Our Nations Capitol

Well hello internet person (or Russian data miners! Seriously, what's with the hundreds of blog views from Russia?! Y'all are weird)! It's been a few years apparently! If I'm being honest with everyone, at this point, I'm writing this for my kids for when I am no longer able to speak to them. Hi Guys! Sorry if anything I wrote before was difficult for you to read. I know I tried to put up a stoic front and be cool when you were small and we were doing all that shit, but I am human and I have thoughts and feelings and this turned out to be one of the ways I processed them, I guess. 

Ok! So! Last I wrote anything was in September 2020 in Miami. Since then, I finished my 3rd year at Miami Beach Senior High School and we actually managed to get some shit done and make some real music post-COIVD. That year was WILD though, the devious licks thing that had kids pulling toilets and sinks off of the wall. I've told the story a few times of the kids that would get self-righteous and angry when I said they couldn't go to the bathroom "What do you mean I can't go to the bathroom, what kind of oppression is this?!?" "Kid, it's not oppression, there's no toilets, you guys are ripping them off the wall because it's funny, remember?! Congratulations, you played yourself!" So there was a TON of learning about how to act in a society at that school that year. For my band and orchestra kids, it was mostly good and I was fortunate enough to get someone after me that could hang (for the most part, the orchestra died and she wants that marching band thing, those kids didn't want that marching band thing, but that's that teachers lesson to learn and while I shake my head a little, I'm not judging, lest I be judged). Anyway, The Wife graduated with her PhD, got a job as a college professor in North Virginia, and we moved to that area. Yay! Getting out of Florida! 

That road trip wasn't quite as epic as going to Miami from Seattle, we drove both cars, we moved our cat in one of the cars, and we just drove North for a couple days and stayed in some hotels and got to our temporary apartment on campus in Fairfax County. I had already sent The Wife to look at a few houses and we were in the process of closing on one. Now, I should say, in Washington/Oregon a town house or row house is fucking garbage housing for garbage people. So I was incredibly nervous about a townhouse and there was NOTHING in this county that didn't have an HOA. I absolutely HATE that, but we didn't have a choice. So not even 2 weeks after unloading the moving truck, we moved all our shit again into our actual house. Thankfully row houses here are a bit nicer than the west coast, but as I'm writing in 2024, it's still not REAL home ownership. HOA's can eat a bag (even though ours has been just fine) and in our tiny little footprint, we can't do the things we want to do, like buy a beater car and restore it, or store a family set of kayaks, or get my outdoor kitchen finished. So, I don't think this is our final stop. But we'll get back to that subject later...

Around that same time I managed to get out of my Army Reserve job as a property book officer and found a job as a band commander in New Mexico. That was AMAZING. Those people I worked with in NM are awesome but damn that commute every month was killing me. An opportunity to transfer to North Carolina came up and I took it so now I'm working National Guard in NC, which is  much better commute, but damn these guys have some issues we need to work through!! I will forever regret and feel guilty for leaving NM when I did though, it was a beautiful place and those were some great people. It was just math. The cost of getting their every month was more than I got paid. LAME. 

Civilian side I got a job teaching itinerant strings because I have taught strings before and I won't screw it up too much with beginners. I did try and keep up with The Wife academically (instead of being a dirtbag slacker with only a masters degree) by applying to the same school she taught at. Now listen, Oye, I'm a band nerd and now a band teacher (temporarily teaching strings) and an Army National Guard Band Commander, so I know a little bit about band stuff. My first class was "history of band" and the guy read a book to us. After 3 classes he couldn't even be bothered to make powerpoint guides. And this shit cost me like $2500!! I told this particular university to fuck off, if they can't get me on full time to do this right, then I'm not doing it. It turns out it was probably ok since they have so many problems at the moment. I also applied for University of MD, even though I didn't really like their director of bands, he's kind of an old school douche canoe, and I didn't play his game and I didn't get in. I even asked him, do you have an opening in your studio, if yes, do you have plans for it? He said "go ahead and apply" and I wasted my time and money and didn't get in. Like, dude, if you knew, just fuckin' tell me and I'm not going to waste my time and money on that application. So that one pissed me off, but of these disappointments turned out ok because I was able to get full time in one school (still teaching strings and still on an itinerant contract) and my district got a HUGE raise. So I was making about $95k a year, nice, but BORED AS SHIT doing the same beginner stuff I've been doing for years, just in D major instead of Bb major. UGH. I have some major philosophical issues with the way things work here too, like HS marching band is EXPECTED to happen, doing certain band festivals is EXPECTED to happen, etc. and I want to do things my way (or not at all). In the end, music education had a massive shakeup in the 90's and most of the rest of the country figured out how to stay relevant and move forward, but this place managed to keep all their things in place and still do the same things that we did in the 90's, and that's just not what kids need these days. But that's a conversation for another place and time.

