Back to the old grind�
11:34 p.m.
The teaching was rewarding today, and I am constantly amazed that I seem to know what I�m doing and that I am capable of effecting change. Of course, it helps when the student really wants to improve and trusts me, the opposite of which I have encountered in the past several times. Choir practice was fun until Herr Doctor Professor Choir Director started stomping on the stage again. I think I should take him aside and tell him that this is not an accepted conducting technique, but I feel that it would not be appropriate for me to do this. The Fanshawe piece is not difficult per se, as it is very repetitive and once you have learned one section, it is repeated verbatim or transposed up a tone or semi-tone several times. Rhythmically it is quite tricky and the sopranos tend to do a lot of screaming. The Willan is gorgeous and I am actually glad to be singing a different part from the last time I did it just so that I can experience the piece in a new way.
It�s wonderful having my house back to just us again. I love my brother, and his wife is a good person, but she has the most irritating vocal quality and I actually started getting a headache as she was talking to me on our drive to and from Stanstead on Sunday. She�s one of these people who knows everything and is constantly giving advice. My Hebrew is still good enough that I understand most of what she says to her son, and she gives the phrase �Jewish mother� fresh meaning. She would ask him if he wanted to eat anything, and he would answer, �No, I�m not hungry.� To this she would reply, �Eat anyway, something small,� and start making suggestions. The boy has absolutely no gumption and would end up having a little something. Her ideas of a balanced diet are rather strange to my way of thinking, but then again, there are several ways to approach diet.
My nephew is extremely undirected, although his mother informs me that he wants to be a marine biologist. I asked Buddy Boy how they got along, and he said that it wasn�t too bad, but they have very little in common. His cousin seems not to be interested in anything, and he couldn�t find out what he liked to do. I think this comes from being overly �coddled�, as it were. His parents married late, had him a year later (my brother was 39 and his wife 38), and they were unable to have another. She got pregnant several times and miscarried each time, the last one putting her in the hospital with such severely depleted thrombocyte levels that the doctor gave her a tubal ligation right there and said she was not to have any more. As a result, he is extremely over protected and has the personality of a tree fungus (I just agonized long and hard over what to say there, and that was the least uncomplimentary thing I could come up with). His sense of humour has been directed by his father, and it is rather racist and homophobic, two traits which I abhor.
I have tried to tell my brother that the world has changed since he went to high school, and that what was funny then is definitely not considered politically correct now. When the boy was extremely little (like age 6 or so, believe it or not), his mother would tape S0uth Park for him so that he and his dad could watch it together. My nephew could not possibly have gotten the jokes at that young age, but my brother would howl with laughter, which greatly amused his son. I explained to my brother that S0uth Park was on late at night for a reason, so that 6-year-olds would not be watching it, but somehow my sister-in-law never twigged to this. She figured it was a cartoon, hence it was suitable for children.
Anyway, they are gone. We will see them fleetingly on Monday next when we are in Toronto on our way back from Thanksgiving with my in-laws, but the visit will be mostly to see my mother. She finds my sister-in-law almost as hard to take as I do. We shall see if my argument with her keeps her from trying to give my mother advice about getting herself household help. It�s not that I don�t think my mother should have help, I know that she won�t get it until she�s good and ready, a state she has to attain all by herself. Now I have to try to get rid of a pound or two before the next food fest.
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