Background music for my recorded training

Note to self: Put a note on the piano when doing 8:00am trainings from home.

I was in the middle of a training session to 31 coworkers this morning, when a lovely chord drifted through my closed office door. Usually, it is not a problem for the boys to play on the piano in the morning while getting ready for school. But usually, I am not delivering live training from my home office. And usually the training is not being recorded for posterity at the same time.

The music is not audible on the recording, thank goodness. I have my note on the closed piano keyboard for tomorrow's training session.

Random piano riffs

Well, in the 48 hours since the piano's arrival, I have not been home much. All day scrapbooking event, evening play tickets, and a planned multi-family outing to Great America have kept us all running. Have I mentioned I am seriously booked at work and wondering how on earth I am going to get all that I need to done while still sleeping more than 3 hours per night? I am a bit stressed.

Meanwhile, the piano remains an attraction in our living room. DH was awoken on Saturday morning by our youngest playing random bits in different octaves. Teddy has wandered over and tried to remember some songs he learned in the 2 keyboard classes he took at the community center. DH has ordered some John Thompsons and Teaching Little Fingers piano books for kids. And DH woke up our oldest child at midnight attempting to master the chords for "Bridge over Troubled Waters".

Even tonight, when I have shuttered myself in the home office to try to get ahead of this massive pile of work, I can hear chords through the door. And it is pleasant--much like the sound of birds in the morning waking you up a minute before your alarm clock.

I am fairly noise-sensitive. Loud sounds bother me more than anyone else in my household, as does repetitive sound, and overlapping sound from different sources. Music has not been a big part of my life, and I think I could spend days alone in silence and be quite content. So, the decision to get a piano was a big one, with some trepidation on my part. While I applauded Barley's interest in the electronic keyboard, I always had the option to request that he put on headphones. And the keyboard has a volume dial.

The piano, on the other hand, does not have any controls, other than the rules we put in place. No headphones, no volume dial, no on/off switch, no batteries to remove, and no lock. (There is one, but no key). Would the musical exploration in the afternoons (when school is out), drive me to abandon my hard-earned work-at-home option? Would I drive into the office more often, where I might find an isolated desk to work at?

Well, so far, it is working out beautifully. I find I can tune out the piano music more easily than the keyboard sound. When I do take a break to just let my mind wander, the notes playing in the background are pleasant rather than intrusive. Hopefully this will continue to be our experience.

Whoa! That thing is HUGE!

OK, I am trying really hard to get my work done, when I hear the title statement outside my window from my 7-year old. I can tell he is near the rosebush, and I don't want to blow my cover by opening the shades, so I go around through the front door.

He is pointing at the first rose in the garden this year, which budded last week. Now in its full flower, it is rather impressive looking. Amazing to think this was one of those disposable supermarket rose plants just 3 years ago. A good friend gave it to me when I was sick. I planted it outside when I got tired of watering it, to see if it could survive on its own. It is now a respectable looking 3' high rosebush.

At the suggestion we cut the blossom to enjoy in the house, Barley looks shocked, and says, "Noo, that's its first one! We can't take that!" My demanding grouch can be so sensitive sometimes.

Checking out the other plants in the front, he immediately noticed the coffee grounds around the blueberry bushes, and said authoritatively, "I see you put down some new dirt, mom. Good work." So, now he just needs a cowboy hat and some wheat stalk to chew on while hooking his thumbs in his jeans.

Aphid Hunter strikes again!

Barley interrupted my conference call to signal to me that my cell phone was ringing in the living room. Good boy. He hovered at my door, waiting to see if I was going to come out or not. I was not, and I tried to shoo him away, and indicate that the phone could ring, it would go to voicemail. I just had no idea how to sign "voicemail" to a 7-year old.

When I did finally escape, he told me very solemnly that he thought my rosebush was in trouble. "I don't think it's going to make it, Mom" Why not honey? "Well, just come out and look, I'll show you." He started giggling when he realized I was still in my robe from the morning and had to throw on some jeans before I could go in the front yard. I had a lot of conference calls today.

The 3 foot rosebush--which is quite healthy, btw, and in no imminent danger of dying, was covered with aphids however. I'm afraid Barley and I have been a wee bit busy the last week, and have not been out manually scraping aphids off the bush in a several days. Luckily, it is still light well after quitting time, so we headed out with our popsicle sticks and cleaned the rosebush off. I think it will survive after all.

DH told me it was all he could do to keep Barley from bursting in on my conference call earlier to tell me the dire news about the rosebush. I love his enthusiasm for taking care of this rosebush. This may not be the most exciting thing to do on a spring evening, but it's time we spend together, and it does not involve electronics of any kind. I count that as a win.

