Entertainment on Stage and Drama in the Milk Aisle

Well - we are in performance mode in this house! Camille danced her heart out on Friday and Ellie played her heart out on Sunday. She performed in the MACSA Awards Recital. Joel babysat again. Poor baby. He is trying to pay off his debts to us but we are like the credit card companies and are hiding the truth that he can never ever ever pay it off! He will go to his grave owing us big time! Mwaaa Haaa Haaa Haaaa (that is my evil laugh).


Anyway, I had pretty much tried to ignore Ellie all day because when she is nervous she makes me nervous and then I make her nervous and you get the picture. Anyway, so I had stayed out of her way all day and I'm pretty sure she was grateful. When we arrived at the location we were early. We're not used to this. We walked in on the end of another recital in progress. We thought we had missed it! Jeff and Ellie immediately looked at ME of course. (I hate being the one in charge but I cannot find anyone to take over for me.) I whispered to a woman "What time did this start?" and she said, "4:30 - it is almost over". I told her I had thought it started at 6:00 and she informed me that another one did, indeed, begin at 6:00. YAY! Another catastrophe avoided.


Ellie chose to sit far, far, far away from me. Did I mention we make each other nervous? I knew Ellie needed to play well - not because people were watching or expecting anything of her - but because she has recently had a few bad runs with memory lapses and freezes on stage and during competitions (all of this music is memorized). She REALLY needed to get through a piece without this happening so she could get her confidence back.

The kids who performed in this recital are all amazing kids. Two of them earned Young Artist Awards, identifying them as being among the best musicians in Texas. Two of them earned Artist Awards, identifying them as being among the best musicians in the US - if not the world. In fact, one of the kids is a 15-year-old who truly is one of the best in the world. When he finished performing, his teacher explained that we would probably never again hear that particular piece played by a 15-year-old, as it is one of the hardest pieces for piano ever composed. So it was a great night with wonderful music and some inspiring (and really nice) kids and Ellie nailed her piece. In the photo below, Ellie is on the left. It was nice of Katie, on the far right, to wear a coordinating dress : ).

This is Ken and AJ Thompson - both extremely talented piano teachers at the Musical Arts Center of San Antonio. Ken is Ellie's teacher and she loves him.



We filmed it with our Olympus digital camera (we don't own a video camera). It will shoot up to 12 minutes of video and we feel that is enough because we have never seen anybody's videos that we wanted to watch longer than 12 minutes. Anyway - this was the first time we had ever filmed her playing. Obviously, the sound quality isn't great but it is good enough to be able to tell she is playing more than chopsticks. I spent the ENTIRE day yesterday (well not entire - I exaggerate units of time due to an impatient personality) trying to upload the video to the blog. IT MADE ME CRAZY. Jeff finally had to get involved and he figured it out. It was too big. We have to upload it somewhere else and then provide a link.


Jeff told me how to do it when he left this morning. He spoke really slowly and clearly like he always does when he talks to me about technical things and I heard this, "waaa blah schma lee for to waa meee quaahhhh, understand?"

"Yeah, do I look stupid to you?"

"I didn't say you look stupid. waaa blah schmee schma fluuu fraaa baaa ta. Get it?"


"Sure, I got it. that's not hard."

"Good. And then you've got to meee schmeee blah wah fah so la ti do. Okay? Do you think you can do that?"

"Duh."

So when he gets home Jeff will add the link.

We are out of tomato soup and today I am going to make homemade spaghetti sauce. We are also looking for a ketchup recipe. All the ketchup we can find has high fructose corn syrup (unless we get the organic, which is expensive, and my kids drink ketchup like milk). Speaking of milk, yesterday I was in the grocery store and bought 4 gallons of milk. I noticed at the checkout that one of them was leaking. So a girl went off to get me another one. I finished checking out and then I waited for her to come back with my milk. And waited. And waited. And waited....."Hey!" I called to the checker. "Shouldn't she be back by now?"

"Huh? What? Who are you? I've never seen you before in my life."

"I'm waiting on my milk."

Blank expression.

"Remember? My milk was leaking? She went to get me some?"

Blank expression.

I waited and waited and waited. She finally returned. With whole milk.

"Oh, I didn't buy whole milk. I bought 1%."

"We're out of the milk you bought."

"Well, I don't want this whole milk."

Blank stare.

"Hey!" I yelled to the checker. "I already paid for my leaky milk and you're out of the kind I want."

"Do I know you? Have I ever seen you before?"

Hmmmmm....how much more time did I want to invest in this? I looked at the milk runner girl and she literally bolted away from me like a rabbit.

"Wait a minute! Come back! I don't want this!"

She was gone.

I walked to the milk section, grabbed a gallon of another (more expensive) brand of milk. I walked back to my cart and yelled to the checker, "Hey! I got a different brand of milk. It cost more!"

And she was like, "Do I know you? Have I seen you before? Why are you bothering me?"

And I walked out with the milk. I couldn't have tried harder if I had slit my wrists and paid in blood.

Speaking of trips to the grocery store... I wrote my sometimes weekly column about a trip to the grocery store with Camille and Jasper in tow. You can read about it in The Wilson County News. You can subscribe to the paper by clicking on the link on the right hand side.

Check back later and Jeff will have a bragging link for Ellie's piano performance! What is the point of living vicariously through your children if nobody is there to witness it?
Later,
Sardine Mama

PS I am really enjoying the google ads running on my page. Google decides which adds are relevant based on the contents on my blog. I just noticed they are advertising toilets today : ) Before that it was towing. I am apparently, a complicated person to understand.