So what do I do now?! Obviously I'm not going to be a Dr. of Musical Arts and conductor with a college band at this point in my life, so I might as well use my teaching experience and Army leadership training and make some money. I applied for a Principal program. Gonna take some classes and try that route. My current principal/boss is awesome and super supportive and has already given me some opportunities and I'm hoping for more. My own kids will both be in high school when I'm done with the principal coursework, so working that principal/high school band director schedule won't be as much of a problem, and I'll hopefully make enough to set them up for college. We'll see on that one! I just want to continue to learn and improve myself and while I would prefer music, I can do this too. Sure. Let's go.

So the kiddos are both cycling through activities and trying to find the things they love. The younger one plays flute, but is thinking about quitting because the class is boring (see 2 paragraphs ago about the philosophy of music here). They've also cycled through soccer, lacrosse, and volleyball, and is now doing a musical. The older one went out for basketball and baseball as a high school freshman and didn't make either team. It was pretty ugly and we were both pretty sad about it. They chose not to continue, and has picked up rowing. One of the things I was looking forward to with a HS athlete is that I wouldn't have to drive them to and from practice everyday like we do in league sports, and the damn kid goes and chooses the one HS sport that I have to pick them up from school and drive them to the fucking river to row. As we all say right now "BRUH." 

The townhouse here we've done a few things... it had shitty real estate agent staging carpet, it now has new hardwood floors on the top 2 floors, we fixed a bunch of DIY shit that was garbage, we just discovered on Christmas day that our kitchen vent pipe is broken. Which is not really a big deal until your drain backs up far enough that water leaks out of our walls. Yikes! We had a plumber snake the drain so that won't be a problem again for a while, but now we're planning a kitchen remodel. As if we didn't learn the first time in Miami... But, in order to access the vent pipe, we have to take out a wall with backsplash and cupboards, so we might as well just remodel the damn thing. Once that's done we'll have replaced two basement windows, the roof, the floors, multiple electric outlets, faucets, leaking pipes and vent fans, made our backyard into an outdoor room vibe space, The Wife says she fixed a hot wire in the attic, and now the kitchen. Honestly, I'm actually concerned about what she will find to do when there's literally nothing left to fix in this house! I'm sure we'll do the bathrooms too, but then... who knows... 

So last thing, the oldest spawn graduates in 2027 and the younger spawn graduates in 2030. I am eligible to retire from the Army in 2028 (if I get my next promotion, it's 2029), and The Wife will get tenure in 2028. That's a lot of things happening right around the same time. So far, while this place is vastly better than Miami, FL (for us at least), it's not home. We don't particularly like this house, even with all the neglected maintenance and repairs and updates we've done. We don't particularly like our area, it's nice and all, but we're not really suburb type folk and this place (a geographical oddity!) is a 20 minute drive from everything. The land looks like is used to be beautiful here on the east coast, but we've absolutely DESTROYED much of it. We went camping in West VA once and the ranger station has a whole history of the WV woodlands that used to be coniferous trees, but while we were busy with the civil war, a bunch of natural resource companies cut literally the entire states worth of wood down and started mining for coal. Just disgusting and I'm thankful for Teddy Roosevelt fighting to keep the west coast somewhat free of that. 

ANYWAY. I digress (Again, it's called mindbarf for a reason, if you hadn't figured that out about me)

The Wife is doing excellent work at her new job/career, but there's some major issues with some coworkers that make it non-permanent, and like I said, the kids will graduate from HS soon, so as we plan things moving forward, it looks very strongly like 2030 is going to be my next blog post, LOLOL.

Have a nice next few years! 

Corona part deaux

Continued... 

