The Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast around here is a hurried affair. Once every few months or so we get the pleasure of going to dim sum for Wending day (our wedding anniversary monthly Chinese meal) but otherwise it is a quick moment between waking up and hurrying out of the house. When Hiro-hanani sometimes wakes up on the wrong side of the morning and is very grumpy, Chaim might cheer him up with a breakfast like this:
consisting of all the favorite things like blueberries (blu) apple, (op) cantalope (mol, mol), grapes, and wheat bread...plus water and a yogurt fruit shake.

but otherwise, this is the norm around here:

A handfull of cheerios, crackers, cheese, banana, and such a bland palate, but I suppose its better than poptarts.

The neighborhood Kid

Today we had our second snow day from school this year, and the 16 plus inches of wet snow was a hard workout for Chaim this morning. As he was sweating away shoveling the quickly falling snow that covered up his clearings he thought to himself, "Wow I'm 50, and in 10 years or so we're going to have to hire some neighborhood kids to do this back breaking work". But then he realizes - "No wait a minute!!!... we HAVE a neighborhood kid upstairs tearing up the house, and in ten years, he'll be doing this work!!!!

And so we had a little fun outside today with the neighborhood kid, and walking home from grandma's we ran into Bix and Humphry on the sledding hill. They let us use their boogie board for one run down the slope at Doughboy Park.

Chaim's finally getting the hang of this

This evening at dinner, a typical family scene around the dinner table. Hiro-hanani has a train wreck of food in front of him as we try to be civilized and eat with at least one piece of cutlery. Hiro-hanani is practicing one-handed drinking from a cup, gulping down the seltzer we call hurt water, due to how it feels going down. He's doing pretty well, but as soon as he gets toward the bottom of the cup, 2/3rds gets dumped over his face and down into his bib. (It's hard to gage distance, amount and gravity all at once). Chaim sees the lake forming in the pocket of the Dr. Seuss bib with nice fish noodles and spinach floating around.

Hiro-hanani decides he's done with dinner and begins to reach for the velcro of his bib on the back of his neck. Before I can say anything, Chaim has rushed around the table, and grabs the lake front bib from Hiro-hanani telling him, "oh are you done? let me help you with that!"

Good save big daddy!

Parallel play

Who says children Hiro's age only engage in parallel play.
Today we kept Skylar company and while we were at it, had more of the "gang" over to hang out on this day off.

Here's Hiro showing Bix his favorite game/ hiding place while Skylar looks on.

Oh and one of these phones are for you!

Discoveries in the house

We just remembered that all the corners in the house have metal strips to protect the drywall. Hiro discovered this the other day. We don't have many metal surfaces upstairs, and since he is gated off from the kitchen, all he had to put his magnetic items in his life was the stainless steel recycling trashcan. Now he has other options.

New Sweaters from Auntie lora

Hiro got a package the other day from Auntie lordie...the master knitter. So instead of waiting until Christmas we opened the tissues to find three beautiful sweaters. Here's the first one, very dapper I think. Also notice his first fat lip- due to a fall which was entirely my fault for not putting him in pajamas with better non slip feet. Chaim was really freaked out when he saw blood, but then I reminded him that there will be many more, and probably worse injeries to come if our boy is ever to play ice hockey.


Also in the back ground is his new chair given to him by uncle Henry.

The second sweater is more of a lounging type garment. Actually it looks like he should have a pipe in his mouth when wearing this.

The thrid sweater is a bit too big, which is great for next year. Thank You Lora!!!!!

The big boy and his big cracker

Ok that's enough, you can have some of it now...

Turning on the Furnace

Yesterday Chaim turned on the furnace to test it, making sure it was in perfect working order before it really got cold. I built a radiator cover for Hiro Hanani's room so we wouldn't get burned when the heat kicked on. When we heard the hissing and the smell of heat, Hiro Hanani crawled over to the new radiator cover and began to sniff it.

