Frustration

I have heard so many wax poetic that the obesity epidemic in the world today is directly related to a lack of physical activity. Others claim the cause is poor nutrition and lack of self-control. If either, or both, are correct, what is wrong with me and those like me?

Let me paint a picture of my week:

• I do one hour of intense Zumba Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
• My husband and I take at least a 2-mile walk 5-7 days per week.
• I drink over 100 ounces of water daily.
• I drink a soy milk and green superfoods drink every morning.
• I eat a primarily vegan diet with the occasional chicken breast or hamburger added to the mix. 
• Our home is dairy-free and, mostly, gluten-free, thanks to Celiac Disease in my husband and second daughter.
• I spend Tuesdays and Thursdays on my feet 10:00 am until 4:00 pm, teaching college mathematics.
• In addition to teaching math, I also teach clarinet and flute lessons on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.
• When I teach all day, I drink a vegan meal-replacement shake and eat a Clif Bar for lunch.
• I have four daughters, a husband, an orange furbaby, and a home to tend.
• I play in a woodwind trio, woodwind quintet, and orchestra.
• I am planning a solo clarinet/chamber music recital.
• I practice one hour or more daily.

My point? I am far from lazy, I do not overeat, and I eat pretty healthy food.

Why, then, am I gaining weight instead of losing? I suspect a few culprits:

1. A healthy body requires at least eight hours of sleep per night, and I am averaging just under seven right now.
2. Weight training is missing from my routine.
3. My stress levels have soared this semester.
4. Although I eat heathy foods, and not too much of anything, I do still have a bit of a sweet tooth.
5. Hormonal fluctuations that are not being adequately subdued by my current medication.
6. Asthma that is not as under control as it used to be.

My plan is to start with the first item on my problem list and work my way through them until I discover what is stopping my weight loss. I have lost it all before, and I can again.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 19

As I posted today on Facebook, I need to refocus my trust in God to provide what we truly need, so I think it is time to start up some thankful posting.

Today, I am thankful for being respected as a musician, teacher, and advocate for the arts. What a blessing and a dream fulfilled to be doing exactly what I'm meant to do and earning the respect of my colleagues in the process.

I have known since the age of sixteen that I want to be a professional musician and music teacher.  I have worked tirelessly for the past twenty years to make this dream a reality.

When I was in high school, I poured myself into my music and schoolwork as a means to garner recognition, awards, and scholarships.  I was determined to see that I "got out" of West Virginia and made something of myself.  As time passed and I gained more and more recognition on the national level, I realized how much my music was a part of who I was, a part of my very soul. There really was no other career path for me. I was meant to be a musician and a music teacher. That is just who I am.

Following graduation from college, I moved to Minnesota to begin my new life with The Boy.  When I moved to Minnesota, I knew no one other than my then-fiancé.  After working in the engineering and mathematics fields for the first 15 months, I was absolutely miserable.  Granted, I loved teaching College Algebra at the University of Minnesota, but it still left a bit of a hole.  I will not even go into the horrible experience I had with civil engineering and how depressing I found it as a career.  Suffice to say that civil engineering is definitely not the creative outlet I need.

While a newlywed and freshly pregnant (my honeymoon souvenir), I began to seek out new opportunities with my music.  There is a fantastic music store in the Twin Cities that hired me to teach beginning clarinet and saxophone lessons for them, and my studio began to bloom.  I became bolder in my self-promotion, and my friends and colleagues suggested me to many schools as a teacher.  Before I knew it, I found myself with a clarinet studio of 30 students per week and a waiting list.  What a huge blessing.  Performance opportunities were always available to me, as well, but my mainstay was my teaching studio.


It was quite difficult for me to leave behind the business I had spent cultivating for ten of my eleven years in Minnesota, but I was able to suggest replacement teachers with confidence.  I have begun this process anew in Maryland, and I am feeling much more confident in my ability to build another successful studio.  I have been welcomed with open arms by the county school system here, and it has given me renewed hope for future success.  While I know it will take time to build another program, I know that God is with me every step of the way.  He has lead me to so many incredible music educators already.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 13

As I posted today on Facebook, I need to refocus my trust in God to provide what we truly need, so I think it is time to start up some thankful posting.

Today, I am thankful that my camera will soon be on its way back to me. I never fully realized how much I truly love shooting nearly every day until I could no longer do so.

My Nikon camera stopped functioning properly several weeks ago, and I sold one of my lensed to pay for the repair.  As of today, it looks like my camera will be shipped back to me within the day.