I typically see myself as a positive person. (see the mindbarfs from 2011...) I've dealt with my personal traumas. But I'm getting tired now. I'm tired of being positive (or at least just realistic, that toxic positivity shit doesn't work for me either), and tired of holding my shit together and not being critical of the ideas and people who need to hear critique. I don't know how to deal with the abject stupidity and willful ignorance of today's conservative folk and maintain my positivity. I mean, I guess I understand that change is difficult for some because it takes caring, thought, planning, revising, attempting to do something, failing, picking up the tears and ashes and doing it again, and most conservative minded people are scared of that process. Change is scary! Especially when you're fucking stupid. It's scary to change when you can't see the lies happening right in front of you. I would be scared to! If I had been taken advantage of and duped that many times and didn't want it to happen again I would also try to avoid the change that would make me an inevitable victim of my own inabilities. Anyway... I digress... I always do and my one reader knows it. (I mean... Mindbarf, right?) So I'm not feeling very positive. Lots of people dead, millions more are willfully ignorant and abjectly stupid, I'm unfortunate to live currently in an uber conservative state (but a Purple region at least) and it's fucking hell. The Wife and I took the kiddos on a quick weekend trip. First time out of the house for more than a day since February. We drove over to the Gulf Side and stayed at this little island and the fat ass privileged white people just destroyed it for me. I didn't get any rest, recovery, recuperation, or anything like that because I'm so incredibly uncomfortable around those shitty human beings. It's kinda why I never got into church, a buncha' damned (and that word was chosen purposefully) hypocrites and assholes. I don't feel safe there, and I didn't feel safe on this island. But I had to put on a show. The Wife was melting down about school, the kids haven't stopped fucking melting down since school started, I hated this trip. But I had to hold my shit together. The land is beautiful but the bugs are just as bad as the conservatives down here, and while it has it's appeal, I need mountains (that's on me though). 

I have realized some things. I once considered myself a hard worker. But the last few months have got me thinking... why the fuck am I working this damn hard? I'm not really getting satisfaction out of it. I mean, I do like my job, I did choose to do it, but I just want to show people how to play music, and it's so ridiculously difficult to just do that. I feel like we just got used to doing so much extra shit over the years. And now with kids, there's concerts here, field trips there, performance here, performance there, The Wife's gigs, and night classes, the kids baseball, dance, swimming, golf, piano lessons, cello lessons, concert here, recital there, oh shit I have grades to do, oh shit she's got 120 papers to grade, and on and on, but having a few months off of that grind made me aware of how hard I was working and how little was coming of it. 

Quick break...

It's now 12/29/24 I forgot about my blog again and when I had a few minutes I did another "oh shit! I should write some more stuff on that!" moment. So rather than continue from here, I'll start a new entry. 

muh muh muh myyyy Corona

Well hello again dear 3 readers! Another mindbarf so soon?! Wow! I mean.. what the hell else am I going to do?

Here we are on week 4 of our first little Global Pandemic in over a hundred years. I've heard there's a Chinese curse that says "May you live in interesting times." I'm sure a quick internet search could verify that, but I'll just stick with my totally amazing memory... This is definitely an interesting time.

I have several perspectives here, 1) As a parent 2) As a teacher 3) As a person and 4) As a political being.

As a parent, I love my children. They're 11 and 7. I always wanted children and The Wife and I made sure we could afford them before we started having them so they have all of their needs and wants covered physically, emotionally, mentally, and even with the amount of damn toys they have. Everyone get it? I love my kids!

NOW... With that said. I haven't figured out how to tell them yet without destroying them emotionally, but I don't give two shits about their favorite YouTuber. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO. AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH. Do they ever EVER stop talking?!?! I yearn for parts of the 80's when parents could say "get the hell out of the house, GO" and we would be gone for hours. Pre-Pandemic we had baseball, dance, playdates, kids down the street, tons of stuff to do. Now there is the toys they never play with, outside stuff (and all the complaining that comes with that) and screens. Screens were definitely part of our lives pre-pandemic, but not 4-8 hours of it. I know it's easy to think "Just kick them off Dad" but then they talk NON-STOP about nothing. And that's the BEST case scenario. They also whine and complain and argue and try to get sassy (I shut that down HARD right now because it only gets so much worse). Any time I tell them to do any damn thing that's not on a screen it's like I'm telling them to clean the city sewer with their toothbrush. I can't interact with them anymore. I've done all I could... I know that someday I'll wish they would talk to me, and if I don't foster the relationship now they won't then, but OMG.

