Coming days ...

• Three auditions.
• End of semester recitals and exams.
• Sick kid.
• Holiday concerts (husband's, child's, students' and my own)
  

No matter how carefully I prepare for the two weeks after Thanksgiving, they always catch me by surprise. To my delight, two more auditions came in for this period (the third one was scheduled weeks ago); this is historically ALWAYS the busy time, but so many companies have changed their plans for this year I wasn't really expecting much, so these are great news (even if one of them is at 10.30 in the morning!)

The wrench in the works, starting today, is the sick daughter, but - for once! - she played it smart and stayed home, warm and quiet so here's hoping she'll recover quickly and won't need time off school this week. Just crossing all fingers I don't catch it. Every parent hates seeing their kid sick, but because her sniffles so often seem to coincide with my busy times (why IS that?!)when I must do everything in my power to stay healthy and keep my voice in shape, I can't provide as much hands-on comforting and TLC as I'd like. It stinks, to be honest, and is one of the biggest singer-mommy pushmipullyus. One tiny solace is the development of a charming little ritual which even at a grownup 10 years old she still demands when she's sick: she'll blow a kiss from across the room and wait for me to "catch" it and press it to my cheek (and then return it to her to do the same, usually culminating in a "catch the kiss" race). I can't even remember how or when this started, but I do know we began this game when she was very little, and there's something so endearing about seeing her spotaneously continue to do it when prudence demands keeping some physical distance.

I'm happy to say that at least I'm a little more organized than usual. My college students are well prepared and just need a little bit of polishing before their own performances. I'm surprisingly ahead on my gift shopping so, even though I'm not done, there's not much left to do. The house was deep-cleaned for the Halloween party, tidied up for Thanksgiving and (amazingly!) we actually completed our self-imposed task of setting up the music room properly over this holiday weekend (including painting and building much-needed new shelving!) so as soon as I've stowed everything, that will finally be a nice space in which to work at home.

And tomorrow... it's December. When did that happen?!