music, therapy, and me

For the first time in a long time, the new year has corresponded with the start of my new journal. I spent over a year in the last one, so this is somewhat of a surprise to me that I FINALLY filled the 200 page book and am getting to start another one. We will see how long this one lasts me before I can start another one, but there is something pretty fun and satisfying about transferring from one book to the next one. I am really taking my 2026 word of the year to heart right now. Metamorphosis is coming. I am heading towards a new phase of existence, and while it is a bit scary, it is also exhilarating. I am getting ready to become something else in my profession, and I am both excited and terrified of the transition! I took some steps towards my new existence on Friday by opening my business accounts with the seed money I have saved over the years. New accounts and a new bank. I have had a bill that will be covered by the business next year (I am hoping), and that is something that ...

Six days left before I go back to work for the last six months of my school contract year. I am getting ready to send my boxes back to my house and pack up all of my things so I can travel across the country to the world of cold. This is always the hardest part about visiting - leaving again. I love this part of the country, and it is always a wrench to have to leave it. I also love where I live because it is different from here.  Yesterday, my family members took me to one of my favorite places in the world - the La Brea Tar Pits. This is a park complex in the middle of Los Angeles where fossils were found in the 1870s while people were excavating the area for oil and gas. There are tons of animal remains contained within the tar, and excavations continue. The animals in the tar pits come from the last 60,000 years and includes the end of the Pleistocene era and all of our current time which is known as the Holocene (Thanks to A Field Guide to La Brea Tar Pits  and the articl...

Oh, well, this is awkward. The surprise is for me, not for you, though you could go to this link to download a previously released free resource in my TPT store... Surprise?? Anyway, my sister and mother are taking me somewhere. I had to fish out a school id that identified me as "teacher," and am now waiting to see what we are going to be doing. My sister has a medical issue going on, so she just called to say that we would start our adventure after she goes to urgent care to get medication for her issue. I am hoping that it will be a good time. I've been warned that we are going to be walking lots and will need to have layers, so I know we are going outdoors. I have some suspicions, but I am not really worried about it. I know that my Sister and Mom will have thought of something pretty good for me. We will see what it is and go through it all! I'll reveal more tomorrow about the surprise. Anyway, I am now sitting in my guest room, in my pjs, at what is 9:38 am at ...

I am halfway through my break now, and I am starting to think about work again. I am not really planning sessions or anything like that, but I am starting to figure out my timeline for the next six months. Even though I still have six months at my current job, I am finding myself more and more looking at the future. I am both exhilarated and terrified by this change in my life. The last time I had such an enormous life change was in 1996 when I moved across the country for graduate school. It is more than time, though. I never intended to stay where I am as long as I have. The problem is that I am unsure how I will earn money starting on July 1st. If all goes as planned, I will start the new year in my own home. I will have another four days of time away from work to arrange things in my house and my life. We have an educational enrichment day away from work, so I am going to spend some time taking stock of what I have in my music therapy resources. The music therapy room is getting mo...

It is Boxing Day here where I am, and it is raining again. It was raining when I came to visit, we had some sunshine yesterday, and now it is raining again. That is a good thing for the place where I am located, but it is getting to flooding stage because the desert ground is getting saturated and will be sliding down the mountains pretty soon. Where I am staying is not in any danger from mudslides, but you never know what might happen... Anyway... Yesterday was a good day of leisurely celebration with Mom and Sister. We ate good food, opened our presents, and did all of our traditions. I received lots of capybara items - my favorite animal of them all. I also opened up the cutest little R2-D2 Bluetooth speaker and a huge R2-D2 popcorn tin. I now have more of my favorite Ivy Corelle dishes, and my sister's secret Holiday Casserole recipe (all sorts of M&Ms in a huge dish - SCORE!!). The gifts I gave were duly appreciated. Mom got all sorts of glue from me while my Sister got lo...

Me in one of the formal portraits  Today is the last Thursday that I work in the month of November. Next week's Thursday is a day off, and I am looking forward to the break. My focus for my five-day weekend is to organize the music room with some of the things that I am bringing home from work. Other than that, I am expecting some extra napping and many different television shows. After this, there are only three more Thursdays before our winter break and the start of the new year. We have been doing our Musicians of the Month listening (music awareness) and leisure choice options (executive functioning and life-long leisure skill development). My other groups are getting an introduction to guitars and then some leisure choice options. My students do not know how to play. It is interesting to watch them just stare into space instead of trying something new or even get something familiar from the cabinets. I mean, I have just about everything. The most used materials are my hot whee...