The next winter time preparation is to get some warm pajamas since Hiro Hanani no longer will be able to sleep in a sleepsack.

Happy Wending Day and Grandma's Birthday

Today was another Wending Day, and it just so happened to fall on Grandma Susy's Birthday. So the whole family decided to move the car and venture out to Flushing for some Dim Sum. We first tried our favorite spot, New Pacific, but sadly they were closed...hopefully not for good but who knows. So we ended up at Ocean Jewel instead, where we had a nice lunch. Afterwards, since we had the car, we decided to go to the Korean huge grocery store. Hiro Hanani got to ride in the shopping cart for the second time, and loved it. On the way out though, we spotted the other carts with the plastic cars for kids mounted on the front... oh well, maybe next time.

Happy Wending Day!

Happy 5770

New Year and New tricks
Hiro Hanani doesn't seem to want to try walking unless he's pushing something, and since pushing the big metal stool didn't seem safe, we bought him a shopping cart.
It was too light, so we loaded it up with all his toys.
Then it was too top heavy so we put the Borzoli Book of Fiction on the bottom shelf and taped it down with all the Mexican stone chess pieces so it wouldn't flip over

National Guacamole Day

Last year, right after Hiro Hananni was born, we discovered National Guacamole Day, but were too elated from having a new baby in our midst as well as just being too sleep deprived to celebrate it.

This year however, Chaim, decided it's been too long since we had Mexican food, and we decided to celebrate it in style, ie... we went out to a restaurant that serves cocktails.

Hiro loves avocados...as you can see from last night's meal...and can be fierce when eating it!



but tonight's meal at Ariba Ariba, we ordered Guacamole- very mild. Unfortunately it had a bit of spice in it and so Hiro Hananni had a little trouble, but kept eating it just the same.
He ended up drinking a lot of water with the meal, but did love the black beans and rice, which were perfect for him, since it came cold. Otherwise the meal was very good. I had the chille rellenos, and Chaim got the steak al la Mexicana, both very good, though Chaim had to add some of his own emergency chillie peppers kit that he still had in his bag from our trip to Japan. The margaritas were very good, though I really could have gone for a few more.

Here's Hiro Hananni demonstrating his drinking (water) skills.

He starts out with really great form.
looking good
but then the water comes rushing into his face
but he keeps going back for more before he will turn the cup upside down.

Happy National Guacamole Day!

One year ago from my last blog post and a lot has happened...

It's been a long time since my last post...I've lost about 40 lbs and we have a new member of our family...
I'm back after about a year and a week to be exact...and I'm back to this blog, and I'm going to try hard to keep up with it, even if it's just pictures and no captions.

So on September 11, this year, our son Hiro Hanan Maddock Spiller turned one. Hiro Hanani is what Steve Teitelbaum likes to call him, by his Hebrew name, picked out with the help of the guys at B&H Photo.

September 11th fell on a Friday this year, I had to work until 5pm and Hiro Hananni's bedtime is 8pm, and Chaim and I were too tired, and couldn't get our act together to throw a party so instead, the birthday boy went to work at Franklin Furnace with Chaim since he hadn't been there since July.
I made 35 banana blueberry miniature muffins for his party.
Here he is showing the staff at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts and Creative Outlet how to do the wind the bobbin dance.



Of course a birthday is not complete without a cake, and so a week earlier in St. Louis, when we were attending Hiro Hanani's cousins Bar Mitzvah, Aunt Jill got him a nice big Angel Food cake covered with cream cheese icing.

Chaim performs his second fatherly duty

Lots of assembly required...about two hours worth, to put together a pack and play for Baby H. A lot of cursing while looking at directions with pictures. "You'd think that since your life !#@$# depended on all this &#^@%# Velcro, the directions would be a bit more straight forward!"

After it was all set up we concluded that it was way too low for ergonomic diaper changing purposes, so I will end up retrofitting the pieces to the dresser in the bedroom by adding some more Velcro and snaps, etc... The mobile is also useless, in that it isn't mobile, even with our fan turned on to high. The three stuffed animals (with huge warning tags, bigger than the animals themselves) just hang there stiff.

