The languages I know and how it helped me navigate melodeon/diatonic accordion videos

This is a somewhat random post, but yesterday I read a post in Spanish and responded. The diatonic accordion is wildly popular in Latin America (as well as the piano accordion). They like the three row accordions and they like it tuned wet. Probably my least favorite combo, but that is for "me" to play, Ms. East-Coast-Suburban-Urban-White-Woman-Raised-in-Iowa. If I were in Mexico or at a Mexican festival, I would love it as it's taking in the culture.

Anyway, it made me realize, I have been able to follow and understand a lot of posts. I'm a native English speaker, obviously. I have an undergrad degree in Spanish (my Masters is in Educational Administration). I married an immigrant from Croatia and we raised our children hearing both English and Croatian. Our oldest son is fully bilingual (in speaking) and our younger son (and myself) mostly understand it, but respond in English. When we visit Croatia I can get by - ordering food, going to the market, asking for help, etc, but I wouldn't consider myself even conversant... just could survive and listen a lot and nod! :-) That artwork at the top? Says 7th Croatian Competition for Accordion.

So, it happens that a lot of posts about diatonic accordions are in English (because of the UK), Spanish, and Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian - all which are understandable to me. Because written French and Italian are somewhat kind of similar enough to Spanish, I can pick out some of that too. The one regular language I cannot decipher much unless they are crossover words in English is German. Of course, what is my dominant cultural heritage? German. GO figure it's the language I can't decipher without help from Google translate.

Accordion music, though, has been popular all over the place. Here's a great video sharing some of that history:

In other news got a good night of sleep and my cold symptoms are lessening (though my son has it now), so hopefully I can get in a good practice today. I might delve into some of the new material that has been sent to me too. We'll see how today goes.

Head is above water and I'm here

The last little bit has been a rocky road. This "fun stuff" my destresser stuff, was too much to add in the last 9 days... OMG, it's been 9 freaking days!

So what has been up? Writing it all out might help me process it all. First, I have my normal work stuff which keeps me busy. And my second job work which had quite a bit in the last little bit more than usually as things are finally moving faster and foward there. Add in that I was in a show as part of work and there were rehearsals and practicing on my own as I didn't want to be the person who messed up as I did in rehearsals (OMG - I had two nightmares about that). And as always, homeschooling my son, teaching my older son to drive on Fridays, cooking, etc.

And then, quite literally, a day after that variety show happened successfully (and was great fun!) I started to get sick on Sunday. By Sunday evening I was super congested, super exhausted, and had a terrible sore throat. I attributed some of it just being exhausted - the nightmares weren't helping! Monday, I was achy and tired and napped twice during the day briefly - and for the first time in my life, I had no voice! Boy is that annoying! Tuesday, my voice was back (yay!) and many of my heavy symptoms were lighter, but by midday I started to develop a fever and by evening, it was significant. Wednesday, I felt quite a bit better and decided to stay home another day from work. By 3 pm I was getting antsy (a good sign), so I did minimum work in the kitchen - I cleaned a few pots and pans, decluttered the counter and made a meal in the electric pressure cooker. Oh, and a couple of lessons with my son for learning. Those other days my husband dealt with more of the learning, all of the snow/ice cleanup  and laundry and dishes, etc. I had no energy or desire to pick up the melodeon. I felt it would just discourage me instead of encourage me.

Today, Thursday, I was itching to get out of the house and to work and it was a productive day, but long as I had evening meetings. I came home about 8:30 and I was starving and getting pretty exhausted. I ate. Thanks goodness for leftovers! And then I came upstairs to spend time with my family. Of course, a minute or less after going upstairs, my hormone ridden son threw an epic fit about saying he had wanted to watch a movie and Sven, my husband, hadn't understood he had wanted to watch a movie. Yes... that was what the fit was about - for real. That burned off my last bit steam and took away any joy left for the day. I was completely sapped and zapped. My son was still so mad at us, he didn't want either of us to read to him tonight which is the first time in his nearly 12 years - and as a child with autism, giving up a ritual on his own is a big deal. 

My only take away from that is that I'm proud my husband and I kept our calm and stuck to our guns and didn't give in to his tantruming. Kiddo calmed down fairly quickly on his own, but he is currently still crying himself to sleep.

That is when I decided to steal a bit of time to play. There was no joy in it. I'm exhausted, but just making the time to play after several days away from it was in itself soothing. It was grabbing some me time once again.

I haven't been to the melnet site, or to my email associated with this blog for more than a week. I'll get to that tomorrow.

It hasnt' been 10 days though since I practiced a wee bit. Thanks to the Streb (what a joy to play on) I got a couple practice sessions at work in break times between work and rehearsals last week. It was short and it made me realize I need a different set of headphones or an adaptor for the port, but I did practice with the volume just turned down low. That was awesome! (even though I was walked in on by someone of our organization and I was still embarrassed!

