Yikes

I'm staring down the month of May right now, giving it the side-eye. It's coming up too quickly and it's going to be absolutely mad.

As for April, I'm just sort of over it. I started this month with news of Echo's death, and proceeded through a hectic trip to Idaho, before going back to work and realizing I wasn't quite as Zen as I'd thought I was. The absolutely boggling events of last week--Boston, Texas, Boston, more Boston, and a huge, deadly earthquake in the very region of China where my awesome exchange students from last summer happen to live (I have not heard about any of them as yet) have left me feeling a little bit beaten up by life right at a time when I need to feel positive and can-do.

My response has been to up the running, which is great. I'm putting in my longer runs again, usually around two-and-a-half miles to a good, solid 5K depending on how I feel. The weather has been perfect for it, and I'm wearing my cute running skirts and tank tops again.

But I have to admit, I've been feeling stressed.

Here's what May is going to look like. In addition to my job teaching private lessons and my Fridays at Petite School, I have all of the following:

May 4: An all-day training in Concord for a summer job I've just been offered. Yay! In August, I'll teach a three-week program to students from China, but it's not the same program I did last year. This time I won't be teaching music, I'll be teaching English, finally using that English credential I have had all these years. This is a fantastic opportunity...but the all-day training isn't my favorite part.

May 11: A fun night in Chico with Summer, having dinner with our friend Amanda. This is all entirely for fun, and I know the night out with friends will do me a lot of good.

May 17: A full day at Petite School, followed by a two-and-a-half hour choir rehearsal. I might as well NOT drive all the way back to Lincoln, but rather plan on taking my lunch and dinner that day. And comfortable shoes.

May 18: A full morning and early afternoon teaching private piano and voice lessons (and hopefully a run that morning), and then, from Fusion, a drive downtown to a 3:30 choir rehearsal. Then a 7:00 concert that night. The good news is I adore the piece we're doing (Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughn Williams) so this concert will be exciting. And once it's done, our season is finished until the new one in September, so I'll have a break from my weekly rehearsals. I'll miss it, but then again, a break will be nice.

May 28 & 29: Extra after-school rehearsals at Petite School, on days I'm not normally there, which means extra driving (it's about 45 minutes one way). These will be our hectic dress rehearsals as we get used to the sound set-up and try to keep the kids calm with all the pre-performance jitters and excitement.

May 30: Spring Concert. I have all of my young classes performing, then the musical. I have high expectations for myself for this concert and I'm driving myself insane trying to make everything just right.

May 31: My last teaching day at Petite School for this school year. I feel I've earned the right to show a video. The next day I'll teach private lessons, but then Sunday, I will crash in an exhausted heap on my bed, watching movies and eating chocolate.

Writing it all out here doesn't make it look that bad, but trust me, it involves a lot of extra time in the car, rearranging my day-to-day schedule, and my own silly tendency to not believe that I have it all under control. I'm very fortunate--at Petite School all of the classroom teachers and the principal are offering full support with crowd control, etc. I really love working there, and I create my own stress.

It hasn't helped that I've been a teensy bit morose of late--oh, not to the point where my family and friends wonder what's wrong, just slightly more worried than usual at the state of the world. The Boston thing really gripped my attention, and I've had a nagging worry about my Chinese students in Chengdu, very near where the quake happened this weekend. I'm also trying to keep up with other goals and duties. I've been reading an Anatomy book my friend Matt gave me, and, also on his recommendation, the Pose Method of Running. I've figured out that I already sort of lean towards the Pose Method, in that I don't heel-strike. But this method will supposedly make my running better--faster, less injury-prone, etc. Matt swears by it and he hasn't steered me wrong yet.

To make a long blog post short--I've been busy. I'm going to get busier. I'm still kind of in a weird place mentally after Echo's death and the events of last week, but I'm okay, really. And hoping that all these upcoming adventures will prove blog-worthy.