To say that I have felt lost and in a bit of despair without my camera is completely accurate.  I had just begun yet another photo project, knowing not to promise a daily photo this time, and I could not force myself to take those photos with my iPhone camera.  Without a point-and-shoot, I have been relying solely on that iPhone, and it has not let me down.  I have been realistic in my expectations of the photos taken with my phone, which has helped quite a lot.  Those pages in the girls' scrapbooks will just have a little extra story to them.  That is not such a bad thing, though.

The lack of a camera body has lead me to rent another camera from borrowlenses.com for a children's shoot, which has made me very excited at the idea of buying a lightly-used one from a colleague that is a brilliant photographer.  This whole experience, in fact, has helped me to define my actual needs versus wants in my photography business.  In addition, I have been able to really define my style and editing process and be more organized about how I want to approach my photography business in the future.

Once again, I find myself thanking God for yet another blessing in disguise.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 8

As I posted today on Facebook, I need to refocus my trust in God to provide what we truly need, so I think it is time to start up some thankful posting.


Today is so easy. Today, I am thankful for my N. She was my miracle baby six years ago, and she is still my little sweetheart. She has a huge heart and lots of attitude. Happy birthday, N! 

To call my N a miracle is not to be taken lightly.  The only reason she is alive is through the sheer grace of God.

We knew we wanted a third child, so Jim and I were overjoyed when it did not take long to get pregnant.  We thought that would be our last pregnancy, but that is an entirely different, and happy, story.  Everything seemed to be going along as expected with my third pregnancy until I slipped and fell in the bath tub at eight weeks.  At this point, I had not been to see my doctor yet, as per his policy of waiting until 12-14 weeks, and there would have been nothing for him to do if I had fallen badly enough to harm the baby or my womb.  As it was, nothing come of this fall other than a few ugly bruises.

At nineteen weeks pregnant, my stubbornness kicked in when my dishwasher stopped working while my husband was out of town on business.  What would a sane, rational, woman do?  Wait until her husband comes home to install a new one.  What did this insane, irrational, pregnant woman do?  Install it herself the same day he was due home.  I did not over-exert myself or put myself in any danger.  All seemed well.

After my husband returned home that evening, I picked up my then two-year-old daughter to take her to bed.  I felt a sharp pain in my side, but I thought nothing of it.  After tucking in my two other daughters, reading, and singing to them, I headed to the bathroom for the twentieth time that day, thinking it would be like any other day.  My husband knew there was a problem when I began shrieking from the bathroom.  I was bleeding.  That is one of the scariest things to see when one is mid-pregnancy.  Yes, spotting and some light bleeding is common in the beginning and the end of a pregnancy, but those months in between the two should be blood-free.  This was my third pregnancy, and I found myself in unknown territory.

Luckily, I had my mid-term ultrasound scheduled for the very next morning.  As I had already been having minor Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks, I was quite anxious to have the ultrasound and know that my baby was fine.  Although the technician was not able to find a placental abruption, my doctor felt the need to keep a closer eye on me.  Research shows that only, approximately, fifty percent of placental abruptions can be diagnosed with ultrasound (that number could be different six years later, but those were the statistics when it applied to us).  

As the next two weeks ticked by, I began to notice a lot of cramping and tightness in my uterus.  Being experienced in birthing children, I knew this was not something I wanted to happen mid-pregnancy.  When I brought it up with my doctor, he immediately prescribed partial bedrest for the remainder of my pregnancy.  I was able to continue teaching in 1.5-hour slots of time, with my feet up, not playing my clarinet, and drinking water the whole time.  After 1.5 hours, I was to rest on my left side for thirty minutes before sitting up to teach again.  

I spent an entire summer with my altered routine, all while taking care of my older children, two and four at the time, from the sofa.  My dear, sweet husband would make them lunches and fill their sippy cups every morning and leave them low enough in the refrigerator for my eldest to reach them.  I would read the girls books and play games and watch fun shows with them from my jail cell on the sofa, and they would bring me anything I might need that they could reach.  They were, and are, the best girls in the world.  

Yet another blessing to count in this post is that my mother-in-law taught me how to knit in February of 2006, just four months before my 4.5-month bedrest sentence.  My sweet, patient husband took me every Saturday to my favorite local yarn store, the Yarn Garage in Rosemount, MN, to buy more yarn and patterns to keep me sane.  >I spent those 4.5 months drinking water, resting, reading, and knitting while fighting the preterm labor that threatened to deliver my third child much, much too early.  While those months were worth every second to ensure that my darling N was healthy, my health and playing deteriorated as I was completely inactive.  Again, that is another story for another post.