Now we have a co-sleeper set up along with this new contraption. Our living room is beginning to look like a small petting zoo with all these small cages and habitats. Now we are just waiting for the little one to fill them.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 79
After Breakfast Level 87
After Lunch Level- 150 oops
After Dinner Level 104
Ketones: Negative
night time insulin 25 units

didn't ride the train yesterday.

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
eggs with onions, peppers and cheese
coffee with half & half

AM Snack:
PBJ on cracker

Lunch:
pasta with pesto
tasted peach preserves I was making.....
too much raw sugar!

PM Snack:
peanuts

Dinner:
Greek @ Uncle George
Greek salad, fried calamari, grilled porgy, escarole

PM Snack:
chocolate/vanilla ice cream

No more Swimming?

Yesterday morning I went swimming as usual, then began to worry a little bit.
At my non-stress test, I asked one of the nurses her opinion about if I could still continue swimming? I remember Peggy from the Lamaze class telling us that she swam up to two days before delivering. But the nurse told me I'd probably better not swim anymore.

So now we are counting down, to a number, we are not sure exactly what, since Dr. Sylvestre definitely thinks that I will not make it till the 21st. This is agonizing..... It doesn't seem as I'm even having fake contractions and this process is not happening fast enough, and today's weather is just miserable... hot and very muggy and now that I'm not going swimming, totally unbearable. I was going to spend the weekend making peach pies, preserves and jam, but it is just too hot to do that.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 89
After Breakfast Level 107
After Lunch Level- 100-two hours later since I was doing errands and didn't have my monitor.
After Dinner Level 125
Ketones: Negative
night time insulin 20 units

6 Train: A miracle!!! on a crowded train, a young well dressed black man gave me his seat

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
eggs with onions, peppers and cheese
tea with milk

AM Snack:
Kashi TLC bar

Lunch:
Italian Sausage with onions and peppers on pita from a cart guy on the street.

PM Snack:
peanuts, 1/8th of quiche

Dinner:
Thai at PaOun
chicken Laab, grilled squid, mussels and a little sticky rice.
salad

PM Snack:
none

Weekley Doctors Visit

Yesterday's visit was very exciting. We found out that I am now 2 centimeters dilated and 100% effaced. He definately thinks that I won't make it to my due date. Before we left Dr. Sylvestre's office he says to me. "See you next week, if you are still pregnant!"

Very scary. I've been waiting for all this to be over, but now that the end is near, I'm having some fears about the pain that's to come. I'm still not clear about what a contraction feels like; could it feel similar to food poisoning? or PMS cramps? or having to take a big shit? or all of them rolled into one.......

And by the way, 10 centimeters is 4 inches. That's about the size of an opening of a mayonnaise bottle. Can a little head fit through that opening? very scary.

Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 84
After Breakfast Level 111
After Lunch Level- forgot to take since I was picking peaches with Lalena
After Dinner Level 98
Ketones: Negative
night time insulin 25 units

7 train: Young white woman offers her seat to me
(still everyone on the 6 train ignores the pregnant woman)

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
cracker with swiss cheese
coffee with half-and-half

AM Snack:
Kashi TLC bar

Lunch:
grilled cheese with avocado

PM Snack:
yogert with berries

Dinner:
whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce
broccoli

PM Snack:
homemade vanilla peach ice cream

Baby Care

At our baby care class, we learned how to hold the baby like a football, give baths, diaper and heard about a lot of products we should and should not use.





For two weeks I've been on night time insulin, slowly upping the dosage from 6 units to 25 and counting. At first I was scared of the whole idea of shooting up every evening, with visions of druggies hypodermic needles, and that rubber band that you have to use to tourniquet your arm. After going to see the insulin counselor, she made me feel more at ease with the whole process, when she showed me the sharpie-like pen I would be using every night. It also doesn't hurt at all, except when I sometimes put it in my thigh at the wrong angle. The first few weeks, there was not much difference in the morning fasting glucose levels, so slowly Dr. Sinha upped the dosage. This morning, finally I awoke and took a BG level of 77. Yippee.