My Niec-at So, my sister reads my blog and sent me her ideas about what my themes should be for each day of the week. I got a text last night (after I was asleep) about what she wants to see as my themes. Here it is - Maker Monday - Tune In Tuesday - Website Wednesday - Thinking Thursday - Fact or Fiction Friday I am still navigating the ideas for each of these themes, but I will start some of them. Since today is Tuesday, let's investigate a bit more about what Tune In Tuesday could be about. It could be about music, music videos, musicians, therapists, or educators that are part of my life or that I've noticed. I'm not sure I could sustain that for long. It could be something about things to pay attention to as a therapist.  I just don't know. I am kinda dithering these days. I have little to no focus for anything other than medical appointments and reading books. I want to do more, but I just can't get going on any project. I have one more step to go through befo...

I am at the end of my second week of enforced rest and healing after my abdominal surgery at the end of last month. I have two and a half weeks left before I go back to my full-time job as a clinical music therapist at a psychiatric residential treatment facility in the associated school. This "rest" has been something necessary but difficult nonetheless. I do not do a good job of self-entertaining when work is happening without me. Now don't get me wrong. There are benefits to being out of work at the moment. First, I am able to rest while my body works on healing the connections that have been recently made. Second, I get bored with my own company, and that makes going back to work much easier. Third, it has been many years since I have had this much time off from work, so I am reveling in the opportunity to become this bored. I do better when I am occupied. Being on an enforced break from work means that my brain is grasping for any sort of thought that it can generate...

Wow. It has been a while since I have written anything on this blog - mainly because I have been in the middle of surgery, recovery, and trying my best to get back into something resembling normalcy. I have had good news - the medical issue that has been plaguing me has now been resolved. I have a new specialist to see next week, but that will probably be a formality rather than a continuing relationship. I am now sitting at home, recovering from having my gut cut up, rearranged, and put back together again. My surgeon has dictated (with my mother's support) that I will not be returning to work until the start of the new school year. So, I am sitting at home instead of being at the extended school year session at work.  I went to shop yesterday to get my steps in, and halfway around the store, I felt the exhaustion set in. I leaned on the shopping cart for the rest of the walk and then returned to my home. I am tired today, and my body is not really doing all the things that it sho...

And, here we are - FINALLY! The first day of my break. It stormed yesterday afternoon - lots of rain and thunder while a front rolled through the area. Rain came in bits and spurts but the thunder was pretty continuous there for a while. I am hoping that the storm will have decreased the heat and humidity, but I sincerely doubt that it did. Yeah - a quick look at my weather app shows that we have 88% humidity at the moment with a forecasted temperature of 91 (before the heat index kicks in). The storms did not help at all, but that's okay. It is what summer is like out here. I miss the dry heat of California. No more dwelling on that thought. Let's talk a bit more about what this break will be for me. I am going on an extended break because I am having another bowel resection on Monday. A part of my gut is growing things that it shouldn't, so it has to be removed. My mother is arriving tomorrow to help me out during my recovery. I have two days to get my house in order and ...

Overwhelmed. It is Tuesday of my spring break, and I have hit my overwhelmed point a couple of days early. I misplaced my planner when I started cleaning down here in the office. I just found it, so I am feeling a bit better about things right now. It's amazing how much I depend on that book. Now that I have found it, I am feeling a bit less overwhelmed.  Egad. When I feel overwhelmed with things, I find that the best thing for me to do is to get busy with chores. Chores tend to be a big part of the overwhelm, so it is best to get things done. Unfortunately, the chores are the source of the overwhelm so the cycle goes around and around. A couple of years ago, I made an index card collage of things that I can do when I am feeling this way. It is a silly little card, but it does help me when I need it. It includes things like reading a book or taking a walk or cleaning a corner. I used to keep it in my journal, but I left it behind a bit ago. I want to put it back in there to remind ...