By late October, at 38 weeks pregnant, I decided that I had had enough of lying around.  I tried to become more involved with day-to-day activities in our home again, but those months of atrophied muscles made it more difficult.  Again, my stubborn nature reigned supreme, and I ended up with a stress fracture in my right foot just one day before delivering my little N.  

At 39 weeks gestation, my doctor induced my labor due to a lightning fast delivery with my second (1.5 hours of labor, three pushes, a 9-pound baby, and I was up and walking within twenty minutes).  Based on the months of complications, we were placed in the very first room by the nurses station, and a NICU team was on call for my delivery.  After starting the Pitocin drip and breaking my water, the nurse came rushing back into my room to turn down the dosage.  N was not tolerating the medicine well, and this trend continued as she repeatedly became distressed when the Pitocin was increased.  Eventually, we opted to nearly turn it off and let nature take its course.

Once our room full of concerned family members took a much-needed break for dinner, everything happened all at once.  I was able to stand without worrying that my dear father-in-law would see my bare bottom, so I took full advantage.  I stood and hugged my husband, and that was all it took for my labor to hit the overdrive stage.  Within ten minutes I went from 4 cm dilation to delivering.  This is precisely the reason my doctor scheduled an induction.

Because of the rapidity of my delivery, the NICU team had to take N very quickly for evaluation.  I barely got to see her, after reaching near-hysteria because the doctor was not showing her to me, before the kind NICU team went to work.  I was so engrossed in watching every movement she and the NICU team made that I was barely aware that I was following instructions to expel the placenta.  I vaguely noticed a weird feeling following the delivery of her placenta, but I was still focused on my new baby.  It turns out that my "weird" feeling was passing two fist-sized blood clots from behind N's placenta from my two partial placental abruptions.

If I had ever needed more proof of God's continued miracles on this planet, that was it for me and anyone else in the room.  He is the reason those blood clots did not kill my baby.  He is the reason why my bedrest was enough to keep my preterm labor at bay.  He is the reason she was fine after having a large vial of amniotic fluid pulled from her lungs by the NICU team.  He is the reason why my pediatrician talked the hospital into not making me put N back in for her jaundice.  He is the reason I have her.  Period.  There is no question in my heart, mind, or soul.  He is the reason we named her what we did, because her name means, "Born of God."  Thank you, Lord, for the most amazing and stubborn and incredible little N a mother could have.

**Note: I have chosen not to include her full name or photos, because my blog is set to public.  I do not wish to allow photos of my children to on the web without strict controls over who can see the photos.  Thank you for understanding my concerns.

30 Days of Gratitude: Day 7

As I posted today on Facebook, I need to refocus my trust in God to provide what we truly need, so I think it is time to start up some thankful posting.

Today, I am thankful for new opportunities and the support of colleagues. 

I have been struggling a lot with the direction of my future once the end of August arrives.  What is so special about the end of August?  My baby will enter kindergarten, and I will no longer be a stay-at-home-mom.  At that point, I have no reason to stay at home any longer.  Yes, I know I could volunteer at school, clean my house even more, etc., but that is just not enough for me.  In fact, the majority of my closest friends were blown away by my decision to stay at home with my children in the very beginning, eleven years ago.  It was, and still is, the very best choice for my four daughters, and I do not regret making such a choice.  But it was still a surprising choice given my level of ambition and talent.  

Fast forward to, say, three months ago.  As my third daughter climbed up the steps of the bus for her first day of kindergarten, I suddenly realized that my days at home were numbered.  What did this mean?  Should I go back to school?  Should I dust off that worthless piece of paper that is my civil engineering degree and go back to it (enter vomiting motions here)?  Should I just continue to stay at home and practice my face off every day in order to get a playing job in a symphony?  

These questions and more have been flooding my head for months now.  Once the news about all these orchestras being frozen out by their management started multiplying, panic set in.  As a professional clarinetist, what prospects are left for my future?  Am I going to have to seek employment in Europe, where audiences still flock to orchestra concerts?  WIll I be able to find a job as a clarinet professor?  Is my profession on the wane?  With the rise in insipid, sophomoric popular music, is it still possible for the general public to enjoy music with real content in today's world?  I wish I knew the answers.  

In an effort to feel more included at the girls' new school and cultivate more connections to the music community in our school district, I began volunteering every Wednesday morning in the music room.  What a blessing that has been!  I cannot begin to say enough good things about the general music teacher and her Recorder Karate program.  These third graders are playing recorder, including traditional American hymns and folk music, and LOVING it.  I mean, LOVING it.  These fine young musicians work so hard every week to impress both me and their teacher with their progress.