They're supposed to be doing school stuff, but online learning is not all that great. I hear people say "it works great for us!" I think it actually doesn't. I think that you're able to guilt-free put your kids on the screen. Whereas when they're just goofing around on YouTube, it comes with parent guilt attached. The older kids teacher just assigned work book stuff which I think was GREAT. Even though The Wife and I have to do the actual teaching... The younger child INSISTS she knows how to do everything all the time. Super independent, but almost immediately asks for help. And by help I mean she wants me to give her the answers, and then after 2 weeks her teacher emails us and says she hasn't turned in ANYTHING. SO clearly she does NOT know what she's doing and now one of the parents has to do work with her. Thankfully we have tons of time so I can tell both of them that I'm not giving them answers, they need to do the thinking, and we can deal with the half hour tantrum that precedes them actually thinking. Anyway, this is a good segue into...

As an educator! Ok. I teach band and orchestra. Making live music with people in the same room. It is a human face to face activity. I have avoided online learning with music because it just doesn't work. It doesn't have the same affect. Recordings are NEVER the same as a live performance. Online platforms have only ever been a tool. Somewhere to put my syllabus and to tell students and parents to go get it their rather than me printing another. So I had to "get my shit together" pretty quick. What platform is used down here in Miami. Oh all of them? Crap, which one do most teachers use? Ok that's what I'm doing. Except it doesn't work for video or audio recordings. Damn. Ok, we'll use Zoom, oh wait that's sketchy as hell and doesn't meet legal privacy requirements? Damn again. Ok. Let's just switch platforms three weeks in and I have to learn a brand new operating system. GAH. All this just to have kids turn in some audio/video recordings of scales and sections of music that we're not going to play again. I have colleagues that are spending 10-12 hours a day doing extra shit for their virtual teaching. They're not getting any more kids involved than I am... A video lecture for 5 kids out of their class of 34? Good grief... I mean, I applaud your dedication, but I learned a loooong time ago that education needs to include the educatees! I'm still coordinating assignments and stuff, but what really am I going to accomplish with music here? I know I'm sounding like a Debbie Downer, I want to make it clear that I chose to teach and that I take my career very seriously, and I'm still working with kids on musical things, but that's also why I'm so critical of this online learning thing. We are successful as educators by our relationships with students, not the platform. Working online doesn't help the relationship and everything else is just a tool for delivering extra instruction. It CAN NOT replace face to face instruction. I've already heard the people who tell me they did just fine with online school, but you know what, I've talked with you, and frankly, no, you did NOT do fine with online learning. You checked a box and got a "good enough." You dumb my friend. I would never say that to someone face to face,  but I'm angry and bored here and this blog is turning into the only place I can process my negative energy, so there it is. I'm not impressed with your education from online classes. Online learning is a supplement to real life learning. Not a replacement. I have tried it for real now and I KNOW for a fact that what I do can not be done online.

Oh one more thing... we all KNOW the whole school year is going to be cancelled, for crying out loud, just cancel it already!! (As of 9 April).

Ok my perspective as a person. Can I be less negative here? I don't know, but I'll try! Miami is an all or nothing kind of place. The way we prepare for a hurricane is a great example! We have WEEKS of weather tracking and news and nobody does a damn thing. Then we get to the day the hurricane might hit and BAM stores and gas stations EVERYWHERE are slammed and generators that in January were $99 are now $549. So what I observed here for the Pandemic was quite a bit of skepticism and reluctance to actually do anything, at first. The CDC and WHO announced that we have an official global pandemic and we moved to virtual school on March 13th and the next 2 weeks in Miami Beach were an extended spring break. The party wasn't over guys, WOOOOOOO!!!! As the country took notice and became very critical, the city mayors started closing things down and the police had to start ticketing people. I didn't see that so much on TV, but what I DID see was that we were all still trying to entertain ourselves by going to parks and being active. I know I was guilty of that too, then we had to shut down ALL the parks, do mandatory house arrest except for essential workers and for food. We all know this, Miami didn't take it seriously until people started getting sick. And then BAM everyone was in masks, the streets were empty, we had to wait in lines to get into grocery stores, the parks were patrolled by police (I cut a corner through a park when I was on a walk and got a talking to!), and people were maintaining their 6 foot distance. It was like watching the stores the day a hurricane was supposed to hit. Nothing nothing, apathy, I don't believe it, meh, whatever... OH SHIT WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

My personal experience (as opposed to my observations of other people), to be continued...