7 Quick Takes (Volume 180)

1) We attended Drummer Boy's Percussion Ensemble concert at the University of Nebraska this week. What a great concert! There were many moments of odd sounds and instruments. At one point it looked like they were banging on bowls and I flashed back to toddler Drummer Boy clearing out my kitchen cabinets and banging on pans with wooden spoons. I had no idea I was fostering his skills by letting him do it! While these students were playing, hands were flying so fast they were blurry. Sounds melded together in unusual ways and you wondered how in the world they put them together. A few times I wasn't sure they WERE together, but they call that 20th century music. In the first piece, Drummer Boy and two other guys each had a station of equipment and often sounded like they were playing three different songs, yet somehow fit it together. I never did quite figure it out. Drummer Boy had the coveted cow bell solo on the last piece and we had a really entertaining evening. Nice work, son.

2) Ladies Man took up the harmonica last week. In a few days time he taught himself to play "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" and "Amazing Grace" and the ever spiritual classic, the theme song from The Office. He pulled his harmonica out of his pocket after Drummer Boy's concert to show him. He whipped through "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus," then proceeded to play it again, this time with his nose instead of his mouth.

Drummer Boy: Wow. Way to worship.

3) Graduation exercises in our school district fall on Mother's Day this year. What kind of cruel joke is that? Mothers are already a wreck at their kids' commencement and now we're going to do it on their special day?! Isn't that like waving a cheeseburger in front of a guy whose jaw is wired shut? You're a mother, but your children will be ditching you soon. It's an extra jab to our delicate sensibilities. It's enough to know your chicks will be leaving the nest. Why commemorate the painful ordeal on Mother's Day?! Whose idea was that?

Must have been a man.

4) I'm thinking of banning my husband from reading the morning newspaper. Every day he finds something to get in a wad about and he's not even drinking caffeine. This week it was a blurb in a magazine insert that identified a common activity for people in Nebraska to be floating down rivers in cow tanks.

Kevin: Oh my gosh! This is a national magazine. Great. Everyone's going to think people from Nebraska are a bunch of back road hicks. "Yeup. I'm gonna float down that there river in a cow tank." Cause that's all we know here. That's all we do. We just float down the river and shoot the breeze.

I couldn't stop laughing.

Kevin: You want people reading your blog and saying, "Hey, she's from Nebraska. I wonder if she floats down the river in a cow tank?"

I couldn't say anything I was laughing so hard.

Kevin: They might as well say we eat out of pig troughs too. Oh brother.

So I suppose I should tell you for the record, yes, I am from Nebraska, but no, I have never floated down the river in a cow tank, although it sounds like it could be fun and now that I think about it, I believe my brothers have done it. Hey, if we took Drummer Boy with his cow bell it would be perfect. Would that make it better, my darling husband?

And honey, maybe it's time to find a new morning habit.

5) Miss Innocent One's middle school show choir sang for a retirement village the other day.

Me: How was it?

Miss Innocent One: They weren't much of an audience. One lady was smiling and nodding at us and I liked her, but the rest of them were pulling their "Napolean Dynamite" with 'tudes.

Ha! I can actually imagine it. Can't you?

6) And speaking of Miss Innocent One, I'm starting to think she and Drama Queen have switched bodies. Drama Queen is super sweet and appreciative of me now and Miss Innocent One is telling me, "You know, you're kind of a freak sometimes" and "Calm down, Mommy!" Lucky for me Drama Queen will be home this weekend. Glory!

7) We're headed up the road today to watch Ladies Man perform for District Music Contest. He's playing with the Wind Ensemble and performing a trombone trio with a couple of friends. He says they're going to suck, but he says that about everything. We'll see how accurate he is.

I have good and bad memories of District Music Contest. One year I had a killer and I mean, KILLER, clarinet solo that I won the Elkhorn Band Olympics with, beating 50 clarinet players. I was ready to go in and WOW the judge, but on my way out of one building into the next, I nicked my reed on the door jam and ended up squeaking all the way through my performance. I got a II rating and was disappointed to say the least, but it got much worse when everyone in my school that year, EVERYONE, got a I rating except me. And I had the KILLER SOLO!

It was the first of many lessons in humility God has given me. Sigh. It was good for me, I know, but still smarted. And you better believe I am a nazi about using my mouthpiece cover now. I cringe whenever I see kids carrying around reed instruments without one. CRINGE!

Hopefully Ladies Man will have a better time of it today. And, BONUS, I get to hang with Drama Queen all day while we listen. Yes.

That's all I got today, friends. Check out Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes.