Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

We went out  this weekend to a restaurant Tori had been to recently and wanted me to try, The Continental.  There, you can have one of the more glorious restaurant oddities I know of: a reuben inside of a pancake, topped with Greek yogurt.  Known simply as a "Continental pancake," this takes the idea of an omelette, changes every ingredient, and makes for an awesome meal.

I digress.  Our food was great, the service was just fine, and the prices are pretty cheap.  A busy place, full of people in good moods, cheering on VCU basketball.  But I wouldn't call it a good time.

Walked in, found that we had a short wait to get a table.  There's not a lot of waiting space, so everywhere we were with a car seat was in someone's way.  Got a table in a few minutes, but it's a high-top deal, tucked into a little inset place in the wall.  We'll make it work, I said, and they brought us a high chair for the baby.  "High" is a relative term, as it turns out, it's about two feet less high than "high-top table,"  so it was about as useful as a car without keys.  So for the entire meal, one of us held Fiona.  Which also means one person holds and entertains, while the other one shovels food in, trying to finish before your mate's food gets cold so you can take the baby.

Going out to eat with a baby means you have to clear the area within arm's reach of silverware, glasses, and anything else that isn't attached, or it will be in the floor.  It means your menu is going to be used as a screen for all the other stuff you don't want chewed on or tossed around.  It means you're probably going to squeeze beside your high-top and chairs to pick up a pacifier and reach for the disinfecting wipes over and over.

Can you tell why there aren't any pictures from this little outing?

So no, I wouldn't really call it a relaxing night out with the family.  It's much easier to make something at home and eat there, where we know the high chair is the right height, we know we have toys she can play with, and we know when the floor was last cleaned.  We'll definitely do it again sometime soon, though.

Before I had a child, my impression of parenthood was that your life is over.  No more doing anything that you want to do, no more fun, no more nice nights out, etc.  So maybe my determination to continue going out like this is in defiance of my own pre-conceived notions of what my life has become.  And really, I think that's a good enough reason in itself.  More than that, though, I want to spend time with my wife and daughter, and I want to do things like this because that's what families do.  As she gets older, we'll go out as a means of teaching her how to act in various situations...right now, it's for us, and it's sort of Dylan Thomas-ish...

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

For the record, I was wrong: you can still do a lot of things you used to do before being a parent.  Sometimes that means you do it less often, sometimes it means you do it to a lesser extent, but often it just means you bring your child with you and do it together.  Which is cool.  Kind of.  It will be cool, eventually.

Fragility Cycles, Bach, and the Whisk

I'm not sure I ever had a specific goal of blogging daily, weekly, or at any other regular interval, but I think I'll steal the blogging goal of a teacher from high school, Phil Sanderson: "Could I have something to say, once a month, for a year?...My promise to you: when I've got nothing more to say, I quit."  Sounds good, dad.

FRAGILITY CYCLES is a hauntingly beautiful, semi-improvised piece by minimalist composer Ingram Marshall.  In this recording, the composer performed it solo, using a Balinese bamboo flute called a "gambuh," some synthesizers, tape loops, voice, a delay system, and a few percussion instruments. Sounds like a lot of work for something whose product is so serene.

For me, listening to this sort of music is an act of defiance, against myself and my society.  Life moves so fast: we live in a world where we can't believe we have to wait nearly two whole years before we can finally upgrade our piece-of-crap, 'ancient' smartphones.  We answer emails on the toilet, drive across parking lots, and can't believe Redbox doesn't have the movie that came out today.

I love that world.  I think technology is pretty damn cool, and I love to figure out how to make it do things I want even faster or more efficiently.  I choose my route home based on whether or not I think I'll make it through a certain stoplight in one cycle.  As soon as a match is over, I want to be able to read a summary and analysis within five minutes.

Fragility Cycles is 15 minutes long.  There are no words; no melody to speak of; no pulse to catch, recognizable harmonic progression - nothing to immediately tell me what's happening and where it's going.  Which is precisely why it's so important to me.  It doesn't happen every day, but when I find that moment, I need things like Fragility Cycles to remind me to slow down.  It's also why I prefer the inconvenience of making my coffee in a french press, and carrying a pocket watch.

At some point in your day, take 15 minutes to listen to this.  Think of it as meditation, if you like.  It's a wonderful exercise in slowing life down, and a great exploration of musical texture besides.

