Stumbling Through Adulthood

Anne-Chloe and Perry are sitting at the piano playing through the a song from Spirited Away together, her the right hand, him the left.

She's playing solo right now, something I don't recognize, from memory. I'd forgotten how good of a player she was before she switched to violin. Not quite Perry level, but a decent player.

I know she's still sad, though she's coping better and seems excited about what lies ahead, but having her home, seeing her enthusiasm and renewed determination to get into medical school feels good.

Christmas in Sarajevo.

She's such a wonderful kid, and it feels so right to have her home. She's got a lead on an apartment and will probably move out soon, but that is normal and feels like progress in a way moving with Dipshit didn't.

ETA Dh is playing the piano part for Into the West, Anne-Chloe is doing the vocals. Tears. It's SO wonderful to hear her sing again.

My husband is a pretty decent pianist. Not as good as Perry, but decent. A few years ago, he picked up the electric guitar, and well, let's just say that it's slower and he still plays the piano better. But I can hear the progress over the years, and he is getting better, so eh. Part of it is that playing the guitar requires some set up time whereas piano just required plunking his butt down in front of it.

We found a stash of music books a week or so ago, and I tried to persuade Perry to learn to play Annie Lenox's Into the West from Return of the King. (If I ever have a memorial service, hopefully I'll have mentioned to someone in my life that I'd like that played, kthxbai). I just love that song.

Perry hasn't played the piano in weeks, if not months, fucking video games, so no dice, but dh picked up the book and is starting to play it on the electric guitar.

It's so neat to listen to the melody, the song, start to come out of the notes. At first, it's not there, he's all over the place, but now, after only half hour or so, I can start to hear the music as it's meant to be. I love it.

Music is such a strange thing for me. I can hear some things, like if something is right, but I usually can't saw what is needed to fix it (by contrast, dh has perfect relative pitch, AC has perfect pitch, Perry hard to tell, but at least perfect relative pitch, and dh think Linnea may have perfect pitch as well. This is entirely his side of the gene pool, my family's musical genes would sink) Anyhow. One of my precious memories of my kids was when we were standing the (front) pew in a Catholic church in South Carolina for dh's grandma's memorial service. The singing started. AC and Perry picked up hymnals and started to, well, sing. Just by looking at the book. This still blows my mind. Perry tried to explain to me how it worked, that it was just like reading something in a foreign language. He truly doesn't understand that to me, that isn't the case. It's completely alien.

I am not sure how it started, but I was watching music vidoes with Linnea and Perry tonight (and inflicting earworms on both dh and myself), often older 80s stuff.

God, Europe's The Final Countdown is still awesome.

I was bouncing from video to video and there was Thriller. Of course I had to watch it.

Linnea: "OMG. WAS MICHAEL JACKSON BLACK?"

Obviously, he's not been a big part of her cultural awareness, but she -ahem- thought he was blackfishing.

I know he was problematic in many ways, but man, what an artist. He was truly innovative.

And in my tour I also watched the music video of Whitney Houston with Kevin Costner (I will always love you.) God what a voice that woman had. And oh hail that was some sexy stuff.

At least Linnea learned something tonight?

Also, watching her do her cute dance moves to some of the music is awesome. Someday I'm going to try to record that...

Dh and Linnea are tired of Skype music lessons, and decided yesterday that next week, they'd do outdoors lessons on the deck. Teacher is thrilled as well.

TBF dh did ask me if it was ok, but the three of them were so excited I didn't say no. (*)

Why would I say no? Because the house is still a freaking mess.

There are boxes in the middle of the floor. There is a 6fx2.5ft portable table covered with boxes. The coffee table has boxes on it. There are boxes on the bench that adds seating in the living room. There are boxes and glassware all over the dining room table. There is a square 2.5x2.5 ft table covered with more glassware.

The floor has not been completely vacuumed since they brought this shit in, Memorial Day weekend. It has not been mopped since then either. The cats shed. The floors are a mess. In normal times, the Roomba gets run every night, and while it doesn't do a great job on a single outing, over the course of nightly sweeping, it does an ok job that we just supplement occasionally.