This week Chaim and I get the house ready for our House warming, baby shower.








Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 73
After Breakfast Level 89
After Lunch Level 113
After Dinner Level 130
Ketones: Negative

7 train: Young Hispanic woman offers her seat to me
(so far everyone on the 6 train ignores the pregnant woman)

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
tofu/egg scramble with bacon, cheese, peppers & onions
glass of milk
coffee with half-and-half

AM Snack:
Kashi TLC bar

Lunch:
Korean: JapJae, brown rice, spicy tofu soup, green salad

PM Snack:
plumb
ww bread w/ cream cheese and Ajvar

Dinner:
beef stew with carrots, parsnips, yams
green salad

PM Snack:
Edy's vanilla fudge swirl ice cream

Shower Cap Aerobics

Having gained about 25lbs so far, my calves are in great shape, due to the extra weight I'm toting around. Otherwise, it's pretty miserable, it's like I'm carrying a book-bag filled with my computer and a gallon of water everywhere I go. Climbing up the 3 flights of stairs to the 7 train is the worst. My only saving grace is going to the Y every day for a swim, where I can be weightless and cool.

Every day at 10am, half of the pool turns into an Aqua Aerobics class for Seniors. Since I came late for my swim, the lifeguard suggested I join them, for a change of pace. So there I was, all big-bellied, wading around with about twenty 70 year old women wearing shower caps. It is the Y's rule to have a swim cap on at all times while in the pool, and since these ladies were not going to go under, they figured a shower cap would be the same as a swim cap.

The instructor came in and immediately spotted the pregnant interloper and asked how many weeks I was, not wanting to be responsible if I were to go into early labor I suppose. Then she told me of the exercises I could not do, the stomach straining moves, which were about half of them. After all the explanations, she lifted her gaze and looked around the pool worried and asked the rest of the class: "is anyone else here pregnant?" This got a round of laughter, and we all began the one hour class.

Usually a person of advanced age, such as this class, has not participated in many aerobics classes in their 70 plus life, so they had a hard time following directions and would end up in a logjam at one end of the pool or another. Most of the class was spent trying to spread out the flower capped masses along the Olympic size pool, while I dodged them left and right.

Needless to say, this was my first and last time participating in Shower Cap Aerobics class, as I realized I'd get more exercise just doing laps.


Yesterday's Stats:

Fasting Glucose Level 97
After Breakfast Level 116
After Lunch Level 94
After Dinner Level 101
Ketones: Negative

7 train: Young white guy offers his seat to me

Food consumed:
Breakfast:
veggie (left over from last weekend's bbq) fritatta w/ cheese
glass of milk
coffee with half-and-half

AM Snack:
PB &J on WW bread

Lunch:
Greek Salad with chicken and avocados
shot of OJ with Iron supplament.

PM Snack:
TLC Kashi granola bar

Dinner:
Veggie Lasagna with WW pasta noodles
green salad

PM Snack:
PB and chocolate ice cream

Lamaze Class

Last Night Chaim and I attended the first of our five week Lamaze Class, which was really like a group couple's therapy session; about 15 or so couples sitting in an over chilled room discussing our fears and body parts. The instructor, who Chaim has already named "Nurse Ratchet", I thought was great. She really stressed that the coach does a lot of the work and that pain can be managed.

Three weeks ago, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and since then, I've been measuring and weighing out every bit of food that goes into my mouth. I'm a walking science project. My blood sugar level is all over the place. It fluctuates over 20 points throughout the day. I prick my finger to get a blood sample four times a day, to get a reading and chart the course. Eating fatty ice cream at night sometimes helps the morning numbers but it's not consistent. We spent last weekend at Art Luekers on Shelter Island and chowed on a lot of sea food. Clams, steamers, lobster, which were all delicious, and according to the carb charts should not be so bad, but again the numbers were high. It looks like I'll be going on insulin soon.

