Confessions

1) I was driving 51 mph in the town of Clarendon yesterday, and I got pulled over, and it was no one's fault but my own. I thought through several different ways to write about the experience. I considered arguing that I wasn't actually going 51 mph, and that the cop might not have clocked me accurately since I was coming up a hill. I considered justifying my error by claiming that I was driving J's car, or complaining that I was going at the flow of traffic. I thought of complaining that the speed trap outside the fire station is a dirty trick and that the 35 mph zone is just a way to fleece out-of-towners. I even considered sidestepping the issue of fault altogether and writing about how angry and frustrated the whole experience made me feel. But no, all of those don't matter. I was speeding. And I was caught. And it was my fault.

2) Whether or not I have a "good" day or a "bad" day depends way too much on how well my practicing goes for that particular day. If I hit all the high notes and my lips feel good, I usually come home with a smile on my face. If my chops feel off and I keep on fizzing out or cracking notes, I come home with a scowl. Today was a good day. I practiced a bunch of really hard etudes, put in some good work on some orchestral excerpts, and had an effortless day on the piccolo trumpet. If everything else in my day had been exactly the same but I'd had lousy practicing, I would have come home a grumpus. This is not fair to James and J, and it's an immature way to approach practicing.

3) I watch the clock when I teach lessons. I try to be subtle, but I'm almost always thinking "okay, ten more minutes until this student leaves, and then I can check my email and read for a few minutes before my next student comes." It'd be one thing if I was teaching a whole class, but I see most of my students either one-on-one or in small groups. There's no reason why they shouldn't have my full attention. To be honest, the really good students get most of it. But for a lot of my students, I'm only paying three-quarters attention at best, and that's shameful. I would have been devastated if I'd found out any of my private teachers were watching the clock and waiting for me to leave.

4) My 12 days of Valentines project for J fell apart badly. I was supposed to have a video ready last Friday, and it didn't happen. We were going to have a movie night on Saturday, and I never got the movie. There were several other events that fell through as well, and the ones that I managed to get done on time weren't nearly as funny or romantic as I'd hoped. I sort of gave up towards the end. There wasn't really a good reason why, either. We're still going to do the date I had planned for the 14th, but even that's going to be scaled back from the original plans.

5) Sometimes when James and I are playing outside in the snow it will be time for him to go inside. (I can tell he's just as cold as I am.) But I know that if I pick him up and carry him inside, he'll scream bloody murder because he wants to stay out. Sometimes I'll let him fall over in the snow on purpose so that he gets upset and needs to be held, and wants to go in where its nice and warm.