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You may recall my mention of a computer networking course I began via Coursera.  Though I still love its egalitarian approach to knowledge, I've discovered a drawback: because anyone can sign up, you can take courses that assume you know more than you do.  Shortly into Week 3, I realized that this course assumed I knew a lot more about computers than I do, so I ended up dropping it.

Not satisfied with just not learning, I decided that I'd stick to a realm I do know about, and deepen my knowledge instead.  So, I'm planning to spend this year getting to know J.S. Bach better.

Wait, you already know about that guy?  No, you don't.  You know about him like I know about wireless routers.  Sure, you've heard of him - some of you have even played or sung some of his stuff, maybe.  But almost none of you have any more than a passing familiarity with his existence.  If you studied music in college, you might even know that his harmonic language was really important to the development of Western music, but I bet you couldn't really articulate why.

As a vocalist, I have performed precious little of his music, much to my own detriment.  In college, I liked a bass player who played the 2nd cello suite in d minor on her recital.  She graduated and we lost touch, but I kept the interest in the cello suites and have been listening to them ever since, so I feel like I know them passingly well for a non-cellist.  But that's about it.  So, I've put together a list of music that will take up most of my listening for this year (hopefully some score study to accompany it!).  If you're interested, my listening syllabus looks like this (all of this is on spotify, by the way):

The Well-Tempered Clavier: Glenn Gould (book I); Masaaki Suzuki (book II)

Goldberg Variations: Glenn Gould

The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello: Yo-Yo Ma and Pablo Casals (VERY different - try it!)

Brandenburg Concertos: Masaaki Suzuki & Bach Collegium Japan

Various Cantatas, including nos. 82, 199, 227, and 228: Masaaki Suzuki

Mass in B Minor (John Eliot Gardiner and also Masaaki Suzuki)

Magnificat (JEG/Suzuki)

St. Matthew Passion (JEG/Suzuki)

St. John Passion (JEG/Bach Choir of Bethlehem, featuring my former voice teacher!)

Christmas Oratorio (JEG/Suzuki)

Since it's Lent, I've started in with St. Matthew Passion, but my life doesn't always allot many extended periods of time where I can follow a score or translation while listening to a multi-hour work.  For those times where my eyes and hands are occupied, I'm also listening to Casals on the cello, or the Mass in B Minor, since I know the words already.  By Advent, the Christmas Oratorio will probably replace my annual listening to Messiah.

In addition, I've also gotten Christoph Wolff's biography, "Bach, the Learned Musician," and with any luck, I'll also get through Albert Schweitzer's biography of the man.  We'll see how all that goes - it's taken me nearly two months to read a single 600-page book so far, so I'll take them one at a time.

So, what about the Whisk, you say?  Fiona's new favorite toy.  Don't spend money on baby things, just find cool stuff you already own. 

Which toy is she actually holding?  I rest my case.

I'm Going To Be A Terrible Parent

A friend reminded me that in one of my last posts (it's a bit too stale to call it "recent"), I said that I'd probably be posting more often, now that I'm done with the Master's degree and all.

Oops.

Instead, I've had a lovely time in my living room floor, tossing around some tupperware containers.  I've been keeping a house running.  I've been singing, playing, teaching, and reflecting upon music.  And I've been baking bread.

That last one has given me reason to worry about my fitness to parent, after a little incident last week involving a drunk dog and rising dough:

What I didn't say at the time is that my dog "found" it because I left it at nose level in Fiona's bedroom floor.  The recipe said to let it rise in a warm place, and that room gets warm.  Didn't even occur to me that the dog could easily push the door open and eat it all.

And that's my problem: I didn't consider what might happen.  Fast forward a few months, and my daughter is mobile.  What's lying around my house that could send her to the hospital when she eats it?  Who knows?  I don't.  And even when I do eventually do the initial "baby-proofing" as she starts getting into stuff, I'm sure there will be things like that bowl of dough that seem perfectly benign that send her into some sort of altered reality, like my drunk dog.

This is not an "oh no, the big bad world is going to get my little girl" sort of thing.  I know you can't protect them from every skinned knee, creepy stranger, broken heart, stolen car, school bully, etc.  This is my painfully real observation that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and if I almost killed my dog with alcohol poisoning FROM BREAD, who knows what I'm accidentally capable of doing to my child?

Crap.