Anyone else used to chant, "slap, bang, here we go again. Here we go again. Here we go again?" Just me? Okay. This seems like a repetition going through my head for today. Here I go again. I am tired, but happy to have an entire week ahead of me for resting and cleaning and discovering things about me that I am ready to learn. I did some clearing out yesterday. The floor of my office area is a bit less cluttered, but it is not finished yet. I did as much as I could stand, but then abandoned the entire thing because I was dizzy and could not trust myself with moving around my environment. I then read a couple of books, cooked some burrito fixings, and then ate my one meal of the day. Today will be a bit more of the same but will also include some stuff outside of my house. I have to go to the bank, the pharmacy, and the movie theater. I might also do some product design and some watercoloring. We will see. Do you ever have something that you know you have put somewhere but you...

It is time for Spring Break from my school job, and I am getting ready for a week of staycation and time to myself. As a result, I may or may not be writing as much this week. I am getting myself ready for rest and cleaning. I just now realized that my plans to go to the library on Monday have to change because there will be a St. Patrick's Day parade on Monday. I will not be going anywhere near my downtown area because of the parade. Getting free parking will be difficult, so I will be remaining away from the library on the 17th. Already, I am shifting my plans around. Going to the library was one of two things that I have to do outside of my house, and now the plan has changed. I am really thankful that I remembered the parade today and not on Monday morning when I was stuck in the whole mess!! It is time to buckle down and get my home environment working for me. I am working on my motivation and follow through for this week, so I am going to try to work on reconfiguring my livin...

This picture is a picture of Walter, my Mother's cat. He is sitting on the towels that she has put down because he likes to vomit in protest when he does not get to go outside. He is halfway between where I am sitting and where my mother is sitting, and this is how he sits at times. Just thought I would include him because he puts himself into all sorts of situations where his whiskers do not belong!! Here it is. Another Saturday morning. I am sitting in my Sister's childhood bedroom which is now the papercrafting room in my Mother's house. The room is covered with bookshelves housing stamps and markers and decorative stickers and die cuts and punches and paper galore. Looking at this room, it is evident that I come by my packrat tendencies by both nature and nurture. My childhood bedroom is the fabric and sewing room. My Brother's childhood bedroom is my Mother's computer room, and Dad's suite is where Mom goes to shred documents. It is interesting how this hou...

I am currently sitting in the family room at my last childhood home, blogging, and thinking about stuff. Nothing really all that important is going through my head, but I am thinking. There is something about being physically away from all things that I have to do that makes my brain start to rumble about other things. It happens every time I come here, and I am both invigorated by it and frustrated about it at the same time. For example, I love that I do not have to work for the next week. I love that I can spend time with the family members who are here, and I love that I can putter around. I am enjoying my mother create things for her Barbie dolls, and I love the self-satisfied giggle she emits when she accomplishes something for herself. We have a project to start creating some rooms to furnish with all the things that she is creating, and I hope that we get to that pretty soon. The frustration comes from not having my own things to create with. I am away from my own stuff, and Mom...

Today is the first, official day of my Fall Break, and the second day of being at home. Since everyone finished their progress reports, we were able to work from home yesterday, and I DID! I started off the day with some blogging (before work hours, of course!), and then followed up with some TPT exploration as I worked on a list of things to include in my next visual aid creation. I started with looking to see what sorts of music schedules are out there, and there aren't many. I remembered that I had purchased one from TPT that merged music education with special education, so I went back into my purchases and found all sorts of things that I already own. That started a marathon printing session, and while printing, I also remembered that I wanted to find some different language "goodbye" phrases to go with my "hello" phrases. I ended up spending $13.30 for four different resources that I will print out when I get to work. After the printing was finished, I sta...

It is day seven of winter break, and I have four more days before it is time to report back to work for the rest of the 2023-2024 school year. I am sitting here, at 3:56 am, writing the second iteration of this post to try to analyze what is going on in my brain and body after an insomnia night. I get these every so often, and so I am not all that surprised that it happened after Mexican food and arranging a visit with a friend from junior high all the way up to now. Add in the full moon, and of course I am waking up over and over again! I am starting to get into the holiday funk that happens to me sometimes. I start to feel squirmy because there are things that I want to get done but can't because those things are there instead of being here. In addition, I want to play with all my Mom's crafting toys, but I am scared to because they are her toys and not my own. I know that she would be fine with me using the stamps and the punches and the dies and all that, but I feel like I ...