Back from a 7 month hiatus

Unemployed and sweaty, I now have some time to update the goings on here in Woodside Queens. Barefoot and pregnant, we are selling stuff on E-bay, living a white trash existence these days.

I've gained about 25 lbs, and there's a dance party that occurs every afternoon and night in my belly.

My ObGyn is French Canadian, which means that Chaim gets to discuss the finer points of Pine Soda and Poutine at our monthly visits.

We tend to do the big things in life around the start of the year so it's easy to count and keep track... Just as we got hitched on New Years eve, Baby H was conceived around New Years....and his due date is on the Fall Equinox, September 21st.

The first trimester was hell...for many reasons. We couldn't tell anyone about why I was so tired and throwing up twice a day. We would get invited to Sushi restaurant openings, Film Premiers parties and other fun get togethers with premium food and liquor and I would have to make excuses for why I couldn't drink the champagne or eat the raw fish/oysters. After a while, I just stopped going out.

The second trimester was great, as all the books and friends tell you. I was energized enough to resume some building in the shop, and the last thing I constructed before I got banned from the table saw was this shed.
This green (left over paint) parallelogram shaped shed sits on the back corner of the garden and is now aptly titled Hillbilly Hills. The back sliver of the yard definitely has that certain shack-livin' atmosphere, especially when we drag out the BBQ grill that Chaim's father gave us. Its a family heirloom from Buffalo, with a steer painted on it. Here's our first July 4th BBQ in Hillbilly Hills.

Kourabiedes

At this time of year, you can often find me kneeling by the printer, but this year I've been spending time around our new Thermador PRG 304 Professional hearth where it is warm and cozy. We have no tree, no twinkling lights and the only Christmas music is heard by me or Chaim singing "Happy Birthday Micky Jesus".

So I Baked Cookies: Kourabiedes (Greek sugar cookies) in fact. Unfortunately, I haven't moved all my books from the studio and thus, the recipe is still tucked into the piano music in a box, so I had to look it up. I remember it to be a pretty easy recipe, consisting of only flour, sugar and butter. The three or four recipes I looked up had completely different measurements for the proportions for the three ingredients, some of them off by 1/2 cup, so I'm just winging it this year. They turned out pretty good though, and the house smells fabulous!

Ingredients (for this batch):

about 4 cups of flour plus a few handfuls more.
about 1-1/2 lbs of butter
2 cups of powder sugar plus a few more cups for dusting
3 tbsp ground cloves
1tbsp Madagascar vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup Johnnie Walker Gold Label 18 year old Scotch (I couldn't find any brandy)
1-1/2 cup chopped almonds

Beat, mix, fold, all ingredients until the hand mixer starts to stall, and begins to smell like the motor is about to burn out. Then take over by hand, and knead to finish mixing. Roll into small balls the size of a grape, then smaller about the size of a frozen green pea, for the second batch when you realize they expand and will not fit into the small tins. Bake in a 350 degrees oven for 15 minutes. Let cool and dust with remaining powder sugar.


Excerpts from the following story was included in a Holiday card a few years ago. Here it is in it's entirety explaining why I love these cookies so much.

Bach Inventions with Sassa

Sassa Maniotis was my piano teacher when I was six. She went to Juilliard a long, long time ago. Her husband was an important geneticist who taught at Washington University, and they were the most interesting Greek couple who lived in a very large 3-story Tudor house behind the school. In the front room where most people had plushy upholstered couches and end tables, she had two Steinway Grand pianos. This is where I used to go for lessons once, then later twice a week. She always had a Pall Mall unfiltered cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She would keep time to my Bach by clapping loudly over my left shoulder. After each few measures, she would spit the stray tobacco from her mouth and shout “AGAIN!” When I got older and started wearing jewelry, big 1980’s bracelets and plastic rings, she would make me remove them at the door, so it would not hinder my practice. I once asked her what she thought of Liberace and she just grunted. Grand pianos were made to be a shiny jet black not a blinding white after all. She would inspect my overgrown nails before stepping up to the bench. If she found them to be more than an eighth of an inch in length, she would make me bite them down to the quick. She disliked the clicking of nails more than Liberace’s white pianos. I describe her as though she could be frightening and militaristic, but once you got past the fear, and became accustomed to her chain-smoking habits, she was a good woman, and a wonderful teacher.