What Glenn Gould Taught Me About Parenting

I can't exactly remember what sparked my renewed interest in the music of J.S. Bach - I think it has something to do with hearing the cello suites playing on my daughter's night time playlist all the time.

I have listened to and loved the cello suites for about eight years now but Bach was such a prolific composer, and was exceptionally important as a composer of keyboard works, that I wanted to spend more time with some of those.  Anyone who knows Bach and the piano would immediately point me to the recordings of Glenn Gould.  Though I've heard of him for years, and spent time in college working in the music library, consuming recordings of everything I could find, I don't think I'd ever listened to one of the most famous classical pianists, known especially for his interpretations of Bach.  You should listen to him.  Here's his famous 1981 recording of the Goldberg Variations:

Even if you're not too interested, watch a few points in this video, because he's quite the character.  His friend and biographer speculated that he may well have been on the autism spectrum; indeed, his eccentricities lend credence to that theory.  You'll see him sitting on an ancient-looking chair with no cushion: his father built that chair, and he only performed sitting on it, long after its cushion wore through.  He specified temperature settings for his studio sessions, did not like to be touched, and limited his contact with people.  His movements while playing definitely fall outside of what's typical.  And my favorite thing: listen closely, and you'll hear him humming along while he plays.

This is how I knew I'd never listened to Glenn Gould before.  I had his Well-Tempered Clavier recording in headphones yesterday, and thought I must be imagining things, because I heard a sort of groan/hum along with the music.  And it's not subtle.  He claimed it was subconscious, and the volume at which he sang varied based on how much he needed to compensate for a given piano's lack of ability to create the sounds he desired.  In some recordings he's louder than others; in this 1981 Goldberg one, critics said many listeners would "find the groans and croons intolerable."

I love it.

Autism or no, Glenn Gould did what he loved, and didn't care what people thought.  His gyrating stage presence might have been a novelty that drew a large crowd, but groaning and humming on a professional recording?  No one does that, and I'm sure it turned people off.  But he was so focused and consumed with his craft that he did what he saw as necessary and good.  I love experiencing other people in love with their craft, and Glenn Gould was unabashedly in love with playing the music of Bach.

I'd like to parent that way.  There's a combination of real and perceived stigma around my current almost-stay-at-home lifestyle, and though I am glad we're doing this, I often find myself playing up the meager hours I spend as a teacher, and mentioning the time I spend at home as an afterthought.  I love teaching, and I love making music, but I also love being a dad, and I want to be just as unabashed about playing in the floor or reading the Belly Button Book as Glenn Gould was about singing on his piano recordings.  Because of his reckless abandon of social norms, Gould created really profound and special music, and I like to think that, given some dose of that, I'll help to foster a profound and special relationship with my little girl.

That might be a bit of a roundabout lesson, but that's how I look at things right now, through a paternal lens.  If you read all that and are still dissatisfied, just listen to him play.

Checking In

If you read this blog on the regular, you will have noticed that I've fallen off a bit on writing.  Well, I've essentially stopped writing for the past few weeks, really.  I haven't given up on the idea of it, but writing in this space has simply slipped my mind, with all the other things happening around me.  Often when I do think about it, it's at a time when I'm busy with some task or another, or Fiona is up and about.  Since I've got that rare moment when she's asleep and I remembered the blog, I thought I'd check in.

Two things I like about this blog:
(1) People hear about and see pictures of my baby, which means when I see people face-to-face, they're often up to date on what's new in her life already, and I can avoid the same small talk dozens of times.
(2) It affords me an opportunity to reflect, rather than simply recount.  This advantage has been largely untapped so far, but I see the potential, and perhaps will use it a bit more in the coming months.

I've been told that people prefer several shorter blog posts over one long one, so I'll leave you with a bit of an overview, of what's been taking my time instead of blogging.

In my last post, I celebrated/ruminated on finishing my Master's in Music Education.  Since then...

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I've decided to start learning a bit about computer languages.  We use them so often, and so many of us have absolutely no idea what makes them do what they do - it's like driving a car without knowing anything about combustion or how to change your oil.  I doubt my skills will progress much beyond what an oil change does for the car, but it's a nice start.  I've decided to focus on things found on the web, beginning with HTML and CSS, and hope also to play with Javascript and Python.  Perhaps soon this blog will get a little facelift - stay tuned!

How am I learning this?  Code Academy!  It's free, and so far I'm very pleased.  Check it out!

