The Bare Necessities...

...or Piano Basics for the Recalcitrant Preteen

Okay, so Lizzy’s piano teacher (shout out to Michelle C at 4/4 Music) is awesome. She’s written her own beginning piano books, teaches piano and voice, and is an all-around Patient Human Being.

Which you have to be when teaching Lizzy.

Don't get me wrong; Lizzy is a great kid. She is kind, generous, empathetic, and super smart. She's also adolescent, know-it-all, lazy, and often puts the ass is Asperger's (though these days it's called Autism Spectrum Disorder Level One: Minimal Support Required, because Hans Asperger was a Nazi).

Some of her issues with piano are related to autism - like her inability to cope with the fact that 6/8 and 3/4 are not the same thing in music notation as they are in math - and some (probably most) are just Being Almost Twelve and Snarky With It. She has also recently had the Growth Spurt That Ate Seattle - a whole new wardrobe including shoes and all in the last three months (thanks, Kirkland Grandparents, for helping with that!)

These are not excuses for her lazy attitude toward practicing, but they are likely contributing factors; they certainly were for me at her age. She gets bored with songs she doesn't already know, and doesn't seem to grok the need for exercises like etudes or "baby songs" as building blocks (she does seem to grok scales, arpeggios, and chords as building blocks, but that's a different post, I suspect. Or maybe a paper for a pediatric neuropsychologist).

In any case, she's willing enough to do her scales and all that, but she seems to dislike most songs she doesn't know, and I was getting frustrated. She doesn't have a lesson next week as her teacher will be out, or the week following because it's her twelfth birthday and I can't see her being able to cope with the first day of middle school, her birthday, dinner, and a music lesson in the same day. We use her makeup days for Abby's voice lessons over and above the ones her dad bought her for her birthday (whenever we can squeeze them in) so there's no loss there.

So I was discussing with Awesome Teacher Michelle C, and she said that there are in fact beginner books for piano for Disney or anime, or current pop songs, whatever Lizzy might be interested in. And I thought, hey, her is birthday coming up, and her Amazon wishlist needs more updating in addition to what we did this afternoon, so...

So, any ideas, Internet Hive Mind? Aside from Goodnight My Someone, I suspect, (if it's in a manageable key) because I know that one is a beginning piano song... it's right there in the play... any particularly good (easy/beginner; she knows three major keys as of yet) piano books in the animation, current pop, or musical theater categories?

Old Home Week

Names and Places have been changed to protect the innocent.

Not that there's any need, really, but it was odd, this week was.

Monday night we had a friend - one of my friends, for a change, rather than one of the kids' friends - over for dinner. It was nice; Abby made her usual Pantry Chow Mein, but a gluten-free version for this friend. Now, I've known this woman - we'll call her Issy - for maybe ten years; I think Lizzy was a toddler when we met. She's the fiancee of a dear friend of Laston's, she now lives in Eastern Washington, but she was over this side for some family stuff. So she came to dinner. And we're talking about an incident from Laston's memorial, when my mom saw Issy's fiance in the grocery store before the homegrown memorial, and he looked so much like Laston to her that when he walked up my garden path later that afternoon, she seriously thought for a split second that we were being haunted. 

So Issy and I were talking about this and laughing a little - the way you do when it's simultaneously hilarious and sad - and she mentioned that my mom always looked familiar to her. We keep chatting about growing up in the area and it comes out that of course my mom looked familiar, and not just because we look like family, but because Issy was in and out of our house and we hers all the time thirty-to-thirty-five years ago. She and my sister were in the same 4-H group or troop or whatever they call it in 4-H, and so I knew her back then, because although I was not part of the group, I was Chief Hair Braider for the girls in it.

Wow. 

And then today, after all the usual scolding from my therapist about taking care of myself during the week leading up to the anniversary of Laston's death and the back-to-school rush, I took myself out to lunch. Lizzy's at Grandma's, Abby's at YAPI, and as I had to bring Abby's forgotten lunch to her anyway, and I was out, I went to eat something I don't usually get when Miss Picky and Miss Allergic are with me.

The server was very nice, and it was late for lunch - about two in the afternoon - so she wasn't busy. As I was headed out the door, the server - we'll call her Bea - rushed to hug a customer coming up to the door. I smiled and asked if he was a regular, and she said, "Oh, I've been taking care of him at my jobs for almost a decade, even when I worked down at Restaurant X."

Wait. 

"You worked at Restaurant X? And your name is Bea? Did you maybe know my husband? Laston Kirkland?"

"Yeah, I was just wondering why I hadn't seen him for a while - he was the guy with the science fiction book, right?"

Right.

Wow again.

I knew the Seattle area was a trifle incestuous in the Tech Work sense. 

But this was two incidents spanning three days. Not even including the lady who gave me a manicure being so pleased I came in again because she wanted me to practice her English on.

Wow.