I once sprained my right wrist playing softball and she composed a short piece, a left-handed invention for me to practice on during the two weeks my right hand was out of commission.
During the holiday season, when I arrived for my lessons, I could count on the haze of smoke mingling with the welcoming scent of cloves and cinnamon, and on the front foyer table, a tin of Kourabiedes, delicious traditional Greek cookies coated with ample powdered sugar that she had just baked. It was hard to sneak a handful of the treats. It’s as if the cookies were designed with so much powdered sugar that when I tried to take more than my share, I would be left with the incriminating dusting of white on my hands and clothes.

One year, the Thursday before Christmas, Sassa asked me to come early for my lesson. Not having practiced as much as I should have, I was sure I’d be lectured before we began the warm up scales. Instead she invited me into her kitchen and we kneaded dough, and mixed together a sprinkle of this and a dash of that. That lesson was one of the most memorable: as I played the repetitive exercises of Czerny for my teacher/baker, and as my fingers became more limber with the warm-up, the house too became warm with the aroma of the Kourabiedes. Later that evening I went home with a copy of the recipe tucked between the Adagio and Allegretto of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 31, No22.

This thick volume, where the flour-dusted recipe still holds place to this day, was given to me on my 15th birthday. Inside the first page of the cover, Sassa wrote this inscription: To Micki On her 15th B’day Use Beethoven Well Love Sassa Maniotis. Sassa presented this book to me after the kitchen lesson and we started right away working through the first Sonata. It was composed and dedicated to Joseph Hayden. I love the piece for just that fact alone.
Three months after that lesson, I was playing that piece without a metronome, keeping speed and time in my brain. 4 months after that, skipping 16 works, Sassa had me playing the last piece: Sonata Op. 31, No2. And 8 weeks after that I quit piano lessons for good. I had become a bratty uncontrollable teenager, and piano was the last thing I wanted to be doing. By jumping to the last work, she almost knew that it would be the last piece I would play with her, and she probably wanted the both of us to feel that we had gotten through this daunting 341-page book together. On the pages of that last sonata, Sassa wrote a lot of demanding things with exclamation marks. Practice! Bring the metronome! There was a scolding tone in the pencil marks.

Recently, we visited Buffalo for one of Chaim's many cousins' Bat Mitzvah. His 9 year old nephew was there as well, a very good piano player. At our wedding he got right up with the band and played some keyboard. He is a fearless player. In Buffalo, he put on a concert for the family, making up programs and raffles, and even had a sing-along karaoke while he played back-up to our off key singing. He hit the notes, and was playing well, but I listened to him, remembering my practicing habits a year before I gave up the piano. I could hear that his heart was no longer in it; he played, just as I had, in quick ramming strokes, getting through the piece so that he could go on to the next song. When he missed notes, he didn't care, and kept going. I told Chaim that he will have retired his Suzuki books and quit by this time next year. Last time Chaim spoke to his sister, he found out that his nephew received a drum set for Chanukah, and we were sending him some wire drumming brushes wrapped with a bow.

Unlike the Suzuki method of teaching piano, Sassa did not rely on any one text, and would tailor a composer to each individual student, depending on many factors; their talent, their finger reach, basically what the student could handle. I have small hands, and could only reach one or two keys beyond an octave, but I loved Chopin. So probably against her discretion, Sassa changed the fingering as written and let me play Chopin. I was a mechanical player -- I could play anything when you put music in front of me, and I could sight read like nobody’s business. But…I could never play anything unless there was sheet music in front of me or I had the piece memorized.