Christmas
With both sides of the family in one town, we always travel for holidays.  This is much harder with a child.  I think my next post will talk about Christmas a little, but for now, I can say that it was good to see family, I successfully cooked my first turkey, and I discovered why people make such a big deal about their baby's schedule.

Living Room 2.0
We spent most of last year buying the odd Home Depot gift card and tossing them in a drawer, as a way of saving money towards replacing the carpet in the one room of our house without hardwood floors.  This picture doesn't show the stains too well, but you can see pretty clearly what animal claws do to berber carpet:


We finally got enough cards, ordered our carpet, and after Home Depot did an ungainly dance with our paperwork, someone else's credit card (the first time I went to pay my order was already paid for, by a card we don't own - they couldn't figure out the owner), and someone showing up to measure unannounced, after they'd already measured and ordered...we got carpet yesterday!  Also replaced the equally stained couches in that room.  They were $100 on craigslist six years ago, so they served us well.  We upgraded this time to a whole $250 on craigslist for a new pair...moving on up!

If you have pets, get this kind of carpet.

So that's a taste of what's been going on.  Yesterday was the big four months for Fiona: besides another terrible trip to the doctor (4 more shots), she's great.  And cute:

Master of The House

Well, I can cross one more thing off that "to-do" list:
Get a Master's Degree.
I guess technically I won't 'graduate' until next month, but it's all over except the paperwork.  I turned in my thesis last week, and now I wait for everything to be official.

Woo hoo!  At last, the long hours of reading scholarly journals and tweaking my APA citations is past. I'm so glad I've done all of that, it's finally cleared the way for...what was that, again?

At least so far, the biggest change I've experienced by finishing this degree program is that I'm not entirely sure what I should do with my spare time (not that I always used that time to study or write before, mind you, I just knew I should be doing that).  So two years and thousands of dollars later, I can say that I have precisely one extra (impending) piece of vellum to show for it.  Oh, and working about 30 less hours a week.  And one article that hasn't been picked up for publication.  And many more years of paying student loans.

Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the degree program I just completed.  I was definitely challenged in ways that my undergrad music education lacked, and I have undoubtedly emerged a better teacher because of what I just did.  There's real value in that.  And I might be able to use this new academic credential to land some work in higher ed...maybe.  It may prove to be just another step on the way to one MORE piece of vellum, a few MORE years of student loan debt...but we're not thinking about that part just yet.  Right now, it's nice to have the degree, and it's very good to have had the philosophical, intellectual, and critical experiences of Boston University to shape me into a better music educator.

In the end, though, being at home so much more than being in a classroom does sort of attenuate those feelings of usefulness and excitement to teach.  I just spent two years and over $25K on a degree, and I'm a stay-at-home dad?  If someone else told me they were in that scenario, I might judge them.

As you can see, I have mixed feelings.  That's true about a great many things these days, so I guess it's fitting.  In practical terms, though, finishing this degree means I need to create more structure in my life, now that one element of structure has been removed.  Stay tuned for how that's going.

How to Make Your Baby Cheaper

Since I'm still neck-deep in thesis writing, Tori's made a guest post about what she does best (well, one of many things she does best): make money work better.

So, while I don’t have any interest in starting a second blog for our family, I told Tim that I would like to share ways that we had a baby without spending a ton of money. This helped to make it possible for Tim to work part-time and for me to take part of my maternity leave unpaid. Tim is by far the better writer, so be glad that he is sharing his thoughts most of the time. So before I add a few more run-on sentences and overuse words like “really” and smiley faces, a list of ways to save $ when you start a family:

1. Start early. Once you know that you are pregnant, start planning. As is often the case, saving money will take time. The more time you have, the more flexibility you will have to bargain shop and make things yourself. The first step should be to decide what matters most to you. Maybe you really want a Coach diaper bag, a nice jogging stroller, a modern looking Pottery Barn crib or some nice video baby monitors. Similar to wedding planning, you need to decide what you want to spend on and where you are willing to be thrifty. If you are cheap like me, this is more about deciding what you need to have new and what you are willing to use second hand. The only things I required new were a car seat (for safety reasons) and a breast pump (gross).
2. Review health insurance & maternity leave policy. Make sure during your open enrollment that you have the best insurance plan for a hospital stay and if you can, fund an FSA or HSA to be able to pay the difference. Just as a frame of reference, we had a pretty normal, two-day hospital experience and before insurance the bill was around $15k. This doesn’t include the 12 or so doctor’s appointments I went to during my pregnancy (ultrasound = xrays in cost). Also look into your maternity leave policy. I haven’t taken a long vacation since 2010 so that I would have about a month of vacation leave saved up after my 6 weeks of paid sick leave.
3. Talk to other moms. More experienced people will tell you what they actually needed and used with their babies. They also may be able to give you these things if they no longer need them. I got most of my maternity clothes, a crib, a lot of Fiona’s clothes, baby gates, toys and some disposable diapers this way. This is free and in many cases doing families a favor because they don’t have all of this junk collecting dust in their house anymore.