How clever am I?

Ah, the joys of working from home. I can hear my offspring come noisily from school, no matter how often DH reminds them, "Shhh, Mommy's working!". From my office, I hear the interrupted parade, as they both insist on watering the new plants before they've even unloaded coats and bookbags from school. Clever of me to pick the plot right by the front door for the herbs we planted over the weekend, eh? "I have to water my parsley!"-- music to my ears!

Barley is loudly hunting aphids on the rosebush right outside my home office window--I sneak a peek at him, but don't linger. If he realizes he can get my attention through there, he'll be forever banging on the window to say, "Hi Mommy! Look at all the aphids today!"

Barley did interrupt my conference call to announce that there was a bird in the bird bath--and it was splashing around! I didn't hit the mute button fast enough--the Manager I was talking with was very amused. Sigh.

I have to admit, I am quite proud of the new birdbath. When we were first shopping for the garden, I noticed the bath prices were a bit high, so I picked up a clay saucer instead. Well, the spot where I had propped it up on rocks was too low, and the birds disdained it completely. In an effort to convince DH that my $11 solution would work, to save us the $110 purchase of a completely unnecessary, but yes-indeed-nice-to-have legitimate birdbath, I looked around to see what else we had that I could use to prop it up higher.
My eyes lighted on this plastic frog statue left by the previous owners. It has its front legs(? paws? flippers?) raised, and I think it must have held a flower pot once upon a time. Unfortunately, the fingers that are raised up are not even, and so won't hold the heavy saucer in a stable fashion.

However, if I flipped him on his head, he does have a flat bottom! I moved it closer to the roses, wedged some rocks around his head and fingers (?) and placed the clay saucer on top. Voila! Here he is in all his funny glory, and to prove me right, the birds have indeed started to visit the new birdbath. And Barley got to see a bird actually splashing around in the middle, not just sipping from the edge. You can see why he felt this was more important than my call with a manager from my company!

Lunch Break

Had a lovely lunch with 2 friends from a former work life. So much of this blog has been focused on kids (and gardening--whodathunkit?) that I want to see if I am capable of writing a post on some other topic. There is not much left of my life after I exclude work and kids as discussion topics. In fact, there seems not to be much of ME left once you take those 2 ingredients out.

Which is food for thought, as my lunch was with 2 girlfriends who are both single and childfree. Both have pets, but did not spend any time talking about them. (To be fair, I didn't ask, either--though they were polite enough to ask about my offspring) I tried to get off the topic of my boys quickly, as I am always concerned that childfree people must get tired of hearing about other people's kids.

We discussed diets, politics, gardening, and the economy. My friends looked healthy and well. We are all a bit stressed about work, but grateful to be employed. No one has a monster boss, so I would call that thriving. All 3 of us were enjoying a "work-from-home" day--a great offshoot of ubiquitous high-speed internet. We would not have been able to meet for lunch like this otherwise, as we work in San Jose, San Mateo, and San Francisco otherwise.

We did discuss Facebook a bit, and contrasted that to blogging. I don't do Facebook, but my 2 friends found it handy as a way to stay in touch and re-connect with people. More personal than Linked-In, and with privacy measures that allow you to restrict who sees your content. I may just have to check it out. I did garner 2 recommended blogs to read: Tech for Luddites and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. Both are very interesting--check 'em out!

Crazy Tuesdays

Got a lot of work done today. Or a fair amount. Or tried my best, anyway. Barley tried to sneak into my office on his belly again. When I am working from home, once he arrives from school, he always tries to sneak up on me while I am on the phone or computer. Sometimes he just gives me a silent sneaky kiss on the cheek (don't tell the people on the conference call that I just kissed you, Mommy...), and sometimes he just grins up at me from the floor like a lumpy mischievous rug.

Teddy had his usual crazy Tuesday, with a bare hour to eat snack and get homework done (or avoid it anyhow) before it was time to go to Lego Robotics (WAY cool, btw), and then a scant 30 minutes to get home from that, eat his fast food dinner, change into his uniform, and answer the door when the cub scouts arrive. Bedtime once they leave. Phew. And the kid's still in elementary school! We've cut back on other activities, so only Tuesdays are insane like this.

Then the kitchen faucet died today. Luckily it gave up the ghost AFTER I had finished excavating all the dirty dishes from the weekend. The plumber arrived quickly, turned off the water before we emptied the county reservoir, and installed the shiny new fixture. Went pretty smoothly overall.

Oh, and btw, there is a recorder concert at school tomorrow morning! Thank heavens for an understanding manager with young children of her own. And web conferencing and high-speed internet at home. I couldn't do all this and stay employed otherwise! And staying employed is very, very important to my lifestyle.