This leads me to my reason for gratitude for today.  Alison, the general music teacher, asked me if I would consider teaching for our school district.  She said that I would make a fantastic addition to the program, and she knows that I would have the full support of several teachers.  That really made me think about my future and an option I had eliminated when I was eighteen.  As a freshman in undergraduate studies, I ruled out a degree in music education simply because of the marching band requirement.  The marching band practices conflicted with orchestra, and I was the only freshman clarinet player in orchestra.  I could not skip out on the type of playing I wanted to do for the rest of my life just to march around and play a shoddy plastic clarinet that would not be heard anyway.  I am a classical, orchestral clarinet player, and field marching just is not my "thing."  It never has been; it never will be.  So, I opted for the bachelors program in music performance instead.

That said, I think I may truly enjoy teaching general music or beginning band.  Ideally, I would love to work only with the beginner woodwind classes, but I realize this is a pipe dream.  So, I find myself now re-visting a career path for which I thought I did not have the patience.  I have not made up my mind as to whether or not I want to pursue this path, but to know that I have the votes of confidence from several members of the music teaching community in my school district really helps.  I still do not know what my future holds, but I do know it will involve music at all times.  That is just who I am.  My prayers have turned more toward trusting God to know what is best for me, and I know that He alone is the one in control of where my future leads.

I Don't Know How

I don't know how to keep rolling with the punches life keeps dealing us. To recap the past three years:

• My husband got fired from his job, even though he was receiving awards and accolades for his work.

• My husband moved across the country, staying with friends for nine months, because he got a lower-paying job in a more expensive area of the country.

• I packed up our entire house, moved every box to the storage unit, fixed up the house, listed and showed the house, continued working part-time in the evenings, and still took care of my precious daughters.

• I watched my music studio dwindle to only a handful of students by the time I moved, because no one wanted to start up with a teacher that was leaving.

• We moved across the country to join my husband, only to find a tiny apartment in a not-so-good neighborhood waiting for us.

• The kids hated their new school.

• We hated their new school.

• I couldn't teach in the apartment, so I wasn't able to work.

• My husband was awarded an incredible raise that saved our bacon.

• The girls started a new year at their school, and we were happy with their teachers. They still didn't really have friends, though.

• Our eldest needed to get braces. Goodbye, $5000, which we're still paying off.

• When our front neighbors moved out, their cockroaches moved into our apartment.

• We found an incredible real estate agent through the Dave Ramsey ELP program, worked out a loan with our amazing credit union, and moved into a large rental townhouse.

• I decided to apply for admission to graduate school in music at a smaller school in the area, assuming that they would have an appropriate assistantship for me. I was heartily granted admission.

• I was not offered any sort of assistantship. I turned down the school.

• The air conditioning in the van broke, so we were going to fix it. It turned out to be a lot more involved and expensive than we expected. On the way to the mechanic to find out what to do next, my husband's car lost the clutch. So, the clutch got replaced, at the expense of the air conditioning in my van, all our savings, and the money we'd scrimped and saved in order to attend the wedding of one of my best friends.

• I finally started teaching again.

• I was hired to play for a musical and teach a band camp in my hometown area, which allowed me to purchase a piece of musical equipment I desperately needed.

• The possibility of several more students was dangled in front of me, but those opportunities fell through.

• Now, our second daughter needs braces, and there is no way we can pay for them anytime soon.

• We haven't taken the girls on a vacation in eight years.

• We don't eat out.

• We only go to free movies.

• I have managed to lose forty pounds and gain all sorts of muscle in the past year through loads of hard work and eliminating meat and dairy from my diet.

• The girls cannot take music lessons or dance classes, because we cannot afford to pay for them. We have residual debt from our youth and crises of the past that takes up most of our income.

• I have been trying to gain momentum with my photography, which seemed to finally be happening, and my camera broke.

• I haven't found anywhere to play here yet. I haven't been hired for any gigs in my area at all. I have only met two other clarinetists, and one doesn't even play any longer.

• The real kicker: my dad has cancer.

Yeah, that's been my three years. There are some great things in there, but the bad things that I've listed have only scratched the surface of the mile-long list I could make.

At this point, I could lose my faith, or I could place it more firmly in God's hands. I'm choosing the latter, because I know God has a plan for me. I just hope that plan has some really good things coming soon.