It's Friday! 1-6 - the 12th day of Christmas

It is the traditional 12th day of Christmas.  In the past, this was a very important day in the year.  Families would give gifts on this day not Christmas.  Christmas was for going to church and being with family.  12th night was for the gift giving and partying.  when I was small, I learned about 12th night from my mom.  I learned even more by reading about it.  We have a tradition in our house (more of Mom's tradition, rather than mine) that you start the year with a clean house, debt free, and grudge free.  It seemed that the day or two after Christmas all the Christmas decorations would be down and put away.  Mine are still up.  this is a Scottish tradition.  My Mom's side of the family came to Canada from Scotland, the Hebrides (I am not sure how to spell it).  They were tailors.  My father's side of the family were from England, immigrated from Scotland.  We think that my mother's family may have moved to Scotland from Ireland at one time.  My father's family were Merchant Mariners, otherwise known as pirates.  Yup, I am from pirate stock.  I come from tailors and pirates, a rather odd combination, but that is the way it is.  One year, in the future, I want to have a 12th night party.  If I had the house in order, I would have done this tonight, but I am not ready for entertaining on a bigger scale.  Okay, I am not ready at all right now.  Give me a few more months to get the house more in order and then we will talk.

I have a busy day tomorrow.  Julian, my temporary student, is coming for not only her regular lesson, but for a make up lesson too so she will be here for about 1 1/2 hours.  It should be fun.  My Katie is going to have her lesson tomorrow as well as Rick!  Rick has been away for 2 months and I am so glad he is getting back into singing.  I am really glad about that.  I wasn't sure if he would come back or not.  I am glad he did.  I really am.  I was going to give him a call when he called that day.  I will also be going through papers on the dining room table this weekend.  I have some photo albums that need to be put away.  Some of them will go upstairs to Mom's room.  I still think of that room as hers.  I know it is a guest room now.  I don't want to move into it, although I know I could.  I happen to really like my room a lot.  Yes, there is more room in that room, but I really like how my room is the coldest in the upstairs.  Because I have a problem with night sweats, having the colder room is best.  Mom's room gets to hot at times so I will stay in my room.  My old room, the other guest room, is actually going to become an office for me.  This will be too cool.  I will have a music storage room downstairs and a have an awesome office upstairs.  Right now there is Mom's filing cabinet and her army stuff on the table in it.  There are some boxes up there too that eventually I will need to go through.

I went and got my hair done tonight.  My shoulder hasn't been very good lately so I have had to go back to the hairdressers to wash and dry it.  I am growing my hair out again so that I can donate the hair.  I have done this before.  this will be the 3rd time I have done this.  I don't want to have super short hair so I will grow it out longer than usual so I can still put my hair up.  I like ponytails and where my hair up in one almost everyday.  I just really like it.

I am having trouble getting judges for piano for competition.  It is driving me crazy.  I know Diane and Georgette are getting very worried as competition is in 7 weeks.  Well, I am doing the best that I can do. All the entry forms are due next Tuesday.  I have 2 and possibly 3 going.  I haven't heard from the one since October so I am not sure if she is still going or not.  I am not happy that I haven't seen her since then, but there isn't anything I can do about it.  Since I haven't seen her since then, I don't know if she is going.

I am glad that it is Friday.  It was a good day.  All the students did very well and are improving.  Emily and I tried something rather new for her.  I had her learn one hand at a time instead of doing both hands at the same time.  This would make sure she knew both hands before she put them together.  Acer students did very well and are improving.  Emily and I tried something rather new for her.  I had her learn one hand at a time instead of doing both hands at the same time.  This would make sure she knew both hands before she put them together.  Acer finished one of his songs for piano.  Calli is learning 2 songs for voice.  I totally forgot she was learning the Italian one!  Yeah, that was not good but fortunately she just kind of laughed and reminded me of it.  I have not so good Brain Fog tonight.  I have a couple of relatives who joke about having Brain Fog but I don't find it amusing.  It is very real and happens a lot to me.  That they joke around about it makes me not want to be with them too much.  I don't make fun of them with their illnesses or symptoms, but they seem to think it is okay to laugh at mine.  This is another reason I don't hang out too often with many relatives.  There are only a few relatives I want to be around at this point.  Unfortunately, the ones I want to live very far away now so I don't get to see them to often but I enjoy being with them when I do see them.  Speaking of relatives, my cousin, Samantha turned 23 a couple of days ago (on the 3rd to be exact!).  I remember her from when she was small.  When I was healthier, I would take her and her older sister, Celia, camping.  I really loved being with them and now they are both grown up and in Celia's case, she has 2 children of her own.  Samantha graduated last June and is now working.  It seems like yesterday she was toddling around with me.  I have many really good memories of the two of them.

I am heading to bed soon.  I hope your day was good too.