Attached are some photos of our act in the show, which honest to goodness, now feels like 50,000 years ago. It's been a very, very long few days here. I don't like share pictures of me, but I do it because I need to get over that crap and accept me for who I am!!!! So below are me and my colleagues presenting "Be Our Guest". We are all dressed as exaggerations of ourselves. I work with children and I tend to wear petticoats and full skirts for festivals and holidays because the kids love it when I have fun and dress up. The kids decorated my skirt the week before too (if you're wondering why I have scribbly drawings on my skirt).

And less than 12 hours after the show, the work must go on. One of the classes I work with made dog toys from donated materials to give to a shelter.

PS. I chose this illustration because it has a robin and snow. Kind of like now. We had our only significant snow this Monday/Tuesday in mid March, just as, quite literally, the earliest spring trees started to bloom; killing probably all the cherry blossoms and kind of making pointless the Cherry Blossom festival in DC this year. Maybe they didn't want to bloom for Trump?

The good and the bad

Since I'm an optimist and like to get the bad out of the way to end on the good, let's start there. So, the bad is that I've been insanely busy. This past week I put in between my full time job, my part-time job, homeschooling, and teaching my older son to drive, I spent nearly every second of my available time which means very little practicing. Means I barely had time to try out the Streb sent for me to use for a few months too! Tomorrow is my day off for my full time job, so I'll have more time to practice tomorrow!

The good, while I was stressed all to heck and super busy, I found I wanted to grab the melodeon to practice and it does act as stress relief.  On Saturday morning, I had three things super looming over me to get to before noon and before I went to the take my son out driving and grocery shopping for the week, I said, "Give me a few minutes to play the melodeon so I can relax a little bit." So, as bad as I am and will be for a long time, playing is serving a crucial purpose - stress release!

Today I received another gift of music from Wally too. I haven't had a chance to open it fully Wally, but thank you! It's shocking and amazing and so generous.

And today I stole an hour at the end of the day to practice. Probably not the best to practice between 8:45 and 9:45, but that is what I had available to me.

I ran through all the pieces I am learning (about 5) and decided to show the second piece I'm working on as it's a march and marches are a Theme of the Month of melnet - maybe I'll put my feeble attempt up as it progresses as, hey, it's a march! Then, I tried the last piece I'm working on which is a reel. I can play it a tiny wee bit better than what I recorded here, but not much better as I have to slow it way, way down to try to get left and right hand to work together.

More progress on separating hands and out for delivery!

Two days ago (didn't have a chance to practice yesterday) I had another small step in a listener's ear, but a huge step for me! I had another micro-step in being able to do one thing with my left hand while doing another with the right hand.

In some new exercises in the Pignol and Milleret Method book there are eighth notes in the left hand basses and quarter notes in the right hand melody.  For the first time I was able to do that - I could lift my hand off the basses without simultaneous lifting my hand off the right hand melody. Of course, it didn't come automatically or every time it appeared in the exercise, but that it even started to happen was a gleeful moment. It means that my brain is beginning to build up connections which allow my hands to work more independently. Yes, this middle-aged brain can still learn new tricks!

I think it helped that it was earlier in the day too - when I'm fresher. Most of the time practice is after a long work day and dinner and a bit of family time - basically, I'm usually practicing when I'm at my worst, not best! When I practice a bit later today, I'll be curious if I can still do it and if it gets better and easier.

In other news, the silent melodeon is out for delivery for today. It got shipped in the UK on March 1st and will be delivered to my house on March 3rd. Before I continue about that - first a comparison about mail. This package from the UK is taking 2 days to get here - door to door. I had a priority mail package sent to me from Minnesota last week. It was mailed on February 22nd and expected delivery was Feb. 24th. I got it on February 28th... When someone pays for priority shipping, they are paying for faster delivery over 1st class mail, but that package got here at 1st class mail timing and that is just wrong. I have no complaint about mail taking days to get here - OK. fine. but if you pay for faster delivery, having it take 6 days is not acceptable.

OK, back to the silent melodeon, the Streb e-melodeon. I can't wait to try it out. Like, last night I could have used it. I got home at 8:30 pm. I had been away since 9 am, so I hadn't seen my family all day. My son and husband were watching a movie together, so I didn't want to disturb too much. Now, when my son watches a movie, he half pays attention as it's not a new movie, so we talk and chit-chat about the day, so talking is OK, but playing an instrument in the room would not be. Yes, I could have left the room to play, but I hadn't seen my family all day. These are the times the e-melodeon will come in useful. I could be there and practice. So practice didn't happen. By the time movie was over and spending a bit of time and reading a book to my son, it was 10:30 pm. I almost went to practice, but I was afraid practice would suck as it was now bedtime, not play time.

So, gleeful!!!! Today is the day! Too bad I have to work today too.