So yeah, mess. There is a lot of work to do to make this place presentable. I am not doing it alone, and Linnea and Perry are going to have to help as well. I'm a bit grumpy about the lack of help we're getting on anything, and I'm sure Linnea will do the waily waily thing about having to clean up when her vacation is almost over, but she's in on this, so she needs to help.

We won't be able to get the boxes taken care of in a week, alas, that's not happening, but maybe we can get them re-arranged and corralled. That would help a lot, since right now part of what is on the card table is a bunch of shoe boxes filled FIL and his mom's papers (they had OMG so many letters and cards and random photos and newspaper clipping and... and... Paper!) that could be consolidated in the other boxes that say "Papers", which would help, and a decision needs to be made on much of the glassware. Either donate it, or get someone to sell it on ebay. My feeling is still that if SIL wants to get money out of it, she needs to sell it herself, I'm not going to.

She got a bunch of money from an insurance policy, free and clear of the estate, and she's pushing dh to get every possible penny out of it. Which I understand, but it's his time and energy that are going there, and while we've recovered some of our costs (the funeral), we paid for enough out of pocket for her and her kid (travel, hotel, rental, clothing purchases, food), that dh will be getting very little money out of this. That's ok, we're not desperate for it, but I do think asking him to do more to get money for her by attempting to get him to sell any personal effect that might have any value at all is really pushing it. He has told her that she is welcome to take all of the stuff, sell it, and keep the money but she can't be bothered. She wants him to do and just write her another check. So we're kinda in a paralysis mode because there is some concern (me especially) that if we don't, she'll come after him, accusing him of not doing his executor duties properly. And yes, she would.

All this leaves me with crap all over the house (and I'm ignoring the garage full of furniture) and no easy way to get rid of it.

(*) Obviously, I don't give my husband permission to have people over. He was asking about my level of comfort for having someone over etc in pandemic times. We agree on risk assessment or it doesn't happen.

I don't think Linnea has stopped crying since yesterday.

She sees this latest rejection as meta, as what her whole is going to be: a series of rejections, one after the other.

She sees nothing but failure ahead.

I don't know how to help.

People mock helicopter parents. If there was anything I could do, I would so be fucking doing it.

I think part of why I'm angry about this music thing is for my deeply disappointed child, but also on a meta level, on the loss of talent and the curtailing of children's dreams. Be the Best or Go Home is not a message I think is good. I'm not talking about everyone getting a participation trophy. I'm talking about everyone being offered a respectful place to play, with room for growth.

For my kid.... it's hard to see her put in so much effort, in some many areas, only to never be good enough. She works as hard as the other rowers, something coaches and fellow rowers often tell her (and us), but at 5ft even, she's never going to be a top rower. She puts hours into homework and study for a C GPA. She practiced her audition piece over and over, even non-musical me could here the progress over the 10 days she had, only to be rejected.

We tell kids to work hard, but then we lie and tell them that hard work will be rewarded.

Perry still messing up on The Entertainer, though he's gotten further and what he does play sounds better. But it's still driving me batty because I truly do like listening to him.

So. I was wandering through youtube looking for things to suggest me play (Liszt, Chopin, anything) when I happened on what I guess is the main theme from Titanic, a song by Céline Dion, arranged for piano solo.

I'll admit that I'm 99% sure I'd never heard the Titantic theme before (no, I've not seen the movie), but I listened to the piano, and it was quite pretty.

Now for some reason, we're listening to Wagner and Strauss Ouvertures and we should really go to bed.

For the record Tannhäuser and Die Fledermaus.

Oh man, the concert last night was great!

It was a different venue than the ones we usually see metal shows at, the Neptune Theater.

Mixed review on the place as a live music venue. We weren't on the floor, because I'm short and most of the venues we usually go to have some areas where even short people can enjoy the show. So we opted for seats -real seats- on the balcony and the only ones left were on the back wall. This turned out to be good. Aside from that.... the bathrooms were clean, there were lots of stalls, so the lines at the women's restroom weren't a nightmare. The theater seating was on a good enough incline that even sitting down, one could see. The seats, OTOH, were tiny. Yes, I know I'm fat, and I did fit, even if uncomfortably, but I saw quite a few people come in, check out the seats, squirm around for a bit and leave, presumably to go hang out on the floor. The acoustics, in the nosebleed section, were pretty lousy and it got hot.

