Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas! Heh heh...

I read somewhere that when your ear is clogged, instead of trying to dig the wax and crap out, you should pour hydrogen peroxide in your ear (no stronger than 3% stuff) and wait till you don't hear it fizzing anymore, then take a shower and rinse your ear out really well. So I tried it, and I gotta say, hydrogen peroxide fizzing in your ear tickles like CRAZY!!!

It worked okay. Much better than plain water, at least. Not perfect, but hey, what is? Besides me, of course. (Kidding.)

Work today wasn't terribly exciting. About the most interesting part was early in the morning when I got ticked off at Tessie for going over my work and ignoring me when I told her I'd already done what she was cleaning. Don't know why I bothered getting annoyed--that's perfectly normal for her. Well, okay, I'll give you the whole story.

You know how sometimes you wake up thinking, "What a wonderful day this is going to be! Fresh air, beautiful sunrise, I feel great...! Yep, nothing can spoil this day!" and then you skip merrily to work humming a jaunty tune? (Slight exaggeration--we call this "artistic license.") Well, this morning, I woke up thinking, "Ugh, I don't even want to be awake. This day needs to just end already. Why can't time just stop for a while?" and then I dragged myself out of bed and went to work in a horribly pessimistic mood. (Again, slight exaggeration, but I think some of you may still be able to relate.)

Only one room to clean today, and they didn't check out for a long time. Not a whole lot to do, and it was only Tessie and me today. Tessie's a nice lady, really. But she doesn't speak English very well. I can only figure out what she's saying about half the time, if I'm lucky, and she seems to understand me less than a quarter of half the time. (That's less than an eighth, for the mathematically fractionally impaired. And yes, I know that last sentence was englishally impaired. Get over it. I'm the writer here, not you. Go start your own blog. Anyway, where was I? See, now you made me lose my train of thought, you punk!)

Sorry for spacing out. I was busy parenthesizing. Wow, spell-check didn't complain about that! Is parenthesizing really a word? I better look it up and make sure it means what I meant it to mean.... (See, this is why I never get anything done.) Hey cool, it does! Awesome! I made/learned a new word today! Heehee!

Anyway... let's see... Oh yes, so anyway, Tessie's nice, but she doesn't speak English, whether by choice or by default. Or ignorance. Or gremlin. Or something. Most of the time, when anyone speaks to her, she gives them a blank stare, then ignores them completely and goes back to whatever she was doing. This morning, we were cleaning the bathroom and she started sweeping right off the bat. Right away, that mildly annoyed me because a) I was in a semi-grouchy mood already, and b) any fool knows that when you're cleaning, the floor is the last thing you clean. So while she swept, I cleaned the mirrors, the sinks, the urinals, and started on the toilets. She started on the last toilet as I was finishing the next-to-last, so I said, "Tessie, is there anything else that needs to be done?"

She looked right at me and said, "No. It's good."

"Okay, then I'll go start cleaning the other bathroom while you finish up here. Is that okay?"

"No no no!" she cried. "Mop!"

"Mop?"

"Yes, needs mop. Floor is dirty!"

Ugh, I hate mopping. "It really needs a mop?"

"Yes yes, go get the mop!"

"Ugh, fine..." So I found the mop and the mop bucket, but the chemical we usually use to make the mopping water was gone. (I don't even know what the chemical is called, but it's usually right by the bucket and today it wasn't.) So I went back to Tessie.

"Hey, Tessie, do you know where the chemical is that we use to mop?"

She put her rag down, led me to the back office, picked up the mop and said, "It's right here. See?" and went back to clean her toilet.

Oy. Fine. So I used Simple Green. Whatever works, right?

So I got the mop bucket ready, went back to the bathroom, and Tessie was cleaning the urinals, which I had just cleaned.

"Hey, Tessie, don't worry, I already did those."

She didn't even give me her blank stare; she just kept scrubbing away at the already clean walls. Oy, fine, whatever.

I started mopping. When I got partway through, I turned around and she was cleaning the mirrors again. "Tessie, I already did that, it's fine." Again, no response. Not even a look in my direction. So I figured fine, let her do it again. Whatever makes her happy. When she finished redoing all my work, I asked her if she could go get the Wet Floor sign. She left the bathroom, and when I finished mopping, she was gone. Already started the next bathroom. Sigh. Whatever. It's not like it's a long trip to where we keep the signs. So I rinsed out the mop, got the sign, put it up, and headed over to the next bathroom. Tessie was just finishing--you guessed it--sweeping.