Free crib (thanks Teri!)


4. Register. I found it helpful to go ahead and set up a registry early. That way you realize all of the things you will need, research the brands and types you prefer and can be on the lookout for sales and secondhand items. I ended up taking a lot of things off of my registry before I even had a shower planned. If you want to save your family money too, register on Amazon. It is the cheapest place to buy most things and you get free shipping on any purchases over $25. They also have a much larger variety of items than Target or Babysrus offer.
5. Go to church yard sales. Churches usually have nurseries, preschools and in our case, just a lot of children. Church yard sales are a great place to buy baby things, especially the ones you aren’t sure will get a lot of use. We got a humidifier ($3), a Moby wrap ($5), a high chair ($5), a jogging stroller ($25) and a variety of clothing and books this way.  
6. Repurpose furniture. Rather than buying nursery specific furniture, use dressers that you already own for your baby’s clothing and as a changing table. We got a nice set of dressers on craigslist for free and Tim stained them gray this summer. That way Fiona or one of our other children can use them for her entire life rather than replacing baby furniture in two years.



Dresser/changing table


7. DIY. In this era of etsy and pinterest, it is pretty easy to find some creative ideas with exact instructions on how to recreate these items for yourself. While that may up the pressure to have a theme party and a beautiful nursery, it also makes it pretty cheap to decorate. Tim & I made all of the decorations for our nursery. I also had several friends who offered to make artwork or even paint a mural, so if you aren’t crafty, you may have a friend who would be happy to give you something decorative in lieu of a shower gift. Same thing applies if you are good at knitting, sewing, etc.



art by tori

8. Breastfeed if you can. Formula is expensive. You can save as much as $3,000 a year in formula, plus decreased healthcare costs for baby and mother.
9. Use cloth diapers if you are willing. Diapers are expensive and though cloth diapers are also expensive, they are reusable – and you can put them on your registry! I was pleasantly surprised that both Target and Babysrus had the Bumgenius diapers we were planning to use. You will save over $1000 if you use cloth diapers.



BumGenius diapers that we use

10. Don’t buy (full price) stuff before your showers. While the little clothes are tempting to purchase, resist the urge. You will be surprised by the generosity of family, friends and coworkers and you may end up with gift cards that you can use to buy registry items you still need.



Fiona had more clothes than I do before she was born.

11. Don’t buy many clothes for future seasons.  That cute 6-month summer bathing suit you bought isn’t going to be very useful when your chubby baby wears 12 month clothing by May. If you do buy clothes for the future, try to stick with onesies, one-piece pajamas, etc. that could be worn no matter what the season.
12. Resell things. You may think that a baby bjorn is going to be the perfect way to carry your baby around while doing housework, but your baby may disagree. If you find that your baby hates the carrier, bottles, or bouncy seat that you bought, resell it on Ebay or Craigslist.
13. Avoid pink & blue. If you want to have more kids, buy gender neutral things, especially the big ticket items. Our car seat and pack-n-play are grey, our nursery is green, our crib is white.

A few other things I'm planning to do in the future to save money include: 

• Putting money into a daycare FSA so money spent on childcare is pretax. (Dominion has a program where you can put up to $2500 a year into this account. Check with your employer.)
• Making my own baby food
• Buy clothes at consignment stores. It is so easy to find baby clothes new with tags!

There are lots of other ways to save money, these are just a things few that we did. I would love to hear other ideas in the comments. I'm pretty sure that our kids will be glad they wore second hand clothes if it means that we can spend more time with them and maybe even pay for college. Also, for the record, babies only need food, warm clothing and a lot of love. They will never notice the rest of this crap.