We were both tired, it's been a long few days, so opted to stay where we were.

The row in front of us was almost entirely empty. A couple was there, the woman was annoyingly recording EVERY SINGLE SONG and posting it to Instagram. Poor dh had to stand the whole time or all her saw was the screen of her phone. I truly don't get it. You're waaay in the back, the acoustics are lousy, I could see on her phone that the images she was getting were, well, crappy. For that, she was willing to be a major PITA. To dh's left was a middle-aged guy, maybe our age. He sat the whole concert and didn't move. To my right two women. One played games on her cell phone the whole time, the other one watched but never clapped, never reacted.

Dh and I were standing, and doing the usual screaming and active metal show thing. We were... a minority, alas. People up in the balcony mainly stayed in their seats and stayed static. It's loud! There are lights! There are musicians trying to get you to MOVE and scream.... how CAN you stay static? Anyhow, we tried not to be annoying to the people around us, but I also felt that there was enough empty seating in the back three rows that they could have moved it were were really obnoxious.

Bands. The first one I'd never heard of, a group out of Finland called Battle Beast. They were damned good. The lead singer was awesome, the band was energetic, the songs were good. They had their acoustics well dialed in for the venue, and were on the ball. I'll be buying their music and adding them to my Spotify.

Next up was Sonata Arctica, probably my favourite band. Their recent few albums have been much more... reflective, and they played too much from those, imo. These are listening songs, not live venue songs The crowd really only got going once they played a few numbers from older albums. I'm used to the main singer, Tony, seriously revving up the crowd, so this was a bit of a letdown. Even the people on the floor didn't appear to be as into it as they could have been. Bad set list, I think.

Kamelot was the headliner, again one of my favourites and they did not disappoint. Smoke machines, incredible lighting, stagecraft, and fabulous music. I was standing and screaming pretty much the whole time! It was great. They played a good mix of newer songs and older ones, the heartbreakingly beautiful ones that attracted many of us to the band in the first place. Check out Kamelot "Forever". Their singer is incredible!

Overall, it was great!

The only sad thing. We bought t-shirts from Sonata, I would have bought Kamelot ones but... they tend to have weird images and this one made me uncomfortable... as I get older I'm less and less happy to see images were women are in iffy situations. Some of the other tees only had a logo on 'em, a stylized K. It's pretty and I know what it means but... I'm always a bit concerned that some of these heavy metal symbol-y things have been too far co-opted by the crazy Europe! First! nationalists, so I passed. :( I hope this era passes quickly, so I can again say I listen to Nordic/Scandinavian heavy metal and not have to immediately specify that it's got nothing to do with white power. Ugh.

Anyhow! Great evening! My neck is only a bit sore!

Perry just played all three movements of the Moonlight Sonata, strung together, with only a few minor problems.

He's been working on it for a while, and today he and the teacher got to the end of their in depth study of the 3rd movement.

Teacher is weepy.

My son is tuning a wine glass. Or two. He has the tuner/metronome thingie. And his sister helping him. He's got one tuned to C and is working on getting the other to something else, with Linnea calling out sharp/flat very accurately, if I'm to believe the tuner thingie.

They finally stopped when my aunt had had enough. Thank goodness. It was... a bit ouchy on the ears.

I'd like to leave you folks with a mental image that will hopefully make some of you laugh, as it illustrates on version of "Teen, 2018".

Perry, sitting at the grand piano. Playing Sonata in C Major (Mozart), reasonably well. He plays from memory, so the sheet music on the piano may or may not be from that piece... but the other thing on the piano, on top of the sheets of music, is Perry's Kindle. Loaded with Brandon Sanderson's _The Way of Kings_. Which Perry is reading as he plays, periodically darting a hand up to "turn the page", and getting back to the music as if there had been no interruption.

Multitasking teens....