"Hey, Tessie. Have you cleaned the sinks yet?"

"No. Only sweep."

Shoot me.

Kamryn's piano lesson was similar, actually. She's finally starting to be able to tell the difference between a half note and a quarter note, and is starting to remember that half note gets two counts and quarter note gets one count. Unfortunately, she can't understand what a count is, and however I explain it, she doesn't understand. I tried to have her tap her foot and count to four and play half notes on C, but she couldn't get her hands and feet to do different rhythms like that. So I had her stand up and tap her foot and clap. Still couldn't do it. I had her pat her head and rub her tummy and she had no trouble at all with that, but she couldn't tap her foot while clapping or playing half notes to save her life. By the end of our hour-long lesson, the best she could do was clap, count to two, and stomp her feet madly.

Then again, an hour-long piano lesson for a five-year-old is a bit much. I've told all of my students and their parents that I shoot for a half hour lesson, but every single one of them still assumes it's an hour. I'm starting to get tired of people not understanding me.

With Kamryn, it's not too bad, though. Since the lesson is so long, I don't feel bad wasting a little bit of time by having her run around when she gets too wiggly. Today, she said the words "I can't," so I taught her how to do push-ups and made her do five every time she said either "I can't" or "It's too hard." Also, she kept trying to play every note with her thumb while the rest of her fingers were underneath the keyboard, so I tried making a ball out of paper, putting it in her hand and saying "Here, play again, and don't drop the ball." (That's what she said was too hard.)

At the end of the hour, she was bored and I was frustrated, so I picked her up, put her in my lap, and "helped" her play Fur Elise as her mom walked in.

Then I was supposed to meet with the missionaries so we could practice our piano duet again, this time on different pianos. (When we tried last time, Elder Darby and I kept bumping arms, so we decided it would be easier on different pianos.) As it turns out, he's decent at piano, but a) he tends to plunk a bit, and b) he's never played a duet before. He's never been in band. In fact, aside from singing hymns in church, he's never played music other than piano solos. (Come to think of it, though, I'd be surprised if he's never played an accompaniment for a singer. Unless he's from Utah, where everyone and their dog plays the piano.) So I taught him how to listen and lead and follow when you're playing with someone else. By the time he and Elder Bell had to leave, we'd gotten enough better that the song actually sounded pretty instead of painful. That's one plus, at least.

Of course, I'm not perfect either... My biggest problem, I think, is that I tend to play very gently. In a gentle solo piece, that's good. But in a duet, that's bad when I have the melody because I can't bring it out enough. Le sigh. I'll work on that. I wish Elder Darby could have been able to tell me what other things I should work on, because I know I'm not really a good musician. I'm a mathematician with hand/eye coordination. And ps, I never follow dynamic markings. Never even notice them.

Thus it is. I don't feel very good. I think I'm actually mildly homesick too, which sucks when you don't know where your "home" is, or if you even have a place you could/would call "home." Or maybe I'm just tired of being "here." I wonder if I'll ever find a place to live permanently or if I'll get bored of any place after a while. My guess is the second one. I'll have to remember not to accumulate too much junk, to make moving easier. Heck, maybe when I get a real place to live, I'll use a cot instead of a bed, just to make it easier when I decide to pack up and move.

Except if I'm constantly moving, I'll get bored of that too, I bet. What a horrible dilemma this is. The only logical solution is hot chocolate, which solves all problems except obesity. Actually, it could help with that too, I bet. If people drank hot chocolate instead of beer, they wouldn't get beer bellies. They'd get hot chocolate bellies. Like Santa Claus. Sure, they say Santa only eats and drinks cookies and milk, but come on, how can you live at the North Pole and not like hot chocolate? How else are you supposed to warm up your fingers after a long Christmas night spent flying around in all kinds of weather in an open sleigh? I bet even Rudolph likes hot chocolate, and he's probably allergic to it. Heh heh, I can just imagine it now... Rudolph drinks hot chocolate and goes into anaphylactic shock... so some kids are out late at night building a snow fort when suddenly, a dead reindeer with a glowing nose drops out of the sky and lands on the other team, killing them instantly and letting team one win by default. Ho ho ho, merry Christmas!!!