I played everything by rote. I so envied the players who could improvise, just sit down and start playing random notes, jazz players especially. The first guy in art school that I had a crush on, in fact, had this talent. He was not very attractive, a cross between a camel and Harry Connick Jr. But he could play piano like Harry Connick, and in smoky dive bars no less, making it that much more appealing. We'd sneak into the school auditorium, or the church down the street and he’d teach me to do the base line, the simple repetitive 3 or 4 chords, so we could play together. He could go on for hours and riff.

I must have had talent though. Especially compared to another of Sassa’s students, Joshua Cohen. Poor Joshua, he really tried hard but somehow just couldn't get it. He was the older brother of my classmate Anna, and had been taking lessons 2 years longer, but it took him 3 times more time to get the fingering down, or to remember that the piece was in A major not B#. I used to come for my lessons following him, so on the days when my mother dropped me off early, I’d have to sit on the runner carpet in the foyer and listen to him struggling. We would pass each other in the hall each time; me with a look of compassion, and he with a look of defeat. Poor Joshua.

When you type in the words Piano and Prodigy in the Google search engine, 80 percent of your hits will refer you to a cute Asian girl or boy sitting at the piano or holding a tiny violin. This percentage was higher in the early eighties I imagine, and growing up in a part of the country where there were few Asians, somehow in the back of Sassa’s mind, I think perhaps this is what she wanted me to become. After all, I was already living the stereotypical child prodigy life; being two grades ahead in math skills, going to Saturday Japanese language schools, and taking piano lessons.

One year, to get me further prepped for a life of competitions, Sassa signed me up for theory classes at the music conservatory, five blocks from the Maniotis house and one block from the public library. This meant that on top of my lesson with Sassa, I would be going to the conservatory one day a week to learn about note reading, intervals and scales, pitch values, triad inversions among other theories I was already playing but not really understanding.

I had been playing piano for about 7 years by then, so they first had to test me to see what level of theory I should be taking. The testing process was brutal. I was blindfolded and led into a room and seated in the far corner of what I assumed, by the echoes, of a large room. I heard feet shuffling, lots of sniffles, and whispering giggles of kindergartners. After what seemed like 30 minutes, an adult male voice cleared his throat, and spoke.

“Miss Watanabe, I will first play a note, then from it, a chord. First I will play it, and then will play it as an arpeggio. Please tell me what note on the keyboard, then tell me the chord, and what key the chord is in”

You must be joking… Every time I got the answer wrong, I would hear giggles, and shuffling. I sat in the corner blindfolded giving incorrect response after another, for what felt like an eternity, and when the blinds were removed, I saw that it was worse than I thought. In a large recital room, I had been sitting about 20 feet from a Steinway, and in another corner, about 25 3-4 year-olds were sitting classroom style facing me, giggling and shifting, swinging their legs. I ran out crying…

My theory teacher turned out to be a man in his mid-forties, with really, really, really bad b.o. I couldn't bear to concentrate when he leaned over to point out something on the sheet music. Music Theory Classes lasted about a month. By then, I think that Sassa realized I would not begin competing and I believe I quit piano cold turkey.

Looking back at the sheet music, I get glimpses of those days with nostalgia and sadness. My mother was right after all, I should have practiced more. Looking over Sassa’s handwriting, and the endearing notes she wrote in the margins, I long to have a place to keep a grand piano (even a baby grand) if not to play, but in memory of my beloved piano teacher.

Now in our new house, in a few weeks we will have everything the two of us owns in one single place. This seems unbelievable. Currently my electronic weighted keyboard upright sits to the right of my computer desk unplugged. It is now temporarily being used as place to pile all the papers and school books.

My new year resolution is this:

Once all the books are unpacked, I will open up the Bach Inventions, practice the scales and begin where I left off ,over twenty years ago and begin again with Beethoven.