoe, at our destination Eliška and my father would take a bus back to the place we had started, somehow manage to restart the car and get it out of the parking lot without reverse, first or second gear, drive it in fourth gear to the campsite at Česky Krumlov, stop briefly to load it, then push it back out of the parking lot. When the time came, the plan was employed and my father gunned it up the steep streets. He drove it faithfully through fairytale fields dotted with the occasional castle, and we used water sparingly. No stops would be made until we were safely in Trutnov. We made it to Prague, several hours outside of Trutnov, in rush hour traffic with the smell of burning clutch wafting through our sinuses. Then, on the highway through Prague, traffic stood still on a busy bridge. We were on an incline. Smoke poured from the hood and pulling over was inevitable. Then and there everyone had to pee. Pulling rain gear from the nether regions of our backpacks, we prepared for the thin drizzle that collected on the ground outside and created a stall with the doors and the guardrail on one side of the highway median. I went first. You'll never believe it, but as soon as I got back into the car, it started pouring rain, like heaven's gate had broke open and all of the angel's bathwater for the past fifteen years gathered and dropped over the bridge on a highway somewhere in Prague. A debate ensued. To go, or not to go, that was the question. It was pouring rain outside, but inside that's all the bladders wanted to do. One by one, the rest of the family trooped outside and relieved themselves, men on the grassy green median, women in the makeshift stall. Until it was Eliška's turn to go. Eli is one of those people who can only think of one thing at any given time. She's brilliant. She just graduated from Charles University with something between a Masters and a Phd in languages, showing correlations between Czech language and Hebrew Psalms for her dissertation or something like that. Only one professor in the entire university was able to understand her studies to the depth that she took them. She cannot, to save her life, think through what she's having for dinner and what bus to take in the morning at the same time. When we were all peeing, she was thinking through how to get us off of the highway. She had enough battery for one more call on her old Nokia phone, taped together with packing tape, and had to choose wisely. She texted different people for different phone numbers, and had this on the mind when she stepped into the pouring rain to empty her bladder. Foregoing the stall, she marched into the middle of the highway, squatted in the middle of median, and peed. Returning to the car, she picked up the phone, and continued with her mission. We were amused, but wouldn't have put something like that past her in a million years. Later we learned that she was completely unaware of the privacy stall. And why should she be? She was on a mission. To make a long story shorter, Anna came to our rescue in an adorable yellow rain jacket, with yellow rain boots, a yellow umbrella with the Prague boyfriend, Jiři in tow. The Kaes family got into Jiři's car while he towed the Ford Focus to Trutnov, depositing it in Ivan's auto mechanic shop, Ivan standing by. By the time we got back to Anna's house for some shuteye, we smelled horrendous. Three days on a river, one six hour car ride, and burning clutch fumes do not make people smell like roses. 

Aight. Here is the first post on my blog. I don't know how often I will be able to update it, but I only plan to use it for funny and not so funny and slightly awkward things that occur in my interaction with life. Please come back?